The Queen Advances.

It had taken longer for a woman [the queen] to appear beside the king on the Russian chessboard than in any other non-Muslim country, including China.

Marilyn Yalom, Birth of the Chess Queen.

White Queen? how could I be the White Queen in this Game when my mother if one believed Aunt Lily's version was the Black Queen? Though we hadn't always been on the best of terms, Mother and I could hardly be on opposite sides especially in a Game as dangerous as this one was purported to be. And what on earth did our birthdays have to do with it?

I knew I needed to talk to Lily, and fast, to untie this unantic.i.p.ated knot. But before I could begin unraveling anything, another queen had arrived on the scene the very last person on earth I hoped to see just at this moment, though I surely might have known. It was none other than that Queen Mother and Queen Bee all rolled into one: Rosemary Livingston.

Though it was only a few days since I'd last seen Sage's mother enveloped in her clouds of fur, back in Colorado, I was as nonplussed as always by her appearance here tonight. And I don't mean just her arrival.

Rosemary made her usual impression as she descended the sweep of stone steps into the cellar, surrounded by men. Some of her exotic escorts were dressed in white desert robes and others, like Basil, were clad in elegant business suits. Rosemary herself wore a trailing gown of shimmering bronze-colored silk the exact color of her eyes and hair, her tresses partly covered with a shawl of sari silk so fine and opalescent that it seemed to be made of pure spun gold.

Rosemary's appearance had always stopped traffic, but never more so than here and now, in her natural element, surrounded by a gaggle of goggling males. But I quickly realized these were no ordinary oglers many of these men I recognized from the Fortune 500. If a bomb were dropped in Rosemary's wake just now, I thought, the news of it might drop the New York Stock Exchange twelve hundred points by tomorrow morning.

Rosemary's powerful sense of presence, like a heady perfume, wasn't anything you could really put your finger on, much less aspire to imitate. But I'd often attempted, in my own mind, to define it.

There were women like my aunt Lily who could carry off the kind of flamboyant glamour that was always part and parcel of their own celebrity. There were others, like Sage, who had polished their chiseled looks into the flawless perfection of the born-again beauty queen. My mother herself had always seemed innately to possess a different kind of aura: the healthy beauty and grace of a wild creature, naturally adapted for survival in the forest or jungle perhaps the reason she'd been nicknamed Cat. Rosemary Livingston, on the other hand, had managed almost alchemically to combine bits of each of these traits into a powerful presence all her own: a kind of regal elegance that at first glimpse fairly took your breath away, leaving you grateful to be touched by the glimmer of her golden presence.

That is, until you actually got to know her.

Now, as Basil removed her wrap just on the other side of the curved gla.s.s part.i.tion that separated the private dining room from the hearth, Rosemary was blowing a moue at me, something between a pout and a kiss.

Though Rodo had told me plenty, at least enough to raise the hair on my neck, I wished like mad that I'd had time to pump him for more information on whatever he knew about this dinner. I couldn't help wondering exactly what the Livingstons were doing, apparently hosting this strange entourage of multinational millionaires. But given those connections that I myself had only recently made involving the chess set, the Game, and Baghdad, it did not seem to me to bode well that many of these diners seemed themselves to be noted figures from the Middle East.

And though as a serving girl myself at this gig I hadn't exactly been introduced to them, I knew these were not just high-level muckety-mucks, as Leda and Eremon had guessed, but there were a few whom I thought I'd even recognized as sheikhs or princes of royal families. No wonder security was at an all-time high over on the ca.n.a.l footbridge!

And beneath everything, of course with a deep-seated unease after Rodo's recent edification about my own projected role I was desperate to know what it all had to do with the Game. Or more specifically, with me.

But these thoughts were cut short, for Rodo had taken me firmly by the arm and was ushering me out to greet the group.

'Mademoiselle Alexandra and I have a special meal prepared for you tonight,' Rodo a.s.sured Basil. 'Your guests and madame's have, I hope, prepared yourselves for something unique. You will each find your menu du soir at your table.'

