TEN

The jangling of the phone seemed incredibly loud as it broke the night stillness. John squirmed in the armchair where he had fallen asleep and tried to ignore the sound. He cursed softly, for he had meant to turn down the bell.

Finally the ringing stopped, but John was already awake. He turned on the standard lamp behind him and glanced at his watch: it was three in the morning. His plane would be leaving in five hours. He glanced down at the chessboard in his lap, debating whether or not to analyse more. Finally he decided against it. He would go to bed and get a few more hours of sleep.

He rose and put the chess set on a shelf that he had repaired. Then he went to the phone, turned it upside down and turned off the bell. The phone began to vibrate as he started to set it down. John hesitated a moment, then snatched up the receiver.

‘What is it?’ he asked angrily.

‘John, it’s Anna Petroff.’

Suddenly John found it difficult to breathe. The sound of the voice on the other end of the line cut through his weariness and jolted him wide awake. It was enough for him to hear that voice, and he did not notice the tension in it.

‘John, I have to see you. Now.’

Then he remembered, and the bitterness of the memory of what Anna had tried to do to him clouded his voice.

‘You want to see me after what you tried to pull?’

There was a long pause at the other end, then: ‘I don’t understand.’

John frowned as he caught himself hoping that it was true, that the girl hadn’t tried to betray him. He shook his head. ‘I have a plane to catch in the morning,’ he said abruptly.

‘Please, John. I have to see you. It’s about Yevgeny.’

He was a fool to be talking to the girl, John thought; a fool to have answered the phone in the first place. He would be gone in a few hours, on his way to becoming chess champion of the world.

‘No,’ John said forcefully, and started to hang up the phone.

Anna’s strained voice leaked from the receiver, pleading, strangely defenceless. ‘John! Please don’t hang up!’

John hesitated. The receiver was only inches from the cradle. He struggled against the image of himself cutting Anna out of his life forever, condemning her to … he didn’t know what. He was very tired, John thought, and not thinking straight. The thing to do was to hang up the phone and put Anna Petroff completely out of his thoughts. He slowly raised the receiver back to his ear.

‘John? Are you still there?’

‘Please leave me alone,’ John said quietly.

‘I have to talk to you, John. You—we—are in a great deal of danger. I … I need your help.’

‘Then you come here.’

‘I can’t. You have to come to me. I’m at the Hotel Carlisle. Room 417. Please, John. I have something very important to tell you.’

He couldn’t leave his room now, John thought. It would be insane. ‘I don’t know,’ he said quickly, and hung up.

John walked quickly away from the telephone as though it was a bomb about to explode. He went to his window and stared out at the city lights. The muscles in his stomach had knotted painfully. He opened the window and took deep breaths of the cool night air, trying to collect his thoughts.

What did she want? What did she want?

Sleep was impossible, John thought. A major distraction had come back to haunt him. The girl’s request was outrageous, but it still upset him.

He took a chess set off a shelf, set it up on the table, then sat down to analyse. His hands trembled as he reached out to move the pieces.

He gave it up after twenty minutes. He rose and searched through his pockets until he found the scrap of paper he was looking for. Then he went to the phone and dialled the number written on the paper. The phone was answered on the second ring by a scratchy recording.

‘This is Peter Arnett. I’m out at the moment. Please leave your name and number, I’ll call you back.’

John replaced the receiver on the hook. He stood very still in the middle of the room for a full minute. Then he strode quickly to a closet, took out a jacket and walked out of the apartment.

It took fifteen minutes to get to the Hotel Carlisle, a twenty-storey building on the lower east side of Manhattan. John paid the taxi driver, then walked through a light rain the few steps to the lobby.

The lobby was just short of seedy, and its personnel reflected this fact. A television set no one was watching was on in a small alcove at the far end. The night clerk was sound asleep behind his desk. John went directly to the elevator and punched the button for the fourth floor.

He knocked once lightly on the door of room 417.

‘Come in.’ Anna’s voice was laced with a curious mixture of relief and tension.

