The Fire (29 page)

I didn’t have to ask. There was only one item I knew of that was definitely in the hands of the Russians.

‘The Black Queen!’ I cried.

‘My thinking exactly,’ said Nim with a pleased smile. ‘And this would especially make sense if Minnie had managed to create a copy of the queen and had retained the original herself! It would explain the double-queen gambit you’ve discovered.’

‘But then, where did your mother disappear after her release? And how did she get that drawing of the chessboard you said she’d sent you?’ I asked. ‘You said you thought you’d solved that puzzle, too.’

‘That drawing of the chessboard by the Abbess of Montglane was a piece of the puzzle that we
know,
according to the nun Mireille’s journal, she had in her possession,’ Nim explained. ‘But it was never passed on to Cat with the other
pieces. Therefore, Minnie must have given it to someone else for safekeeping.’

‘To
your
mother!’ I said.

‘Wherever our mother has been all these years,’ said Nim, ‘there’s one thing that’s clear. That card she gave you and your father contained both a phoenix and a firebird. But it said
Beware the Fire.
The Firebird is nothing like the Phoenix, which bursts into flame each five hundred years and rises from its own ashes. The tale of the Phoenix is one of self-sacrifice and rebirth.’

‘Then what
does
the Firebird mean?’ I said, breathless enough with anticipation that I was at risk of passing out yet again.

‘It gives up its golden feather – something of enormous value, just like Minnie’s Black Queen – in order to bring Prince Ivan, who’s been killed by his ruthless brothers, back to life. When the Firebird appears, the message to be understood is:
Recalled to Life.’

This is a secret service altogether. My credentials, entries and memoranda, are all comprehended in the one line, ‘Recalled to Life’…

– Charles Dickens,
A Tale of Two Cities

Remembering is for those who have forgotten.

– Plotinus

Brumich Eel, Kyriin Elkonomu

(Fire Mountain, Dwelling Place of the Dead)

The sounds of rushing water seemed to have been with him always, night and day. Dolena Geizerov, the Valley of Geysers, the woman had told him. Healing waters created by fires beneath the earth. Waters that had brought him back to life.

Here in the meadow, high atop the cliffs, lay those steaming, silent pools that he’d been bathed in by the elders. Their milky, opaque waters from deep in the earth, variously colored by the layers of dissolved clay, shone in rich tones, vermillion, flamingo, ocher, lemon, peach, each with its own medicinal properties.

Far beneath him on the sheer rock cliff water bubbled
within the sinkhole, growing more and more agitated – until suddenly, Velikan the Giant erupted in a steam explosion, shocking him as it always did, spewing its powerful rainbow of steaming water thirty feet into the air. Then on down the canyon as far as the eye could see, one by one they went off as if synchronized by clockwork and gushed over the sides, their boiling waterfalls tumbling into the torrential river far below that rushed onward to the sea. This constant throbbing, deafening roar of the explosive surge of waters was nonetheless somehow strangely soothing, he thought – rhythmic like life, like the breath of the earth itself.

But now as he moved diagonally up the uneven slope to higher ground, he took care to follow in the woman’s tracks so he wouldn’t fall. One couldn’t maintain footing across this slippery slope of mud and wet rock. Though his highlaced moccasins were made of bearskin for a better grip, and the oiled fur tops kept them warm, snow was sifting through the limpid sunlight. The tumultuous clouds of steam from below melted the flakes even before they touched the ground, turning the wet mosses and lichens to a gummy paste.

He’d walked these ravines every day for months until he was strong enough for this trip. But he knew he was still weak for so long a trek as today’s would be – they’d already come seven versts through the canyon of geysers, and higher still lay the tundra, meadowlands, and the taiga, a tangle of slender birch, scrub spruce, and pine. They were now moving into terra incognita.

As they left the roaring waters behind, climbing higher into the mountains, into the silence of a new and snowy world, he felt the fear begin to grip him – the fear that comes with emptiness, uncertainty about the unknown.

