Back Channel: A novel Read online

  “Yes, Bobby, but this is different—”

  He had found the game he wanted and was moving the pieces, very fast. “If it’s so important, you go. You can tell me about it tomorrow.”

  III

  Agatha had a map. She marked the location of the restaurant, then had Margo write in her own hand the name, in English block capitals, painstakingly misspelled.

  “Just in case,” said Agatha.

  “In case what?”

  The minder shrugged. They were standing in the surf once more, slacks rolled up to their knees. “The map is camouflage. If you have the map, if you’re constantly reading street signs, it’s evidence that you’re just a tourist.”

  “Does anybody suspect I’m not?” asked Margo, suddenly chilly, and not because of the waves. “What if the whole thing is a trap?”

  “The whole thing might well be a trap.”

  “What am I supposed to do in that case?”

  “That’s what Bobby is for. The Bulgarians wouldn’t dare arrest him. Their own chess fans would riot.” Agatha smiled. “Bobby is your protection, Margo.”

  “I thought I was escorting him, not the other way around.”

  “And I thought by now you understood. You’re the one who’s going to carry the message. You’re the one who matters. Bobby’s a lunatic. His only function in the entire operation is to be at your side so that nobody will touch you.”

  Margo stared. “When were you planning to tell me this?”

  The smile never wavered. “I just did.”

  “Bobby is my protection. Not the other way around.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So—what do I do if he won’t go tonight?”

  Agatha’s watchful brown eyes apologized. “You’re a woman,” she murmured, in eerie echo of Stilwell’s taunts back in Ithaca. “Persuade him.”

  IV

  Margo had seen quite a bit of Varna. In the mornings, while Bobby slept in or studied his chess, she spent the hours wandering the town, especially the older parts, the churches and monasteries and even occasional castles that had survived war, pestilence, and socialism—to say nothing of ordinary plunder, for the stone for many of the buildings constructed in the past half-century came from demolishing walls and bridges and even palaces in disused corners of the city. She had seen Euxinograd Palace, with its magnificent gardens, and the dank caves in the hills above the city, where aging monks guarded manuscripts and relics said to unlock the secrets of the universe. She had tried to attend Sunday services at the Dormition of the Theotokos Cathedral but had been prevented by the usher for reasons he had not seen fit to put into English, so she contented herself instead with taking photographs of the golden domes with her Kodak Instamatic. Another time, she went to one of the city’s handful of private vineyards, where the proprietors were so delighted to see an American that they piled her with bottles to take home. Untouched, the bottles sat in the hotel room, although, on Agatha’s advice, she had doled out a couple to the staff.

  Sometimes Agatha joined her on these little jaunts. Margo’s only other company was a young fellow in a red leather jacket, who materialized whenever she headed into town. He rode a motorcycle and managed constantly to stay on her tail. Even when she sauntered through an alley, he would show up at the other end. She was careful to keep looking at him; and never to try to escape him.

  They will watch you night and day, Harrington had warned. That’s their beastly way, my dear. There’s no time to train you in techniques for losing surveillance, and even if we did, your newfound abilities would only make you stand out. This way, it isn’t personal. They think every Westerner is a spy, poor lambs. The more nervous you are around them, the more they’ll be sure you’re the rare one who isn’t.

  The Bulgarians were fascinated by her blackness, particularly once they learned that she was not African—she was of the branch enslaved rather than colonized by the capitalists. People came up to her in the street to ask innocently aggressive questions about America: What was it like to live in a country ruled by the Central Intelligence Agency? Was it true that millionaires could have their servants flogged, or were they simply thrown in prison these days? Once a prosperous-looking family commanded her disdainfully to pose with them for a photograph, snapped by a stylish woman holding a Kodak camera that looked suspiciously like the one stolen from her hotel room the day before. But when she tried to inquire, the family’s English, theretofore quite serviceable, deserted them.

  Still, Margo loved the city. She adored the architecture and the art. The people were friendly despite the weight of history, for this was a land whose polyglot culture stood as testimony to its frequent occupation over the past thousand years by larger powers. And there was something else. During World War II, Bulgaria, under Tsar Boris III, had been one of the Axis powers. Following the Nazi lead, the country had enacted severe restrictions on its Jewish population, limiting everything from property rights to education to permissible names. But, unlike other Axis countries, Bulgaria had refused Nazi demands to send its Jews to the camps. Forty-eight thousand Jews lived in Bulgaria when the war began; nearly all of them survived the Holocaust.

  The Bulgarians at their best were a brave and charitable people; Margo would be counting on those qualities tonight.

  V

  Bobby proved unbudgeable.

  It was nearly nine, and time to leave. Margo had been waiting outside Bobby’s room when he arrived from the first session of the game with Botvinnik. He didn’t look so much at her as through her, and when he opened the door, he seemed surprised that she followed him in.

  “Go away.”

  “The interview, Bobby. It’s at ten. We have to hurry.”

  “Interview?” He was setting up the adjourned position on one of the boards. “You’re out of your mind. Go away. I have to analyze.”

  “Bobby—”

  “There isn’t time for this!”

  She fought the urge to grind her teeth. “We have to go, Bobby. This is why we’re here.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. I’m here to play chess, and I have to analyze. This is Botvinnik. The world champion.” Throwing up his hands. “Why are women so stupid?”

  “This is important—”

  “So is this.” Waving a wild hand at the board. “I’m a pawn up, but he’s just sitting there, so confident. I don’t think I missed anything—I think I win—but I don’t know for sure until I study it. That’s why the meeting is tonight. I told you. They don’t want me to analyze the position. They’re trying to cheat me, the way they cheated me in Curaçao!”

  She tried womanly persuasion, just as Agatha had suggested; she just didn’t know how it was done, and had always looked down on those who did. She tried every line that popped into her head: Come on, Bobby.… We can have a nice dinner, Bobby.… We’ll get to spend time together, Bobby.… Don’t you want to take a night off, Bobby? None of it did any good. Either she wasn’t very good at this, or Bobby was unpersuadable.

  She returned to her room alone.

  “Then you go,” said Agatha.

  “What?”

  “You meet the interviewer yourself.” Pointing at the walls. “At least you can find out what questions he wants to ask Bobby. Maybe arrange another time for him and Bobby to get together.”

  Margo was already shaking her head. “I can’t go to the meeting by myself. You said it yourself. Bobby is my”—she almost slipped and said protection, but she saw Agatha’s stony expression, and the discipline of the past week held—“he’s the reason I’m here. I’ve been touring the city by myself for days. I’m not all that interested in going out at night alone.”

  “This is why you’re here, Margo. To make things easier … for Bobby.” Dissembling for the microphones. “That’s your mission, and you have to carry out your mission. Tonight. This is it, honey. The big leagues.”

  Margo swallowed. Hard. “Can you come with me?”

  “Sorry, honey. I can’t. I have other plan
s.” The minder leaned forward and murmured in her ear, “You won’t see me, but I’ll stay as close as I can.”

  VI

  She took the tram—watching the streets and consulting the map, because that was what a tourist would do, but also because she had no idea where she was going. Her fellow passengers crowded close to try out their English and to find out whether black people smelled different, and a boy with quick fingers would certainly have lifted her wallet had not a snarling old woman slapped his wrist and waved her cane in menace. A thirtyish man in a leather jacket scolded the boy, then smacked his cheek with a newspaper.

  “Thief,” he explained to Margo. His hair was very blond, almost platinum.

  She had figured that part out for herself.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Bad thief,” the man answered.

  The boy got off at the next stop. The blond man moved farther down the tram. The old woman smiled an apology. Margo smiled back. The old woman reached into her cloak and pulled out a little notebook that she flashed furtively, turning her broad back to screen the move from the other passengers. Margo expected an introduction to the black market, or perhaps even a whispered code word, but what the old woman waved before her eyes was instead a picture of John Kennedy, snipped from a postcard. She pointed to the photo, then, still smiling, pointed to her heart.

  Margo nodded. “I like him, too.”

  The old woman beamed, and the notebook disappeared.

  “Your stop,” grunted the blond man in the leather jacket.

  “Thank you,” said Margo.

  But he had gone back to his newspaper.

  She stepped down onto the cobblestones and consulted the map. She was in front of a church, across from a housing block. The street was in shadow. Half the street lamps were out. Cars were jammed everywhere, most of them battered. A stone memorial celebrated some act of wartime heroism, but the lettering on the plaque was Cyrillic. She walked down what seemed to be the right street, ignoring the whispered invitations from the darkness that sounded the same in any language. She was scared to death and determined not to falter. The desire to look around for her minder presented a constant temptation. She was furious at Bobby, but at everybody else, too. She was so lonely at this moment that she would have welcomed even the boy on the motorcycle: would have bought him a drink, kissed him, slept with him, married him, had eight children for him, done whatever he wanted, in return for the briefest glimpse of a familiar face. But she kept checking the map and kept on walking. She wanted Harrington to be proud of her; and Agatha; and Nana, too.

  It occurred to Margo that she did not know what the contact looked like, or how she would recognize him. But there couldn’t be too many young black women in Varna just now, and photographs of her strolling the beach with Bobby Fischer had been in the papers.

  She hoped Nana never saw those.

  Two blocks on, she found the address. She maneuvered between the triple-parked cars toward the restaurant. The building looked to be two hundred years old, and the windows were high and narrow, as if to provide lines of fire against the hordes, but the door was open, and loud music, some sort of folk tune, was spilling out, along with several drunks.

  It was not a part of the city that drew the tourists.

  On the sidewalk, she hesitated. Agatha had promised to stay close, and this time Margo could not resist a quick look, but when she scanned the street she saw no sign of the prim little minder. Margo told herself that not seeing Agatha was better than seeing her, because it meant that the minder was good at her job. Thinking about Agatha gave her the courage she needed just now, not least because she was pretty sure that the man with the blond hair and leather jacket hadn’t been on the tram when the other passengers were helping her with the map, and therefore couldn’t possibly have heard her mention her destination.

  “Keep moving,” she whispered.

