The Fire. Katherine Neville

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СКАЧАТЬ confession was about to top that pile.

      ‘Nearly thirty years ago,’ Lily told me, ‘we all made a solemn vow to your mother that we would never again speak of the Game. But now, with this drawing, I know that I must tell the story. I think that’s what your mother intended, too,’ she added, ‘or she would never have hidden something so critically important here in that jammed desk drawer. And though I’ve no idea why she would dream of inviting all those others here today, she would never have invited anyone on such a significant a date as her birthday unless it had to do with the Game.’

      ‘The game?’ Vartan took the words from my mouth.

      Although I was surprised to learn that Mother’s obsession about her birthday might have something to do with chess, I still figured that if it was thirty years ago, it couldn’t be the game that killed my father. Then something occurred to me.

      ‘Whatever this game was that you were sworn to secrecy about,’ I said to Lily, ‘is that why Mother always tried to keep me from playing chess?’

      It wasn’t until this last that I recalled that no one outside of my immediate family had ever known that I’d been a serious chess champion, much less about our longtime family altercations over it. Key, despite a raised brow, tried not to look too surprised.

      ‘Alexandra,’ said Lily, ‘you’ve misunderstood your mother’s motives all these years. But it isn’t your fault. I’m extremely sorry to confess that all of us – Ladislaus Nim and I, even your father – agreed it was best to keep you in the dark. We truly believed that once we’d buried the pieces, once they were hidden where no one could find them, once the other team was destroyed, then the Game would be over and done with for a very long time, perhaps forever. And by the time you were born, and we’d discovered your early passion and skill, so many years had passed that we all felt sure you would be safe to play chess. It was only your mother who knew differently, it seems.’

      Lily paused and added softly, almost as if speaking to herself, ‘It was never the game of chess that Cat feared, but quite another Game: a Game that destroyed my family and may have killed your father – the most dangerous Game imaginable.’

      ‘But what Game was it?’ I said. ‘And what kind of pieces did you bury?’

      ‘An ancient Game,’ Lily told me, ‘a Game that was based upon a rare and valuable bejeweled Mesopotamian chess set that once belonged to Charlemagne. It was believed to contain dangerous powers and to be possessed of a curse.’

      Vartan, just beside me, had firmly grasped my elbow. I felt that familiar jolt of recognition, something triggered in the recesses of my mind. But Lily hadn’t finished.

      ‘The pieces and board were buried for a thousand years within a fortress in the Pyrenees,’ she went on, ‘a fortress that later became Montglane Abbey. Then during the French Revolution the chess set – by then called the Montglane Service – was dug up by the nuns and scattered for safekeeping. It disappeared for nearly two hundred years. Many sought to find it, for it was believed that whenever these pieces were reassembled the Service would unleash an uncon-trollable power into the world like a force of nature, a force that could determine the very rise and fall of civilizations.

      ‘But in the end,’ she said, ‘much of the Service was reassembled: twenty-six pieces and pawns from the initial thirty-two, along with a jewel-embroidered cloth that had originally covered the board. Only six pieces and the board itself were missing.’

      Lily paused to regard each of us in turn, her gray eyes resting at last upon me.

      ‘The person who finally succeeded, after two hundred years, in this daunting task of reassembling the Montglane Service and defeating the opposing team was also the individual responsible for its reinterment, thirty years ago, when we thought the Game had ended: your mother.’

      ‘My mother?’ It was all I could muster.

      Lily nodded. ‘Cat’s disappearance today can mean only one thing. I suspected it when I first heard her telephone message inviting me here. It now appears that this was only the first step in drawing us all out on center board like this. Now I fear that my suspicions were right: The Game has begun anew.’

      ‘But if this Game ever really existed, if it was so dangerous,’ I protested, ‘why would she risk setting it in motion again, as you’re saying, by inviting us here?’

      ‘She had no choice,’ said Lily. ‘As in all chess games, it’s White that must have made the first move. Black can only counter. Perhaps her move would be the sudden appearance of the long-sought third part of the puzzle that your mother has left here for us to find. Perhaps we’ll discover some different clues to her strategy and tactics—’

      ‘But Mother’s never played chess in her life! She hates chess,’ I pointed out.

      ‘Alexandra,’ said Lily, ‘today – Cat’s birthday, the fourth day of the fourth month – is a critical date in the history of the Game. Your mother is the Black Queen.’

      

      Lily’s tale began with a chess tourney she’d attended with my mother thirty years ago, the first time she and my mother had met my father, Alexander Solarin. During a recess in that match, my father’s opponent had died under mysterious circumstances, which later proved to be murder. This seemingly isolated event, this death at a chess game, would be the first in an onslaught that would soon sweep Lily and my mother into the vortex of the Game.

      For several hours, as we three sat in silence, Lily recounted a long and complex story that I can only summarize here.

      

       The Grandmaster’s Tale

      One month after that tourney at the Metropolitan Club, Cat Velis departed New York upon a long-planned consulting assignment in North Africa for her firm. A few months later Mordecai, my grandfather and chess coach, sent me to Algiers to join her.

      Cat and I knew nothing of this most dangerous of all games in which we ourselves, as we soon discovered, were mere pawns. But Mordecai had long been a player. He knew that Cat had been chosen for a higher calling and that when it came to close maneuvers, she might need my help.

      In the Casbah of Algiers, Cat and I met with a mysterious recluse, the widow of the former Dutch consul to Algeria, and a friend of my grandfather, Minnie Renselaas. The Black Queen. She gave us a diary written by a nun during the French Revolution that recounted the history of the Montglane Service and the role that this nun, Mireille, had played in it. Mireille’s diary later proved vital to understanding the nature of the Game.

      Minnie Renselaas enlisted Cat and me to penetrate deep into the desert, to the Tassili Mountains, and retrieve eight of the pieces she’d buried there. We braved Saharan sand-storms and pursuit by the secret police, as well as a vicious opponent, the ‘Old Man of the Mountain,’ an Arab named El-Marad who, we soon discovered, was the White King. But at last we found Minnie’s pieces hidden in a cave in the Tassili protected by bats. We clawed in the rubble to extract the eight pieces.

      I shall never forget the moment when I first saw their mysterious glow: a King and a Queen, several pawns, a Knight, and a camel, all of a strange gold or a silvery material, and caked with uncut jewels in a rainbow of colors. There was something otherworldly about them.

      After many travails, at last we returned with the pieces. We reached a port not far from Algiers, only to be seized by СКАЧАТЬ