It was foolish of him to feel that way, he knew, when after all, to him everything was part of the void, that greater unknown. He’d long ago stopped asking where he was, or
how long he had been here. He’d even ceased asking who he was. She’d told him that no one could provide that answer for him – that it was important he should discover it on his own.

But as they reached the end of the steep ravine, the woman stopped and side by side they gazed out across the valley. He saw it there in the distance across the valley floor – their destination: that enormous cone far across the valley, all dressed in snow, which seemed to arise from nowhere like a mystical pyramid viewed across an ancient plain. The volcano had deep runnels in the sides and the top was crushed in, with smoke pouring out as if it had recently been struck by lightning.

He felt a kind of fascinated awe at the sight, a mixture of terror and love, as if a forceful hand had just gripped his heart. And the blinding light had suddenly, unexpectedly returned.

‘In the Kamchal tongue, it is called Brumich Eel – Mountain of Fire,’ the woman beside him was saying. ‘It is one of more than two hundred volcanoes here on this peninsula, called apagachuch, the excitable ones, for many of these are always active. A single explosion of one has lasted for twenty-four hours, pouring lava, destroying trees, and followed by earthquake and tidal wave.

‘This one, Mount Kamchatka, Klyutchevskaya in Russian, erupted just ten years ago, raining ash and embers more than one vershok deep over everything. The Chukchi shamans to the north of here believe it is the sacred mountain of the dead. The dead live inside the cone and they hurl rocks down at anyone who should try to approach them. They plunge beneath the mountain, under the sea. The summit is covered with bones of the whales they have devoured.’

He could barely see across the valley, the fire in his head had grown so bright – nearly obliterating everything else.

‘Why did the elders believe that you must bring me to that place?’ he asked her, squeezing his eyes shut.

But the light was still there. And then he began to see.

‘I am not taking you there,’ she said. ‘We are going together. Each of us owes our own tribute to the dead. For we have each been recalled to life.’

On the summit, at the very lip of the collapsed cone, they could look down within to the molten lake of hot lava that bubbled and seethed inside. Sulfurous fumes floated skyward. Some said they were poisonous.

It had taken two days to reach this spot, fifteen thousand feet above the sea. It was now after twilight, and as the moon rose above the waters of the ocean in the far distance, a dark shadow slowly began to creep across its milky white surface.

‘This eclipse of the moon is why we have come here tonight,’ the woman spoke beside him. ‘This is our gift to the dead – the eclipse of the past for those in this pit, that they may sleep in peace. For they shall never again have a present or a future, as we ourselves shall.’

‘But how will I have a future – or even a present,’ he asked in fear, ‘when I can remember nothing at all of my past?’

‘Can you not?’ the woman said softly. She’d reached inside her fur-lined vest and extracted something small. ‘Can you remember this?’ she asked, holding it out to him in the palm of her hand.

Just at that moment, the last of the moon was eaten by shadow and they were cast temporarily into darkness. There was only that awful red glow from the pit beneath.

But he’d seen that flash of fire again in his head – and he’d suddenly seen something else. His glimpse had been long enough that he knew exactly what that object had been in her palm.

It was the black queen from a chessboard.

‘You were there,’ he said. ‘There at the monastery. There was going to be a game – and then just before—’

The rest he couldn’t remember. But in that flash, as he’d looked at the black queen, he had caught just a glimpse of his own past as well. And now he knew one thing beyond doubt.

‘My name is Sascha,’ he said. ‘And you are my mother, Tatiana.’

There are seven keys to the great gate, Being eight in one and one in eight.

– Aleister Crowley,
AHA

I still couldn’t find the key, though Nim’s story last night had resolved a few paradoxes for me.

If Minnie had a duplicate Black Queen that she’d used to secure Tatiana’s release forty years ago, that would account for the second queen that had appeared before my father’s eyes at Zagorsk.

