The Fire. Katherine Neville

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       The King’s Indian Defense

       [The King’s Indian Defense] is generally considered the most complex and most interesting of all the Indian Defenses… Theoretically, White ought to have the advantage because his position is freer. But Black’s position is solid and full of resource; a tenacious player can accomplish miracles with this defense.

      – Fred Reinfeld, Complete Book of Chess Openings

       Black will…allow White to create a strong pawn centre and proceed to attack it. Other common features are Black’s attempts to open the black-squared long diagonal and a pawn storm by Black’s King-side pawns.

      – Edward R. Brace, An Illustrated History of Chess

      The silence was broken by the sound of splintering wood.

      I glanced across the room from where I stood by the hearth and saw that Lily had disconnected Mother’s answering machine and pulled the spaghetti of wires from the drawer; they were splayed across the campaign desk. With Key and Vartan looking on, she was using the dagger-shaped letter opener to pry the stuck drawer all the way out of the desk. From the sound of it, she was deconstructing the thing.

      ‘What are you doing?’ I said in alarm. ‘That desk is one hundred years old!’

      ‘I hate to destroy an authentic souvenir of British colonial warfare – it must mean so much to you,’ my aunt said. ‘However, your mother and I once found some objects of immeasurable value hidden in drawers that were jammed just like this one. She must have known something like this would set off a few bells for me.’ She went on hacking in frustration.

      ‘That campaign desk is awfully flimsy to keep anything of value,’ I pointed out. It was just a lightweight box with drawers, on collapsible legs or ‘horses’ – of the sort British officers hauled by pack mules on campaigns through treacherous mountain regions from the Khyber Pass to Kashmir. ‘Besides, for as long as I can recall, that drawer has always jammed.’

      ‘Time to unjam it, then,’ Lily insisted.

      ‘Amen to that,’ Key agreed, grabbing up the heavy stone paperweight lying on the desk and handing it to Lily. ‘You know what they say: “Better late than never.”’

      Lily grasped the rock weight and swung it down onto the drawer with force. I could hear the soft wood splintering further, but she still couldn’t yank the drawer all the way out.

      Zsa-Zsa, crazed by all the noise and excitement, was squeaking frantically and bouncing around everyone’s legs. She sounded something like a colony of rats going down at sea. I picked her up and tucked her under my arm, squishing her into temporary silence.

      ‘Permit me?’ Vartan offered Lily politely, taking the tools from her hands.

      He stuck the letter opener between the desk and the side of the drawer and hammered it with the paperweight, jimmying it until the soft wood cracked loose from the drawer’s base. Lily gave one good tug on the handle and the drawer was released.

      Vartan held the damaged drawer in his hands and studied the sides and base, while Key knelt on the floor and stretched her arm back into the open hole as far as she could reach. She felt around inside.

      ‘There’s nothing there that I can touch,’ Key said, tipping back on her haunches. ‘But my arm won’t reach all the way to the back.’

      ‘Permit me,’ Vartan repeated, and he set down the drawer and squatted beside her, sliding his hand back into the open cavity of the desk. He seemed to take quite a long time feeling around. At last, he withdrew his arm and looked up at the three of us with no expression as we stood there expectantly.

      ‘I can’t find anything back there,’ Vartan said, standing up and brushing the dust from his sleeve.

      Maybe it was my natural suspicion or just my jangled nerves, but I didn’t believe him. Lily was right. Something could be hidden there. After all, these desks might’ve had to be lightweight for transport – but they also had to be secure. For decades, they’d been used to carry battle plans and strategies, messages with secret codes from headquarters, field units, and spies.

      I palmed off Zsa-Zsa to Lily once more and yanked open the other drawer of the campaign desk, rummaging around inside until I found the flashlight we always kept there. Brushing Key and Vartan to one side, I bent forward and swept the flashlight around, exploring inside the desk. But Vartan was correct: There was nothing in there at all. So what had made that drawer stick all these years?

      I picked up the damaged drawer from the floor where Vartan had put it, and I looked it over myself. Though I saw nothing amiss, I shoved the answering machine and tools aside and I set the drawer atop the desk, pulling out the other drawer to dump out its contents. Comparing the two side by side, it seemed that the rear panel of the damaged drawer was slightly higher than that of the other drawer.

      I glanced at Lily, still holding the wriggling Zsa-Zsa. She nodded to me as if to confirm that she’d known all along. Then I turned to confront Vartan Azov.

      ‘It seems there’s a secret compartment here,’ I said.

      ‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘I noticed it earlier. But I thought it best that I should not mention it.’ His voice was still polite, but his cold smile had returned – a smile like a warning.

      ‘Not mention it?’ I said, in disbelief.

      ‘As you’ve said yourself, that drawer has been – do you say, stuck? – for a very long time. We’ve no idea what is hidden there,’ he said, adding with irony, ‘maybe something valuable – like battle plans left from the Crimean War.’

      This wasn’t entirely implausible, since my father had actually grown up in the Soviet Crimea – but it was highly unlikely. It wasn’t even his desk. And though I was as nervous as anyone about СКАЧАТЬ