Joseph Wolfe moved his rook to the bishop's square, setting the piece down precisely. He looked up from the board. His round, fleshy face was expressionless, and his bald head glistened under the clubroom lights. His eyes, from behind thick glasses, met Vasily's blankly. There was no sign of emotion or concern. It was like playing chess with a machine.
Vasily stared back. In the old days he had known the Chessmaster only slightly, and he had no fear of being recognized after ten years. Having made his move, Wolfe nodded abruptly and went on to the next table. Vasily watched him go, conscious of no anger, no outrage, no yearning for revenge for what had happened to Martin and Josefina. He was at the chess club to do a job, and, as always when he worked, he suppressed all emotion in favor of an overwhelming concentration on the technical aspects of his trade. At that moment he was as much a machine as Wolfe was.
The room in the chess club was quiet, only occasional murmurs breaking the silence. At fourteen different tables fourteen players studied their boards as Wolfe went from one to the other, playing fourteen games simultaneously. There had been twenty players to begin with, but six had already gone under. Of the remaining players, it could be expected that one or two would manage a draw and one, perhaps, even win. The others would certainly lose.
Vasily, from his position at table twelve, watched Wolfe as he continued up the line studying each board briefly, making his move, nodding once, and then moving on. Aside from his skill, the Chessmaster had only two slight advantages over his opponents. At each board he played the white pieces, which had given him the opening move, and at each table it was required that the challenger have made his next move by the time that the Chessmaster returned. Slight edges, nothing more.
Vasily studied his board, prepared to move P-Q6. He was pleased with his position after twenty-eight moves, pleased to see that he had retained some of his onetime skill. His technique, such as it was after long disuse, was dramatically opposite to that of the Chessmaster. Wolfe played a hypermodern, technical game, dull and colorless, with clearly charted lines of defense and a logical progression of attacking moves. Vasily, on the other hand, played chess with elan in the classical fashion, constantly attacking and happily sacrificing material for an advantage in position. The clash of styles was stimulating to him, and he realized that he had allowed this game to capture his imagination too strongly. He was there for a purpose, and he should have made his move, his professional move, long before this. The carrying case in his pocket, with the six loaded pieces, pressed against his hip, reminding him. He turned his attention to the board again and advanced his central pawn a space: P-Q6.
When Wolfe returned to the table, his next move, given his style of play, was obvious. It would be PxP, the white pawn taking the black pawn just advanced. Thus, Vasily's move, his professional move, was to substitute the loaded pawn in his pocket for the one that Wolfe would have to touch. But he hesitated. Once Wolfe touched that pawn, he was a dead man and the game was over. His hand in his pocket, Vasily studied the permutations of play. If he kept the loaded piece in his pocket, then PxP would be followed by Q-Q5, after which Wolfe would be forced to move his rook to QB3, and then . . . yes, he could see the progression. Wolfe would be forced to resign, his position hopeless, within five moves at the most.
I've got him, he thought with quiet satisfaction. Just a few more moves and he's finished.
He laughed quietly to himself, knowing that the game would never be ended that way. He had an end game of his own in his pocket. Slowly, he moved his hand in that pocket, reaching for the loaded pawn, gripping it by the base so as not to touch the lethal head. He looked around the room. The attention of the players and the spectators was concentrated on the boards. Wolfe was in motion on the far side of the room, approaching table number three. Using only his fingertips, Vasily began to extract the pawn from the case. Then he saw something that made him stop, the motion frozen.
The president of the chess club had come up to Wolfe and was talking to him in an undertone, motioning toward the telephone on his desk. Wolfe shook his head. The president said something insistently. Wolfe, frowning, went to the desk and picked up the phone. He listened briefly, then replaced it. His usually expressionless face was suddenly drawn and strange.