If Minnie had given Tatiana the abbess’s drawing of the chessboard to protect, that would explain why that important ingredient had been missing from my mother’s final cache of pieces.

I couldn’t forget that this same key piece of the puzzle was currently sewn up inside my feathery jacket. Nor could I forget that first encrypted clue I’d received from my mother in Colorado, the clue I’d had to unravel before I could even unlock our house – those square numbers that resolved themselves into that final message:
The chessboard provides the key.

But despite all my uncle’s solutions and resolutions last night, there were still too many questions on one side and too few answers on the other.

So while Nim did the breakfast dishes, I whipped out my paper and pen to jot down what I still needed to know.

For starters, it wasn’t only answers that were missing. My mother
herself
was missing, and apparently my newly discovered grandmother had vanished, too. Where were they? What role did each of them play? And what role did everyone else play in this Game?

But when I looked at my notes, I realized I was still missing the larger point: whom to trust?

For instance, my aunt Lily. When I’d last seen her, she’d offered as part of her ‘strategy’ to try to sleuth out the chess and, possibly, the underworld connections of Basil Livingston – a man with whom, she’d failed to mention, she might have far more than a nodding acquaintance. After all, Basil was a chess organizer, wasn’t he? And these past two years since her grandfather’s death, when Lily had left New York, she’d been living in London – Basil’s second home. Now, several days after I’d departed Colorado, Lily still hadn’t reported in on that mysterious late-night meeting of hers I’d learned about, in Denver, with Basil’s daughter, Sage.

Then there was Vartan Azov, who’d graciously agreed to check out the Taras Petrossian connection, mentioning only later that the very person he was to ‘investigate’ was actually his late stepfather. If Petrossian had indeed been poisoned in London, as Vartan seemed to believe, it was odd he’d never mentioned what Rosemary Livingston subsequently told me: that Vartan was sole heir to Petrossian’s estate.

Then Rosemary herself, who had given away more than she’d gotten from me last night. For instance, that she seemed to spend as much time not just in D.C., but in London, as her hubby, Basil, did. That they could be whisked
inconspicuously from one part of the globe to another without even changing clothes, much less filing a flight plan. That they could command their own private, State-level dinner replete with the requisite security, for guests who operated at the highest echelons of international wealth and power. And of infinitely more interest: that they’d been on a first-name basis with the late Taras Petrossian and his stepson, Vartan Azov, ever since Vartan was ‘just a boy.’

Last but not least was that feisty Basque, my boss, Rodolfo Boujaron, who seemed to know more than he was letting on about everything and maybe every
one
. There was his unique Basque pedigree for the Game itself and the background of Montglane, which no one else had mentioned. But there was also his foreknowledge of my mother’s birthday
boum,
and his mention of the meaning of our birth dates – a strange idea that no one else had suggested, that she and I might be imagined, by some, to be on opposing teams.

In reviewing what I’d written while Nim was still splashing in the kitchen, I jotted down some ancillary characters like Nokomis and Sage or Leda and Eremon – people I knew well, but who were likely only pawns in the Game, bit players if they were players at all.

However, an unknown quantity emerged from this picture, one that stuck out on the page like the proverbial sore thumb: the only person of all those my mother had invited to her birthday
boum
whom I’d never heard of prior to the party.

Galen March.

But then, as I tried to go over in my mind the events of that day, and his role in them, something struck me for the first time: No one else had really seemed to know him all that well, either!

It’s true that the Livingstons had arrived with Galen and introduced him as a ‘new neighbor,’ and that he’d later hopped a ride on their plane to Denver along with Sage.
But I now recalled that at dinner last Friday he’d actually spent his time asking
other
people questions, as if it were the first time he’d ever met any of them. Indeed, it seemed I had it only on
his
word that he’d ever met my mother either! What was his connection, if any, to the recent death of Taras Petrossian? Yes, further research was definitely called for on the highly improbable owner of Sky Ranch.