He squeezed my arm tightly from beneath his own: a far-from-subtle hint that I should keep our prior conversation under my chef's cloche and follow his commands until otherwise notified.

Having made certain that everyone was seated within viewing distance of our performance back at the hearth, Rodo dragged me off to beyond the gla.s.s wall and hissed in my ear, 'Faites attention. Tonight when you serve the food you must be the...entzula. Not the jongleur des mots, comme d'habitude!'

That is, I should be a 'listener' and should avoid my usual 'word juggler' behavior, whatever that was supposed to mean.

'If these guys are who I think they are, they all speak French, too,' I hissed back at him under my breath. 'So why don't you stick with talking in Euzkera? Then n.o.body will understand you including, if I'm lucky, me!'

With that, Rodo made like a clam and shut up.

The bouillabaisse was followed by the bacalao an enormous cod poached in a Basque lemon sauce with olives, accompanied by heaps of the steamy boulles of ash-baked shepherd's bread.

My mouth was watering that stuffed potato at lunch seemed to have worn off but I held my ground and pushed my serving cart back and forth, planting dishes on the table for each course, removing them to the larder where I slipped them into the dishwashing machine to await the morning staff.

It did occur to me that this was almost the mirror image of my mother's birthday boum, where I'd made a point to glean as much information as I could about this deadly Game in the midst of which I'd found myself.

But though Rodo had told me to be the listener here as well, I couldn't follow the dinner conversation, due to my duties. Everyone seemed quite chatty until I came into the room to serve each course. And though there were many compliments for Rodo's brilliant cuisine, the talk then seemed to drift away as I swept the dishes off and lay the fresh food before the diners.

Perhaps it was my imagination or Rodo's sinister suggestion just before their arrival but they didn't seem to be worried that I might overhear their dinner conversation. They seemed to be watching me.

It wasn't until the Meschoui course his pice de resistance that Rodo left the hearth and accompanied me to the dining room. Traditionally, the lamb must be served still on its spit, with everyone gathered around, all standing up, so they can pull pieces of the succulent, herb-infused meat from the carca.s.s with their fingers.

I couldn't wait to see Rosemary Livingston attempting this feat in her costly gown of Parisian silk. But one of the desert princes had moved swiftly to rectify matters.

'Permit me,' he said. 'Women should never be required to stand beside the men at a Meschoui!' Motioning for Rosemary to remain seated, he personally pulled a small plate of lamb just for her, which gentlemanly Basil delivered to her place at table.

This seemed just the opportunity the Queen Bee had been awaiting. Once she was left alone at the table, with Rodo rotating the spit for the men gathered around the lamb, she motioned for me to bring the water pitcher to replenish her gla.s.s.

Though I suspected, given Rodo's cautionary glance in my direction, that it was a ruse, I bent over the table and poured the water. Rosemary, regardless of her sn.o.bbery, was not to be put off by convention when she wanted something. Deftly circ.u.mventing the table to come around and buss me at either cheek with her trademark 'air kiss,' she held me away and breathed, 'Darling! After hearing of that dreadful storm due to arrive, Basil and I never hoped to see you back here so quickly from Colorado. We're delighted! And we do hope your mother got over her crisis or whatever took her away. We ourselves, of course, took the Lear back to the East Coast that very same night!'

Hardly surprising. I knew that the Livingstons kept a stable of pilots and designer planes at the ready at all times, on their private tarmac in Redlands, in the event that Rosemary might get a craving to go off somewhere and shop till she dropped though of course, they might have offered us a lift, too, instead of leaving us stranded in the path of that incoming storm.

As if she'd read my mind, Rosemary added, 'You know, if we'd realized you were going down to Denver we might have dropped you and the others, along with Sage and our neighbor, Mr March.'

