1. a little flesh, a little history

Freddie woke up.

The first thing he noticed was that he was in his hotel room in Bangkok. This came as a surprise, for some reason.

He had come with Walter to commentate the match on Global Television. Maybe make some money. Maybe see if Florence would speak to him again. The match wasn't scheduled to start until the eighth of the month, and today—he was pretty sure—was only the sixth. Enjoy yourself, Walter had said. See the city. Except the city was full of people whose ideas of enjoyment were very different from his own. Freddie had never thought highly of the FIDE arbiter, but he was right about one thing; when you didn't like women and didn't take dope, what did tourist traps have to offer?

Freddie remembered storming off while muttering something about how Merano felt like it had only been a minute ago. He'd been exhausted, dazed, prone to lashing out in self-pity. Then he'd tripped along the riverbanks, and—

Slowly, painfully, memories returned. Had it been a dream? In dreams, things had a form of logic that could not be questioned until one awakened and proved it incoherent, like trying to replay a game that had begun with an illegal pawn move. By that standard, what he had seen was certainly dreamlike. The technology? The governments? His conscious, calculating mind knew it was impossible. And yet, in the moment, it had felt so real. He hadn't paused to marvel, and neither had anyone else.

Still. Maybe he should talk to someone. Just in case.

2. from Moscow to the Bering Straits

Watching Viigand did not instill the wonder or pride that Sergievsky had brought, but it gave Molokov something better: confidence, founded on something that ran deeper than brilliance in a game. Viigand was a son of the motherland, and that was an assurance of success, one way or another.

The hotel phone rang. Had Svetlana arrived already? "Hello?" Molokov said.

"Hello," said the receptionist, in broken Russian. "There is visitor in lobby to see...Mr. M."

The only person who contacted him by initial was de Courcey. And he knew for a fact that de Courcey was busy with his news channel. Had there been a change of plan? "Tell him to wait. I'll come down."

He prepared a briefcase and a thick suit with several hidden pockets—one couldn't be too careful—and walked down to the lobby. But he didn't need any tradecraft to identify one of de Courcey's agents. Freddie Trumper was there, disheveled even by his standards, a manic glint in his expression.

Sergievsky had warned him against writing Trumper off as a has-been, a lunatic. But that had been when the American still had a title, and hadn't sunk into a reclusive miasma for a year. If he were not intimately acquainted with the details of Sergievsky's passport status, Molokov would have said this man looked more like an exile.

"Molokov," said Trumper. "Let's talk."

Molokov raised an eyebrow. "At your service."

"Not here. Somewhere...else."

The man was as bad at negotiations as Vassy, and less pleasant. "Sanam Luang? It's lonely in a crowd."

"Sanam Luang?" Trumper repeated, mangling the pronunciation. Capitalists.

"The park by the palace," said Molokov.

If Trumper noticed his overexaggerated syllables, he didn't let it on. "Fine."

There was no hint of his onetime bluster and self-promotion as they made their way to the square. Tamarind trees were in bloom and children flew kites, but Trumper had neither eyes for them nor acted paranoid that others might be following him. If he was an agent, he'd learned to play his part well.

At last, apparently satisfied that this place was as good as any, he cleared his throat. "I'm not your friend, and I don't want to make friends. But I know you're not stupid, and I know you don't care about chess."

"Charming as ever."

"What would you do if there was no USSR?"

"What?"

"No KGB, no Brezhnev, no communism. What would you do with yourself, and don't tell me coaching chess. You got a girlfriend or something back home? Family?"

Molokov blinked. He was used to playing the family man; it put Westerners at ease. But Freddie Trumper trying to take an interest in his well-being? "That's none of your business."

"Hey, man, I get it, everyone's different. You ever want to travel? Want to see America, or are you sick of us from all Walter's ops?"

"If I were ever to visit the States, you would not be among the people who had need-to-know."

Trumper rolled his eyes. "Just go. Get out."

"You're the one who wanted this meeting."

"I mean, leave your job. Leave the Soviets. You think you're important enough that people will miss you or even point fingers like they did when you lost Sergievsky? Nobody's gonna care. You're just a cog in a machine, and when the machine breaks down, nobody's going to look for a little cog."