By this time Vasily was up and moving, the loaded pawn still in his pocket, heading for the door. Only the severest emergency could have interrupted Joseph Wolfe in the middle of a simultaneous match, and from the look on the Chessmaster's face, Vasily had a clear idea of what that emergency was. Something had gone wrong with one of the hits. The alarm had been given and his target was about to run.
He was almost out the door when he heard Wolfe's flat, incisive voice announcing, "Gentlemen, I regret that I must cancel the remainder of this exhibition. My apologies to you all."
Vasily ran down the steps quickly, leaving behind him the babble of protest from the disappointed players. Out on the street, he raced for his car and was behind the wheel with the engine turning over when Wolfe emerged from the building flanked by two husky young Spaniards. The three men hurried into a dark blue Lincoln Continental parked at the curb, Wolfe in the back and the others up front, and pulled out into traffic with a squeal of rubber. Vasily followed, easing back to leave a five-car distance between them. He maintained that distance as the Lincoln turned left along the port, then left again past the railroad station, heading north out of town on the road that led to Vich and beyond. Vasily drove with tight concentration, his eyes on the road and on the car up ahead; but a part of his mind was still back at the club, observing the board. He could still see the ending as clearly as if it had been marked on the score sheet.
White Black
PxP Q-Q5
R-QB3 P-N5
R-N3 B-Q4
Wolfe, playing white, is helpless. He resigns.
Vasily sighed and drove on.
It was a long and boring watch for Emerson, perched on the deserted hillside. The sugar-cube house sat silent against the sea with no indication of life inside it. The shutters were slatted closed and the garage door was down. At various times a rooster crowed, a donkey brayed; but he heard no human voices. Out on the water the daytime fishermen chugged down the coast, heading for home, while out on Andriakis' sloop a wiry young Greek padded about the deck doing the chores that seem never to end for seamen: polishing fittings, scrubbing planks, checking lines, and tending to the dinghy that was run out astern. The sun wore down, and Emerson waited patiently for a sign of Andriakis.
At twilight time the lights came on in the house, the first indication to Emerson that his target was at home, and the first confirmation that he had not been wasting his time. He relaxed a bit then, prepared to wait through the evening until he was sure that his man had left for the tavern in Pyrgi. He ate some bread then and washed out his mouth with water. It was just after eight, and the night was quiet.
At nine o'clock he decided to shift his position. Based on what had happened the night before, he reasoned that Andriakis would leave for Pyrgi sometime within the next hour, and he wanted to be closer to his car when the time came to follow. He worked his way back up the hill in the moonlight, scrambling across the rutted fields that lay between the bends of the road. He was halfway up when he heard the sound of an engine starting. He whirled around, looking back and down. The lights in the house were off; the garage door was up; and Andriakis' car, a red Lancia, nosed out onto the driveway. Emerson froze, undecided.
One part of him wanted to race for his car, but another, older, well-trained part told him to wait.
Wait, said the voice from his past. Never assume, always confirm.
Wait, he told himself. There's always time to get to Pyrgi.
He waited. The Lancia pulled out onto the road and roared away, heading south for Pyrgi.
He waited. He saw moonlight on the water and ... he looked again. He saw the dark bulk of the moored sloop and the slighter shape of the dinghy moving away from it. silently heading in toward
the beach with the young Greek at the oars. And then he saw the unmistakable form of Peter Andriakis hurrying out of the house, across the terrace, and down the stone steps that led to the water.
He started running then, bounding downhill in giant strides, the heels of his sandals thudding into dirt each time he landed. He ran mindlessly, knowing that he would be too late. He was still pounding downhill when the dinghy reached the beach and Andriakis climbed aboard, still forcing his stride and panting when the Greek turned the boat around and began the return journey. He stumbled as he ran, sharp stones nicking at the soles of his sandals. The haversack bounced against his back, and he knew that he should throw it away but he could not take the time. He was almost to the bottom of the hill when he heard the sloop's engine starting up and then the distinctive clank as the mooring cable was slipped. He lurched, skidded the last ten feet, and then was racing across the highway, past the house, and toward the beach as the sloop came round and headed out on a course that would take it past the nearer of the two jetties that extended out into the sea.
