Читать книгу The Fire - Katherine Neville - Страница 15

A position with extensive interlocked pawn chains and little room for manœuvre by the pieces. Most men will still be on the board and most of the pieces will be behind the pawns creating a cramped position with few opportunities for exchanges.

– Edward R. Brace, An Illustrated Dictionary of Chess

The sun sets early in the mountains. By the time we’d gotten the guests and luggage moved inside, a silvery glow was all that still sifted through the skylights above, casting the animal carvings overhead into sinister silhouettes.

Galen March seemed to be quite taken with Key the moment he met her. He offered to help and followed her around, pitching in as she turned on the lamps around the octagon, threw a fresh bedsheet over the billiard table, and drew up the stools and benches all around it.

Lily explained my mother’s absence to the newcomers by claiming a family crisis, which, technically, it really was. She lied to the others, saying Cat had phoned with apologies and the wish that we’d enjoy ourselves in her absence.

Since we lacked the necessary number of wineglasses, Vartan filled some teacups with vodka from the tray on the sideboard and some coffee cups with hearty red wine. A few sips seemed to loosen everyone up a bit.

Taking our seats around the table, it was clear we had too many players to sort things out – a party of eight: Key and Lily and Vartan, the three Livingstons, myself and Galen March. With everyone looking a bit uneasy, we raised our cups and glasses in toast to our absent hostess.

The only thing we all appeared to have in common was my mother’s invitation. But I knew well from my experiences in chess that appearances can be deceiving.

For instance, Basil Livingston had been unconvincingly vague with Lily about the role he’d so recently played at that chess tournament in London. He was just a silent partner, he said, a financier; he’d hardly even known the late tournament organizer, Taras Petrossian.

But Basil did seem to be on a first-name basis with both Lily and Vartan Azov. How well did he know them? How likely was it to have been mere coincidence that all four of them, including Rosemary, had been in Mayfair two weeks ago, on the very day that Taras Petrossian was killed?

‘Do you enjoy chess?’ Vartan was asking Sage Livingston, who’d seated herself as closely as possible beside him.

Sage shook her head and was about to reply when I jumped up and suggested that I start serving dinner. The thing was, no one in this group except Vartan and Lily knew about my life as the little queen of chess. Or why I’d quit.

I went around the makeshift dining table, dishing up boiled potatoes, tiny peas, and the Boeuf Bourguignonne. I preferred this vantage point: Moving around the table, I could listen in and read the expressions of the others without focusing attention on myself.

Under the circumstances, this seemed an absolute necessity. After all, it was my mother herself who’d invited them all here today. This might be my only opportunity to observe these seven all together. And if even a part of Vartan’s revelations were true, someone here might have played a part in my mother’s disappearance, my father’s death, or Taras Petrossian’s murder.

‘So you finance these chess tournaments?’ Galen March commented to Basil across the table. ‘An unusual hobby. You must like the game.’

Interesting choice of words, I thought, as I ladled up Basil’s stew.

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘This Petrossian chap arranged that tournament. I knew him through my venture capital firm, based in Washington, D.C. We finance all sorts of business ventures around the world. When the Berlin Wall fell, we helped former Iron Curtain folks – entrepreneurs like Petrossian – get on their feet. During glasnost, perestroika, he owned a chain of restaurants and clubs. Used chess as a publicity stunt, I think. When Putin’s troops cracked down on capitalists – oligarchs, they called them – we helped him move his operation farther west. Simple as that.’

Basil took a bite of his Bourguignonne as I moved on to Sage’s plate.

‘So you mean,’ Lily said drily, ‘that it was really Petrossian’s interest in Das Kapital, not in the Game, that got him killed?’

‘The police said those rumors were quite ungrounded,’ Basil shot back, ignoring her other implications. ‘The official report said Petrossian died of heart failure. But you know the British press with their conspiracy theories,’ he added, sipping his wine. ‘They’ll likely never stop questioning even Princess Diana’s death.’

At the mention of the ‘official report,’ Vartan had slipped a guarded sideways glance at me. I didn’t need to guess what he was thinking. I ladled some extra peas onto his plate and moved on to Lily, just as Galen March chimed in again.