'Oh, I wish I'd known,' I told her in the same lofty tone. 'But don't let me keep you from your meal; the Meschoui is a Sutalde specialty. Rodo almost never prepares it; he'll be upset if my gabbing with the guests lets yours grow cold before you've even tasted it.'

'Then sit beside me for a moment,' Rosemary said, in the most ingratiating tone I'd ever heard from her. She slipped back to her place and patted the empty seat just beside her with a smile.

I was in shock at this lapse of protocol here before all these dignitaries especially on the part of the biggest sn.o.b I'd ever met. But her next words were even more flabbergasting.

'I'm sure that your employer, Monsieur Boujaron, won't mind if you and I chat for just a moment,' she a.s.sured me. 'I've already told him you were a family friend.'

Friend! What a concept!

I made my way around to her side of the table, replenished a few water gla.s.ses, and glanced once, quickly, in Rodo's direction. He'd raised one eyebrow slightly as if to ask if I was okay.

When I reached Rosemary's side, I said, 'Well, Mr Boujaron is looking our way. I'd better get back to the kitchen. As you see from your menu, there are three more courses following this one. And as wonderful as the cuisine is, we don't want it spoiled by ruining the timing. Nor would you want to be here all night.'

Rosemary grasped me by the arm in a deathlike vise and pulled me down to the chair beside her. I was so surprised, I nearly spilled the water pitcher in her lap.

'I said I'd like to talk,' she announced under her breath yet in a tone that qualified as one of imperial command.

My heart was racing. What in G.o.d's name did she think she was up to? Could someone be killed at a private dinner party in a famous restaurant when Secret Service were crawling all around outside? But I couldn't help recall, with sinking spirits, Rodo's comment about the blocked communications down here in the cellar. So I set the pitcher down on the table and nodded.

'Sure. I guess a few moments won't matter,' I said with as much calm as I could muster, peeling her fingers carefully away. 'What took Sage and Galen to Denver?'

Rosemary's face shut down. 'You know perfectly well what they were doing there,' she said. 'Your little half-breed friend Nokomis Key has already pa.s.sed you the word, hasn't she?'

There were spies everywhere.

Then with steely eyes, she unleashed the persona with which I was more familiar. 'Exactly whom do you believe you are dealing with, my girl? Do you have any possible conception of who I am?'

I thought of saying that I was having trouble just figuring out who I was. But, given Rosemary's most recent reaction, not to mention the composition of this mysterious group, I thought we all might be best served if I'd checked my levity, along with that cell phone, at the door.

'Who you are?' I finally said. 'You mean other than Rosemary Livingston? My former neighbor?'

Rosemary sighed with enormous impatience and tapped her nail on the plate of Meschoui before her, which she still hadn't touched.

'I told Basil this was all foolishness a dinner, for heaven's sake but he simply wouldn't listen,' she said, almost as if to herself. Then she looked back at me with narrowed eyes.

'You do know who Vartan Azov actually is, of course?' she said. 'I mean, apart from his avocation as a world-cla.s.s chess master.'

When I shook my head, confused, she added, 'Naturally we've known Vartan since he was just a boy. He was then the stepson of Taras Petrossian, Basil's business a.s.sociate who's just pa.s.sed away in London. Vartan never likes to speak of their relationship. Nor the fact that he himself is sole heir to the Petrossian estate, which is quite extensive.'

Much as I hoped to avoid showing what I felt at this revelation, I couldn't help staring and quickly averted my gaze. Of course Petrossian was rich. He'd been an 'oligarch' during the brief heydey of Russian capitalism, hadn't he? And, too, Basil Livingston would hardly have had truck with anyone who wasn't.

But Rosemary hadn't quite finished. Indeed, she seemed to be waxing on her poisonous theme with unprecedented gusto.

'I wonder if you could explain for me,' she said, her voice still low, 'exactly how Vartan Azov, a Ukrainian subject, managed to obtain a visa for the United States with such short notice, just to attend a party? Or why he and Lily Rad if they were really in such a hurry to reach Colorado decided to drive together cross-country in a private car?'

