Dmitri Viigand honestly didn't know what he was doing, but nonetheless felt that his current angle of approach was best. Yet as Freddie Trumper opened the door in front of him, he could not find his words or formulate any plausible, intelligent, thoughts.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Freddie demanded, rising to full height in the doorframe to as to attempt to appear larger than the thick Russian, which he was not.

Dmitri was still agape, having lost all his knowledge as the door had opened.

"Say something, you fool." He commanded himself mentally, wincing as he did so.

"I... uh... can I come in? I need to talk to you about... some things... Chess... uh..." Viigand finished lamely, sounding much like the frightened youth he had once been.

"About chess?" Freddie frowned.

Freddie had only once met with Dmitri Viigand, this last year at the World Chess Championships. They had much in common, and in the midst of all the commotion following the finale of the match, they had found themselves both sitting in the same overpriced bar near their respective hotels. Out of shared misery, they had communed together, sharing liquor and memories, finding that in fact they had much in common.

Dmitri had too suffered a terrible childhood- his mother succumbed to drugs and his father often beat him. Dmitri was an overweight child, and after countless years of taunts from both his peers and father, he had reverted into a solitary boy, hardened and alone. An educator had introduced him to the game of chess in the hopes that the pudgy abused child would find solace in the game's intense mental motives. Sure enough, Dmitri proved himself quite adept at the game, and by age fourteen he had become both a skilled chess player and a fit physical specimen.

Freddie liked Dmitri, he was tough, quiet, talented, and, like Freddie himself, a failure. They had spent nearly six hours in the bar, and by the end of their endeavor, had become something like kindred spirits. Yet they had still parted ways with no more than a amiable handshake, and that had seemingly been the end of it. However, Dmitri now stood on Freddie's doorstep, wanting to talk.

"Yes... chess, among other things..."Dmitri confirmed, wrenching his hands together in nervousness.

Freddie removed himself from the doorway and offered a pathway inside.

"Come on in."

Dmitri did so, significantly more timidly than one might expect from such a corpulent man.

Freddie led him into the bedraggled sitting room, which was still littered with newspapers and dirty dishes alike.

Dmitri, with some difficulty, found an available seat and sat as an old man would, sore and unsteady. Freddie frowned, noticing that all of Dmitri's movements seemed strained. Perhaps he had been injured...

"Alright, I'm going to cut directly to things... it's Molokov." Viigand heaved.

"Who else." Freddie snorted, rolling his eyes at the mere mention of the name. Yet he was still intrigued by the nature of Viigand's surprising visit.

"Yes, well... after Svetlana made her... announcement-"

"About her having a secret love affair with you?" Freddie interrupted, meaning to test his fellow.

"Yes." Dmitri winced. "Anyways, after that, Molokov sent a group of men to my house with a car, and had me driven to his office building in Moscow."

"Go on." Freddie urged, now very curious.

"And then they led me to Svetlana, told me I had ten minutes, and shut me in a basement of some sort with her, to talk." Dmitri explained, stopping to gather his thoughts and inhale a substantial lungful of air.

"She looked terrible- thin, tired, and her arms were riddled with bruises in the distinct shapes of hands. There was so much to say, but we knew we were being monitored, so we really didn't speak. I told her I was sorry for leaving, for becoming the one thing she had been trying to escape from in the first place, and she also apologized for all she had done and such. Then, after the ten minutes were up, Molokov himself came to fetch me, and with only a cold glare to Svetlana, he shuttled me out of the place."

At this Freddie was shocked- he understood that Molokov was ruthless, but harming a woman physically had always seemed something beyond him. Apparently he was wrong.

"Next, I was taken to an office, where I was told to sit. I waited for at least an hour before Molokov returned, and when he did, he questioned me. He wanted to know if Svetlana's words were truth, and if I planned to start a relationship with her, as soon as her divorce was finalized. I told him all he wanted to know, and then he left for another period of time. When he returned, he seemed agitated, and cut into me again. He said I had to play chess for The Soviet Union again, and that I was going to win. He said I must form a union with Svetlana and our daughters, so as to appear benevolent to the press, and that I had to tell him what I knew of you, Florence, Anatoly, Svetlana, and D'Courcey. I told him I was never going to play chess again, and that I would only try a relationship with Svetlana if she wanted to, as any sane man would, but that apparently wasn't what he wanted to hear, so he slapped me. When I went to retaliate, Molokov had two men restrain me, and then, after kicking me a few times for good measure, he locked me away in the basement where Svetlana was." Dmitri explained, shuddering just slightly.

"So he wants you to play chess for The Soviets, after you lost? I would have guessed that they would be furious with you and cut you off." Freddie reasoned.

"I thought the same thing. I had planned to slip quietly into the background- I figured they would be glad to be rid of me and I could go back to having a semi-normal life."

Freddie couldn't help but produce a small chuckle at this comment.

"For us, even a semi-normal life is out of the question now." Freddie chortled bitterly. "I remember Florence once mumbling something to the extent of 'never make a promise or plan.' I guess she was right- you can never keep your promises and nothing ever goes as planned."