It was hopeless, but he kept on going, plowing through sand now. He was only at the base of the jetty as the sloop approached the tip of it, but he did not stop. His mind was turned off and only his body was functioning. Wheezing and creaking, but it was functioning as he raced down the concrete strip and threw himself into the water. The sloop was past the jetty by then, but the dinghy trailing astern was there. Three frantic strokes, legs pumping, brought him close enough to grab, miss, grab again, and this time hold on to the heavy metal pintle at the stern of the boat. He hooked his arm around the rod and turned on his side, gasping for air as the water rushed past him, and let his body rest as his mind began to work again.
Rusty Emerson awoke Wednesday morning to a feeling of overwhelming helplessness. She knew that she had nothing in her power to control the events of the day. Thousands of miles away the two people whom she loved the most were doing things she dared not even think about, and there was nothing that she could do to help them. After she had bathed and had breakfasted in the sitting room of her suite at the Princesa, she looked the day dead in the eye and knew that the only way she would get through it without climbing the walls would be to submerge herself in a trivial round of sightseeing and shopping. It was a remedy she had used before as difficult times in her life, although never so difficult a time as this.
Well before noon she set forth in a taxi hired for the day, armed with instructions from the concierge of the hotel, and went first to the Anthropological Museum in Chapultepec Park. After an hour of delighted wandering, she went on to the National Palace on the Plaza de la Constitucion, and then made the rounds of the Palace of Fine Arts and the National Preparatory School to view the murals of Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros.
By then it was well into lunchtime, and she had her driver take her, again on instructions from the concierge, to La Trucha Vagabonda in the Zona Rosa. She told herself that she wasn't at all hungry, but she finished an order of snails with ease and then disposed of a plate of the tasty white fish from Lake Patzcuaro. By now the game was beginning to pall on her, but she forced herself to linger over coffee before being driven to the Reforma. There she instructed the driver to wait for her and plunged into the web of side streets off the Reforma for an orgy of shopping.
In a shop on the Calle Hamburgo she found a blouse for herself and one for Ginger, and the expedition was fairly launched. In the next two hours she bought four dresses and two skirts; a feathered poncho for Ginger; a sweater for Jimbo; a hand-tooled leather belt for Eddie; and, in a moment of whimsy, an oversized sombrero for Vasily, guessing at the size and smiling at the thought of how it would look perched on his aristocratic head. Thoroughly pleased with herself, she ordered the packages delivered and had herself driven back to the hotel through the jam of evening traffic.
As she took her key from the desk clerk she congratulated herself on having handled the day, and decided that she would indulge herself now with a long bath and then would take her time dressing. She would have exactly two Rob Roys, order up dinner, watch television for a while (it sounded so much less dreary in Spanish), and go to sleep early.
And tomorrow?
Tomorrow would be all right, she decided. Tomorrow she would hear good news. There was no other way it could be.
With this comforting philosophy in mind she rode the elevator to the third floor, walked down the corridor and opened her door, flicking on the light switch as she came into the sitting room. She stopped and stood motionless. Lounging casually in the deep chair facing her was a slim young man with an engaging smile. Three other men were in the room. One of them closed the door behind her.
The young man beamed at her. The last time she had seen him he had been lying on her living room floor, bleeding from a head wound.
"Dobri vyechir, Mrs. Emerson," He said. "My name is Aleksander Ignatiev. Most people call me Sasha. The last time we met I never got a chance to introduce myself."
She stared back at him, stiff and unbending, and said, "You haven't said what I'm supposed to hear."
"Ah yes, the magic word. Homefire."
"Backfire," she replied.
"Seafire." He laughed and snapped his fingers. "There, the formalities are complete. Backfire may now commence."
