A/N: I'M BACK BABY. I've been through a really awful three months, but it's over. The end of this story is coming.
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All the way to the airport, she spins it round and round in her mind, to the rhythm of the cabbie's driving. First game. First move. If I win. Back one square. Borgov. Harmon. Borgov. Go back. Borgov.
In her fist she's folded the piece of cheap, lined paper with the note in Mendelsohn's hideously neat handwriting in blunt pencil: Departure lounge south entrance, 2:30pm.
Can't look back now. Airport. Baggage. Mendelsohn. Gate. Plane. Taxi. Hotel. Borgov.
The cab driver gives her an odd look when she lifts her case from the trunk herself, but his fist swallows her five-dollar bill without hesitation.
Mendelsohn. Gate. Plane. Opening gambit. Queen? Danish? Sicilian? Too obvious. Paris?
Already scanning the crowd for Mendelsohn's lanky figure, her eye catches on a stocky figure by security, steel-gray head half swathed in a deep red scarf.
"...Demyan?"
He shrugs, in his heavy dark coat. Half-smiles. "I came to check you did not miss the plane."
Mendelsohn jogs breathlessly up behind her, in a gray suit, and skids to a stop about six feet away.
Beth ignores him, studying Demyan carefully. "You could have driven me to the airport, you know," she says, at last. "Since you were coming anyway."
Demyan half-shrugs and looks over his shoulder at a poster advertising New York fares. "You talk too much."
Beth looks at her feet, biting back a smile. Demyan looks at the poster. Mendelsohn looks back and forth between them as though he's watching a tennis match.
Demyan fumbles awkwardly in his battered satchel and produces a small red cardboard box, which he offers to her with his eyes still averted.
She takes it. "What's this?"
He shrugs the left shoulder again, but he meets her eyes with a sheepish smile. "Tea."
Beth steps inside the radius of his arm, ignoring his start, and throws both her arms around his neck.
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Mendelsohn loosened his tie when the flight leveled out, but he's shown a refreshing lack of inclination to talk to her. He produced a New York Times out of his briefcase, and as far as she can tell, he's genuinely paying no attention as she shifts the pieces on the little board from her purse and makes notes in her leather-bound notebook. (Borgov. Moscow. Luggage. Hotel. Borgov.)
The newspaper is cutting into her view of the board. She shifts a pawn to king's knight four. "Don't you want to talk to me about Moscow?"
"What about Moscow?"
"What we should do when we're there. How I should follow you around, and tell you if I get any secret messages. You know."
He turns the page without lifting his eyes off the paper. "Do you want me to talk to you about security?"
"Not really."
"Why don't we just talk in Moscow, then."
Beth feels obscurely nettled. "Okay."
"Good." He turns a page.
Beth moves a piece.
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The man in the torn T-shirt throws her suitcase into the trunk; the driver, in battered jeans, pours himself into his seat. Mendelsohn buckles himself into the back across from her, emitting a cool amusement.
Beth lets her thoughts drift, in this short window before the hotel (meeting, game, Borgov), staring through her own reflection in the dark window. "I love this place," she says absently, looking out at the soothing blanket of dark.
Mendelsohn snorts. "What do you know about it?"
Beth jerks out of her reverie, and turns to face him; his face, so blank until now, is mobile with amusement. "I've been here before. I learned to speak Russian. Why shouldn't I like it?"
"What you've seen and what is real are a long way apart." He leans forward between the front seats. "Voditel." Driver.
"Da."
"Eta printsessa dumayet, chto Moskva prekrasna," Mendelsohn says fluently, a sneer clearly articulate in his voice.
The driver laughs harshly. "Eto pravda?"
"Pravda."
"Pochemu by nam ne pokazat' printsesse krasotok?"
Mendelsohn laughs in his turn. "Da, sdelay eto." The driver wheels a hard left across another car, who hits the horn furiously.
Beth's mouth is still hanging open in shock. "You speak Russian?"
"Do you think I got this job for my looks? I have a degree in Russian studies. I spent a year living here." Mendelsohn leans back, and runs a hand through his sandy hair; a signet flashes on one finger in the light through the window. "Lucky for you."
"Booth didn't speak Russian."
Mendelsohn snorts again. "I guess you thought all of us at State just sat around watching spy movies. Practising the Russian alphabet, da, spasibo. We have a job. It doesn't always get done perfectly. But we have a job."
Something else has made its way through the fog of astonishment; she narrows her eyes. "Princess?"
He sobers quickly, but not without a slight smirk. "If you don't know how you look here, now's the time to realise it."
Looking at his face, striped irregularly with light as the streetlights flash by, she's almost overcome by the feeling she had when she first saw him - that she was safe with him, and that she wanted, above all things on this earth, to land a single good punch on that solid chin, that rocklike nose, and see it bleed.
It's too late though; the flashes of light have become fewer and farther between, and the driver is slowing, pulling into a sharp curve. Above her, against the night sky, is silhouetted a vast block of angular darkness.
"Where do you think Russians live, Miss Harmon?" says Mendelsohn, with what seems distinctly like mocking politeness.
Beth is too discomfited to fight; the men in the front seat have turned around, the passenger resting his elbow on the seat with a smile of wolfish anticipation, for all that they can't possibly understand what Mendelsohn is saying to her. "I don't know. Homes. Where are we… what have you… where are you taking me?"
Mendelsohn indicates the dark sky-blotting shape. "Homes. Yes. But not like your lovely suburban residence in Lexington, madam. These are Russian homes."
The courtyard they are in is nothing but dirty stones, in the dim light; the lamp affixed to the front of the building is burned out. Beth can see the narrow shapes of balconies, many balconies, hung over her, some cluttered or half-collapsed; the paint is peeling on almost every one.
"These are probably communal apartments," Mendelsohn says, with a sort of ghastly cheerfulness. "Each family has one room to live in. Then there's a communal kitchen for all the families. A few might have a TV to share now."
Beth shivers; the night air in the still car is none too warm, and the driver has wound down a window. A mugger, a thief, or worse - She gathers her coat closer at the neck. "Okay, I get it. Can we go?"
Mendelsohn's eyes flicker to her movement. "Your nice white wool coat would feed and clothe the average family here for, hmm, three or four years," he says conversationally. "Except of course they wouldn't be able to buy such a thing here. Unless they were high in the Party."
Something in her gut is threatening to crystallise into panic. "Mendelsohn, I get it! What do you want? I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry. I want to go to my hotel."
Mendelsohn deflates a little; his hair shines almost white in the orange light through the window as he nods to the driver, who turns the key and forces the engine to a cough. "Of course, Miss Harmon. To your hotel."
She hears the word luxury as though he had spoken it aloud. "I didn't make this country what it is," she says, very low, at length, looking down at the spotless wool across her lap.
"Nor did I," says Mendelsohn, his gaze once again fixed distantly out the window.
"I just wanted to play chess."
"Would that it were so simple, Miss Harmon. For all of us."
The cab sweeps into the arc of the hotel drive.
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When the door is finally bolted behind her (Mendelsohn had faded away, with parodic courtliness, when they reached the door to her room) and she's kicked off her shoes and is lying on the bed -
Well. Then there is nothing between her and tomorrow.
Wake up. Breakfast. Borgov. Chess. Borgov. Sleep. On and on and on…
Beth leans over to flip the switch beside the bed, and then lies back again, in her dress, staring unseeing at the almost pitch dark.
What will it be like, her last night in this room? Knowing she will walk out, and step back into a cab, and be transported back to the grubby throng of Sheremetyevo and another smoky plane. And she'll be going back to - to victory. Or defeat. When she picks up her suitcase for the last time, she'll know. And when she puts it down in Lexington, and looks around at the dust motes in the air, summer blooming in her garden and the sweat under her arms, she'll -
Sleep. Wake up. Breakfast. Walk around. Borgov…
She stretches one leg after another, very carefully, until the joints crack.
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The hotel lounge is soft and padded; velvet armchairs, spindly tables, an overstuffed banquette. Borgov is already waiting when she's ushered into the room, Mendelsohn tailing her like a patient golden retriever. He's seated on the banquette with his hands loosely spread on the polished tabletop, his eyes unreadable. Behind him is standing a pale-faced man with acne scarring across his face, wearing a dark anonymous suit, and beside him is seated his wife, wearing a neat navy blue skirt suit, with a dark braid wound twice around her head and a face like thunder.
Beth pulls up short, and then, trying to disguise her hesitation, sits down carefully across from Borgov, pressing the wrinkles from her skirt as she smooths it over her knees. She darts a glance back at Mendelsohn, who gives her a quick fleeting grin as he positions himself across from the standing man, and assumes an expression of implacability.
There is a long, hollow pause.
Mendelsohn breaks it, and Beth feels a surge of gratitude as he clears his throat. "Miss Harmon," he says, without colour. "Vasily Nikolaevich. It is traditional in Russia for the champion and challenger to take tea together before the first match. I have arranged this for you with the cooperation of the Kremlin." He repeats himself in slow, carefully spaced Russian - for my benefit, thinks Beth, furious again - and Borgov nods, the muscles on his face betraying not a flicker. Borgov's wife - her name, her name is nowhere for Beth - shoots Beth a look that should have burnt holes into the wooden tabletop.
The white-shirted waiter deposits a tray on the table, with a tall golden samovar and short glasses, and then fills each one with dark bitter tea with a flourish.
Beth clears her own desperately dry throat. "Borgov," she says, trying to banish the dust that seems to be clogging her. "I mean, Vasily Nikolaevich. It's good to see you."
Borgov inclines his head, his gaze steady. "Eleezabet' Pavlovna. I welcome you back to Russia."
Borgov's wife pulls a glass of tea towards her sharply, then spoons dark jam into it from the dish and stirs furiously. Borgov's gaze doesn't as much as flicker in her direction, so Beth, reddening, pulls her tea towards her likewise. Spoon, stir, sip.
"Eleezabet' Pavlovna," says Borgov, with stiff formality. "It will be honour to play you in our first game tomorrow."
Beth stiffens, the repetition of the patronymic finally battering through to her brain. "How - how did you know my father's…?"
He cuts his eyes, very faintly, over her shoulder; she turns, and sees Mendelsohn standing, hands tucked behind his back, eyes idly fixed on his counterpart across the room.
Borgov takes a sip of his tea, and gently pushes the dish of round, whitish cookies towards her. It's clearly her turn; she clears her throat. "It's good to be here," she says, hearing Alma echo distantly in her head. Knees together, wrists straight. "I thank you for your kind welcome."
"Vash reys," Borgov says. "Your flight. It was… komfortnyy? Good?"
She drops her eyes to the tabletop. "Yes. Very smooth, thank you. Khoroshiy, spasibo."
"This is long visit for you," says Borgov, to the tableau of his furious wife and her impossibly awkward self and this silent blond American, his voice fractionally softer. "Alexei Ivanovich, he can arrange tour. Kremlin, the sobor... Cathedral. Very pretty." He jerks his head lightly to the man standing behind him, "You want?"
Mendelsohn coughs, from behind her; clears his sandy throat. "Miss Harmon would - "
But Beth overrides him. "Borgov," she says, desperately. "Can we - talk about chess? That's what I wanted. To - talk about chess - with you."
Borgov clears his own throat; his hands shift on the tabletop, to his half-empty glass of tea and away. "Eleezabet' Pavlovna," he says, back to formality. "We will speak chess much. There is much time."
Beth leans in more closely over the tabletop, heedless of the poison in Borgov's wife's eyes. (Irina. It's there. Irina Borgov.) "Please," she says, through barely open lips, "can't we speak privately? Just you and me. I can ask him, Mendelsohn, to leave for a while. I just want to talk about chess."
"I don't speak so well, Eleezabet'," Borgov says, with a note that is almost pleading in his voice. "May we speak Russian? Ya ne ochen' khorosho govoryu po angliyski."
"Mozhet my vstretimsya, chtoby obsudit' shakhmaty?" Beth says slowly, feeling her way. May we meet to discuss chess?
"My mozhem obsudit' shakhmaty seychas." We may discuss chess now.
Irina Borgova snorts, and sets her empty tea-glass down with a resounding smack.
"This is a…" Beth fumbles to a halt, and begins again in Russian. "Eto vyzov. A challenge. To play so many chess in your country."
Borgov lets his first smile flicker across his face. "It is a challenge indeed. I hope - " and something she can't make out - "and rested."
"Could we talk," Beth says carefully, "in another way? With - dva? Two?"
Borgov's face slides back to unreadable. "We can speak here. Much time."
"But," Beth says haltingly, thick-tongued, "to be clear - "
Borgov's eyes flicker, and he turns his head to the window. "A sparrow. A fine bird," he says, but not before she has caught the movement of his eyes towards the silent, dark-suited man. "I hope you enjoy my city, Eleezabet' Pavlovna."
Realisation sweeps over Beth's body; and humiliation. Why does she always blunder into these things? Why can't she learn? "I would like to take the tour," she says, in her best Russian. "The city is very good."
"Da," says Borgov, with obvious relief. "Alexei will arrange." He pushes the cookie plate gently towards her again. "Please try the pryaniki. Irina made them."
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"Do you bolt your door?" says Mendelsohn, abruptly, after he walks her to it.
Beth tenses up, and glances rapidly over his shoulder; no one, despite the sound-deadening effect of the thick corridor carpet. "Of course."
"Good," he says, with equal abruptness. "Good night." And he's gone.
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Elizabeth Pavlovna, is what's left echoing in her head when the heavy cover is over her and the light is out. Elizabeth Pavlovna. Elizabeth, daughter of Paul.
Where's daddy?, she remembers asking Alice, that first night in the trailer, the one blurred with novelty and distance and fear.
You don't have a daddy, said Alice.
But -
You don't have a daddy any more, said Alice, and her face was set hard.
Even then she knew that look.
When he came back, when he was just a man outside and Alice's voice was poisonous and low, it was the first time she ever really looked at him. A dark shape edged with light, dark lapels, a voice coming out of blackness. All she really remembered from before that was gray legs, wool that was coarse against her cheek. A voice coming from high above her, a heavy hand on her head that shook with amusement. A voice in the darkness, calling her Lizzy, in a way that skated off her skin like glass. Lizzy was someone she might have been, once, fuzzy like if she looked through the wrong end of a telescope, a little girl who lived in a house and read stories with a woman called Mama.
