The Eight: The Fire Part 18

But now cradled in his arms, my sobs subsiding I felt myself sinking into exhausted oblivion, too weary to ask my many questions, too heavy with fatigue to understand the answer my uncle was here to give me, that 'gift' that was about to change everything: the knowledge of my own past.

'Doesn't he ever feed you, this employer of yours? When was the last time you ate?' Nim was asking me, irritably.

Despite the caustic tone he was regarding me with grave concern with those strange bicolored eyes one blue, one brown that seemed always to look at you and through you at once. His brow furrowed, his elbows propped on my kitchen table, he watched every swallow I took as I tucked into my second helping of the delicious soup he'd prepared from things he'd foraged in my barren kitchen. He'd whipped up this soup to revive me, after I'd apparently blacked out in his arms and he'd laid me out cold on the living room sofa.

'I guess Rodo and I both overlooked that I haven't had time to eat much lately,' I admitted. 'Things have been so confused these past few days. I think the last real meal I had was what I prepared myself, back in Colorado.'

'Colorado!' Nim exclaimed under his breath as he glanced once, quickly, toward the window. Then he lowered his voice further. 'So that's where you've been. I've been hunting you here for days. I've been by that restaurant of yours more than once.'

So he was the trench-coated mystery man who'd been lurking around Sutalde.

But suddenly, without warning, Nim had slapped his hand flat on my nearby kitchen counter with a loud smack. 'c.o.c.kroach,' he said, holding up his empty palm with one brow slightly raised as in warning. 'I noticed one, but there may be others. When you've finished your soup, let's go toss this outside.'

I understood: That empty palm suggested my place was 'bugged' in a different fashion, so we couldn't talk here. My eyes were scratchy from my weeping jag, my head ached from lack of sleep. But hungry or exhausted or not, I understood as well as he did the urgency of our situation. We really needed to speak.

'I'm pretty tired already,' I told my uncle with a yawn that I didn't need to fake. 'Let's go right now and get it done. Then I can get back and catch some sleep.'

Pulling my big coffee mug down from its hook over the stove, I ladled it full of the soup. I made a mental note to jot down later the magical meld of flavors Nim had managed to concoct from the dusty tins and paper packets he'd tossed together: a rich, creamy corn chowder laced with curry and lemon juice, sprinkled with toasted coconut, crabmeat, and chopped jalapeno peppers. Astonishing. Once again my uncle had demonstrated what he'd always prided himself on: creating a magical meal just by rummaging through the refuse of an ordinary kitchen cupboard. He'd do Rodo proud.

We slipped on our outdoors coats. I stuck the spoon in my cup and followed him down the darkened steps and into the wet black night. Both the ca.n.a.l towpath below us and the meandering footpath leading into Key Park were black and deserted, so we walked uphill to M Street where the streetlamps always shimmered golden pools of light throughout the night. By unspoken consensus we turned left toward the lighted span of Key Bridge.

'I'm glad you brought the soup along. You will finish that, please.' Nim nodded toward the big cup as he tossed his arm across my shoulders. 'My dear, I'm seriously concerned about your health. You look a wreck. But I'm not nearly as worried about what's already happened to you you can explain all that to me later as I fear what may be about to happen. What on earth suddenly possessed you to up and take off for Colorado?'

'Mother's birthday party,' I said between slurps of the fabulous soup. 'You were invited yourself. Or at least, so you said in your voice message-'

'My message!' he said, taking his arm from my shoulder.

'Jawohl, Herr Professor Doktor Wittgenstein,' I said. 'You declined to attend, you were running off to India for a chess tournament. I heard the message on Mother's machine. We all did.'

'All!' cried Nim. He'd stopped cold in his tracks just as we reached the upper corner of Key Park and the entrance to the bridge. 'Perhaps first, after all, you'd best tell me exactly what did happen in Colorado. Who else was there?'

So there under the streetlamp at the park's edge, as we heard the clock chime two a.m., I quickly filled in my uncle on the arrival, one by one, of Mother's mysterious motley crew of birthday invitees and what I'd learned about each. He winced at a few names princ.i.p.ally Basil and Vartan. But he was paying close attention when I told him Lily's story of the Game, as if he were trying to reconstruct the moves of an important chess match they'd all played years ago. As he likely was.

I'd almost reached the critical parts about our finding the chessboard in the drawer, and what Vartan had revealed to me about the Russian Black Queen and my father's death, when suddenly my uncle cut in with barely concealed impatience.

