The Eight: The Fire Part 20

The Key.

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 everyone. 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 splas.h.i.+ng 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 p.a.w.ns in the Game, bit players if they were players at all.

However, an unknown quant.i.ty 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 s.h.i.+ft, 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 c.o.c.ktail 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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: Gaelen March aa c ee g h l m n r This was a game we'd played when I was small name anagrams. But practiced though I might be, I was no match for my uncle. The moment he'd unscrambled the anagram in writing for me, I looked up at him in horror.

It read: Charlemagne.

'Not very tactful, is it?' Nim said with a grimace. 'Giving away your hand and your likely agenda, along with your calling card.'

I couldn't believe it! Galen March had not only moved up my list of suspicious figures in this Game he'd just landed smack on top!

But Nim hadn't quite finished. 'Naturally, given the medieval saga that your Basque employer spun for you yesterday, this would suggest to us some connection between him and your new neighbor,' he said, studying my sheet of notes in more detail. 'And speaking of Monsieur Boujaron, the sooner you learn what he has to tell you, the better. From these observations you've written here, I suspect that whatever he knows may prove quite important. Since I failed to inquire, will he be coming by here for his postponed meeting with you tonight?'

'I forgot to tell you,' I said, 'now that our morning appointment was deferred, I don't know if I'll even see him today. Rodo normally cooks on the dinner s.h.i.+ft and I work the fires on the graveyard s.h.i.+ft after he's left for the night. That's why he wanted to be sure I was available tonight. I should phone and find out when we can reschedule our talk.'

But when I glanced around, I noticed that the living room phone seemed to have vanished from its place, as well. I went over and grabbed my shoulder bag from the table where I'd left it, and I rummaged around until I found my cell phone to call Rodo. But before I'd even flipped the cover open to power it on, Nim crossed the room and s.n.a.t.c.hed it from my hand.

'Where did you get this?' he snapped. 'How long have you had it?'

I stared at him. 'A few years, I guess,' I said, confused. 'Rodo insists on having us all at his beck and call.'

But Nim had put his finger to my lips. Now he went to retrieve the yellow pad and scribbled something. He handed both the pad and pencil to me with a sharp look. Then he studied my phone that he still held in his palm.

'Write your answers,' his scrawl read. 'Has anyone recently handled this phone but yourself?'

I started to shake my head, when in horror I recalled exactly who had, and I cursed myself. 'The Secret Service,' I wrote. 'Last night.'

And they'd held on to it for hours enough time to plant a bomb or anything else, I thought.

'Have I taught you nothing, all these years?' Nim muttered beneath his breath when he saw my message. Then he scribbled again, 'Did you use it at all, after it was returned?'

I was once again about to reply in the negative, when I realized that I had.

'Only once, to phone Rodo,' I wrote, and handed back the pad.

Nim put his hand briefly over his eyes and shook his head. Then he wrote on the pad again. This time it took so long that I was on tenterhooks. But when I actually read it, my breakfast did a swift toss in my stomach and threatened to land in my throat.

'Then you've activated it, too,' Nim had written. 'When they seized it, they got every phone number, message, or code. All now in their possession. If you've turned it on even once since then, they've overheard all that we've said in this room, too.'

Good G.o.d, how could this be happening?

I was about to write more, but Nim grabbed my arm and ushered me to the kitchen sink, where he tore all our notes into shreds, including my earlier observations, lit a match, and burned them. He washed the ashes down through the garbage disposal.

'You can phone Boujaron in a moment,' he said aloud. Without a word, we left the phone on the table and went downstairs and outside.

'It's too late now,' my uncle told me. 'I'm not sure what they've heard, but we can't let on that we know they've learned anything. At this moment, we must take everything of value out of your place with us, and get to someplace where we can't be overheard. Only then can we try to rea.s.sess the situation sanely.'

Why hadn't I thought of that phone first thing this morning, the moment he'd told me why he'd removed the others? Whatever we'd said on the bridge last night might be safe, maybe even our breakfast chat, which was in another room. But what had we said this morning, in the vicinity of the cell phone? I felt my hysteria rising.

'Oh,' I said with tears in my eyes, 'I'm so sorry, Uncle Slava. It's all my fault.'

Nim put one arm around me, drew me to him, and kissed my hair as he had when I was tiny. 'Don't worry,' he said softly. 'But I'm afraid this does alter our timetable a bit.'

'Our timetable?' I said, looking up at him, his face blurry.

'It means,' he said, 'that no matter what amount of time we thought we had to find your mother, we now haven't any.'

Too Many Queens.

Dark conspiracies, secret societies, midnight meetings of desperate men, impossible plots these were the order of the day...

Duff Cooper, Talleyrand.

Valencay, The Loire Valley.

June 8, 1823.

Only in France can one know the full horror of provincial life.

Talleyrand.

Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, prince de Benevent, sat in the small pony cart wedged between the two little children who were dressed in their linen gardening tunics and big straw hats. They were following the servants and Talleyrand's recently returned chef, Carme, who went before them through the herb and vegetable gardens with baskets and cutting shears, letting the children help select the fresh produce and flowers for this evening's dinner and table decorations as they did each morning. For Talleyrand it was customary never to dine with fewer than sixteen at the table.

As Carme pointed his scissors at various bushes and vines, nasturtiums and purple rhubarb and small artichokes and bunches of fragrant bay leaves and small colorful squashes toppled into the servants' baskets. Talleyrand smiled as the children clapped their small hands.

Maurice's grat.i.tude knew no bounds for the fact that Carme had agreed to come to Valencay, and for a number of reasons. It was only coincidence, however, that today was Carme's birthday. He'd told the children that he was preparing a special surprise for dessert tonight, for himself as well as for them a pice montee, one of those architecturally designed constructions of moulded and spun sugar for which he'd first become internationally famous.

Antonin Carme was today the most celebrated chef in Europe, made even more famous with the publication, last autumn, of his book Matre d'Htel Francais, more than a cookbook in its scholarly erudition, for in it he compared both ancient and modern cuisines and explained the importance of foods in various cultures as connected with each of the four seasons. He drew many of his examples from the twelve years of early experience he'd garnered as chef in Talleyrand's kitchens, both in Paris and especially here at Valencay, where he'd prepared, with Talleyrand's intimate involvement, a separate menu for each day of each and every year.

Having served in the intervening years as master chef to other luminaries including the Prince of Wales at Brighton; Lord Charles Stewart, the British amba.s.sador at Vienna; and Alexander I, tsar of Russia Carme had now returned, at Talleyrand's insistent request, to spend these few summer months recuperating at Valencay while his new employers finished renovating their palace in Paris. Then, despite the serious lung ailment from which all chefs of his era suffered, he would a.s.sume his tasks as master chef to the only people who could afford his full-time employment James and Betty de Rothschild.

This morning's jaunt through the twenty-five acres of kitchen gardens with Carme and the children was just a pretext, of course, though morning outings like this had long been a favorite custom here at Valencay.