Of course, when it came to Nim, I knew that in these past hours together, my normally enigmatic uncle had opened his bosom and his wounds to me, probably more than to anyone else in his life. I needn’t ask how he broke into my place last night, for I was sure he’d done it the same way he’d entertained me through my childhood: He could crack almost any safe or pick any lock. But I would have to probe a bit further into other topics. There were still a few open questions to which perhaps only Nim could provide the answers.

Even though my inquiries might just lead to a long trail of red herrings, it was worth at least checking to see if any of them might prove to be real bait. For instance:

When had Nim first lured my mother into the Game, as he’d told me he had? And why?

What did Mother’s birth date – or mine – have to do with our roles?

What were those jobs with the U.S. government that my uncle told me he’d helped to arrange for my parents, even before I was born? Why had they never discussed their work in front of me?

And more to the recent point, back in Colorado: How had my mother come up with all those clues and puzzles she’d left for me, if Nim hadn’t helped provide them?

I was about to jot a few more thoughts on my list when Nim arrived in the living room, drying his hands on the towel he’d tucked into his waistband.

‘Now down to business,’ he said. ‘I agreed to the demands
of that employer of yours that I release you into his custody before nightfall,’ adding with his wry smile, ‘Do you work the swing shift, or is there some vampirism involved?’

‘Rodo’s a bloodsucker, all right,’ I agreed. ‘Which reminds me, you’ve never met anyone from Sutalde, right?’

‘Except for that meals-on-wheels wench this morning – the platinum blonde on Rollerblades who delivered your breakfast makings,’ he told me. ‘But we never met. She left them in the downstairs hall and departed before I could proffer any gratuity.’

‘That’s Leda, she’s the cocktail manager. But no one else?’ I said. ‘You’ve never set foot inside Sutalde or seen the stone ovens?’

Nim shook his head. ‘There’s some mystery about the place, I take it?’

‘A few dangling plot elements I need to pull together,’ I told him. ‘Yesterday morning in my absence, someone set up the rotisserie spit there incorrectly, so that burnt lard got baked onto the hearth. That’s never happened before – the place is like boot camp – yet Rodo didn’t seem at all fazed. And the night before, when I got home here after midnight, someone had left the April seventh edition of the
Washington Post,
with a note, at my door downstairs. That wasn’t you?’

Nim raised a brow and removed his kitchen towel. ‘Do you still have that note and the paper? I’d like to have a look.’

I rummaged around in one of my baskets of books and extracted the
Post
for him, with its yellow stickie still attached.

‘See?’ I pointed out. ‘The note says
See page A1.
I think the headline is the key:
Troops, Tanks Attack Central Baghdad.
It’s all about U.S. troops’ entry into Baghdad – the very place where the chess service was first created. Then it
mentions that the invasion itself began a little over two weeks earlier, the very day when my mother phoned in all those birthday invitations and the Game was launched once more. I think whoever left that newspaper for me was trying to point out that these two things – Baghdad and the Game – have somehow been reconnected, perhaps very much as they were twelve hundred years ago.’

‘That’s not all,’ Nim interjected. He’d folded back the paper while I spoke and skimmed the rest of the article. Now he glanced up at me and added, ‘I believe that the saying is, “The Devil is in the details.”’

He and Key would have made a fine pair, I thought.

But aloud I said, ‘Do embellish.’

‘This article goes on to describe what the invading troops had done to secure the area. There is, however, an interesting remark further along about a “convoy of Russian diplomats” departing the city. The convoy was accidentally strafed by American forces, and several were injured. Yet U.S. Central Command claimed no U.S. or British forces were operating in the area at the time, the obvious question being—’ He raised his brow again, this time to urge my response.

‘Um – was someone actually after the Russians?’ I hazarded a guess.