'And what of your mother all this while, when all these "guests" were arriving?' he said. 'Did she tell you nothing that might have explained her actions? Did she say why she took such a foolish risk to throw this party on her own birth date, despite the obvious dangers? Who else was invited? Who didn't attend? Good lord after all those names you've just told me, I pray she had the presence not to mention the gift I sent.'

I was still so obliterated due to my deep-sleep deprivation that I wasn't sure if I'd heard him correctly. Was it possible that he really didn't know?

'But Mother was never there at the party at all,' I told him. 'It seems she left the house only shortly before I arrived. She never returned. She simply vanished. We hoped, Aunt Lily and I, that you might have some idea where she was.'

I'd never seen this expression on my uncle's face: He seemed thunderstruck, as if I were speaking some exotic tongue that he simply couldn't comprehend. At last those bicolored eyes of his focused upon me in the lamplight.

'Gone,' he said. 'This is far worse than I'd conceived. You must come with me. There's something you really must learn about.'

So he hadn't known Mother was missing. 'This is far worse than I'd conceived,' he'd said. But how could it be? Nim always knew everything. If he didn't know, then where was my mother?

At this moment, alone with my uncle in Georgetown somewhere between midnight and dawn, I suddenly realized that I felt too deeply depressed even to plumb the depths of my own depression.

Together Nim and I crossed the road to the opposite side of Key Bridge. Then we hiked along the bridge sidewalk till we reached the midpoint, high above the water. Nim motioned for me to sit beside him on the concrete base that supported the celadon bridge railing.

We were sitting in a puddle of milky pink light cast by the lanterns high above us. The eerie glow turned my uncle's coppery curls to gold. From time to time a car came across the bridge, but the drivers never noticed us seated there, only feet away from them, just behind our protective barrier.

Then Nim glanced down at the cup in my hand. 'But I see you haven't finished your soup, though you surely need it. It must be cold by now.'

Obediently I took another spoonful it still tasted great, so I tilted the cup to my lips and swilled it down.

Then I looked at my uncle, awaiting his revelation.

'I must begin,' he informed me, 'by saying that your mother has always had a mind of her own. A stubborn streak.'

As if that were news to me!

'Only a few weeks ago,' he went on, 'shortly before I knew she was planning this mad confrontation that she had the effrontery to call a "birthday party," I'd sent her an important parcel.' He paused, then added, 'A very important parcel.'

I was pretty sure I knew what the contents of that parcel might be. It was likely what was hidden in the lining of my parka right at this very moment. But if Nim was ready to talk, I wasn't about to interrupt his informative train of thought with such trivia as Vartan Azov's sewing skills. My uncle might well be the only person who possessed the missing pieces of the puzzle I needed in this most dangerous of all games.

But there was one thing I needed to know.

'When exactly did you send this parcel to my mother?' I asked.

'It means nothing to ask when I sent it,' said Nim. 'Only why. It's an object of enormous importance, though not mine to give. It belonged to someone else I was surprised to receive it. I sent it on to your mother.'

'Okay, then why?' I asked.

'Because Cat was the Black Queen the one in charge,' he said, glancing at me with impatience. 'I don't know how much Lily Rad has spilled to all of you, as you told me she did. But her imprudence might well have placed all of us especially you in terrible danger.'

Nim removed my soup cup and set it on the pavement. Then he took my hands in his as he went on speaking. 'It was the drawing of a chessboard,' he told me. 'Thirty years ago, when your mother first became custodian of the other pieces, that part of the puzzle was missing, though we knew from a diary that it originally had been captured by the nun who was known as Mireille.'

'Lily told us about her. Lily said she'd read that diary,' I told him. 'She said she claimed she was still alive that her name was Minnie, and that my mother had somehow replaced her as the Black Queen.'

It took more than an hour for me to fill him in on all that had happened. Knowing Nim's obsession with detail, I tried to leave out nothing. The puzzles Mother had left me, the phone message with the key, the eight ball, the game in the piano, the card tucked inside the Black Queen, the drawing of the chessboard hidden in the desk, and lastly, Vartan's revelation of what transpired just before my father's death and our mutual conviction that his death was no accident.

I realized that my uncle was the only one with whom I'd yet shared what I had deduced from this: the possible existence of a second Black Queen, which might have led to my father's death.

During this entire time, as he followed each word intently, Nim said nothing and showed no reaction, though I was sure he was taking copious mental notes. When I'd finished everything, he shook his head.

