The Defector Read Free

last thing on his mind.
     
     
     
     
     
     
    THE MATCH was scheduled for half past six at the club’s usual venue, the Lower Vestry House of St. George’s Church in Bloomsbury. Simon Finch, Grigori’s opponent, arrived at a quarter past. Shaking the rainwater from his oilskin coat, he squinted at a trio of notices tacked to the bulletin board in the foyer. One forbade smoking, another warned against blocking the corridor in case of fire, and a third, hung by Finch himself, pleaded with all those who used the premises to recycle their rubbish. In the words of George Mercer, club captain and six-time club champion, Finch was “a Camden Town crusty,” bedecked with all the required political convictions of his tribe. Free Palestine. Free Tibet. Stop the Genocide in Darfur. End the War in Iraq. Recycle or Die. The only cause Finch didn’t seem to believe in was work. He described himself as “a social activist and freelance journalist,” which Clive Atherton, the club’s reactionary treasurer, accurately translated as “layabout and sponge.” But even Clive was the first to admit that Finch possessed the loveliest of games: flowing, artistic, instinctive, and ruthless as a snake. “Simon’s costly education wasn’t a total waste,” Clive was fond of saying. “Just misapplied.”
    His surname was a misnomer, for Finch was long and languid, with limp brown hair that hung nearly to his shoulders and wire-rimmed spectacles that magnified the resolute gaze of a revolutionary. To the bulletin board he added a fourth item now—a fawning letter from the Regent Hall Church thanking the club for hosting the first annual Salvation Army chess tournament for the homeless—then he drifted down the narrow corridor to the makeshift cloakroom, where he hung his coat on the rollaway rack. In the kitchenette, he deposited twenty pence in a giant piggy bank and drew a cup of tepid coffee from a silver canister marked CHESS CLUB. Young Tom Blakemore—a misnomer as well, for Young Tom was eighty-five in the shade—bumped into him as he was coming out. Finch seemed not to notice. Interviewed later by a man from MI5, Young Tom said he had taken no offense. After all, not a single member of the club gave Finch even an outside chance of winning the cup. “He looked like a man being led to the gallows,” said Young Tom. “The only thing missing was the black hood.”
    Finch entered the storage cabinet and from a row of sagging shelves collected a board, a box of pieces, an analog tournament clock, and a score sheet. Coffee in one hand, match supplies carefully balanced in the other, he entered the vestry’s main room. It had walls the color of mustard and four grimy windows: three peering onto the pavements of Little Russell Street and a fourth squinting into the courtyard. On one wall, below a small crucifix, was the tournament bracket. One match remained to be played: S. FINCH VS. G. BULGANOV.
    Finch turned and surveyed the room. Six trestle tables had been erected for the evening’s play, one reserved for the championship, the rest for ordinary matches—“friendlies,” in the parlance of the club. A devout atheist, Finch chose the spot farthest from the crucifix and methodically prepared for the contest. He checked the tip of his pencil and wrote the date and the board number on the score sheet. He closed his eyes and saw the match as he hoped it would unfold. Then, fifteen minutes after taking his seat, he looked up at the clock: 6:42. Grigori was late. Odd, thought Finch. The Russian was never late.
    Finch began moving pieces in his mind—saw a king lying on its side in resignation, saw Grigori hanging his head in shame—and he watched the relentless march of the clock.
    6:45 . . . 6:51 . . . 6:58 . . .
    Where are you, Grigori? he thought. Where the hell are you?
     
     
     
     
     
     
    ULTIMATELY, Finch’s role would be minor and, in the opinion of all involved, mercifully brief. There were some who wanted to have a