John pushed the door open and stepped into the room. He found himself in one room of a suite. The lighting was dim, but he could make out Anna sitting on a couch shrouded in shadow at the opposite end of the room. A doorway behind her was covered with a curtain. The air was musty.

‘Thank you for coming.’ Anna’s voice was flat.

John went to turn on the overhead light.

‘Please don’t turn on the light,’ Anna said quickly.

John turned on the light. Anna’s hands flew to her face, but not fast enough to hide from John the fact that she had been beaten. The entire right side of her face was black and blue, and her right eye was swollen almost shut. She quickly turned away.

‘Who did that to you?’ John asked angrily.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Anna said from behind her hands. ‘What does matter is that you came.’

‘Are you finally going to tell me what part you play in all this?’

‘Would you turn off the overhead light, please? I don’t want you to see me like this.’

John hesitated, then turned off the light. The only illumination came from a small table lamp to his left. Anna rose and walked across the room to him. She kept the damaged side of her face turned away from him. John wanted to reach out and touch her, cradle her face in his hands. He kept his hands at his sides.

‘John, you mustn’t get on that plane. Don’t go to Venice.’

‘You must be out of your mind.’

Anna shook her head, then moaned softly with the pain. ‘You’ll be hurt, John! You may even be killed if you go. You must believe me!’

‘Who’s going to kill me?’

Tears glistened in Anna’s eyes, and there was a note of desperation in her voice. ‘I can’t tell you anything except that you must not go to Venice. Even if you go, you won’t play, John. Believe me! You’ll never get a chance to play!’

‘They haven’t stopped me yet,’ John said with a touch of pride. ‘You haven’t stopped me yet, and you sure as hell gave it your best shot.’

‘Oh, John!’

John sat down in a chair and casually crossed his legs. ‘You’re one cool bitch, Anna Petroff,’ he said evenly. ‘First you try to set me up with those papers, then you get yourself punched around to make this pitch sound more convincing.’ He wasn’t sure that was true, but he had to say it because it was on his mind. It was the only explanation that made sense to him. He tried to see the girl’s face, but she was still turned away from him. ‘For a woman who’s convinced her brother can beat me over the chessboard, you’ve gone to an awful lot of trouble to try to keep me from playing him.’

Anna’s voice was choked. ‘I didn’t try to trick you with those papers. They were what I said they were: a gift.’

John frowned in the dim light. He hesitated a moment, then bored in again. ‘You gave them to me so that it would look like they were a payment for my smuggling secrets out of the country.’

Anna slowly shook her head. ‘John, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You’re a very convincing liar. What did you want in return for the papers?’

‘I … I still can’t tell you. For your sake, I can’t tell you.’

‘Does your brother want to defect or doesn’t he?’

Anna’s answer was immediate, and her tone was stiff with pride. ‘My brother is a Russian, and he is a patriot. He would never defect.’

John found the girl’s tone, her certainty, disconcerting. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said weakly. ‘I don’t believe anything you say.’

‘If you weren’t prepared to believe anything I say, why did you come to see me?’

‘A good question,’ John said wryly. ‘Maybe it’s because I can’t get you out of my mind. I don’t know what game you’re playing, but I respect the way you play it. I couldn’t do it. I need a board, a certain number of pieces. Most important, I need to know the rules.’

‘Oh, John, it’s not a game.’ Anna stepped forward and gripped his arms. ‘At least agree to a six month postponement. I think you care for me, or you wouldn’t have come. Then do it for me. Trust me. Please. You won’t have to wait more than six months. You’ve waited years; six more months can’t make that much difference.’

‘No,’ John said quietly. He slowly removed Anna’s hands from his arms, then turned and started to walk towards the door.

‘John!’

Something in her voice made him stop. He turned and froze.

Anna reached up with trembling fingers and began to undo the buttons on her blouse. She made no effort to brush away the tears that slid down her cheeks.

The blouse was unbuttoned. Anna shrugged it off her shoulders and it fell to the floor. Then she reached behind her and unsnapped her bra. She took that off and dropped it next to the blouse.