Rusty sank into a chair with a sigh of relaxation. "It will have to commence after I've had a bath and a drink. I'm exhausted."
"Don't get too comfortable," Sasha warned her. "We're leaving shortly. You see, I've come to abduct you."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The bordello of Katerina Felluci occupied the first four floors of an old but well-preserved building on Milan's Via Manzoni, a respectable neighborhood of dwellings, offices, and shops. The building was much like the others on the street, a sturdy granite structure with a spacious courtyard that could be entered only through a narrow archway. The facade was well kept, the courtyard tidy, and each of the doors was varnished to a black sheen. The interior of the building, however, was considerably different from the others. On the first floor what once had been a sitting room had been converted into an elegant bar, and the former dining room was now a miniature cinema. At the back of the floor, the kitchen was occupied eighteen hours a day by a team of Calabrian cooks turning out platters of antipaso di mare, carciofini all'olio, peperoni arrosto, and fried baby squid covered with soul-searing sauces.
Above the ground floor were three stories, each with four bedrooms and two baths. The bedrooms were furnished simply and functionally. The bathrooms were furnished with adjustable rubbing tables and Jacuzzi baths. The medicine cabinets in all of the bathrooms contained a supply of Vaseline, baby oil, contraceptive foam, and vaginal jelly large enough to stock a small gynecological clinic. Twelve girls worked in the house, nine regulars and three interns- in-training, plus four maids, the two cooks, and two others in the kitchen - all of them under the benevolent fist of Katerina Felluci. Architecturally and logistically, Katerina's bordello was a model of its kind, and if Better Homes and Gardens had ever thought to devote an issue to the whorehouses of Italy, hers would have been the first to be featured. Her prices were outrageous, but her clients were restricted to the fortunate few who could afford them, and her girls were considered well worth every Eurobuck spent. The House of Felluci represented a standard of excellence in the trade, and Katerina was determined to keep it that way.
"We're number one in Milan and we're going to stay number one," she was saying. "And the only way to do that is to improve the efficiency around here."
It was six in the evening, with the daytime customers gone, the night-time customers still to come, and it was time for Katerina's weekly sales conference. Attendance was obligatory, and the bar was filled with girls, some dressed for the evening in wisps of flimsy nothingness, others dressed for the street, and the uniformed maids and kitchen staff in spotless whites. Some had finished the daytime shift, others had just awakened, and all of them sat slumped in their seats, eyes glaz
ed, heads nodding.
Katerina held the floor in front of the bar, an attractively plump woman in her forties, sedately dressed in a beige linen suit, her dark curls framing a heart-shaped face. On the bar behind her were propped two charts with plastic overlays. One was a multicolored time-and-motion analysis, and the other was a weekly production graph with each girl's name slotted into a column. Katerina was a passionate believer in American-style efficiency, and she was convinced that every business could be reduced to its essentials through the intelligent application of graphs and charts.
"I don't know of any other industry that would tolerate such a low level of efficiency," she was telling her benumbed audience. "According to my figures, the average girl in this house has an on-bed percentage of only fifty-four point two. That means that during a given hour a girl here spends only slightly more than thirty-two minutes performing the functions for which she gets paid. The rest of the time is spent in servicing and resupply, and, I'm sorry to say, simple laziness. Now, there is absolutely no reason why a girl should take twenty-eight minutes in turnaround time between one customer and the next. It simply does not take that long to wash and freshen up."
Katerina paced up and down, swinging a rubber-tipped pointer in arcs through the air, her voice firm and commanding as she spoke in the precise accents of the northern
Italian. "Yes, I know what you're thinking," she continued. "We run a quality operation here, but nobody ever made money by turning business away, and that's what wasted time amounts to. Now, girls, I'm going to ask you all, regulars and interns alike, to try for a lower turnaround time. I'm setting twelve minutes as the maximum, and I want you to make it your goal. Next week we'll compare figures and ..."
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