“I should have left you hanging on the side of that rock,” I said. “In Zugzwang.”
ZUGZWANG
It is always better to sacrifice your opponent’s men.
—Savielly Tartakover
Polish GM
It was just past noon when Lily and I left the corrugated high plateaus of the Tassili and descended into the plains of Admer a thousand feet below, to the outskirts of Djanet.
We found water to drink along the way from the many little rivers that irrigate the Tassili, and I’d brought along some branches laden with fresh dhars, those syrupy dates that stick to your fingers and your ribs. It was all we’d had to eat since last night’s dinner.
We’d rented donkeys from a guide at Tamrit, the village of tents we’d passed by night at the entrance to the Tassili.
Donkeys are less comfortable to ride than horses. To my shredded feet I now added an inventory of bodily woes: a sore derriere and aching spine caused by endless hours of trotting up and down the stony dunes; torn hands from clawing my way up a cliff; a throbbing head probably caused by sunstroke. But despite all that, my spirits were high. We had the pieces at last—we were headed for Algiers. At least, so I thought.
We left the donkeys with the guide’s uncle at Djanet, four hours away. He gave us a ride in his hay cart to the airport.
Though Kamel had said to avoid airports, this seemed impossible now. Our car had been discovered and was under guard, and finding a rental car in a town this size was out of the question. How were we to get back—hot-air balloon?
“It worries me, flying into the Algiers airport,” said Lily as we brushed the hay from our clothes and entered the glass doors of the Djanet airport. “Didn’t you say Sharrif had an office there?”
“Just inside the Immigrations gate,” I confirmed. But we didn’t have to worry about Algiers for long.
“There are no more flights to Algiers today,” said the lady at the ticket counter. “The last one left an hour ago. There won’t be another until tomorrow morning.” What could you expect in a town with two million palm trees and two streets?
“Good Lord,” said Lily, drawing me aside. “We can’t stay overnight in this burg. If we tried to check into a hotel, they’d ask for identification, and I don’t have any. They found our car, so they know we’re here. I think we need a new plan.”
We had to get out of here—and fast. And get the pieces back to Minnie’s before anything else happened. I went back to the ticket counter with Lily on my heels.
“Are there any other flights leaving this afternoon, to anyplace at all?” I asked the ticketing agent.
“Only a chartered flight returning to Oran,” she said. “It was booked by a group of Japanese students en route to Morocco. It’s leaving in a few minutes from gate four.”
Lily was already hoofing it toward gate four with Carioca tucked under her arm like a loaf of bread, and I was right behind her. If anyone understood money, it was the Japanese, I thought. And Lily had enough of that to communicate in any language.
The tour organizer, a dapper fellow in a blue blazer with a name tag that read “Hiroshi,” was already shooing the boisterous students out to the runway when we arrived out of breath. Lily explained our situation in English, which I began to translate rapidly into French.
“Five hundred bucks cash,” said Lily. “American dollars right in your pocket.”
“Seven fifty,” he snapped back.
“Done,” said Lily, peeling off the crisp notes beneath his nose. He pocketed them faster than a Las Vegas dealer. We were on our way.
Until that flight, I’d always visualized the Japanese as a people of impeccable culture and high sophistication who played soothing music and performed tranquil tea ceremonies. But that three-hour flight across the desert revised my impression. These students were dashing up and down the aisles telling raucous jokes and singing Beatles songs in Japanese—a cacophonous caterwauling that made me reminisce longingly over the shrieking bats we’d just left in the caves of the Tassili.
Lily was oblivious to all this. She lost herself at the back of the plane in a round of Go with the tour director, defeating him ruthlessly in a game that is the Japanese national sport.
I was relieved when from the plane window I spotted the huge pink stucco cathedral that topped the mountainous city of Oran. Oran has a large international airport serving not only the Mediterranean cities, but the Atlantic coast and sub-Saharan Africa as well. As Lily and I disembarked from our charter flight, I thought of a problem that had never crossed my mind at the airport in Djanet: how to get past the metal detectors if we changed planes.
So when Lily and I got off the plane, I went at once to the car rental agency. I had a plausible cover: there was an oil refinery at the nearby town of Arzew.
“I’m with the Petrol Ministry,” I told the rental agent, flashing my ministry badge. “I need a car to visit the refineries at Arzew. It’s an emergency—the ministry car broke down.”
“Unhappily, mademoiselle,” said the agent, shaking his head, “there are no rental cars available for at least a week.”
“A week! This is an impossible situation! I must have a car today, to inspect production rates. I demand you requisition one for me. There are cars outside on your lot. Who has reserved them? Whoever it is, this is more urgent.”
“If only I’d had some warning,” he said, “but those cars on the lot—they’ve just been returned today. Some clients have been waiting weeks for them, and they’re all VIPs. Like this one …” He plucked a set of car keys off the desk and jangled them. “Only an hour ago, the Soviet consulate telephoned. Their petroleum liaison officer is arriving on the next flight from Algiers.”
“The Russian petroleum officer?” I snorted. “You must be joking. Perhaps you’d like to telephone the Algerian oil minister and explain I cannot inspect production at Arzew for a full week because the Russians—who know nothing about oil—have stolen the last car?”
Lily and I looked at each other indignantly and shook our heads as the rental agent became more nervous. He was sorry he’d tried to impress me with his clientele, but sorrier yet that he’d mentioned it was a Russian.
“You’re right!” cried the agent, pulling out a clipboard with some papers attached and pushing them over to me. “What business has the Soviet embassy to demand a car so fast? Here, mademoiselle—sign this. Then I’ll bring the car around for you.”
When the agent returned, keys in hand, I asked to use his phone to connect with the international operator in Algiers, assuring him he wouldn’t be charged for the call. He put me through to Therese, and I took the phone.
“My girl!” she cried over the static on the line. “What have you done? Half of Algiers is searching for you. I should know—I’ve listened to the calls! The minister told me if I heard from you, I’m to tell you he can’t be reached. You are not to go near the ministry in his absence.”
“Where is he?” I asked, glancing nervously at the agent, who was listening to every word while pretending not to understand English.
“He’s in conference,” she said meaningfully. Shit. Did that mean the OPEC conference had begun? “Where are you if he needs to reach you?”
“I’m on my way to inspect the Arzew refineries,” I told her loudly, and in French. “Our car broke down, but thanks to the fine work of the auto rental agent here at the Oran airport, we’ve secured another vehicle. Tell the minister I’ll be reporting in to him tomorrow.”
“Whatever you do, you must not return now!” said Therese. “That salud from Persia knows where you’ve been—and who sent you there. Get out of that airport as fast as you can. The airports are secured by his men!”
The Persian bastard she referred to was Sharrif, who clearly knew we’d gone to the Tassili. But how did Therese know—and more incredibly, how did she guess who’d sent me there? Then I remembered it was Therese I’d interrogated to help find Minnie Renselaas!
“Therese,” I said
, still watching the agent as I switched to English, “was it you who told the minister I had a meeting in the Casbah?”
“Yes,” she whispered back. “I see you found her. May heaven help you now, my girl.” She lowered her voice so I had to strain to hear her. “They have guessed who you are!” The line was silent for a moment, then I heard the disconnect signal. I put down the receiver, my heart thumping, and picked up the car keys that lay on the counter.
“Well,” I said briskly, shaking the agent’s hand, “the minister will be most pleased to learn we can inspect Arzew after all! I can’t thank you enough for your assistance.”
Outside, Lily hopped into the waiting Renault with Carioca, and I took the wheel. I laid down rubber heading for the coast road. Against Therese’s advice, I was going to Algiers. What else could I do? But my brain was going a mile a minute as the car chewed up the turf. If Therese meant what I thought she did, my life wasn’t worth a plugged farthing. I drove like a bat out of hell until I hit the twisting two-lane highway to Algiers.
