Vartan smiled and kissed the tip of my nose.'I'll make us dinner,' he said. 'Tell me when you've got the answer. I don't wish to distract you just at the critical moment in your deciphering. But I can safely promise that once you've solved it you can expect a handsome reward. A grandmaster will sleep in your bed and do delightful things to you all night long.'

He was halfway to the kitchen when he turned and added, 'You have got a bed, haven't you?'

Vartan flipped through the pile of paper, my reconstruction of our game, as he wolfed down the spaghetti he'd prepared for us in my woefully wanting kitchen. But he never complained, even about his own cooking.

I watched his face from across the table. From time to time, he nodded. Once or twice, he laughed out loud. Finally he looked up at me.

'Your father was some kind of self-created genius,' he said. 'I a.s.sure you that he never got any of these ideas you have just thrust upon me from that long term of sentence that he'd endured, as a boy, at the "Palace of Young Pioneers." You got these blitz techniques from him? But it's like something Philidor might have invented, only using pieces instead of p.a.w.ns.' He paused and added, 'Why did you never use any of this on me before today? Ah yes, your "Amaurosis."'

Then he looked at me as if he'd just had a true revelation. 'Or perhaps it's we two who have both been blind,' he said.

'Blind about what?' I asked.

'Where is that card that Tatiana gave you at Zagorsk?'

When I retrieved it from the trouser pocket where I'd left it, he flipped it back and forth to look at both sides. Then he stared at me. 'Je tiens l'affaire,' he said, like Champollion finding the key to the hieroglyphic. 'You see it? That's why it says here "Beware the Fire." The Phoenix is the fire, the eternity that your mother spoke of the perpetual death and rebirth in ashes and flame. But the firebird doesn't die in fire or ashes or anything. Her magical feathers bring us eternal light. I think that's the freedom your mother meant. And the choice. And it would explain what she's discovered about the chess set itself why neither Mireille nor Galen could attain the true meaning, nor could your mother by helping either of them. They'd already drunk the elixir for whatever their individual motives might have been. They'd exploited the service toward their own ends, but not for the original purpose of the designer.'

'You mean, it's like a built-in fail-safe mechanism,' I said, in amazement, 'and that al-Jabir had designed it so that no one who used the Service for personal gain would then be able to access its higher powers.'

Great solution, I thought. But it still seemed to leave that same old problem facing us.

'So what are those higher powers?' I said.

'Your mother told me that she'd given you the key to all the rest,' said Vartan. 'What did she tell you?'

'Nothing, really,' I said. 'She only asked if I'd understood all of her messages that she'd left for me in Colorado especially the first one: The chessboard is the key. She told me that that message had been for me, her special gift.'

'How could it be her special gift,' said Vartan, 'when we all saw that drawing of the chessboard, just as she surely knew we would? It must have been another chessboard she was speaking of as the key.'

I stared down at the board that still sat there before us on the table, that checkmate still in place on its surface. Vartan's eyes followed mine.

'I found it inside Mother's piano in Colorado,' I said. 'It was set up with our last Moscow game, yours and mine, just at the place where I fumbled. Key told me you'd sent Mother the position yourself-'

But Vartan was already removing our spaghetti plates and winegla.s.ses from the table and sweeping the p.a.w.ns and pieces to one side.

Then he turned to me and said, 'It has to be in here not hidden in the pieces. She said the board.'

I looked at Vartan and I could feel my heart pounding. He was examining the board closely with his fingertips, just as he had with that desk in Colorado. I had to stop this. I'd never before felt so afraid of my own future.

'Vartan,' I said, 'what if we end up just like all those others? After all, you and I are both natural-born compet.i.tors even since our childhoods. Just now in that game, I only wanted to defeat you. I didn't think even once about s.e.x or pa.s.sion or love. What if it grabs us? What if, like them, it turns out that we just can't stop playing the Game, even against each other?'

Vartan looked up at me and after a moment he smiled. It took me by surprise it was truly radiant. He reached over and took me by the wrist, turning my hand up to kiss the place where my pulse was beating harder than usual. 'Chess will certainly be the only "game" we shall ever play against each other, Xie,' he said. 'And all these other games must be stopped, too.'

'I know,' I said. I leaned my forehead down on his hand that still held my wrist. I was too exhausted to think.

