Night Soldiers (7 page)

He offered his closed fists: Khristo picked the left hand and played black.

He had learned the moves, back in Vidin, from Levitzky the tailor, who called it “the Russian game.” Thus, the old man pointed out, the weak were sacrificed. The castles, fortresses, were obvious and basic; the bishops moved obliquely; the knights—an officer class—sought power in devious ways; the queen, second-in-command, was pure aggression; and the king, heart of it all, a helpless target, dependent totally on his forces for survival.

Khristo had virtually no inkling of strategy, but he resolved to be the best opponent he could. The object of the game, he knew, was not to slay the other king but to put the opponent in a position where he had no choice but to submit. He had overheard one of Vidin's more daring wits describe checkmate as “all that Russian foot-kissing business.” Khristo's notion of a chess tactic was to sneak a pawn down one side of the board—hoping for a distracted or mortally unobservant foe—and quick make it a queen. At heart, the strategy of checkers thrown in well over its head. Failing that, he liked to send his castles hurtling back and forth, up and down, in obvious but savage forays, hoping to shock a piece or two from his opponent. The knights he rarely used—they had a herky-jerky motion he distrusted: things shouldn't go straight and then cat-corner.

Ozunov attacked down the left side of the board, giving up two pawns, but pinning Khristo's castle down with a bishop. Khristo wasted two turns hip-hopping his queen around the pawn rank—stopping to take Ozunov's apparently suicidal pawns—for he liked it to have an unobstructed field of fire. Ozunov reacted to this provocation with apparent caution, breaking off his bishop's attack on the castle, drawing the piece back to safety. It was Khristo's theory that a succession of entirely random moves might startle the opponent, give him pause, make him think you had some obscure trick up your sleeve. Ozunov pondered the board, smoke curling upward from his pipe, chin resting on folded hands, intent once again on his own attack. So intent that Khristo had a little flurry of victories, took a pawn and a bishop with his galloping castle, made Ozunov move to defend his king. He seemed, somehow, to have taken the initiative. Perhaps he really could play. He stared out the white window, hypnotized by the slow drift of the snowflakes, then forced his attention back to the game—he could not allow Ozunov to see that his mind wandered. Where was Marike? He'd not seen her at breakfast.

Suddenly, a tragedy. Ozunov's remaining bishop came wheeling out of ambush and snapped up his queen. Damn! Khristo quickly checked his pawns to see which had snuck farthest down the board. No solace there. Finally, for want of anything better to do, he threatened Ozunov's castle with a pawn. How on earth had Ozunov finagled his queen? His eyes wandered to the piece, lying on its side among the ranks of the dead by the edge of the board. Would he not have taken the bishop with his queen on the previous move if the path had been open? How had he missed it?

The game progressed, snow drifted in the street below, Khristo's forces were slowly picked to pieces. He tried to concentrate, to see the distant implications of each possible move, but the suddenly captured queen obsessed him. From that blow he would not recover, but he wanted at least to see the reason of it. In time, he realized what Ozunov had done. At first he could not believe it, but finally had to accept the fact that Ozunov had brazenly cheated him. Why? He didn't know. Even the strongest had a weakness somewhere—they'd taught him that themselves. Perhaps Ozunov could not bear to lose.

Toward the end of the game, as Ozunov chased his king mercilessly around the board—stopping only to pick off one of the few motley survivors—the Stoianev temper asserted itself. Khristo determined that he would not be fooled quite so easily and, just then, a distraction in the form of a telephone call came to his aid.

Soon enough the game was over, a last faithful knight eliminated, a few helpless pawns standing around like poor relations at a funeral. Ozunov reached over and laid Khristo's king on its side.

“Check,” he said, “and mate, I believe. You agree?”

“Yes,” Khristo said.

“You dislike to lose, Khristo Nicolaievich?”

“Yes, comrade Major.”

“Then you must learn to play better.”

“I agree, comrade Major.”

“Losing your queen, that's what finished you I believe.”

Khristo nodded agreement.

“A very simple stratagem. Plain as your nose, eh?”