'Your story only serves to confirm my worst fears, and my conviction that we must find out what has become of your mother. I hold myself responsible for Cat's disappearance,' he said. 'There's something I've never told you, my dear. I believe I must always have been deeply in love with your mother. And it was I myself long before she ever met your father who foolishly lured Cat into this most dangerous Game.'

When Nim saw my reaction, he placed his hand on my shoulder.

'Perhaps I shouldn't have revealed to you how I felt, Alexandra,' he said. 'I a.s.sure you that I've never shared these feelings with your mother. But from what you've said, she's surely in danger. If you and I hope to help her, I've no choice than to be as honest and direct with you as possible much as it might go against my cryptographic nature.' He regarded me with that familiar ironic smile.

I didn't smile back. Openness was one thing, but I'd just about had it with these post-meridian surprises from every quarter.

'Then it's time to decrypt a few things, starting now,' I told him sharply, making every effort to draw myself out of oblivion. 'What would these long-suppressed feelings of yours about my mother have to do with her disappearance, much less with the chess set or the Game?'

'After that unsolicited confession of mine, you've the right to ask me anything. And I hope you will,' my uncle told me. 'The moment Cat received my packet with that drawing of the chessboard the final piece of the puzzle, once we could decode it she must immediately have understood that the Game was once more afoot. However, rather than her consulting with an expert code-breaker like myself, as I'd hoped and expected, she announced she was throwing that mad tea party, and then she disappeared!'

This would explain the 'why' of my uncle's previous comment why he'd sent my mother that packet with so little fanfare. Clearly he still hoped, ten years after my father's death, that he could be her cryptographer, her confidant or perhaps something more.

Could there be some reason why she hadn't turned to him?

'After Sascha's death,' Nim said, reading my mind, 'Cat never trusted me never trusted any of us. She felt we'd all betrayed her, betrayed your father, and most of all, betrayed you. That's why she took you away.'

'How did you all betray me?'

But then I knew the answer. Because of chess.

'I remember the day it happened, the day she first drew away from us all. It was the day we all realized what a strange little animal we were harboring in our midst,' Nim said with a smile. 'But come, let's walk as I tell you, it will warm us.'

He stood, took me by the hand, and pulled me to my feet, stuffing my empty coffee mug and spoon into his trench-coat pocket.

'You were only three years old,' he said. 'We were at my place on the tip of Long Island, Montauk Point all of us, as we often were on weekends during the summers. That was the day we discovered, my dear girl, who and what you really were. That was the day that began our estrangement from your mother.'

So we crossed the bridge to Virginia as foggy midnight crept toward rosy dawn. And Ladislaus Nim began his tale...

The Cryptographer's Tale The sky was blue, the gra.s.s was green. The fountain splashed into the pool at the edge of the lawn, and in the distance beyond the crescent of beach, as far as the eye could see, spread the expanse of little whitecapped waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Your mother was swimming laps, cutting through the waves, as lithe as a dolphin.

On the gra.s.sy lawn, Lily Rad and your father sat in lacy white wicker lawn chairs, with a pitcher of iced limeade and two frosty gla.s.ses. They were playing chess.

Your father, Sascha the great grandmaster Aleksandr Solarin had given up tournament play shortly after he came to America. But he'd still needed a job. There was a special provision that I knew of, a fast track to citizenship for someone gifted in physics, as your father was.

As soon as was practicable, both your parents took well-paying but un.o.btrusive jobs with the U.S. government. Then you were born. Cat thought tournament chess too dangerous, especially once they'd had a child; Sascha agreed, though he still coached Lily on weekends, as today.

You'd always seemed fascinated by the board, those little black-and-white pieces on black-and-white squares. Sometimes you even stuck them in your mouth and looked quite proud to have done so.

On this particular day you'd been toddling about the lawn as they two began their play. I'd pulled up my chair so I could observe the game and your mother's swimming at once. Aleksandr and Lily were so intent that none of us paid much attention when you were suddenly there, clinging to a table leg to hold yourself upright, those large green eyes peering across the board as you watched their play.

I distinctly recall that it was just at move 32 of the Nimzo-Indian Defense. Lily, playing White, had somehow got herself caught between a fork and a pin. Though I'm sure your father could have extricated himself from a similar trap, it was clear that, to her at least, there seemed to be no way forward and no way back.

She'd turned to me for a moment to jest that if I refreshed her limeade gla.s.s it might refresh her point of view when, all at once, still clinging to the table, you reached forward with one chubby child's fist and plucked her Knight from the board. To my complete astonishment, you set it down in position to check your father's king!

