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“Please.”

“Vasily Smyslov is also a Soviet chess grandmaster, my dear. One of the strongest players in the world. Won the world championship four or five years back, although he lost the rematch.” Harrington recited this history with a delighted smile, to make sure you knew she had only recently studied it up. “He’s going to be at Varna, so we’re told. On their team for the Chess Olympiad.”

“Is he the reason I’m going?”

But women of Harrington’s class did not allow themselves to be rushed. “This past summer, there was a grand tournament down on Curaçao. Such a lovely island. Eight of the strongest chess players in the world battled for a month, twenty-eight games apiece, the winner to play a match with the world champion, you see. Smyslov wasn’t invited this time, poor lamb, but he dropped in for a few days to watch the others. Four Soviets out of the eight players in the tournament, so I imagine he would have been cheering them on and so forth. On a free
day, they all took the boat from Curaçao and went to the beach. Now, the thing you have to understand, my dear, is that the Soviet chess grandmasters are followed everywhere they go by special security agents, known as the gorillas. When the Soviet masters travel abroad, the only foreigners with whom they are allowed to socialize are their fellow chess players. There was one American in the Curaçao tournament, my dear, and that day at the beach, the American and Smyslov stayed in the boat while the others waded or swam or whatever one does. Even the security gorillas were enjoying the sun, so Smyslov and our source had a bit of time together. Smyslov evidently had flown to Curaçao by way of Havana, where he had been on a goodwill tour, playing an exhibition. He had talked to some friends there, people who we believe, from his description, must be part of the apparatus. Not that our Cuban assets are good enough for us to seek confirmation. No matter. The point is, Smyslov told our American source that when the Soviets finished their secret project in Cuba, the United States would be as surprised as Levitzky against Marshall. Alas, before he could explain further, one of those beastly gorillas appeared, and Smyslov clapped the American on the back and said he would see him in Varna and tell him the rest of the story. The next day, Smyslov flew home.”

She saw Margo’s blank stare.

“Dear me. Where shall I begin? A famous chess game, my dear, played in 1912 at Breslau. Levitzky is doing fine, possibly heading for a win, when, out of the blue, Marshall’s queen swoops down onto the most heavily defended square on the board. But it can’t be captured. No matter which piece the queen is captured with, Marshall will checkmate Levitzky. Sudden, unexpected, forceful—some call it the most brilliant move ever played on the chessboard.”

“I see,” said Margo, utterly mystified.

“Except you don’t see, do you, Miss Jensen? Let me explain. Smyslov had no reason to let slip anything about Cuba. But we know—and I suspect Smyslov knows we know—that, in addition to his chess, he does occasional odd jobs for the KGB. Pretty much all of them do, or they don’t get to travel abroad. Our American source missed the point, but when he got home to New York, he mentioned the tale to one of his chess friends, who mentioned it to a friend of ours. We realized what our source didn’t—that Smyslov was sending us a message. He very likely came to Curaçao with that very intention. He wanted us to know
that the Soviets are planning something brilliant and unexpected in Cuba that will turn the game on its head.” Harrington turned another page. “You wouldn’t know this, of course, but Soviet ships have been offloading huge crates in Cuban ports for weeks now.” That preposterous laugh. “Oh dear. Need I remind you that what I am about to disclose is highly classified? If you should ever share it with anyone, they’ll send you to prison for simply years, my dear. You do understand, don’t you, Miss Jensen?”

This time Harrington waited, and Margo realized that she had to respond, for the record. “I understand, Mrs. Harrington,” she said, shrinking inside.

“It’s Miss Harrington, my dear, or Doctor, if you find that more comfortable.” The older woman slid a long printed form and pen across the table. The page carried a warning in large red capitals:
YOUR SIGNATURE SUBJECTS YOU TO STATUTORY PENALTIES
—
DO NOT SIGN WITHOUT READING!
But whatever the text might demand, Margo knew that she would sign anyway: having been brought this far inside, she found unbearable the thought of being escorted summarily from the room and sent back to Ithaca. And even as Margo signed—without reading—and added the date, it occurred to her that Harrington, for all her surface pomposity, was rather a wise psychologist, having chosen the perfect moment. For Margo stood at the precipice of the secret world, and longed to jump.