Khristo was not sure how to answer. Ozunov smiled, as though to himself, and poked idly at the bowl of his pipe with a toothpick. “I knew an Englishman once, a few years after the Revolution, it was my job to know him. We spent many hours in conversation, it was a most pleasant assignment really. There was nothing we did not speak of, women, politics, religion. All those matters that men like to speculate about when they are at ease. From this man I learned a particular thing.
Fair play
, he called it. Not such a simple notion, perhaps, when you probe to find its heart. A kind of code, which each gentleman must honor individually in order for all to benefit. In time I came to understand that it was a good system for those who had more than they needed, for those who could afford to give something away. But I also realized that I had never known anybody like that. Nobody I ever knew could say, ‘Here, you take it, I do not deserve it. I do not need it so badly that I will cheat and lie to get it.' Perhaps some day we may indulge ourselves in that fashion, we may have so much that we can afford to give some of it away, but not now. Can you understand this?”

Khristo looked hesitant. Ozunov laughed at his discomfort. “Yes, boy, I cheated you. I moved a piece while you were daydreaming out the window, enchanted by our Russian snow. I acknowledge it!”

“But why, comrade Major? You could have won without that.”

“Yes, I could have. You do some things well, comrade student, but you play chess like a barbarian. I wanted merely to teach you something, that is my job now.”

“Teach me what, comrade Major?”

Ozunov sighed. “I am told Lenin once called it the Bolshevik Variation, simply another strategy, like the Sicilian Defense. It has two parts to it. The first is this: win at all cost. Do anything you have to do,
anything
, but win. There are no rules.”

Khristo hesitated. He had a response to this, but it was very bold and he was not sure of himself. At last, he took the leap.

“I have learned what you wanted to teach me, comrade Major,” he said, opening his hand to show Ozunov the white pawn he had stolen when the telephone rang.

“You're a good student,” Ozunov said. “Now learn the second part of the Variation: make the opponent play
your
game. And the more he despises your methods, the more you must make him use them. The more he arms himself with virtue, the more you must make him fight in the dirt. Then you have him.”

He gestured with his pipe toward the white pawn lying on Khristo's palm. “Keep that,” he said. “A student prize from Ozunov. You have won the copy of Vladimir Ilyich's speeches, now you will have something to remind you, in times to come, how to turn them into prophecies.”

“Wake
now
, please.”

The hand jerked his shoulder. His body rose upright, by itself it seemed, and he suddenly found himself sitting. He struggled to get his eyes open. What time was it? His heart was beating like a drum at being torn from deep sleep.

“You are up? No falling back down in a heap?”

It was Irina Akhimova, one of the night guardians, an immense woman with tiny eyes and a voice like a ripsaw.

“Dress yourself, Khristo Nicolaievich. Quickly, quickly.”

At last his eyes opened. The dormitory was dark, the windows revealed snow drifted over the sill, black night above. Goldman stirred in the next bed. Somebody coughed, a toilet flushed. Ozunov's chess game had kept him awake a long time the night before, his mind tossed on the sea.

“What is it?” His voice was thick.

“Angels dancing on the roof!” Her harsh voice cut through the room. “How should I know?” She grabbed him by the hair, not so playfully. “And wear your warmest things, little rooster, lest your manhood become an icicle.”

She let him go with a flourish. He swung out of bed; she didn't take her eyes off him while he dressed. When he visited the toilet, she waited just outside. He wound a scarf around his throat, put on a sweater and his wool jacket.

“Very well,” he said.

She looked at him critically. Reached to a nail above his bed, whipped his peaked cap from it and put it on him, pulling it down as far as it would go. Then she took him above the elbow and led him out of the room. There was a mug of tea for him on the table in the parlor and a man's silhouette in the shadows.

“Here he is,” Irina Akhimova said to the shape, “and good morning to you.” She left abruptly. The man moved forward and stopped. His body was very still; he stared at Khristo and his eyes did not blink.

Khristo had never before seen anyone like him. He came from an unknown world, and this world, sealed, alien, hung about him like a shadow. His overcoat was finely made, with a soft collar standing upright.

On his head was a fur cap, set at an angle. He was perfectly shaven and smelled of cologne. He had longish, lank black hair, strong cheekbones, dark eyes so deeply set they seemed remote and hidden.

“I am Sascha,” he said. “Drink your tea quickly and come with me.”