He rested his other hand on my hair for a moment, then pulled me back to face him. 'As for how we'll "end up,"' he said, 'I think it will be a bit more like your parents. That is, if we are very, very lucky. But every chess player knows Thomas Jefferson's famous line, "I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it."

'Now let's go to work,' he added. 'And let's hope we get lucky.'

He took my hand and he placed it on the chessboard. Then, with his hand resting over mine, he slid my fingertip beneath his own until I heard a click. He lifted my hand from the board, where a section of the surface had popped open. Inside was a single sheet of paper in a loose plastic wrapper. Vartan extracted it and pa.s.sed it to me so we could both study it.

It was a tiny drawing of a chessboard. I could see that many of the p.a.w.ns and pieces were connected to little lines that were then drawn out to the side of the page, where a set of different numbers was written above each line. I counted; there were twenty-six lines in all the exact number of pieces Lily told us that my mother had captured herself, in the last round of the Game. Some of them seemed to be cl.u.s.tered in sets, like bunches of twigs.

'These numbers,' said Vartan, 'they must be some kind of geodesic coordinates, perhaps the area on a map where each of their pieces has been hidden. So one of two things must be true: Either your father was not the only one who knew this information, or else he had taken a decision to write it down, after all, despite the risk.' He added, 'But numbers like these would provide us no more than a general idea, not the specific location.'

'Except maybe this one here,' I said, for I'd noticed something. 'Look, there's an asterisk printed beside these numbers.'

We traced that line back to the chessboard ill.u.s.tration to see which piece these coordinates might be connected to.

It led to the Black Queen.

Vartan flipped the page over. On the reverse side was a small map of a spot that looked all too familiar, with a tiny arrow at the bottom, pointing north, that seemed to suggest: Start here. By now I could hear my heart pounding so loudly in my ears that it was deafening. I gripped Vartan by the arm.

'You mean you actually recognize where this place is?' said Vartan.

'It's right here in Washington, D.C.,' I told him, trying hard to swallow. 'And given which chess piece the line was pointing to on the flip side, it must be in this very spot, right here inside the District itself, where Mother hid the true Black Queen!'

A familiar voice from across the room said, 'I couldn't help but overhear, my dear.'

The hair on my neck stood up!

Vartan had jumped to his feet, the chessboard drawing still clutched in his hand. 'Who in G.o.d's name is that?' he hissed at me.

There in the open doorway much to my horror and distress stood my boss, Rodolfo Boujaron.

'There, there,' said Rodo, 'please resume your seats once more. I did not mean to deranger you both when it seems you were just about to finish with your meal.'

Nonetheless, he came into the room and put out his hand to Vartan. 'Boujaron here,' he said, 'Alexandra's employer.'

Vartan had surrept.i.tiously dropped the map into my lap as he stepped forward and shook hands with Rodo. 'Vartan Azov,' he said. 'A friend of Alexandra's from childhood.'

'Oh, a great deal more than that by now, I'm quite sure,' said Rodo. 'As you'll recall, I did overhear you. I didn't intend to pry in upon your private conversation. But I'm afraid, Alexandra, that you did leave your cell phone in the sofa cushions when you last departed. Galen and I and our compatriots were merely using it to monitor those who might come into this place searching for things in your absence. You see, only your mother knew where she had hidden her list, and she trusted only you to retrieve it. But with that manner of yours these past few days in and out of here, knocking about exactly like a bocce ball well, we did all feel that one cannot be too careful in these most difficult times. As I am certain you will both agree.'

He went over and pulled the phone from between the cushions where Nim had left it, opened the window, and flung it out into the ca.n.a.l far below.

So I'd been caught with my phone down again. What in G.o.d's name was wrong with me? I felt ill at the thought of everything he must already have overheard not least, of course, some of those intimate musings between Vartan and me.

But at this point, I figured it would seem silly to act naive and say, 'List? What list?' So instead I opted for, 'Who's all this "we"? What "compatriots"?'

'Those men up at Euskal Herria,' Rodo a.s.sured us, taking a seat at the table and motioning for us to do the same. 'They like to dress up in berets and red sashes and pretend they are Basques, though, as it proves, trained dervishes can be trained to do the high kicks in the Jota quite well.'

He'd whipped out a flask from his pocket and extracted some shot gla.s.ses from his other one. 'Basque cherry brandy.' He filled the gla.s.ses and handed them around. Then he added, 'You'll enjoy it.'