Without a direct reply, Nim handed me the
Post,
folded back to page 1 again. ‘That’s
still
not all. Read further,’ he suggested, pointing to another article I hadn’t noticed before:

At Airport, Probe Leads Army to Secret Room

I scanned it quickly. In a ‘VIP terminal’ at Baghdad airport, apparently U.S. soldiers had found what they ‘suspect was a hideaway for president Saddam Hussein. Elaborately appointed, it has a carved mahogany door, gold-plated bathroom fixtures and a verandah opening onto a rose
garden. But its most intriguing feature is a wood-paneled office with a false door that leads to a basement room.’ The troops found weapons there. ‘But,’ the article went on, ‘they believe there is something more: a secret exit.’

‘A secret departure terminal, a secret room, a secret exit, and a convoy of Russians the source of whose injuries is unaccounted for. What does this tell us?’ said Nim, when he saw that I’d finished reading.

I remembered my uncle’s enjoinder to me when I was young, never to overlook the obvious point that whatever was done could also be undone, in chess as in life: the ’Vice Versa Factor,’ as he liked to call it. It seemed he wished to invoke the factor here.

‘What goes out can also come in?’ I suggested.

‘Precisely,’ he said, with a look that somehow managed to mix satisfaction at finding something important with concern about what he’d inadvertently uncovered. ‘And what or whom do you suppose might have come
into
Baghdad through that secret terminal, that secret room, that secret exit – and might also have left by the same route only shortly before the invasion? Only shortly before your mother sent her party invitations?’

‘You mean something arrived there from Russia?’ I asked.

Nim nodded and went over to get his trench coat. He pulled from his pocket the same wallet as before, but this time he opened the wallet and extracted a piece of folded paper. He unfolded it and handed it over to me.

‘I rarely search on the Web, as you know,’ my uncle told me. ‘But thanks to your mother’s foolishness with that gathering of hers, this time I felt it might be important to do so.’

Nim’s Vice Versa Factor, supported by his thirty years as a computer technocrat, had convinced him never to surf anything. ‘If you’re investigating
them,’
he’d told me often enough, ‘they’re likely also investigating
you.’

The bit of paper he’d handed me was the smeared printout of a press release, dated March 19, from a Russian news agency I’d never heard of. It began by announcing the ‘Christian-Islamic peacemaking mission’ that had just returned to Russia from Baghdad. The rest was a real eye-opener.

Among the luminaries – which included Russian Orthodox bishops, a Supreme Mufti, and head of the Russian Muslim council – was a name I might have known, had I still been a player in the world of chess. It was a cinch, however, that everyone
else
at Mother’s dinner must have known it: Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of the Russian republic of Kalmykia, and a self-made billionaire at the age of forty.

Of more immediate import, however, was the interesting fact that his excellency, the president of the little-known republic of Kalmykia, was also the current president of FIDE, the World Chess Federation, not to mention the highest bankroller in the history of the game. He’d sponsored tourneys in Las Vegas, and even built a chess city, with checkerboard streets and buildings shaped like pieces, in his own hometown!

I stared at my uncle, rendered totally speechless. This guy made Taras Petrossian and Basil Livingston look like a pair of patzers. Could he be for real?

‘Whoever strafed that convoy of diplomats yesterday made their move a bit too late,’ Nim told me grimly. ‘Whatever might once have been hidden in Baghdad certainly has been removed by now. Your mother must have known that; it would even explain why she threw her party with the odd guest list you’ve described. Whoever has left this newspaper on your doorstep Monday before dawn must have known it, too. I think we had best review your mother’s list of invitees a bit more closely.’

I handed my notes to him, and he scrutinized everything. Then he sat beside me on the sofa and flipped to a fresh page on my yellow pad.

‘Let’s begin with this chap, March,’ he said. ‘You’ve spelled his first name G-A-L-E-N, but if you use the Gaelic spelling, it works perfectly.’ He printed the name. Then beneath it he wrote each letter in alphabetical order, like so: