But I had a bigger question one that had been bugging me the whole time I listened to Vartan's story, a question that had brought back that pounding of blood behind my eyes, a pounding that was only exacer bated by the constant, humming throb of the Bonanza's engine though I wasn't sure how I could actually bring myself to ask it. I waited until Key went back to resume the controls from 'Otto' and check our bearings. Then I took a deep breath.

'I'm a.s.suming,' I said to Vartan, my voice shaking, 'that if Petrossian's "mission" and Basil Livingston's was to round up more pieces of the Montglane Service, that would have to include the one that you and my father saw together at Zagorsk?'

Vartan nodded and watched me carefully for a moment. Then he did something entirely unexpected. He took my hand in his and leaned over and kissed me on the forehead as if I were still a little child. I felt the heat of his skin infusing mine at these two contact points, as if we'd been electrically grounded. Then at last, almost reluctantly, he released me.

I was so taken off my guard, I felt my throat growing hard and the tears welling up in my eyes.

'I must tell you all of it,' he said in a quiet voice. 'After all, that is what we're here for. But do you think you can take this right now?'

I wasn't sure that I could. But I nodded, anyway.

'That tournament in Moscow the match between you and me I was just a child myself, so I didn't understand at all then. But from what I've been able to put together, I can think of only one reason why that event was established in the first place: to lure you and your father into Russia. With your mother protecting your father, they could never have gotten him to go back there of his own accord. Do you see?'

I certainly did. I felt like screaming and pulling my hair out. But I knew what he'd said was right on target. And I knew exactly what that meant.

In a way, I had killed my father.

If not for my childhood compulsion to become the world's youngest grandmaster if not for the alluring golden opportunity dangled before us to accomplish that goal my father would never have returned to his homeland at any cost.

That's what my mother was afraid of.

That's why she'd made me give up chess when he was killed.

'Now that we've learned so much about the Game,' Vartan told me, 'it must all make perfect sense. Anyone who was a player would surely know who your father was not just the great grandmaster, Aleksandr Solarin, but a major player himself in the Game and the husband of the Black Queen. My stepfather lured him there to show him that they had that important chess piece, perhaps with the hope that they somehow could strike some kind of bargain...'

Vartan paused and looked at me as if he wanted to take me in his arms and comfort me. But his expression was so distraught, it seemed he needed comforting himself.

'Xie, don't you see what this means?' he said. 'Your father was sacrificed but I was the bait that was used to lure you both into the trap!'

'No, you weren't,' I told him, putting my hand on his arm as Key had done just a moment before. 'I wanted to beat you; I wanted to win; I wanted to be the world's youngest grandmaster just as you did. We were only children, Vartan. How could we possibly have guessed then that it was more than just a game? How would we even know now if Lily hadn't explained it to us?'

'Well, we know very well now exactly what it is,' he told me. 'But I certainly should have known even before that. Only a month ago, Taras Petrossian called for me to come to London, though I hadn't seen the man in years, not since he'd emigrated. He wanted me to play in a large tournament he was organizing. By way of incentive to attend, he could not resist reminding me that, if not for his generosity in acquiring coaching and the like during his years as my surrogate parent, my grandmaster t.i.tle might never have been awarded. I owed him, as he explained to me in no uncertain terms.

'But shortly before the tournament, upon my arrival at the Mayfair Hotel where my stepfather resided, I learned that he had something quite different, something more important, in mind, in the way of that "payoff." He asked me to perform him a service. And he showed me a letter he'd received from your mother...'

Vartan had paused, for my expression surely said all. I shook my head and motioned for him to go on.

'As I said, Petrossian showed me a letter from Cat Velis. From the gist of her letter, it seems that he possessed several items that had belonged to your late father. He wanted to get them into your mother's hands as quickly as possible. But she didn't want my stepfather to send them to her himself, nor to pa.s.s these objects to Lily Rad during the tournament. Either of these alternatives seemed to your mother to be...the word she used, I think, was "imprudent." She suggested that Petrossian enlist me, instead, to send these objects anonymously to Ladislaus Nim.'

The chessboard drawing.

The card.

The photo.

Now it was all falling into place. But though Petrossian could have gotten the card from my coat pocket at Zagorsk, how on earth had he ever laid hands on that chessboard drawing, which Nim thought was in the possession of Tatiana, much less that 'only photo in existence' of my father's family?

But Vartan hadn't quite finished. 'Your mother's letter also invited me to join Lily and Petrossian after the tournament and come to Colorado, which I agreed to do. We could discuss everything there, she said.'