Being plenty ready for a drink, I tasted the brandy. It was wonderful, tart and fruity, and it went down my throat like liquid fire. 'The Basque brigade are actually dervishes?' I said, though already I was beginning to get the message.

'They've been waiting a very long time, the Sufis, from the time of al-Jabir,' Rodo said. 'My people in the Pyrenees have worked with theirs for more than twelve hundred years. That motto over my kitchen door about Basque mathematics 4+3=1 you know, these numbers also add up to eight, a game your mother knows very well. That moment, ten years ago, when Galen told her the truth behind your father's death and the schism created in the White Team by it, she came directly to me.'

'Schism?' said Vartan. 'You mean the one Rosemary Livingston created?'

'In a sense, it was she who triggered it,' Rodo told us. 'When her father was killed, she was yet a mere child. The first time that Rosemary, as a child, met your mother, it appears that Cat handed her a small White Queen from a pegboard chess set which deceived her father, El-Marad, into believing Cat was a White player, though he quickly learned otherwise. From the moment you began to play chess yourself, though Rosemary was never completely certain what part you were to play, she began to move in as a predator stalks its prey. She's still quite young for such a ruthless player, though no one knew quite how ruthless she could be.

'When Galen March, along with Tatiana Solarin, his descendant whom he'd rescued, realized that the only way to bring the pieces together, at least in the manner that was originally intended by al-Jabir, was to bring the players together, they knew that their best chance in this was to bring Tatiana's son Aleksandr, and through him, his wife, Cat, back into the Game. Taras Petrossian was the instrument through which they executed this plan. Once they knew that a final chess game would definitely take place at Zagorsk, they brought the Black Queen there to be put on display. No one realized that this was the very opportunity Rosemary and Basil were seeking: They turned the tables, had Solarin shot before he could depart with this information, and seized the Black Queen for themselves.'

'So,' said Vartan, 'you are saying that my stepfather, Petrossian, was not involved in their plot?'

'Difficult to know,' said Rodo. 'All we do know is that he helped save the life of Alexandra's father by removing him from there. But Petrossian was forced to flee Russia shortly thereafter, though it appears that Livingston continued to support at least one of his chess tourneys in London, at any rate.'

'Then,' I asked Rodo, 'if the Livingstons stole the Black Queen at Zagorsk, where were they hiding it all this time? How did Petrossian obtain it, so he could get it into the hands of my mother?'

'Galen March smuggled it to Petrossian to send to your mother,' said Rodo. 'That's why your mother arranged her birthday boum in Colorado the very moment she learned that Petrossian had been killed. She was desperate. She had to draw all the players away from the place where the piece was now hidden until she could contact you somehow. But what of that Washington Post that I left on your doorstep a week ago? Your mother wanted us to alert you, but with no fanfare, when Baghdad was entered. She felt sure you'd make the connection for yourself. But then when we overheard your conversation with your uncle, we realized we'd overlooked something mentioned there in the paper the covey of Russian diplomats that was strafed when departing Baghdad. The Livingstons knew they'd been betrayed by someone, but not by whom. Galen and I made copies of the paper to send to those who needed this very vital piece of information-'

He paused, for he could see that I now had found the answer to almost all my questions.

'Of course!' I cried. 'Rosemary hid the Black Queen in Baghdad! That secret room at the Baghdad airport! Basil's Russian connections! Their party here at Sutalde last Monday with all those oil magnates they must have set it up the moment they learned that the Queen was already missing from Baghdad, that Galen might have taken it, that it might already be in my mother's hands.' But I had to laugh at my next thought. 'Rosemary must have done a pretty fast U-turn from here to Colorado and back again, if she thought that my mother was somehow, somewhere, going to pa.s.s that hot chess piece on to me!'

But then came the sobering recognition of exactly what that must mean.

'If Rosemary had my father killed at Zagorsk so she could grab the Queen and prevent him from pa.s.sing information about its very existence to anyone,' I said, 'and if ten years later, once she'd learned of Petrossian's betrayal, she had him killed for exactly the same reason to prevent him from telling anyone at the chess tourney where he'd sent the Queen until she herself could arrive at that destination-'

I looked at Vartan. From the grimness of his expression, and the fact that we both knew the parts of the puzzle I myself was holding the drawing of the board and the location of the pieces, starting with the Black Queen I probably didn't have to state the obvious.