“Excellent! Oh, you’re doing wonderfully well, my dear. I can see why Dr. Niemeyer admires you so. Well.” Harrington checked the signature, then slipped the paper back into her folder. She was once more turning pages. “The crates being offloaded in Cuba. All we know about them is that the Soviets have code-named the operation Anadyr. That is the name of a river, and a town in one of the Soviet republics. The name was chosen in order to mislead us, Miss Jensen. Alas, our vaunted intelligence agencies have had no success in penetrating Anadyr, and so we have no idea what they are seeking to mislead us about. But the crates keep coming. They could hold tank shells or grain, automobile parts or Spanish-language copies of
Das Kapital.
Those are the optimistic scenarios, my dear. In light of what Smyslov said, and given the state of our relations with the Communist bloc at the moment, we are forced to assume the worst. There has long been a faction within the Central Committee urging Khrushchev to
put nuclear warheads into Cuba. I’m sure Niemeyer has taught you that in the next war, warning time will be everything. With missiles in Cuba, we would have none. Washington and New York might disappear before anyone had the chance to tell the President that the Soviets had pushed the button. Oh.” A motherly lift of eyebrows. “Why the long face, my dear? You needn’t be worried. Most of our people think Khrushchev is too clever to try such a thing, because, if the Reds start a war, we would wipe the floor with them”—from her partisan delight she might have been discussing the Harvard-Yale game—“but one doesn’t protect one’s country by assuming the best of the enemy, does one? Naturally, then, we have to find out precisely what Operation Anadyr is. You see that, don’t you, my dear? Probably there is no reason for concern, but Khrushchev is under enormous pressure, poor lamb. That’s why he built that beastly wall in Berlin. He wants to prove that he’s as tough as his predecessors, you see.”

Harrington’s gaze had intensified, and Margo, no longer able to meet its glow, was staring at the blank pad in front of her. The State Department logo was embossed in the blue leather.

“So, there we are,” said the older woman. “We need information, don’t we? We need to know whether the Soviets are offloading missiles or mosquito nets. At the moment, our only path to that information is to follow up the message from Smyslov. As I believe I mentioned, Vasily Smyslov is scheduled to be at the Olympiad in Varna, playing for the Soviet team. Our American source will be there as well, playing for the American team. We asked our fellow countryman if he would please rekindle the conversation with Smylsov, to find out what on earth he was talking about. He can talk to Smyslov, you see. Nobody else will be able to get past the security gorillas. Only, the little snot refused.” Harrington chuckled in embarrassment at her own vulgarism. “Oh, dear me. He does bring out the worst in people, I’m afraid. Never mind.” She folded her hands.

“I apologize, Dr. Harrington. I still don’t see why you need me.”

“My dear, it is evident that you are an innocent. You don’t know men as one day you shall. When we asked our countryman to help us out, he told us no, absolutely not. We appealed to his love of country. He said the Russians would kill him. We said we’d give him a minder. He said talking to Smyslov about some Russian surprise in Cuba would distract him from his chess. We pointed out that the mission would
require only one or two conversations over the course of three weeks. We offered him money, but money seems to bore him. We had friends of friends prevail upon him. Finally he said he would do it—he would meet Smyslov—but only if we pay him a great deal of money,
and
if you go. He appears to believe that you are his good-luck charm.”

“Oh, no,” said Margo, a terrible suspicion dawning.

“Oh, yes, Miss Jensen. Our American source seems to have developed quite the crush on you. I would congratulate you were Bobby Fischer anything other than the little monster we both know him to be.”

If Harrington intended by her clever deployment of the identity of the source to get a rise out of her guest, she succeeded, quite literally, for Margo was on her feet, instinct causing her to back away from the table, as if to put physical space between herself and the memories evoked by the name. For a terrible moment, time flipped backward to last spring, and she heard voices raised in fury, shouting about life being wasted, together with layering insults about the intellectual capacity of women, who, as a group, ranked somewhere below the hated Russians in Bobby’s bizarre cosmology. She saw Bobby’s long, narrow face and those dark, pounding eyes as he screamed at her; saw the only man she had ever loved, squaring to slug his best friend in the world.

Because of her.