"You're still quite hung up over her, aren't you? Even more so than when I spoke with you at the ending of the match. I didn't realize you cared about her that much." Viigand stated, deviating from the present subject of his encounter with and escape from Molokov.

"You have no idea." Freddie huffed, "I love her. I spent weeks trying to nurse her to health both mentally and physically after we returned from Bangkok, and even then she still chose Anatoly- I even loved her enough to call him and make him come back here."

Dmitri listened sympathetically from his chair, the end of his mouth turning up in a sad, crooked smile.

"You can't make her love you back, that's one thing I've learned, anyways."

"I didn't even tell you the best part." Freddie laughed dementedly, pounding his palms on the wide armrests with an air of amused misery. "She's pregnant! With his child! And then they ran off to the country for a fucking holiday!"

Dmitri's eyes widened, very much caught off guard by both the nature of this development and the way in which Freddie presented it.

"When...?" He gaped.

"Sometime before the championships she thinks." Freddie fired.

"Well... that's..." Dmitri attempted, only to be shot at by Freddie, who replied rudely:

"It's fucking shit is what it is."

Dmitri was considerably shocked by this news, yet he was also awaiting the chance to complete his tale of Molokov and Svetlana, so after giving Freddie a few moments to collect himself, he cleared his throat and continued.

"Back in the basement..."

"Ah yes. Sorry, please continue." Freddie grunted, cracking his knuckles.

"Yes, so, in the basement, Svetlana and I talked some, still sort of around the main issues. She told me about you calling Anatoly, all in metaphors of course, so Molokov has no idea. She said she hadn't seen her girls in weeks and they had been trying to get her to submit to them, to give in and take everything she said back, and to use the girls against Anatoly, but she won't, she says she owes it to him to let him get out." Viigand mourned, clearly empathetic towards his former lover. "Svetlana said that from what she can gather, Molokov wants to lure Anatoly into a difficult lineup for next year's championships, create some sort of scandal, and draw him back in. He wants to turn everyone else against him so that the only place he can go is Russia."

Freddie continued scowling down at his hands, attempting to draw the deepest meaning from Viigand's words. He tried to think like Molokov, like a traitorous, malignant rat. As he wrestled with his task, Dmitri lamented another point.

"Although I guess now, with Florence pregnant, a scandal is practically right in front of him. I'm sure there's some way he can twist it into something awful."

"I would have to agree with you- he seems to be capable of nearly anything now." Freddie related. "So what happened next?"

"Well, after a few days, he returned for me and once again locked me into an office. He wanted to know what he had to give me in order to get me to play again. I told him Svetlana and her daughters were to be allowed their own house, free of any restrictions. I told them that she should be allowed to settle where ever she wanted to, even if that included Western Europe. Molokov laughed in my face and said that that would be difficult to arrange. I told him that was the only way I would do it, and he said I wasn't worth it, and started to leave." Dmitri sustained, with some difficulty.

The large Russian man now focused solely on Freddie, clearing his throat in the hopes that Freddie would do the same. Complete contact established, Dmitri continued with a great degree of guilt.

"You have to understand, I was desperate, and I knew that there was no way I was going to convince him to give in."

"What... did you do?" Freddie ordered, now grasping that whatever was coming next was going to be something he would not like.

"I told him I could get him someone better, someone Anatoly wouldn't expect and wouldn't be able to handle."

"Viigand..." Freddie warned.

"I told him I could get you to play again, and that your return would throw him so much that he wouldn't even be able to function, especially after you and Florence..." Dmitri quavered.

Freddie was furious for only a moment, letting the magnitude of this situation sink in, letting it take effect. Yet his anger soon subsided as the opportunities within this unfortunate predicament proclaimed themselves.

"Please, you've got to help me. Molokov is awaiting my word, from you, that you'll play. I have only until tomorrow to let him know, he threatened me with death and Svetlana-"

"Shut up, Dmitri." Freddie snarled, an intricate plan already taking shape in his complex mind. "I'll do it. You can call Molokov and tell him that I want to play. Although I have my own conditions- you're my playing second. You know Anatoly's mind, his style. And you can also tell him that another stipulation of this deal is that Svetlana and your girls are relocated to the free world, Paris, to be exact. I believe that's where the next championships are, and it will be best if we train there too."

Now it was Dmitri's turn to be stunned, and following a moment's respite, he moved on to a grateful stream of chatter, very much out of character for him.

"Freddie, I don't know how to thank you!" He stammered, still significantly shell shocked.

"Don't, you're not the only reason I'm doing it. Just go call Molokov and tell him I am waiting for his call." Freddie charged, begining to turn towards his chess board with the intention to play, for the first time in weeks.

"I will." Dmitri concurred, rising with an air of a man compelled.

"And Dmitri." Freddie added.

"Yes?"

"Be careful, all of you."

"Of course."

Without another word, the sizable blonde Russian exited Freddie's apartment, leaving Freddie to commence in a quiet reunion with his game.