The light from his car door striking up as he looked, in that long, long moment. As he looked at her.
A man who never came. Never asked. Even when her name was on television. In Newsweek. But, once, he'd looked -
The weight of Alice's ghost is beside her, in her print summer dress, her hair long and loose.
"I told you they would want to teach you things," she says, and her voice is hard and dark with pain.
Beth closes her eyes. "Is that why you had to go?"
"I had to go because I had to go." Alice crosses her legs. "I don't expect you to understand."
"Good, because I don't." Beth turns her face into the pillow. "You left me too."
"I'm sorry," says Alice's ghost. "It was necess - "
"You took me from him, you left him, and then you left me too!" A bubble of tears has burst inside Beth's throat. "Why did you take me from him, when you were only going to leave me too?"
"I couldn't be myself with him," says Alice, helplessly, after a long pause. "I couldn't do - "
"But he was good enough later. When you tried to take me back." Beth squeezes her eyes shut.
Alice breathes in a little harsh gasp. "I thought - " she starts, then begins again. "I hoped - "
"Oh, go away." Beth burrows deeper under the covers. "You can't tell me anything new, can you? You never could. You said it all before I was nine. Go away."
Alice's eyes are in front of her, when she opens them again, in the way they were, long ago, when Alice would stroke her hair and tell her how to be. "I wanted you to be able to be you," she says, and her eyes are clear and bright. Her throat is trembling. "You know now - what it's like - to be a woman who doesn't fit. To be a woman that men have to squash like a bug. I didn't want that for you. I wanted us to be free."
Beth's eyes are level with Alice's now; she's taller, just. "Did he ever love me?" she says, in a voice straight out of 1955.
Alice rests one light ghost-hand on her hair; strokes down and down, then again. "He loved the idea of you," she says at last. "He liked being responsible for you. He liked to play with you, and teach you things. He loved the idea of a sweet little girl."
"You were right, you know." Beth closes her eyes again. "Everything you tried to tell me about men. They're - weak. They're afraid of us. They run away… All of them. Paul, Benny, Harry, even Townes… bastard Allston. All they know how to do is run away."
"I know." Alice strokes her hair, with a cold hand.
"I knew you'd come tonight," Beth says, bringing her adult voice achingly back. "You always have to, don't you? When it's important to me. You always have to steal it."
The hand on her hair is gone. "I never meant to steal, Bethy. I swear."
"But you do. You took from me what I most wanted, and you gave me things I never wanted, and made me carry them… All my life." Beth opens her eyes. "This isn't yours. I did this myself. I made my own way."
Alice is fading, shrinking into herself, in her gay cotton-print. "I can't take it. I'm sorry. But I had to be here. I had to see you have it, what I wanted for myself, so much…"
Beth fixes her eyes on the amber-dark of Alice's, dimming but steady. "Okay, mother," she says softly. "Okay."
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Her face looks like hers, in the bathroom mirror; or close enough to pass, anyway.
Mendelsohn met her for breakfast, mercifully silent; he passed her the toast, and poured extra coffee.
And then it's time. Her legs feel distant as she stands, and Mendelsohn pushes her chair back in. They walk to the ballroom. Borgov ducks his head to her. They shake hands. The arbiter explains the arrangements carefully, first in Russian and then again in English. Mendelsohn settles into a chair at the far side of the room; Beth pulls the hard wooden chair towards her, hearing it scrape harshly against the floor.
She's facing Borgov. Borgov is facing her.
The arbiter flips. She draws white.
Pawn to queen's bishop four. She starts the clock.
Russian glossary
Eta printsessa dumayet, chto Moskva prekrasna - This princess thinks Moscow is beautiful
pravda - truth
Pochemu by nam ne pokazat' printsesse krasotok? - Shall we show the princess the real beauties?
Da, sdelay eto - Yes, do it
Ya ne ochen' khorosho govoryu po angliyski - I don't speak English very well
Author's note
Russians are addressed formally and on social occasions not as Mr or Miss/Mrs, but by their first name and patronymic. "Vasily Nikolaevich" means "Vasily, son of Nikolai". Since Borgov can understand what is said in English, Mendelsohn uses the correct Russian form of address for him in both English and Russian; when he repeats his introduction in Russian, he uses Beth's correct patronymic, Pavlovna - in other words, "daughter of Paul", which is Pavel in its Russian form. Borgov then picks this up when he addresses Beth. Mendelsohn takes care to repeat his introduction in full in both languages, because it would be an insult both to presume the KGB agent in the room speaks English and to presume he does not.
Pryaniki are traditional Russian honey-spiced cookies.