He paused and added, 'But as you know, my stepfather himself was killed before that London tourney even finished. Lily and I had met privately in London. We were unsure exactly how much to reveal to each other of what your mother had shared with either of us, since Lily hadn't been able to reach her. But we both mistrusted Petrossian and Livingston. And we agreed that Petrossian's involvement, combined with your mother's cryptic party invitations to us all, suggested that your father's death at Zagorsk may not have been an accident. As the only other person who'd been present at Zagorsk when your father died, I privately believed that the items I'd mailed might somehow be involved.

'The moment that Lily and I learned of my stepfather's untimely and suspicious death, we both resolved to leave the tournament at once. And in order to draw less attention to our movements, we agreed to fly to New York and go to Colorado by Lily's private car.'

Vartan stopped and regarded me gravely with his dark eyes. 'Of course, you know the rest of the story from there,' he told me.

Not quite.

Though Vartan might not know how it was that Petrossian had come by the chessboard and those other items in the packet that Mother had arranged for him to send to Nim, there was still one major item that hadn't been accounted for.

'The Black Queen,' I said. 'You told Key and me, when we were back in Maryland, that it was you yourself who'd sent that chessboard drawing to Nim. Now you've explained how and why. Then you said you believed that Taras Petrossian was killed because he sent the Black Queen to my mother.

'But you'd also told me earlier that the last time you'd seen that piece was ten years ago, inside that gla.s.s case in the treasury at Zagorsk. So how did Petrossian get his hands on it? And how and why would he himself send something that valuable and that dangerous to my mother, when he knew that she was afraid even to have him communicate directly with her?'

'I don't know for certain,' said Vartan, 'but given the events of these past few days, I have begun to form a very stong suspicion. It occurred to me odd though it may seem that Taras Petrossian may already have had that chess piece in his possession ten years ago, when we were all at Zagorsk.

'After all, it was he who'd arranged to remove our last game to that remote spot; it was he who told me that the chess piece had just been discovered in the cellar of the Hermitage and how famous it was; and it was he who said that it had been brought to Zagorsk just in order to display it there for our chess tourney. So why couldn't it also have been Taras Petrossian, the man who'd lured you to Russia, who had placed the chess piece there in that gla.s.s case perhaps in the hope that, when Aleksandr Solarin saw it...'

But he stopped, since clearly as for me there was no obvious answer as to what Petrossian's objective might have been. Whatever he had hoped might come of all these clever machinations that, as it seemed, had resulted in nothing for anyone except death.

Vartan rubbed his head of curls to bring the blood back, for even to him it wasn't making sense.

'We've been a.s.suming,' he said, picking his way, 'that they were all playing on different teams. But what if they weren't? What if my stepfather was trying to contact your parents all along? What if he had always been on their team, but somehow they didn't know it?'

And then I saw it.

And in the same exact moment so did Vartan.

'I don't know how Petrossian got his hands on that chessboard drawing,' I said, 'and he could have picked my pocket for the placard though it's unlikely it would have meant anything to anyone but my father and me. But there's one thing I do know. There's only one person on earth who could have given him that photo that you put in the packet and sent to my uncle. I think it's the same person who warned us with that card at Zagorsk.'

I took a deep breath and tried to focus on exactly where this was leading. Even Key was listening intently, at this point, from her place at the controls.

'I think,' I added, 'that the person who gave Taras Petrossian that chess piece in the first place, ten years ago maybe even the person who helped him to lure us to Moscow was the same person who gave him that photo, so it could be put in the packet to my mother that you ended up sending to Nim, to make my mother believe in Petrossian's story.

'That person is my grandmother! My father's own mother! You and Key first triggered the idea when you both kept saying that my mother believes there may be no Game, that we may somehow really be on the same team. And if it was my grandmother behind all this, it could mean-'

But as Vartan and I looked at each other in astonishment, I couldn't bring myself to face what I'd been about to say. Even after all we'd been forced to face, it was too much to imagine.

'What this means,' Key informed us over her shoulder, 'is the whole reason your mother's been in hiding. It's the reason she threw that party, the reason that she sent me to fetch you.

'Your father is still alive.'

The Cauldron.

Thus, in nearly all mythologies there is a miraculous vessel. Sometimes it dispenses youth and life, at other times it possesses the power of healing, and occasionally...inspiring strength and wisdom are to be found in it. Often, especially as a cooking pot, it effects transformations; by this attribute it achieved exceptional renown as the vas Hermetis of alchemy.

Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz, The Grail Legend.

Alive.

Of course.

I felt as if I'd stepped onto an unfamiliar planet whirling across time and s.p.a.ce. And from this new perspective, even the craziest and most illogical events of these past few days impromptu parties, mysterious packages sent from foreign lands, my mother's vanishing act, my abduction by Key suddenly would all make sense.

Maybe this revelation was the shock that broke the proverbial camel's back. Otherwise, I certainly don't know how it was that I ever got to sleep after that. When I awakened, though, I was completely sacked out, lying in darkness in the back of the fuselage on an improvised bed of duffel bags.

But I wasn't alone.

Beside me was something that was warm. Something breathing.

It took a moment for me to realize that the plane engine was silent. Key was nowhere to be seen. It must be well after midnight, which was when we'd deboarded at our second pit stop near Pierre, South Dakota. That was when Key had announced to us she had to catch a few z's and that we really all should do so before heading up over the mountains.

At this moment, I found myself half-sprawled across the firm, p.r.o.ne body of Vartan Azov, who lay with one arm loosely tossed over me from behind, and his face buried in my hair. I thought of disentangling myself from this haphazard embrace, but I realized I might wake him, and I reasoned he probably needed sleep as much as I did.

Also, it felt really good.

What was it with me and Vartan? I had to ask.

And if I waited until Key returned from watering the plane, or whatever she was up to right now, that might afford me a small s.p.a.ce to think minus any vibrating motors or the repeated whiplash of those incoming emotional shocks with just the peaceful sound of the rhythmic breathing of a snoozing chess player in my ear.

And I knew I had lots of thinking to do most of it, unfortunately, trying to unravel the twisted skeins of the completely unthinkable. After all, it was only hours ago that I'd learned why my mother had been in hiding, why she'd lured everyone out of the woodwork, and yet kept all of us in the dark all this time all of us, that is, but Nokomis Key.

But I'd figured it all out somewhere between our first stop today at Moyaone, the ossuary fields at Piscataway, and that first refueling layover of ours in Duluth four elapsed hours, not bad when I had finally confronted Key, and she'd admitted to me the role she was actually playing: That she was the White Queen.

'I never said Galen was wrong about that,' Key had protested when I'd refreshed her memory of her earlier denial in the stairwell at the Four Seasons. 'All I said was, Just ignore him! After all, those fools have all had their chance at this Game. Now it's somebody else's turn to turn the tables. That's what your mother and I intend to do.'

My mother and Nokomis Key. Though I had trouble visualizing these two joined up in this fashion, if I were to be perfectly honest with myself I'd have to admit that all along, ever since our childhoods, it was Key who had actually been the daughter that my mother had never had.

The Black Queen and the White Queen in cahoots.

I kept hearing a refrain, one of those jingles from Alice in Wonderland, something like: Won't you please be sure to come to tea, with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me?

But jingled and jangled though I myself might be, I was grateful beyond words that my mother had decided to 'blow the whistle,' as Key had told me back on the first leg of our trip, and to join forces, whatever that might entail.

I no longer cared a fig why my mother had apparently cut her connections with my uncle, nor why Key had locked the hotel door on a few who might well be players on the White Team. I'd find out the reason later. Right now I was simply relieved.

Because one thing had finally dawned on me: why Key had worn that ironic smile and why she had made those cryptic remarks about the burial place at Piscataway. And indeed, why we had visited that ossuary field at Moyaone in the first place. All the bones and all the secrets, she'd said.

Because I now understood that if my father was alive, as Key said, and if Mother had learned of it, then it was clear that all this time it hadn't been me Mother was protecting, nor even herself. It had been my father, all along, who'd been the one in clear and present danger.

And now I also knew why my mother had been so afraid all these years, even before Zagorsk: She was the one who'd put him there. The secrets of the Montglane Service weren't buried with the bones at Piscataway, any more than the pieces were.

They were buried in my father's mind.

Aleksandr Solarin was the only one, of all those who'd ever been involved in this Game, who knew where those pieces were located. If he was alive and I was sure that Key and my mother must be right about that then we had to find him before anyone else did.

I only prayed that we wouldn't be too late.

Key hadn't been kidding when she'd asked me, back on the parkway, if I had the 'vaguest clue' how hard it had been to orchestrate my closet abduction. As the sky seeped lavender, we revved up the little Bonanza and hopped over the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore, headed for the Rockies. And she elaborated a few of those technicalities. She'd come in a plane not licensed to her, and had not filed a flight plan so it would be hard to follow us or even to guess where we might be headed.