Everyone was silent for a very long moment dumbstruck was more like it as we understood what had occurred. But as it slowly sank in, just what the long-range ramifications of such an event might be, the tension around the chessboard built up like that within the interior of a pressure cooker.

'Cat will be furious,' Sascha was the first to remark, softly and in a voice completely devoid of all intonation.

'But it's incredible,' said Lily between thin lips. 'What if it's not an accident? What if she's truly a prodigy?'

'Not a broccoli,' little Alexandra announced firmly to the group.

Everyone laughed. Your father plucked you up and set you on his lap.

But once Sascha and Lily had reconstructed that game hours later, as they always did after each such coaching session, they saw that the move made by a three-year-old toddler had been the only viable one that might enable Lily to draw that game.

The lid of the problem had been opened. And there would never be any chance of putting it back shut.

Nim paused and looked down at me in the dim light. I saw we'd reached Rosslyn on the Virginia side of the bridge. It was dark and isolated, with the high-rise office buildings all shut down for the night. Wired as I was, I knew I needed to go home and crawl into bed. But my uncle hadn't quite finished.

'Cat came up the lawn after her dip in the sea that day,' he told me. 'She was brushing sand from her feet and drying her hair with the edge of her toweling robe. Then she saw us all seated on the lawn around that chessboard, with you her innocent little daughter in your father's lap holding a chess piece in your hand.

'No one had to say it Cat knew. She turned on her heel and left us without a word. She would never forgive us for putting you into the Game.'

At last Nim fell silent. I thought it was time to intervene, or at least turn back, so we wouldn't be out here all night.

'Now that I know about that larger Game from you and Aunt Lily,' I said, 'it certainly explains why Mother didn't trust the lot of you. And why she was so afraid for me. But it doesn't explain the party or her disappearance.'

'That wasn't all,' Nim said.

What wasn't all?

'That wasn't all that was in the parcel I sent to Cat,' he said, again reading my mind. 'That card you found the placard with the picture of a phoenix on one side, a firebird on the other, and some words in Russian. Almost like a calling card someone thought I would recognize. But though it was quite beyond me, there was something else I must show you-' He eyed me suspiciously. 'What on earth is it now?'

I'm sure I looked like I might black out again, though this time not for lack of food or sleep. I couldn't believe this was happening. I reached into my pants pocket, pulled out the card, and handed it to my uncle.

' 'Danger Beware the Fire,' ' I told him. 'Maybe it meant nothing to you but I can tell you what it means to me. That card was given to me just before my father died. How did you get it?'

He bowed his head over it for a long moment there on the darkened pavement. Then he looked up at me with a strange expression and handed the card back to me.

'I've something to show you,' he said.

He reached into his trench coat and extracted a small leather folder the size of a wallet. He held it carefully in his hand like a relic, looking down at it. Then he opened my hands and placed the leather wallet in them. He kept his hands around mine for a moment, then finally released them.

When I opened the folder, even here in the dim light of Rosslyn, I could make out details of a worn black-and-white photo that was tinted with aquarelles to resemble a color image: It seemed to be a family of four.

Two little boys perhaps four and eight years old were seated on a garden bench. They both wore loose tunics belted at the waist, with knickers; their pale hair fell in loose ringlets. They looked into the camera with uncertain smiles as if they'd never had their picture taken before. Just behind them stood a muscular man with unruly hair and intense dark eyes, looking fiercely protective. But it was the woman who stood beside him that had caused my blood to turn to ice.

'It's myself and your father, little Sascha,' Nim was saying in a choked voice I'd never heard. 'We're sitting on the stone seat of our garden in Krym, the Crimea. And those are our parents. It's the only photo that exists of our family. We were still happy. It was taken not so long before we learned we would have to flee.'

I couldn't tear my eyes from that image. Fear clutched at my heart. Those chiseled features I could never forget, her white-blond hair even paler than my father's had been.

Nim's voice seemed to come through a tunnel thousands of miles long. 'G.o.d knows how it could be,' he was saying, 'but I know that only one person could have possessed this photo after all this time, one person who would understand its importance, who could have sent it to me along with that card and the chessboard drawing. Only one.'

He paused and looked at me gravely. 'What it means, my dear, is that regardless of what I've believed all these years and as impossible as it might seem to me even now that woman in the photo, my mother, is still alive.'

She certainly was alive. I myself could testify.

She was the woman at Zagorsk.

Two Women.

Deux femmes nous ont donne les premieres exemples de la gourmandise: ve, en mangeant une pomme dans le Paradis; Proserpine, en mangeant une grenade en enfer.