The road went along the high corniche 250 miles east into Algiers. After passing the Arzew refineries, I stopped watching my rearview mirror so anxiously and at last pulled over and turned the driving over to Lily so I could continue with the translation of Mireille’s journal.
Opening the soft leather cover, I turned the fragile leaves carefully to find the place where we’d left off. It was already afternoon, and the purple-edged sun was curving toward the dark sea, making rainbows in the spray where the water struck the cliffs. Groves of black-branched olive trees hugged the cliffs in the slanting afternoon light, their fluttering leaves moving like tinkling bits of metal.
As I turned my gaze from the moving landscape, I felt myself returning to the strange world of the written word. It was odd, I thought, how this book had become more real to me than even the very real and immediate dangers that surrounded me. This French nun Mireille had become like a companion on the road of our adventure. Her story unfolded before us—inside us—like a dark and mysterious flower.
As Lily drove in silence, I continued to translate. I felt as if I were hearing the tale of my own quest from the lips of someone who sat beside me—a woman engaged in a mission I alone could understand—as though the whispering voice I heard were my own. Somewhere in the course of my adventures, Mireille’s quest had become my quest as well. I read on.…
I left the prison with great trepidation. In the box of paints I carried was a letter from the Abbess, and a considerable sum of money she’d enclosed to aid my mission. A letter of credit, she said, would be established for me to draw upon my late cousin’s funds at a British bank. But I was resolved not to go to England yet—rather, there was another task I must accomplish first. My child was in the desert—Chariot, whom only that morning I’d believed I’d never see again. He was born under the eye of the Goddess. He was born into the Game.…
Lily slowed the car, and I looked up from my reading. It was dusk, and my eyes were strained from the waning light. It took a moment before I realized why she’d pulled suddenly to the side of the road, dousing her lights. Through the dim light I saw police cars and military vehicles all over the road ahead—and a few passenger cars they’d pulled aside to search.
“Where are we?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if they’d seen us.
“About five miles before Sidi-Fredj—your apartment and my hotel. Forty kilometers from Algiers. Half an hour and we’d have been there. What now?”
“Well, we can’t stay here,” I told her. “And we can’t go on. No matter where we hide those pieces, they’d find them.” I thought a minute. “There’s a seaport a few yards ahead. It’s not on any map, but I’ve gone there to buy fish and lobster. It’s the only place we can turn off without doubling back and looking suspicious. It’s called La Madrague. We can hole up there until we formulate a plan.”
We edged slowly up the winding road until we came to the dirt road that trailed off the main drag. By now it was almost completely dark, but the town was only a one-block street that ran along the edge of the tiny harbor. We pulled up before the only inn in town, a sailor’s hangout where I knew they had good bouillabaisse. We could see cracks of light through the closely shuttered windows and the front door, which was just a screen on loose springs.
“This is the only place for miles around with a phone,” I told Lily as we sat outside in the car looking through the pub doors. “Not to mention food. It seems like we haven’t eaten in months. Let’s try to reach Kamel to see if he can get us out of here. But no matter how you look at it, I think we’re in Zugzwang.” I grinned at her in the gloom.
“What if we can’t reach him?” she asked. “How long do you think that search party will be there? We can’t stay here all night.”
“Actually, if we want to abandon our car, we can hoof it down the beach. My apartment’s only a few miles from here if you go on foot. We’d bypass the roadblock that way, but we’d be stuck at Sidi-Fredj with no wheels.”
So we decided to try the first plan and went inside. It was perhaps the worst suggestion I’d made since we began our trek.
The pub at La Madrague was a sailors’ hangout all right—but the sailors that turned to us as we entered looked like extras from a film of Treasure Island. Carioca burrowed into Lily’s arms, making snuffling sounds as if trying to rid his nose of the evil smell.
“I just remembered,” I told her as we paused at the door. “By day La Madrague is a fishing port, but by night it’s the home of the Algerian Mafia.”