"You really are insane."

"Someday you won't have your Cold War and your spy games. It's none of my business what you do, but do something, you're too smart to just give up."

"Your decadent neighbors have been prophesying our downfall for decades. And here we are."

Trumper snorted. "You think I'm one of Walter's goons?"

"You're here under the auspices of Global Television, and I doubt you've pushed wood in six months, so yes, I do think you're one of Walter's goons."

"The thanks I get." Trumper shook his head.

There was only so much he could do with a madman. Molokov returned to the hotel, and noted to his satisfaction an encoded letter waiting for him at the front desk. He had the authority to promise Gregor Vassy's safe return in exchange for Sergievsky throwing the match.

Smoke and mirrors, plots within plots, just another day in the life of a spy. Ciphers and feints were transparent compared to whatever nonsense Freddie Trumper was babbling.

3. bring back the golden era

When Viigand submitted a request for adjournment, he looked as placid as he'd been hours earlier when the round started. No doubt Molokov and his team would be spending the night helping him brainstorm strategies for the resumption of play.

Anatoly? Florence would help him, if he asked. But she wasn't sure whether he would prefer to go over the game or try to get a good night's sleep, away from Molokov and Svetlana and the cameras and all the reminders of his past. Freddie had had a way of harnessing the energies of the outside world to propel him to greater heights; Anatoly faced pressure by retreating into himself, letting the world collapse to the grid before him. It wasn't a bad strategy—in fact, it had defeated Freddie's when they'd faced each other. But how long could it last?

Before she could make her way from the lobby, a figure in an ill-fitting Global Television jacket approached her. "Florence," said Freddie. "We need to talk."

She forced herself to breathe in and out, slowly. "We really don't."

"This isn't about me," he said. "I could make excuses, but you wouldn't listen."

That honesty, from Freddie, was unnerving. "What do you want?"

"Molokov is trying to put pressure on you, isn't he? Well, on Anatoly, but you're in the way. Don't listen to him."

"What would you know?"

"They promised you your father back. But even if Molokov was playing fair—and he's not, he's a Soviet, you know what they're like—" It was almost the same way he'd raged in Merano, unwilling to believe that she had seen Anatoly as a person, in many ways a gentler person than Freddie himself. Except there was something more than stubborn patriotism compelling him now, something that made him hurry his words and trip over himself. "—there's nothing Anatoly could do. You know he would never throw any match, I'm telling you the truth, Florence."

"I haven't asked him anything. And I never would. He has enough on his shoulders already without me."

"Then leave him. Don't let him break your heart. You're worth more than that."

"Now you're the gentleman? Don't make me laugh."

"You think that little of me? That I can't care about your happiness, as a friend? Not a chess player, not a businessman, not a partner, just a friend?"

"You never tried that for seven years," said Florence. It was something she had not realized, much less admitted, until those last few days in Merano. But in retroanalysis, lots of moves became clear. "Why start now?"

"I don't care about the past, I care about the future."

"And you think I can't deal with Anatoly on my own? Because I'm a mere woman?"

"I've changed, Florence. Please?"

"No," said Florence, hurrying on. Anatoly knew how to shut out the world, if only for a few hours at a time. If she could do nothing else for him, she could do that too.

4. always a step behind

It wasn't fair.

Chess skill was measured by the ability to think ahead: if I go there, what will my opponent do? If he captures, should I capture back or delay? When he's in check, where will he flee? If he knows there's no way out, he will resign. Imagining the future and knowing your opponent had the ability to imagine it, too, meant that it never needed to come to pass. They agreed to draws, and the moves themselves were hidden.

And as much as Freddie took pride in his homeland, that kind of skill could bloom anywhere. It could be nourished by a team of bureaucrats in a cold dictatorship, or by a couple of books read by a child escaping his parents' fights. You didn't need to know or care who was president; if you could make the moves, you had a chance to win. Even better, if you read your predecessors' games, learned what schools and philosophies had held sway in the past, you could improve upon them, and so could unseen rivals across the world. Chess was unforgivingly hard—you could dedicate decades to it and never be more than a patzer—and miraculously easy. If you won, the moves spoke for themselves, and nothing else mattered.