John stood rooted to the spot, staring at Anna’s half-naked body. She had full, firm breasts, topped with large brown nipples that went rigid under his gaze. Her whole body trembled, as if from some inner cold. Finally she reached up and cupped her breasts in a gesture that was entirely out of tune with the strain—and shame—etched on her face.

‘All I’m asking you for is six months,’ Anna said in a choked voice. ‘If you agree, you can have me. I’ll do anything you ask.’

She reached down and started to pull down the zipper on her skirt. John held up his hand and smiled thinly. He wanted to laugh and couldn’t. ‘You might as well stop right there,’ he said in a voice that contained much more bitterness than he had intended. ‘I’m impotent. I can’t take what you want to give me.’

Somebody laughed for him. The sound was low and guttural, coming from somewhere in the darkness beyond the closed curtain.

‘I’m sorry, John!’ Anna cried, covering her face with her hands and moving to one side. ‘He made me!’

A large, gnarled hand reached out and drew the curtains aside. The body that followed was huge, topped by a bullet-shaped head. The thin mouth was drawn back in a sneer of contempt.

John recognised the man from his picture: Alexander Gligoric.

Anna had begun to cry. Gligoric turned towards her and spoke sharply in Russian.

John felt his legs go numb. He stood frozen to the spot, glancing back and forth between Gligoric and Anna. Anna swept up her blouse and covered her breasts. She rushed at Gligoric, grabbing at his arm.

‘Don’t hurt him! Please don’t hurt him!’ She repeated it in Russian, but Gligoric brushed her easily to one side and moved towards John.

John slowly moved backwards, keeping his eyes fixed on Gligoric as the big man reached into his pocket and withdrew a set of brass knuckles. The metal gleamed in the soft light of the table lamp. Gligoric slipped the deadly ring of metal on to his right hand, then flexed his fingers as though testing the fit.

‘Is he another one of your gifts?’ John asked softly, looking directly at Anna.

‘He’d have come for you anyway!’ Anna cried out. Her voice quivered with fear and desperation. ‘I had to try to stop you from playing! Tell him now! It’s not too late! Tell him you won’t play!’

John bolted for the door. Gligoric, moving with the speed of a jungle cat, was there before him, leaning against the door, staring down at John with eyes that had suddenly gone the colour of iron.

Anna, her hands balled into fists, rushed at Gligoric. Gligoric’s left hand flicked out like the tongue of a snake, catching her on the side of the head. Anna spun, then fell to the floor, unconscious. A second later the big man casually brought his fist up into John’s stomach. John doubled over in pain and staggered out into the middle of the living-room, gasping to recover some of the air that had exploded from his lungs. He retched, dropping the remains of his last meal on the rug at his feet. The room was suddenly filled with the acrid smell of vomit and John’s fear.

Gligoric came after him.

Still gasping for air, John lifted his arm in a silent plea which Gligoric ignored. The Russian grabbed John by the front of his shirt and slapped him hard with an open palm. John fell backwards to the floor. His ears were ringing and he could taste blood in his mouth.

The man was toying with him, John thought. Torturing him. One blow with the mailed fist would kill him, and John suspected it would not be long before Gligoric tired of slapping him around.

He could hear footsteps coming up behind him. His vision was blurred, and he groped around for something with which to defend himself; there was nothing within reach of his fingers but the soft, furry nap of the rug. Then he suddenly became aware of pressure on the right side of his chest; something sharp was digging into him—his chess wallet.

John quickly rolled halfway over on his back and reached into his jacket pocket for the set with its sharp metal pieces. Gligoric’s powerful hand was already gripping his shoulder as John found the set, drew it from his pocket and snapped it open. He withdrew a sharp-pointed bishop.

Gligoric yanked him to his feet and spun him around; the fist with the brass knuckles was drawn back, ready to smash into his head. John lashed out with the chess piece. The bishop carved a long, red welt across Gligoric’s forehead, just above the eyes. The welt immediately spouted blood.