I kicked myself for being a mental midget. If Rosemary was trying to throw suspicion upon my friends, she was doing a really great job. Why had it never occurred to me to ask such questions?

But the very instant that I did ask those same questions of myself, that was all it took to strike the final, lethal chord of terror up my spine. I was relieved I was still sitting down. My limbic system was wreaking havoc with my visceral reponses; I was drenched in cold sweat.

But I couldn't help hearing that one particular phrase, like a clash of symbols in my mind the phrase that pulled everything together in a way that I really couldn't bear to understand: Naturally we've known Vartan since he was just a boy...

If the Livingstons had known Vartan Azov since he was a boy if they'd known him ever since the time when he was Taras Petrossian's stepson and they'd been involved all that time with Petrossian himself then this meant that they'd all been intimately connected. Even from the very first moment that my father and I had set foot in Russia.

Which meant that they all must have been involved in that very Last Game, the one that took my father's life.

The Game had certainly advanced. In those few words of aside, I'd quickly realized, Rosemary Livingston had not only shown her true colors, but perhaps provided a good deal more than food for thought.

As I served the next three courses the daube of wild mushrooms, the poultry with vegetables and spicy greens braised in pan drippings, and the gteau au chocolat thick with brandy-soaked Basque cherries I hung out like the proverbial fly on the wall and tried to get a better glance at the board I was playing on. I learned a lot, if only through innuendo.

Though Rodo had soon rescued me from the clutches of our hostess and got me back to my more comfortable habitat, raking ashes and serving vittles, I still couldn't stop the refrain running through my head: that most of those who'd been my mother's guests only days ago in the Colorado Rockies, had turned out to be somehow intimately connected with one another as well in a way that suggested they were therefore also suspiciously connected with my father's death.

This meant that they certainly were all players in the Game.

Now all I needed to grasp was how they were connected with me. What role did I play? The Sixty-Four-Square Question, as Key might say and as Rodo, in his own way, had earlier tried to point out. I couldn't wait to get him alone after closing time, to pump him about the real inception of this gala meal. Whose idea had it been? How was it initially arranged? How had it been set up replete with all the high-level dignitaries and the haut security force?

But despite all those unanswered questions floating in the forefront of my consciousness, there was one thing I was sure that I had deciphered, one thing that lay lurking within the deep recesses of my mind.

Something else had happened ten years ago. Something besides my father's death and besides my mother's decision to yank me out of school in New York and relocate us both to the Octagon in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains something that almost seemed like an inexplicable chess move within a larger Game.

For ten years ago, as I now recalled, the Livingston family had pulled up roots in Denver and become our full-time neighbors. They'd moved to their ranch in Redlands, on the Colorado Plateau.

It was after midnight when the Livingstons departed with the last of their guests. Rodo and I were both too exhausted for a lengthy chat. He said he'd like to meet me tomorrow morning and take me somewhere private where we could do a postmortem on what had been going on tonight.

That sounded good to me. A field trip with Rodo would also spare me the ire of the master chefs and Leda not to mention the dishwashing crew when they discovered what we'd left them to clean up after tonight.

I was moving the kettles and pans to the larder, where they could be left soaking in water for the next few hours, when I moved the dripping pan and saw those awful burned drippings glommed onto the slate floor underneath. I pointed it out to Rodo.

'Who set up that spit with the mouton?' I asked him. 'Whoever it was, they really left a mess. You should have had me do it, or you should have done it yourself. Who'd you send down here as helpers this morning the Basque Brigade?'

Rodo shook his head sadly at the baked-in black goo. He trickled some water onto it from the pitcher, then sprinkled it with a bit of baking soda.

'Just a friend,' he said. 'I shall correct it tomorrow. Right now I shall retrieve our cell phones. You had best go to bed yourself and get you some sleep.'