What had happened that night was not the eureka moment of deduction, but a dream. Impossible to describe, to share, except to those who had been there. The Soviet Union had collapsed. Instead of battling each other for supremacy, chess players faced off against immense computers—then tried to defend humanity's creativity after being humiliated. Nobody knew the name of Leonid Viigand, and only a few diehards remembered Sergievsky. Florence Vassy was some insufferable do-gooder who helped support women's rights in the burgeoning democracies of Eastern Europe. Frederick Trumper was a conspiracist, or a lunatic, or on some international watchlist somewhere, or maybe dead.

And instead of asking if they could help, or trying to change his fate, people tried to poke holes in his story. Like he knew how the USSR had collapsed from within, without a war! Like he cared what technology company was manufacturing those colossal mainframes! They already wanted to call him a has-been, a loser; it was easier not to listen. What was the point of defying space and time if nobody believed him?

His mother had been dead in that future, too, and never reconciled with him. Maybe it meant he shouldn't bother to call her. Maybe nothing could change.

Or maybe people needed games that were better than chess. The opening theory was so stale, people rushing into positions that had been analyzed for centuries, that it was small wonder the computers could improve upon it. But random opening positions could revitalize the game, make people throw that theory out the window. If the present was always changing, no one could blame them for not seeing the future.

5. or betray yourself too

Anatoly couldn't truthfully say he was enjoying the view. Florence had insisted he needed to take some time away from the tournament and get some fresh air, but he was going to be seeing the board in his mind either way. It didn't make a difference. Unless this was his last chance to enjoy seeing a tiny fraction of the world's beauty and diversity as a free man. In which case, the added pressure of trying to see it all, experience it all, made the park less rather than more splendid.

Another thing that made the park less splendid was Frederick Trumper. "I know you don't want to chitchat, so I'll make this brief."

"If this is about Florence," Anatoly said, "then stay out."

Trumper rolled his eyes. "You two are so determined to fall on your swords for each other, it's almost as if you deserve each other after all."

"Don't talk about her that way."

"This isn't about her, or her father, or anyone else. Not even Viigand. It's about you."

"Thanks for your concern."

"Tomorrow, you can let a nobody like Viigand win, and it means letting people like Molokov push you around for the rest of your life or until the USSR collapses, whichever comes first. You can blow a 5-1 lead even worse than I did. Or you can win. And don't give me the false modesty of 'we don't know, it could go either way,' because you know you're better than him. It's not going to fix things with your wife or Molokov or anyone else. But you can win for chess, the one thing that's beautiful, the one thing that will repay your faith in it. Now, you're not a stupid person, and I think you're smart enough to make the right move here. But just in case you need a reminder. Get a grip."

Anatoly tried to take this in. "If that's what you think of me," he said, "I'm not sure whether to be flattered or insulted."

"I don't care how you feel, as long as you win."

"Why?"

"Because I care about chess, unlike everyone else in this city, apparently."

"I mean, why do you trust that I'm smart enough to do the right thing without your advice? If Molokov and Svetlana are to be believed, apparently you're the only one who thinks that, too." Florence had not said anything to pressure him. Maybe she was afraid of changing his mind. But she had always known that there was more to life than chess.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

Trumper hesitated, then shrugged. "What the hell," he said. "Everyone thinks I'm crazy, anyway."

"I never have." He couldn't have gotten nearly as far as he once had if he was crazy. Selfish and petty and worse than Florence ever deserved, maybe, but not crazy.

So Trumper told him what he'd seen: the future, a future at least, in which Anatoly himself was known not as a defector or a freedom fighter or a loyal lover or terrible husband, but a champion twice over.

"So you're saying," Anatoly said, "that you got to see a new world. A free world, like your own but different. Journeyed somewhere that should have been impossible. And just when you started to understand, to belong, you had to leave and start all over again."

"Yes," said Trumper. Defensive, tensed, clearly no fan of the tamarind trees either.

"That's not crazy," said Anatoly. "That doesn't sound crazy at all."


If Freddie is an expy of Bobby Fischer, does that mean that in this world people are playing Trumper random chess? Maybe.