Gligoric screamed with pain and surprise as he stumbled backwards and came up hard against the opposite wall. His hands flew to his face, but blood continued to well from between the fingers, the crimson rivulets collecting and rolling down over the wrists, and into his eyes.

John braced himself and shook his head, trying to clear it. Anna had regained consciousness. Out of the corner of his eye John saw her slowly sit up and look around her. Then she froze, her face a mask of terror.

Now it was Gligoric’s turn to grope. The blood running from his forehead had made him temporarily blind. He removed his hands from his face and began to search the area around him with his fingers. His features were smeared crimson and sounds of animal rage and fear issued from his throat.

Numb with shock, John backed up into a table, knocking over a lamp. Gligoric immediately reacted to the sound, lowering his head and rushing, arms outstretched like a bull’s horns, towards the source.

There was no time to move out of the way, and John only just had time to pick up the lamp and bring the base crashing down on Gligoric’s skull; the porcelain base splintered like delicate China. And then Gligoric had him.

The Russian wrapped his huge arms around John’s body, locking his hands together behind John’s back. Then he quickly moved his arms down to the base of John’s spine. Gligoric began to squeeze.

Pain blossomed in the small of John’s back, then exploded into a river of fire that swept to all regions of his body, threatening to engulf him. His body arched and John screamed with pain. In a small corner of his mind that was still functioning, John realised that he would black out at any moment—and that he would be dead seconds after that.

Anna had recovered and was once again pounding at Gligoric with her fists. She might as well have been punching a stone wall. Gligoric gave no indication that he was even aware of her presence. His sightless, bloodshot eyes were wide, staring at nothing. A thin stream of frothy white spittle flowed from the corner of his mouth.

John closed his fist hard around the metal bishop and brought the point up hard against Gligoric’s left temple. There was a soft sound like a melon being punctured. John cried out in revulsion and dropped the chess piece. But the pointed metal had already done its work: the remaining light in Gligoric’s eyes went out. His arms flew out a right angles to his body and he went crashing to the floor like a felled redwood.

Anna screamed. John crumpled and writhed in pain. But gradually the fire was extinguished, banked to a dull, throbbing pain that pulsed from his buttocks to the base of his skull.

Someone was pounding at the door.

‘Hey! What the hell’s going on in there?’

John struggled to look around at Gligoric and Anna. He tried to speak but couldn’t. Still, the message in his eyes was clear and Anna knew what had to be done. She bit into her clenched fist, stifling her screams. She regained some of her composure through a tremendous effort of will, then walked uncertainly to the door. She took a series of deep, shuddering breaths as she leaned against the jamb.

‘It’s all right,’ she managed to say in a strangled whisper. ‘Just a fight with my husband. It’s all over now.’

The footsteps on the other side of the door moved away. Anna turned back to find John kneeling over Gligoric’s body, grasping the thick wrist in a futile search for a pulse. John dropped the wrist and slowly looked up at Anna. His face was ashen.

‘He’s dead.’

Anna stared wide-eyed at the corpse, as though afraid it still might rise from the floor and come after her. John reached out with a trembling hand and picked up the chess piece. The tip of it was stained with blood, like his clothes. He rose and staggered into the bathroom. He turned on the tap and ran water over the metal. Then he cupped handfuls of water and furiously scrubbed at the stains on his shirt and jacket. They wouldn’t come off.

He’d killed a man. He’d killed a man!

The metal chess piece fell from his hand and clattered in the sink. John fell over to one side, crashing into the glass door of the shower stall. Finally he braced himself on the sink. He managed to rinse out his mouth, then he caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror. The face belonged to somebody else, a stranger, a man who had just destroyed himself. It was not the face of a man who might once have been world chess champion.

He began to tremble. The tremors started in his fingers, spread through his hands to his arms, and finally in waves over his body. He shook like a man with palsy, and he did not think he would ever be able to stop.

Then Anna was beside him. She wrapped her arms around his waist, anchored her head on his shoulder and squeezed. She had not put her blouse back on, and her nipples were hard points in the soft mounds of flesh pressing against him.