As long as the staff at the private airports knew you, she explained, it wasn't much of a problem. She had only put down for refueling in places where she was sure she could radio ahead for someone she knew to be on-site, even at night, when the airfield staff were gone like her friend, the mechanic from the Sioux Reservation who'd refueled us last night at Pierre so we could be sure to take off before dawn.

Now, bundled up in our thermal gear that she'd brought in the duffel bags, we were cruising atop the world.

'Dawn!' Key called down to the mountains. 'What an eye-opener! The better to see you with!'

Sailing at fifteen thousand feet over the Rockies in a small plane just after dawn was always breathtaking. The mountains were only a thousand feet beneath us. With the sun rising behind us, gilding our wings, the little plane cut through shreds of pink cloud like a skyborne raptor. We could see everything below in detail the craggy, purplish rock veined with silver snow; the steep slopes thick with pine and spruce; the brilliant turquoise skies.

Though I'd done mountain trips like this dozens of times with Key, I never got tired of them. Vartan was practically s...o...b..ring on the window, looking out at the astonishing view. G.o.d's country, the locals called it.

Landing at Jackson Hole four hours later was something else again. Key cut like an arrow through the pa.s.ses, with mountains looming, almost within spitting distance, on either side. It was always unnerving. Then she dropped to the valley floor with precision. Actually, precision was a prerequisite when landing a plane in the bottomless 'Hole.'

It was already mid-morning by the time we touched down, so we grabbed the duffels, loaded them in the Land Rover she always kept at the airport, and by unspoken agreement, went to get some chow.

Loading up with eggs and bacon, toast and marmalade, fried potatoes, sliced fruit, juice, and tons of black java, I suddenly realized that this was the first time I had eaten since yesterday's breakfast compliments of my uncle Slava.

I really needed to stop bingeing once a day like this.

'Where's our friend meeting us?' I asked Key when we'd paid our fare and left the restaurant. 'At the condo?'

'You'll see,' she replied.

Key kept a pad at the Racquet Club for her stopover flights, so her bush pilots who were headed into the North Country would always have a bath and bed. I'd stayed there myself a few times. It was designed by a custom shipbuilder for maximal use of s.p.a.ce and it was comfy and regal at the same time. There were even ball courts of several kinds and a workout room for those who might be athletically obsessed.

My mother wasn't there. Key told us to drop the duffel bags. Then, after sizing up Vartan's height, she pulled three lightweight, thermal jumpsuits from the closet and told us to put them on, along with some waterproof zippered snow-booties, and we went back to the car. She headed up the road without giving us further information.

But after about half an hour, when we'd pa.s.sed the entrance to Teton Village and Lake Moran, I knew we were running out of what might be called civilization, so I couldn't help but be nervous.

'I thought you said we were headed to pick up my mother, so we could help find my father,' I told her. 'But this road only leads to Yellowstone National Park.'

'Right,' Key a.s.sured me, with her usual sarcastic glance. 'But to pick up your mom, first we have to find her. She's in hiding, as you may recall.'

Once I'd had a moment to think things through clearly, I confess, I had to hand it to Key. Her mapping of this mission had been impeccable through and through. I myself couldn't have concocted a better spot where one might have stashed my mother, to ensure minimum visibility, than winter in Yellowstone National Park. And it was winter here, no matter how the official calendar might mislead one into imagining otherwise.

Back in Washington, D.C., early April might be Cherry Blossom Festival and tourist season. But here in northern Wyoming, the twelve-foot-high, red-and-yellow snow marking poles had been placed along the roadside since mid-September. And it might stay winter in these parts for another two months yet. Camping wouldn't even begin until June.

The park was always closed to all but Snowcoach and snowmobile traffic and even those, by reservation only from November 1 through the middle of May. By next winter, even snowmobiles would be verboten, through a new federal edict, in this, our historic and first-ever national park. Even now, the main road itself Grand Loop, a 140-mile twisted loop in a figure eight pattern would be closed throughout much of its northern reaches.

But nothing was completely off-limits to the park rangers and scientific staffers like Key, some of whom conducted their most important research at this time of the year. That was what was so brilliant about her whole clandestine operation, though I confess, I still hadn't seen the Big Picture, as she would put it.

When we reached the park entrance, Key picked up three tickets with her park pa.s.s, and we all hopped onto the Snowcoach, a kind of Econoline van with tank treads instead of wheels, and with what looked a lot like water skis stuck to the front to keep us from sinking into the snow.

A number of folks, who seemed to be of the same party, were already on board all oohing and ahhing as our chatty and informative tour guide pointed out a few of the park's ten thousand geothermal features, 'just here to the left and right of us,' and peppered everyone like a spray gun with little-known western history involving the early days of the park.