Legends

“On second thought you ought to avoid it, comrade visitor. Queen sacrifices are not for the weak of heart. I tried it once in my life. I was fifteen at the time and I was playing the State Grandmaster Oumansky. When he made his sixteenth move, I studied the board for twenty minutes and then resigned. There was nothing I could do to avoid defeat. The Grandmaster Oumansky accepted the victory gracefully. I later discovered he spent months replaying the game. He couldn’t figure out what I’d seen to make me surrender. To me, it was as conspicuous as the nose on your face. I would have been a pawn down in four moves. My bishop would have been pinned after seven and the rook file would have been open after nine, with his queen and two rooks lined up on it. What I saw was I could not beat the State. If I had it to do over again,” the driver added with a sigh, “I would not play the State.”

A hundred meters in from where the Prigorodnaia spur joined the four-lane Moscow-Petersburg highway, interior ministry troops in camouflage khakis had blocked off circulation, obliging the occasional automobile to slow to a crawl and slalom between strips of leather fitted with razor-sharp spikes. When Katovsky’s Zil came abreast of the parked delivery truck with the DHL logo on its side, baby-faced soldiers armed with submachine guns motioned for the driver to pull off the road. A brawny civilian in a rumpled suit yanked open the passenger door and, grabbing Martin’s wrist, dragged him from the car so roughly his cracked ribs sent an electric current through his chest. A second civilian wagged a finger at the driver, who was cowering behind the wheel. “You know the rules, Lifshitz—you could get six months for operating a taxi without a license. I might forget to arrest you if you can convince me you didn’t take a passenger to Prigorodnaia today.”

“How could I take a passenger to Prigorodnaia? I don’t even know where it is.”

Martin, looking back over his shoulder, asked, “Why are you calling him Lifshitz?”

Gripping the nape of Martin’s neck in one huge hand and his elbow in the other, the brawny civilian steered the prisoner toward the back of the DHL truck. “We call him Lifshitz because that’s his name.”

“He told me it was Katovsky.”

The civilian snorted. “Katovsky, the chess grandmaster! He died a decade ago. Lifshitz the unlicensed taxi driver was a finalist in the Moscow district Chinese checkers tournament five, six years ago. Chess grandmaster—that’s a new one in Lifshitz’s repertoire.”

Moments later Martin found himself sitting on the dirty floor in the back of the DHL truck, his legs stretched in front of him, his wrists manacled behind his back. The two civilians sat on a makeshift bench across from him, sucking on Camels as they gazed impassively at their prisoner through the smoke. “Where are you taking me?” Martin demanded, but neither of his captors showed the slightest inclination to respond.