Bobby Fischer and Tom Jellinek were indeed friends, if a man like Bobby could be said to have friends. They had grown up together in Brooklyn, attending Erasmus Hall High School. Both had been chess-mad. Tom had been very, very good at the game; Bobby had been a true genius, who already at age thirteen had defeated one of the strongest players in America in what
Chess Review
labeled “The Game of the Century.” Bobby dropped out of school to focus entirely on chess, and was now, at age nineteen, one of the best in the world, widely expected to win the championship before too long. Tom won a scholarship to Cornell. Margo got to know Bobby because he came up to Ithaca now and then to spend a few days sleeping on the floor of Tom’s
dorm room, to escape the Russian spies peering in his window, or the knife-wielding thugs hiding behind every lamppost, or the people coughing on him in the street, from whom he might catch some dreadful disease. Tom usually indulged his peculiar friend, so Margo did, too. For a while, she even developed a maternal attitude toward him, for Fischer projected the air of a sly child bewildered by the world and in need of protection. But then, the last time he visited—

“Do sit down, my dear,” said Harrington, with a touch of bemused impatience. She was still turning pages in her folder. “I’m afraid we have not completed discussion of the mission parameters.”

But Margo was shaking her head. “No,” she said. “Absolutely not. I am not going to Bulgaria with that boy.”

Harrington wore glasses on a chain around her neck. She put them on, and her eyes were all at once large and demanding. “I didn’t ask you whether you are going to Bulgaria,” she said. “I asked you to sit.”

Plainly, the older woman had already realized that her guest had been raised to respect the authority of elders. Margo sat.

Warily.

“Now, then,” said Harrington, ruffling her papers. “Shall we continue?”

“I don’t think you understand. Bobby and I don’t get along. He doesn’t get along with anyone.”

“So I gather. Nevertheless, Miss Jensen, you are his price, and your country has agreed to pay. The matter is out of our hands. You have no more choice than the rest of us.” She did not wait for Margo to contradict her. “Mr. Fischer, as I said, seems to regard you as a good-luck charm. Evidently, he won some famous game in your presence?”

“Yes, in New York last December, against a man named Byrne, but—”

“Then it’s settled, my dear. The mission parameters remain the same. There is no requirement that the two of you like each other, or even that you pretend to like each other. What Mr. Fischer has demanded is your company. He cannot demand that you enjoy his. Naturally, we will compensate you for your labors.”

With every word out of Harrington’s mouth, Margo felt diminished. The assurance of payment only heightened the sense of having been bartered by her own government. Quite against her raising, she
put her elbows on the table and rubbed her palms over her eyes. A rising exhaustion battled a rising fury. No one had actually deceived her, but their refusal to tell her whom she was to accompany until now had much the same effect. They hadn’t lied; they had simply deployed the truth rather cleverly.

“You don’t know Bobby like I do,” Margo finally said. “He’s not just unpleasant or rude. I don’t care how brilliantly he plays chess. He’s crazy. That’s not just a word. He’s actually crazy. Half the time he’s a perfect gentleman or a shy little boy, but the rest of the time he’s seeing monsters under the bed. He thinks the Russians are going to murder him to keep him from winning the world championship. He isn’t joking. He really believes it. He thinks people are poisoning his food. He thinks Communists, Jews, and homosexuals are in a conspiracy to rule the world. Do you know what book he brought to Ithaca the last time he visited Tom?
Mein Kampf
! Do you have any idea what kind of man he is?”

Again Harrington affected not to hear. “This is the way things are going to work, Miss Jensen. The Olympiad games begin every afternoon at three. Mr. Fischer sleeps late most mornings, I am given to understand, and rises for lunch. You will join him for lunch whenever possible, although I am told that he prefers to eat alone. In the afternoon, he likes to walk. You will walk with him. You will try to get him to talk to the Soviet players—Smyslov in particular. If he can get you past the security gorillas, you might even be introduced to Smyslov yourself. In any event, you will endeavor to listen to any conversation the two of them might hold, or between Mr. Fischer and any other Soviet or Iron Curtain player. We will not expect you to record the conversations, because there is no time to train you in the use of the proper equipment—and, besides, a microphone is precisely the sort of thing the gorillas will be looking for. You will listen as best you can, and then, when the round begins, you will return to your hotel room and make the best notes you can of what was said. Agatha will take possession of your notes each evening, and that will be the end of your responsibilities. You will fly home with the thanks of a grateful nation, along with a nice bit of cash, and you will resume your studies, and you will never again lay eyes on either Agatha or myself.”