Khristo gulped his tea. The voice was educated and genteel, but there was no question of not doing whatever it told you to do. He put the cup down. The man gestured toward the door.

The air outside was like ice, dead still, bitter with wood and coal smoke. White plumes blossomed slowly from every chimney. The snow was cleared away in a path to the street, where a low black car idled unevenly in front of the building. Sascha opened the back door for him, then went around and climbed in the front seat. The driver was bulky and thick-necked, with a hat like Sascha's set square on his head.

They moved slowly down the street on packed snow. The lights picked out dark bundles, which Khristo knew to be women, wielding shovels. They drove in silence, the driver turning the wheel gingerly as they crawled around the corners. On the horizon, Khristo could see a fading of the darkness, a thin light that he had come to know as the winter dawn. The upholstery in the car had a strong musty smell. Sascha moved the sleeve of his coat back an inch, he was wearing a watch.

Khristo tried to quiet his breathing, to slow it down. He did not want these men to know what he was feeling. The interior handles of the back doors had been removed.

They drove down Kutuzov Prospekt, a grand boulevard, past the Kremlin towers, then into a narrow side street that had been shoveled down to the paving. They passed under an archway, where a soldier with a rifle saluted them, then stopped in a courtyard full of black cars. The driver remained seated. Sascha opened his door and beckoned him out. He moved stiffly, shoulders hunched as he stepped into the sharp air. He had thought that facing death, facing whatever he now faced, his mind would be bright with panic, but this was not the case. Instead, he felt like a man at the bottom of a deep well, a statue, empty of feeling.

Sascha led him through a series of guarded doors until they stood in a grand marble entry hall dominated by a magnificent staircase and a domed ceiling that was a vast concave painting of nymphs and swains in a woodland. Khristo was directed to a small door set into a panel on one side of the rotunda. This opened on an iron stairway which they descended, their footsteps ringing against the walls. It was otherwise silent and very damp, lit, just barely, by dim bulbs in wire cages. Down three flights, they moved through empty corridors that seemed to go on and on, like hallways in a dream. At last, they stopped in front of an unmarked wooden door.

“Listen to me carefully,” Sascha said in a low, even voice. “We have caught a German spy. There has been a full confession—names, details, places of meeting, everything. You are not implicated in this. We do not
believe
you are implicated, but we do not know so very much of you. If you are to be one of us, we must assure ourselves of your disposition in such matters, so you will have to prove yourself. Now. On the other side of this door. My instructions to you are these: do not think, do not speak, do not hesitate. Only act. Follow directions. Do what needs to be done. You must not be sick, or stagger. Remember that you are a man full-grown.”

Sascha tapped on the door and it opened instantly. On the other side was a large man in white shirt and dark trousers with suspenders. The man had a cold, plain face and looked at him for a long moment without expression.

The room smelled strongly; musty, sweet, and damp. It had no windows, only water-stained floral wallpaper, a rough table and chair, and a carpet rolled up against one wall to reveal a smooth brick floor with a drain at the center.

The German spy knelt facing a corner of the room. Khristo saw the hands, tied behind the back with brown cord, the head bent forward, the eyes shut, the lips moving silently, skin the color of dirty chalk.

The man in suspenders moved forward. He limped when he walked, in felt slippers that did not make a sound on the brick floor. Standing by the kneeling figure, he looked back at Sascha, who nodded affirmatively. Gently, he pushed the head forward until the forehead was only a few inches from the floor, then took the orange hair tied back in a red ribbon and tucked it in front of her shoulder, revealing a white neck.

Khristo felt Sascha take him by the back of the hand and turn it palm up. He had bony fingers, cold to the touch, and a grip like steel. From his pocket he took a Nagant revolver, slapped it hard onto Khristo's hand, then stepped back.

A different pair of men drove Khristo Stoianev back to Arbat Street and the Brotherhood Front of 1934. They too wore watches, conspicuously checking them now and again. But they drove slowly and carefully, and took a long, winding route through the city, which had now struggled to life amid the great snowdrifts. Black bundles—you could not determine the age or sex—shuffled head down, single file, along shoveled paths. The sky was dark and thick, the air still. It had long since stopped snowing. Khristo stared out the side window. They were watching him in the rearview mirror—in the same mirror he could see their eyes shift—and he hid his privacy by looking away.