I'm next.

Rodo saved me the breath anyway. 'You are safe for the time,' he said calmly, pouring us all a splash more brandy, as if any danger were far from this room and a thing of the past. 'The moment that your prankster friend Nokomis sealed us four into that hotel suite, Nim was headed for the door, phone in hand, to dial security and to try to break open the lock, when Galen March stopped him in both endeavors, putting a hand on his arm. That's when Galen told us.'

'Told you?' said Vartan.

'That this had all been planned by Alexandra's mother,' Rodo continued. 'He'd already said that Key was the new White Queen. He said that this was, as people say, a new ball game, but one with completely new rules. That Alexandra had a drawing of the board and would soon have knowledge of the location of the pieces, as well.'

'He said what?' I gasped, as I saw Vartan flinch from the corner of my eye.

This was worse than my worst imagining! Mr Galen 'Holy Roman Emperor' March had set me up royally. And there was something else, wasn't there? I racked my brain to reconstruct the context inside that room at the Four Seasons, at the instant when I'd left it: my uncle Slava, Galen, and Rodo...

And Sage Livingston.

Sage Livingston sitting there toying with her tennis bracelet.

'Sage's bracelet was bugged all that time!' I told Rodo.

'Mais bien sr,' he said with his enduring sangfroid. 'How else could your mother have protected you all these years have communicated what she wanted the Livingstons to believe without Sage's unwitting a.s.sistance?'

'Her unwitting a.s.sistance?' I said.

I was horrified. Sage's mother had pressed her to befriend me, and my mother had used her, among other things, to cut the real estate deal that had moved Galen March to center board in Colorado. And what did Rodo mean by 'all these years'? Had Sage already been running this Mata Hari racket in grammar school?

'That is why Galen was upset earlier,' Rodo went on. 'When your mother suddenly vanished and Galen couldn't contact her, he planned, along with Nokomis Key, to meet with you and your uncle privately and reveal everything. When Sage continued to attach herself to him like so much chewing gum to the bottom of a shoe, he sought my help. But at the Four Seasons, when he saw you drag Sage into the locker room to interrogate her privately, he became alarmed and returned down the stairs of the club. He was afraid that, without intending to, you might reveal something to her, or she to you, which could find other ears outside and ruin everything. At last, when Nokomis arrived and saw Sage there, she took matters into her own hands. Galen felt that his only solution was to draw Sage's attention and that of the ever-present Livingston security guards back toward the Game. And away from that mystery that your family were protecting.'

Now at least I could guess how the eavesdropping 'Secret Service' had gotten on our tails so fast, until Key ditched them crossing the river. But if the Livingston clan were out there somewhere with even that much data, my own life wasn't worth a plugged farthing.

'How can you claim that I'm "safe for the time"?' I refreshed Rodo's comment. 'Exactly where is this motley crew of villains right at this moment?'

Rodo said, 'Once we were rid of Sage, Galen revealed the truth about Solarin; then he and Nim were able to form a plan to protect you. I was empowered to share this as soon as you both returned tonight. Your uncle has managed to spare you the effort of dealing any further with the Livingstons. Ladislaus Nim is, after all, one of the world's great computer technocrats. Once he'd grasped the situation, as I understand it, he ensured that, through cooperative ant.i.terrorist channels, the Livingstons' funds in a variety of countries were instantly frozen pending criminal investigations: in London, the investigation into the a.s.sa.s.sination of a former Russian citizen living on British soil. An arrest order has also been served, of course, over a certain Colorado oil and uranium baron's complicity with the former regime in Baghdad.'

Rodo glanced at his watch. 'As for where the Livingstons are at this precise moment since there is only one country likely to refuse to cooperate with such extradition proceedings just now I should imagine they are somewhere in the air above Arkhangel'sk, headed for St Petersburg or Moscow.'

Vartan slammed his hand on the table in frustration. 'You all believe that merely by seizing the Livingstons' a.s.sets and exiling them to Russia, that will protect Alexandra?'

'Only one thing will protect her,' Rodo told him. 'The truth.'

Then he turned to me.