This was so unlike my boss whom the chefs called the Euzkaldun Exterminator that it fairly took my breath. The real Rodo would have leveled his contempt like an AK-47 a.s.sault rifle at anyone for a transgression even half this bad. He must be slipping after the exertion of tonight, I reasoned.

I myself was nearly slipping into a coma from exhaustion by the time Rodo had returned from the bridge patrol with our cell phones. Once he'd locked the door behind us it was once again the wee hours. Becoming a tradition for me. The footbridge was open, the gumshoes gone, and their carrel and concrete barriers conveniently removed.

We parted at the end of the bridge where Rodo wished me a good night's sleep and said he'd phone tomorrow and arrange to pick me up. It was after one a.m. when I headed down the alley to my pied terre overlooking the ca.n.a.l.

When I reached the terrace at the usually shadowy entrance to Key Park, everything was as black as the inside of a wool sock. The streetlamp had burned out, which happened more often than I liked to think. It was too dark to see, so I fumbled for my keys and finally located the right one by touch. But when I opened the door to my hallway there was something wrong. I noticed a dim light that seemed to be glowing at the top of the stairs.

Could I have left a lamp on this morning by mistake?

After all I'd been through these past four days, I had the right to be worried. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Rodo's number. He couldn't be more than a block or two away likely hadn't even reached his car yet but there was no answer, so I hung up. I could easily punch Redial if I found something up there that was really wrong.

I crept soundlessly up the stairs until I reached the door to my apartment. It didn't have a lock of its own, but I always shut it when I left the house. Now it was slightly ajar. And there was no doubt: a lamp was lit inside. I was about to hit Redial when I heard a familiar voice from within.

'Where have you been, my dear? I've been waiting here for you half the night.'

I pushed the door and it swung open. There, seated in my comfy leather chair as if he owned the place, lamplight falling on his coppery curls, a gla.s.s of my best sherry in one hand and an open book upon his lap, sat my uncle Slava.

Dr Ladislaus Nim.

The Middle Game.

Middlegame: The part of the game that follows the opening phase. It is the most difficult and the most beautiful part, where a lively imagination has great opportunity to create wonderful combinations.

Nathan Divinsky, The Batsford.

Chess Encyclopedia.

Nim regarded me with his wry smile, but for only a moment. I must have looked like a complete wreck. As if he'd grasped everything that had happened, he set down his gla.s.s and book and came over to me; without a word he enfolded me in his arms.

I had no idea of the real state of my frazzled nerves. But the instant he hugged me the floodgates opened and I found myself sobbing uncontrollably into his sleeve. Frightened as I'd been only seconds ago, I felt it turn to relief. For the first time in as long as I could recall, I found myself under the protection of someone I could trust completely. He stroked my hair with one hand, as if I were his pet, and I began to relax.

My father had nicknamed my uncle 'Slava,' a kind of Russian double entendre short for Ladislav, the p.r.o.nunciation of his name, but also the Russian word for a 'Glory,' the eight-pointed star that forms a halo in Russian icons for figures like G.o.d, the Virgin, or angels. My Slava was definitely ensconced in his own aura, replete with a coppery halo of hair. And although now that I was grown, like everyone else I called him Nim, I still thought of him as my guardian angel.

He was the most fascinating person I'd ever known I think because he'd kept a trait that most of us possess as children, but few of us manage to retain as we grow older. Nim remained fascinating because he was always fascinated by anything and everything. His favorite admonition summed up this philosophy: Whenever I'd wheedled to be amused or entertained as a child, he'd say, 'Only the boring are bored.'

Whether fascinating or mysterious to others, Nim had been the most stable ingredient in my young life. After my father's death and the estrangement from Mother that followed my removal from the world of chess, my uncle had given me two important gifts that helped me survive gifts that were also the means we'd employed all these years to communicate with each other so we didn't have to speak about the deeper things that clearly we both found so painful: the arts of cooking and of puzzles.

And my intriguing uncle was here just now, tonight, to bestow a third gift something I'd never expected or sought or even wanted.