  She stepped inside, and it was every cheap after-hours restaurant in the world: bad lighting, decrepit wallpaper, a grimy bar, a very loud, very bored combo, playing dreary music to which nobody would ever dance. A clutch of heavily painted women off to the side looked her over and evidently decided that she was competition, because they began whispering and pointing. A grubby little man in a dirty shirt bustled over and tested her Bulgarian, then her German, then a couple of other languages she couldn’t identify. He was unable to make heads or tails of her schoolroom French, so she tried English.

  “I’m meeting someone,” she said, slowly. “I just want a quiet table.”

  He frowned and gestured to one of the girls, for whom Margo repeated her request. After a bit of puzzling and dumb show, they reached vague if general agreement, and the little man sat her up front, near the band, where she couldn’t hear herself think. A waiter slapped a badly printed menu on the table and vanished. A beer arrived, although she hadn’t ordered one, and when she looked up, a very broad man over at the bar was smiling at her and lifting his own bottle.

  Not the kind of contact she was looking for, she reflected as he eased his bulk in her direction; but any port in a storm.

  “You are Ethiopian?” he demanded, seating himself without quite being asked. His necktie was askew; his eyes were very wet. “Studying at the university, right? No? Kenyan? Dominican? Ghanaian? They say the women from Ghana are very beautiful, and you are very beautiful.”

  “American,” she said.

  “And you come here? Why?”

  “I’m meeting someone.”

  “You have a boyfriend? A husband?”

  She shook her head, frantic now. “No, no, I’m meeting a—a journalist.”

  “And you come alone? To this part of town?” A laugh, loud and oppressive. “Maybe you need a protector. Maybe I wait with you. What do you say?”

  “I think I’ll be fine. Thank you.”

  “Maybe we meet this journalist together. Come on. Drink your beer. Let me order some food. What do you want? Sausage? Ham?”

  “I don’t need anything.”

  “Listen.” He bounded to his feet with improbable energy. “There’s a better place a few blocks away. Real jazz. Western-style. Meet some intellectuals. I take you there, okay?”

  “I’m fine here. Thank you.”

  “Come on. You meet some great people. Artists, writers.”

  He had a hand on her arm. She shook it off. “I’d rather stay and wait.”

  “Maybe your journalist friend will be there. Lots of Westerners.”

  “No, thank you.” Coldly now. “Please, leave me alone.”

  He marched off angrily. Three drunks playing cards at the next table raised their glasses in salute. Margo nodded back uneasily, and the men resumed their game.

  The waitress returned, and made a great show of wiping off the table, but never asked Margo what she wanted. Huffing in annoyance, the woman vanished again. Two minutes later, she showed up to wipe the table again. Margo realized that the rule was the same as in the hotel: you had to tip in advance if you wanted service. She pulled a bill from her pocket, and it must have been the right size, because the waitress picked it daintily from her palm and more or less smiled.

  “Mineral water,” Margo said.

  Another man arrived at the table, sad-faced and cadaverous, and she was about to say something rude, but there was in his posture a hint of importance, and even before he sat, she knew this was her contact—the messenger from Smyslov—the truth about Operation Anadyr and whatever was happening in Cuba—the mission that had brought her to Varna, come to life at last.

  He slid gracelessly into the seat across from her and drew up the lapels of his heavy coat as though expecting a storm. He took off his glasses and polished them on a cotton handkerchief. His eyes were red-rimmed and hunted.

  “Who are you, please?” he asked.

  “My name is Margo Jensen.”

  He glanced around the room. “I was expecting to interview Mr. Fischer. Is he here?”

  “He stayed at the hotel.”
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  “At the hotel?” The stranger’s air of disappointment intensified. He folded his arms. The thin wrists were a pasty white. “He will not be joining us?”

  “No.”

  “Did he receive the message?”

  “Yes.” She looked around, nervousness growing. “He had to study the adjourned position.”

  One of the drunks from the card game was looking their way, remarkably clear-eyed. The stranger sighed and thrust his hands into his pockets. He looked like a gambler in the movies, planning to shoot the man across the table. “Very well. You will come with me, please.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Please, miss.”

  Margo stared. And noticed that the bar had gone very quiet. The musicians had put down their instruments and, like the rest of the patrons, were busily averting their eyes. A couple of men and one of the women were standing very close, and looked not at all drunk.

  “I don’t understand. What about the interview?”

  “The interview was with Mr. Fischer. He has chosen to stay at the hotel. This was wise of him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, unlike you, Mr. Fischer is not breaking the law.” He drew his hands from his pockets, and he was not holding a gun after all, but only a wallet, which he flipped open to display a grimy photograph and several lines of Cyrillic, cheaply printed but imposing. “My name is Ignatiev. I am a colonel of the Second Head Directorate of the Darzhavna Sigurnost, tasked with protecting the security of the decent and peace-loving citizens of the Bulgarian People’s Republic against foreign spies. You are under arrest, miss.”

  The room swayed. The DS. The Committee for State Security. Agatha had told her scary jokes about it. The colonel put a steadying hand on Margo’s arm. She heard her voice, weakly, asking what she was charged with.

  “All shall be explained.”

  “I—I want to call my consulate.”

  “One shall see. You will please come with us.”