It was she, they said, who had spangled the nighttime sky with glittering stars. And she who had first set the Game upon its adamantine course. Charlot had journeyed here from across the sea to lay his eyes upon her for the first time since his birth. It was she alone, they said, who might reveal – perhaps only to the chosen one – the secret behind the Game.
Charlot awakened before dawn and tossed off the woolen djellaba he’d used as a cover against the open night air. Something was terribly wrong, though he couldn’t yet sense what it was.
Here in this spot – a difficult four-day hike over treacherous terrain from the valley below – he knew he was well protected. But there was no hiding from the fact that something was amiss.
He rose from his makeshift bed for a better view. Away to the east, toward Mecca, he could make out the thin ribbon of red that ran across the horizon, portending the sun. But he did not yet have enough light to make out his surroundings. As he stood there in the silence atop the mesa, Charlot heard a sound – only meters away. First, a soft footstep on gravel, then the sound of human breathing.
He was terrified to make a false step, or even to move.
‘Al-Kalim – it is I,’ someone whispered – though there was no one within miles to hear.
Only one man would address him as Al-Kalim: the Seer. ‘Shahin!’ cried Charlot. He felt the strong, firm hands press his wrists – the hands of the man who’d always been mother and father, brother and guide.
‘But how have you found me?’ said Charlot. And why had Shahin risked his life to cross the seas and the desert? To come through this treacherous canyon by night? To arrive here before dawn? Whatever had brought him to this place must be urgent beyond imagining.
But more important: Why hadn’t Charlot foreseen it?
The sun broke over the horizon, licking the rolling dunes in the distance with a warm pink glow. Shahin’s hands still firmly grasped Charlot’s in his own, as if he could not bear to let him go. After a long moment, he released Charlot and drew back his indigo veils.
In the rosy light, Charlot could see the craggy, hawklike features of Shahin for the first time. But what he saw in that face actually frightened him. In the twenty-nine years of his life, Charlot had never seen his mentor betray any emotion at all, under any circumstance, much less the emotion that Charlot could see written on Shahin’s face right now, which terrified him: pain.
Why could Charlot still not see inside?
But Shahin was struggling to speak: ‘My son…’ he began, nearly choking on the words.
Although Charlot had always thought of Shahin as his parent, this was the first time that the elder man had ever addressed him in this fashion.
‘Al-Kalim,’ Shahin continued, ‘I would never ask you to use that great gift that was bestowed upon you by Allah, your gift of the Vision, if this were not a matter of the gravest importance. A crisis has occurred that has driven me to cross the sea from France. Something of great value may have fallen into evil hands, something I learned of only months ago…’
Charlot, with fear gripping his heart, understood that if Shahin had come for him here in the desert with such urgency, the crisis must be grave indeed. But Shahin’s next words were more shocking still.
‘It has to do with my son,’ he added.
‘Your…son?’ repeated Charlot, fearing that he’d not heard correctly.
‘Yes, I have a son. He is greatly beloved,’ Shahin told him. ‘And like you, he was chosen for a life that is not always ours to question. From his earliest years, he has been initiated into a secret order. His training was nearly complete – ahead of its time, for he is only fourteen years old. Six months ago, we received word that a crisis had occurred: My son had been sent upon an important mission by the highest shaikh – the Pir of his order – in an attempt to help avert this crisis. But it seems that the boy has never arrived at his destination.’
‘What was his mission? And what was his intended destination?’ Charlot asked – though he realized, in a state of panic, that this was the first time he’d ever had to ask such a question. Why didn’t he already know the answer?
‘My son and a companion in this mission were bound for Venice,’ Shahin answered, though he was looking at Charlot strangely, as if the same question had just struck him, too: How could Charlot not know?
‘We have reason to fear that my son, Kauri, and his companion were abducted.’ Shahin paused, then added, ‘I have learned that they had in their possession an important piece of the Montglane Service.’
[The King’s Indian Defense] is generally considered the most complex and most interesting of all the Indian Defenses… Theoretically, White ought to have the advantage because his position is freer. But Black’s position is solid and full of resource; a tenacious player can accomplish miracles with this defense.
– Fred Reinfeld, Complete Book of Chess Openings
Black will…allow White to create a strong pawn centre and proceed to attack it. Other common features are Black’s attempts to open the black-squared long diagonal and a pawn storm by Black’s King-side pawns.
– Edward R. Brace, An Illustrated History of Chess
The silence was broken by the sound of splintering wood.
I glanced across the room from where I stood by the hearth and saw that Lily had disconnected Mother’s answering machine and pulled the spaghetti of wires from the drawer; they were splayed across the campaign desk. With Key and Vartan looking on, she was using the dagger-shaped letter opener to pry the stuck drawer all the way out of the desk. From the sound of it, she was deconstructing the thing.
‘What are you doing?’ I said in alarm. ‘That desk is one hundred years old!’
‘I hate to destroy an authentic souvenir of British colonial warfare – it must mean so much to you,’ my aunt said. ‘However, your mother and I once found some objects of immeasurable value hidden in drawers that were jammed just like this one. She must have known something like this would set off a few bells for me.’ She went on hacking in frustration.
‘That campaign desk is awfully flimsy to keep anything of value,’ I pointed out. It was just a lightweight box with drawers, on collapsible legs or ‘horses’ – of the sort British officers hauled by pack mules on campaigns through treacherous mountain regions from the Khyber Pass to Kashmir. ‘Besides, for as long as I can recall, that drawer has always jammed.’
‘Time to unjam it, then,’ Lily insisted.
‘Amen to that,’ Key agreed, grabbing up the heavy stone paperweight lying on the desk and handing it to Lily. ‘You know what they say: “Better late than never.”’
Lily grasped the rock weight and swung it down onto the drawer with force. I could hear the soft wood splintering further, but she still couldn’t yank the drawer all the way out.
Zsa-Zsa, crazed by all the noise and excitement, was squeaking frantically and bouncing around everyone’s legs. She sounded something like a colony of rats going down at sea. I picked her up and tucked her under my arm, squishing her into temporary silence.
‘Permit me?’ Vartan offered Lily politely, taking the tools from her hands.
He stuck the letter opener between the desk and the side of the drawer and hammered it with the paperweight, jimmying it until the soft wood cracked loose from the drawer’s base. Lily gave one good tug on the handle and the drawer was released.
Vartan