“I sure hope you’re kidding,” she said, raising her chin as we started to move to the bar. “Somehow I don’t think you are.”
Just then my stomach did a horrible turn. I glimpsed a face that I wished was not familiar. He was smiling and raised his hand to the bartender as we arrived at the bar. The bartender leaned toward Lily and me.
“You are invited to be guests at the corner table,” he whispered in a voice that didn’t sound like an invitation. “Name your drinks, and I’ll serve them there.”
“We buy our own drinks,” Lily began haughtily, but I grabbed her arm.
“We’re in deep shit,” I whispered in her ear. “Don’t look now, but our host Long John Silver is a long way from home.” And I guided her through the throng of silent sailors, who parted like the Red Sea in our path—straight toward the table of the man who waited alone at the far side of the room. The carpet trader—El-Marad.
I kept thinking about what I had nestled in my shoulder bag, and what this guy would do to us if he found out.
“We’ve tried the powder room trick,” I said in Lily’s ear. “I hope you’ve got something else up your sleeve. The guy you’re about to meet is the White King, and I doubt he has any illusions about who we are and where we’ve been.”
El-Marad was sitting at the table with a bunch of matchsticks spread out in front of him. He was picking them out of a box and putting them on the table in the shape of a pyramid, and he didn’t rise or look up as we arrived.
“Good evening, ladies,” he said in that horrible soft voice as we came up to his table. “I’ve been expecting you. Won’t you join me in a game of Nim?” I did a double take, but apparently no pun was intended.
“It’s an old British game,” he continued. “In English slang, nim means ‘to pinch, to filch—to steal.’ But perhaps you didn’t know that?” He looked up at me with those jet-black eyes that had no pupils. “It’s a simple game, really. Each player removes one matchstick or more from any row in the pyramid, but from one row only. The player required to take the last matchstick loses the game.”
“Thanks for explaining the rules,” I said, pulling out a chair and taking a seat as Lily did likewise. “You didn’t arrange that roadblock out there, did you?”
“No, but since it was there I took advantage of the fact. This was the only place to which you could detour, once you showed up.”
Of course—what an idiot I’d been! There wasn’t another town for
miles this side of Sidi-Fredj.
“You didn’t get us here to play a game,” I said, looking disdainfully at his matchstick pyramid on the table. “What do you want?”
“But I did bring you here to play a game,” he said with a sinister smile. “Or should I say, to play the Game? And this, if I’m not mistaken, is the granddaughter of Mordecai Rad, the expert gamesman of all time—especially those having to do with theft!” His voice was getting nasty as he looked at Lily with his hateful black eyes.
“She’s also the niece of your ‘business associate’ Llewellyn, who introduced us,” I told him. “Just what part does he play in this game?”
“How did you enjoy meeting Mokhfi Mokhtar?” said El-Marad. “It was she who sent you on the little mission you’ve just returned from, if I’m not mistaken?” He reached out and removed a matchstick from the top row, then nodded for me to make a move.
“She sends you her regards,” I told him, taking two sticks from the next row. My mind was on a thousand things, but somewhere in the back I was looking at this game we were playing—the game of Nim. There were five rows of sticks, with one stick on the top and each row having one more than the row above. What was it that reminded me of something? Then I knew.
“Me?” said El-Marad, a bit uncomfortably, I thought. “Surely you’re mistaken.”
“You’re the White King, aren’t you?” I said calmly, watching his leathery skin grow pale. “She’s got your number, bub. I’m surprised you’d leave those mountains where you were so safe, to make a trip like this—plopped out on the board and running for cover. It was a bad move.”
Lily was staring at me as El-Marad swallowed, looked down, then took another match from the pile. Suddenly she squeezed me under the table. She’d understood what I was up to.
“You made the wrong move there, too,” I told him, pointing at the matches. “I’m a computer expert, and this game of Nim is a binary system. That means there’s a formula for winning or losing. And I’ve just won.”