'Cat was more realistic,' he added. 'She knew what was required to save you. She sent you to me only when she understood that it was a kitchen, not a chessboard, where you should go to learn the lessons required of an alchemist. And she realized that we all need some kind of a chariot driver to pull our forces together, like those horses of Socrates, one pulling toward heaven, one toward the earth, like the battle of spirit and matter. You see it all around us: people flying airplanes out of the skies and crashing into buildings because they hate the material world and want to destroy it before they depart it; other people despising the spiritual so much that they want to bomb it into their idea of normality. That's not what we would call being "well-balanced."'

Until this moment, I'd had no idea that Rodo had any thoughts on this or on any other such subject though I wasn't sure where this 'opposites must attract' theme was exactly leading. But then I recalled what he'd said about Charlemagne and the Montglane fortress.

I asked, 'Is that why you said my mother's and my birthdays are important? Because April 4 and October 4 are opposite in the calendar?'

Rodo beamed a smile at both Vartan and me. He said, 'That's how the process takes place: April 4 lies between the first spring zodiac signs, le Belier and Taureau, the Ram and the Bull, when the seeds of the Great Work are shown to be sown in every alchemy book. The harvest is six months later, between Libra the Balance and Scorpio symbolized in its lower aspect by the scorpion, but in its higher aspect by an eagle or firebird. These two poles are described by the Indian proverb, Jaisi Karni, Vaise Bharni our results are the fruits of our actions. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. That's what The Books of the Balance of al-Jabir ibn Hayyan are all about: Sowing seed and harvesting means finding the balance. Alchemists call this process the Great Work.'

Rodo added, 'The man we call Galen March you've read his papers, so you know was the first in one thousand years to solve the first phase of this puzzle.'

I looked at him and said, 'He's played so important a role in all of this. But what's become of Galen now?'

'En retraite for a while, just like your mother,' said Rodo. 'He sent you both this.'

He handed me a packet, similar to the one Tatiana had given us but smaller. 'You may read it when I've gone tonight. I believe it will come in useful in your quest tomorrow. And perhaps even longer.'

I was filled with questions, but when Rodo got to his feet, so did Vartan and I.

Rodo said, 'Since Cat has led you to the first of the hidden pieces, right here in D.C., I can guess even without seeing that map you've hidden from me just where you two may be doing your reaping tomorrow.' When he got to the door, he turned back over his shoulder to us. 'Both of you together, that's perfect. It's the secret, you know,' he told us. 'The marriage of black and white, of spirit and matter it's been known since ancient times as "the Alchemical Marriage" the only way the world will survive.'

I felt my face turn more than a little pink. I couldn't even look at Vartan.

Then Rodo was out the door and into the night.

We sat back down and I poured us each another splash of the cherry brandy as Vartan slashed open Charlot's letter packet and he read it aloud for me.

The Alchemist's Tale It was the year 1830 when I discovered the secret of making the formula, just as it had been prophesied.

I was in the south, living at Gren.o.ble, when France once more fell into the throes of a revolution that began, as always, in Paris. Our country was again in turmoil, just as it had been at the time of my conception so long ago when my mother, Mireille, had run the barricades to flee to Corsica with the Bonapartes, and my father, Maurice Talleyrand, had fled to England and then to America.

But in this revolution, things would soon prove to be far different.

By July of 1830, our restored Bourbon monarch Charles X after six years in power, having revoked civil liberties and disbanded the national guard had infuriated the people once more by dismissing the magistrates and closing all independent newspapers. That July, when the king quit Paris to go on a hunting trip at one of his country estates, the bourgeoisie and the ma.s.ses of Paris called upon the Marquis de La Fayette, the only n.o.ble of the old guard who seemed still to believe that the restoration of our liberties was plausible, and they charged him to reconst.i.tute a new national guard in the name of the people and to scour the countrysides of France for additional troops and munitions. Then, in swift succession, the people appointed the duc d'Orleans regent of France, voted to restore the const.i.tutional monarchy, and sent a missive to King Charles demanding that he resign his crown.

But as for I myself, living in happiness at Gren.o.ble, none of these politics meant anything. As I foresaw things, it seemed that my life was only just beginning.

For at age thirty-seven the exact age that my father was when he had first met my mother I was filled with joy, I was on the brink of complete fulfillment. My vision had returned along with my powers. And, as if fate itself had intervened, things were coming together in a most extraordinary way.