‘Stop trembling, John,’ Anna whispered. ‘You’ve got to get hold of yourself.’

John closed his eyes and shook his head. His teeth were chattering, and he suddenly felt very cold. ‘I just killed a man,’ he croaked.

The pressure of Anna’s arms increased, but John still continued to shake uncontrollably. Anna lifted her mouth to John’s face and kissed him gently on the cheek.

‘He’d have killed you, or made you a cripple. You did the only thing you could do. Now you’re going to be all right. I’m going to make you all right.’

The tip of her tongue flicked out and touched his ear lobe. Suddenly John was very conscious of Anna’s naked breasts, her smell. God, how he needed someone to hold him like this, John thought, to make him feel safe, if only for a few moments; to love him, make him forget.

Something was happening to him; there was a different fire in him now, flaming in his belly and sending its hot fingers down into his groin, making him hard. He was afraid of that feeling; in the past it had been a weapon of torture, humiliation and failure. But his need was even greater than his fear. He lifted Anna’s head in his hands and kissed her hard on the mouth. Anna’s mouth opened and her tongue searched for his. John cupped Anna’s breasts, and he felt her pelvis thrusting forward, urgent and demanding.

Suddenly Anna broke away, gripped John’s hand and led him into the adjoining bedroom. Quickly she removed her skirt, panties and stockings. She stripped hurriedly, yet with ease. Then she stood before him, completely unashamed at her nakedness.

‘I want you to take me, John,’ Anna said, stepping forward and touching him.

‘I … I told you I—’

‘Stop thinking about it. Just do it.’

She pulled him down on the bed beside her. John felt as if he was about to explode. He quickly removed his pants. Anna wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, spread her legs beneath him and guided him into her. John closed his eyes and thrust deeply, impassioned, yet sick with the fear that he would go soft as in the past. He didn’t; everything else but the soft, wet warmth of Anna’s body faded into the background of his consciousness. The force inside his body was building.

He came a few moments later, and almost immediately his mind was bathed in warmth. His tensions and fears melted away as he collapsed in Anna’s arms.

‘Goddamn,’ he said softly.

‘Hear, hear,’ Anna replied warmly.

He lay still as Anna first bathed him with a warm, wet flannel, then dressed his cuts and bruises. John wanted to speak, but was afraid he couldn’t without sobbing. He remained silent, watching the girl closely. He thought of the body in the other room, but even that somehow seemed unimportant at the moment, paling before the light of the gift Anna had given him; that light blinded him, numbed him. No matter what happened now, he knew he would never forget that gift. He had been drowning and the girl had saved him with her body.

And John knew he loved her.

Anna finished, then dressed and sat down next to him on the bed. She took his hand and smiled down into his face.

‘Are you all right now?’

John nodded.

‘I have to go now,’ the girl said quietly.

John worked his tongue over his lips, then tried his voice. Its steadiness surprised him. ‘Still no explanations?’

The light in the girl’s eyes changed with the tone of her voice. ‘No, John. I don’t think it would be wise. The game is over.’

‘What game were we playing?’

Anna ignored the question. ‘You must leave too,’ she said quietly.

John considered it for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No, I won’t run. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. My fingerprints are all over this place, and they’ve got a nice fresh set down at the police station.’

‘You were arrested?’

‘You didn’t know?’ But John knew the answer to his question before he asked it. The surprise and concern in Anna’s voice had been genuine. The girl’s innocence filled him with a new kind of warmth and almost made him forget the unanswered questions.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he continued. ‘I was falling apart and you put me back together again. Why?’

Something like hurt glinted in Anna’s eyes and John regretted the question. But it was too late to retract it.

Anna squeezed his hand once more, then stood. ‘Goodbye, John,’ she said simply.

