competition when she ran your Moscow station. She’s very clever, very skilled. But I must think of the needs of my country first. General Morrison knew the risks when he entered the intelligence profession. It’s tragic, but the die is cast.”
I moved my bishop six spaces to f5, where it could threaten one of his pawns.
He looked up at Arbatov. “Alexi, would you be so kind as to fix us some aperitifs? I assume you drink, Major? And you, Miss Mazorski?”
We both nodded. “Good,” he said, bringing out his bishop five spaces.
I studied the board while he leaned back and stretched. I moved another pawn to a position that blocked his bishop from attacking my queen.
He chuckled. “A better position, but you will not last six more moves.”
“Really?”
He reached down and moved another pawn to d6, to open his right bishop. I moved my queen six spaces to the left. He smiled and moved his bishop to a position where I either had to take it with my queen or shift my queen to a nonthreatened spot. Either would expose a pawn whose loss would threaten my king. I counted. Depending on how I moved he would either beat me in three or five moves. There was no way to prevent it.
He gave me a knowing look. “Some things are inevitable. You should play Alexi someday. We’ve competed for years. A few times he has even beaten me.”
Alexi was smiling down at him. “Very few, Papa.”
I said, “Then Morrison’s fate is inevitable?”
“I’m afraid so. Please believe I wish it was different, but life is not like chess. The playing board is not always fair or just. I’ll tell you this, for whatever help it might be. Bill created this situation himself. He made mistakes that undid him. He is an arrogant and selfish man who overestimated his own talents and the loyalty of those around him.”
What was he trying to tell me? I mean, there’s a lot you can learn about somebody from the way they play chess, and after getting my butt kicked twice in less than five minutes I’d learned this. Viktor Yurichenko was probably the smartest man I’d ever met, if not the slyest. He’d never hesitated a single second to make his next move, just nonchalantly watched me unfold my strategies, then brushed them aside like he was swatting flies. His own moves had been surefooted and deceitful. You can move three ways on a chessboard: forward, sideways, or diagonally. Both times he’d beaten me using only his diagonal pieces, his queen and his bishops.
He was still coming at me from the diagonal. Was he saying Morrison had been a sloppy, overconfident traitor who brought this on himself? Or was there some other implication and I just couldn’t see it?
I nursed my drink, hoping to drag this out a little longer. Yurichenko struck me as one of the last of that dying breed called old world gentleman, who’d never throw out a guest without letting him finish his drink.
He suddenly smiled and said, “So how do you like law, Major?”
“I like it well enough.”
“But you started your career in the infantry, if I’m not mistaken. You saw combat in Panama and the Gulf. Don’t you miss the excitement?”
I tried not to let my jaw drop open, but I couldn’t completely disguise my surprise. He obviously knew all about me. I said, “Law can sometimes be pretty exciting, too.”
He sipped from his drink. “Had I been born in America, I would have chosen law. You Americans make it a delightful game of wits. Unfortunately, we Russians have never relied on our courts. Under the Communists they were facades. Under democracy, nothing has changed. We settle our disputes in the streets with guns.”
I said, “I had a little experience with that when I was in Moscow.”
“I saw the report,” he said, then looked up at Alexi. “Did you ever receive an update from our friends at the detective bureau?”
Alexi looked at him, then at me. “They are still saying the Chechens were behind it. The two officers of the patrol that failed to respond in a timely fashion have been removed from the police.”
Yurichenko was shaking his head. “You see what we must contend with? And to think we were once the second most powerful nation on earth. How the once-mighty have fallen, eh?”
I looked down, and his hand was caressing the queen he’d twice used to thrash me. I said, “If it wasn’t the Chechens, who could it have been?”
“Who can know these things? I’m unfamiliar with you, Major.” Then he suppressed a yawn, which really was a very elegant signal that I’d overstayed my welcome.
Alexi gracefully intervened. “Viktor, the long flight… you are becoming tired. You should be going to bed while I cater to the needs of our guests. Is important for you to be fresh for our meetings.”
The old man glanced up at him, and the look on his face was one of huge affection for the younger man. “You young pup, it used to be me who put you to bed.” He turned and looked at me with an abashed expression. “Life is pitiless to the elderly.”
Alexi led the old man to his bedroom, Viktor grasping his arm like a crutch, and I noticed that Yurichenko walked hunched over like a very old man. Only a moment before he had seemed so sprightly and energized. Now he looked feeble and depleted.
Katrina and I raised eyebrows at each other, undoubtedly thinking the same thing. Yurichenko was a piece of work. Norman Rockwell would drool at the sight of him. It wasn’t hard to see why he’d succeeded in the KGB and then been picked by Yeltsin to head the SVR. He was lovably crafty.
Alexi walked out of the bedroom a moment later, shaking his head. “Have you gotten what you wanted, Sean?”
“Yes and no. I obviously didn’t help my client, but I just met a most remarkable man.”
He looked suddenly embarrassed. “Viktor is a, uh, he is very special to me, yes? Like father… you understand?”
“I can see why. I’m sorry for disturbing you… I had to try.”
“Of course.”
Then Alexi walked us both to the door. He looked at Katrina. “Were you liking Viktor?”
“Who couldn’t like him? I was enchanted.”
He smiled like a little schoolboy. “Then I am bigly delighted you two have met.”
Bigly delighted? Well, here we were again, me trying to save my client as these two treat this like an opportunity to meet the prospective in-laws. Alexi swiftly bent forward and gave Katrina a kiss. A simple handshake was fine with me.
Then we were out the door, collecting the two police officers and heading back to the lobby. I’d given it my best try, and I’d failed. I drove home in a severe funk.
Brian Haig
The Kingmaker
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
When I entered the office at 7:00 A.M., another of those ubiquitous vans was parked outside, and a man was hefting more boxes inside. At the entry stood destiny in the form of Fast Eddie himself, leaned up against the doorjamb, emitting a smug, ever-confident glow. The fiddler had come to collect his bill.
I walked up. “Here to see how the other half lives?”
“Something like that. You got a coffeemaker in this slum?”
“Yeah,” I said, and we walked inside. Katrina was already there and had brewed up a fresh pot. I saw no more than six or seven boxes.
I poured two cups and handed one to Eddie, who was gazing with great amusement at the wall safes. It no longer looked like an office; it looked like a refrigerator store stuffed with ferociously ugly appliances.
“I filled all these?” he asked, proud of his handiwork.
“And two warehouses on the other side of the post. You outdid yourself.”
“I wanted to be sure you had everything,” he said, smiling wickedly. “The government can’t afford to be accused of withholding key evidence in such an important trial, can it?”