John watched her walk to the bedroom door, then turn. He expected her to say something, but she didn’t. She stared at him for a few seconds, then turned round again and walked out. John waited until he heard the outer door open and close, then rose and quickly dressed. He knew he was in deep trouble, and yet he felt oddly removed from it all. He was sorry he would not be able to play Yevgeny Petroff for the world title, but it no longer seemed the end of the world. The pressure of the last few days, the killing, and, finally, the heat of Anna’s body seemed to have burned something out of him, and he found he was not sorry it was gone.

He felt as if he had undergone some sort of exorcism.

He walked into the living-room and glanced at Gligoric’s body. Rigor mortis had already begun to set in and the hands that had almost killed him were now frozen into harmless, ugly, paper-white claws. The eyes were open, but had no more life in them than balls of dough. John took a caftan off the sofa and threw it over the face. Then he went to the telephone, dialled the operator and asked for the police.

‘93rd Precinct,’ a husky voice said. ‘Sergeant Stone speaking.’

John said nothing. His mind was somewhere else, on a stage in an auditorium in a theatre somewhere in Venice. And he was considering ways of getting there, going over alternatives in his mind like they were variations on a chess problem.

‘Hello! Anybody there?’

John hung up, then quickly dialled another number from memory. The phone was answered on the first ring.

‘Arnett.’ Arnett’s voice was sharp and tense.

‘Arnett, this is Butler.’

Arnett’s exhalation of breath sounded like a pent-up explosion. ‘Butler! Where the hell are you? I’ve been looking all over the Goddamn place for you!’

John grinned in spite of his pain, his tension. It gave him distinct pleasure to hear Arnett, for once, caught off balance. ‘Really?’ he said casually. ‘Why?’

‘Why? Because you’re not in your room, that’s why! What the hell are you trying to pull?’

‘Look, Arnett,’ John said evenly, ‘I haven’t got time for conversation. I’ve got a plane to catch, and you’ve got a little mess to clean up.’

Arnett’s voice suddenly became very wary ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘The man in the picture you showed me. Gligoric. He’s dead. I killed him.’

‘You what?’

‘You’ll find the body at the Hotel Carlisle. Room 417. I’d appreciate it if you’d do a good job of covering my tracks.’

‘Butler—’

John hung up the phone. He smiled to himself, then rose and walked painfully from the room.

Tom Manning’s fingers were bloodless as he stood behind a fence at the boarding gate and clutched at the railing. Behind him, the whine of the jet plane’s engines rose to a piercing whine that was painful in his ears, but not as painful as the weight he carried in his heart.

The last passenger had boarded, and now the steward who had agreed to hold up the flight for ten minutes was openly glancing at his watch.

He’d been here before, Tom thought. By now he should be used to the mercurial temperament and tortured soul of John Butler. But he wasn’t. He searched inside himself for anger and found only pity and disappointment. This time he had been convinced that things would be different. Obviously, they weren’t. Once again John had lost his most important match, that against the inner demons that tormented him.

Tom turned to the steward and started to speak when suddenly the steward glanced up and pointed behind him.

‘Isn’t that your man?’

Tom spun around and felt his heart leap with excitement at the sight of John. The excitement was quickly tempered by anxiety as Tom saw that John was limping badly. He carried no luggage, and his face—even behind the bandages—was swollen, His right eye was almost closed. The front of his shirt was covered with rust-coloured stains that Tom recognised as blood.

Tom rushed forward. ‘John—’

‘Top of the morning,’ John said cheerfully, brushing past Tom and going directly to the steward. ‘Thank you for waiting for me,’ he said simply.

Tom caught up with him as he was climbing up the ramp into the plane. ‘John, where have you been? What happened?’

‘It’s a long story,’ John said wearily, ‘and I’d rather not get into it now. I need some sleep.’

‘You need a doctor!’

‘That can wait until we get to Venice.’

Tom nodded, fighting back his impatience. ‘Henry isn’t here,’ he said quickly. ‘He called at the last moment and said he was ill. I just don’t understand it.’

It seemed to Tom that John took a long time to answer.

‘Well,’ John said at last. ‘That’s too bad.’

A minute later John had strapped himself into his seat and was asleep before the plane was in the air.