Satan's Spy (The Steve Church saga Book 2) André Gallo (top 100 books of all time checklist TXT) 📖

in confusion at Hill then at Mousavi. “Yes, I do. However, there are many people I’ve met whose names I don’t know, waiters, taxi drivers. There was one person, a guide, who wanted to show me the wonderful culture of Iran, and he might have said Bahai, but I frankly was not listening very closely. The lights had gone out at my hotel, and I was out in front getting a breath of air. I didn’t go anywhere with him, and I don’t know his name.”

Mousavi glanced back at his aide questioningly and looked back to Steve, “You deny having contact with Kanjani?”

“I had no more contact with any Baha’i than a white pawn with a black pawn on your chess board.” He paused, looked down an instant, and, pointing toward the door, said, “I’m sorry but I have to ask you. Isn’t that the start of the Sicilian Defense? If I were white, I might have stopped the game too.”

He smiled, feeling everyone’s eyes on him at this non-sequitur, sensing that he would now be throw out of the country not for contacts with the Baha’i but for insubordination, or for breaking diplomatic protocol, or simply for making a dumb statement to a minister.

There was a pause in the room as everyone held their breaths. Then Mousavi chuckled, and the others joined him, but not any louder than Mousavi who said, “Yes, Mr. Breton. I see you play chess. Yes, that is the Sicilian Defense, Pawn to Queen Bishop’s fourth, my favorite opening when I play black. You must go to our National Museum. You will learn that chess was invented in Iran.”

He held a hand up as if to stop any protest. “Yes, I know, some claim India. That is not true. The rook got its name from the Senmuru, the mystical Iranian bird, a gigantic creature that could carry off a camel or an elephant. The Arabs borrowed it in their tales and called it a Rukh. Also, ‘checkmate’ is English for shāh māt, or frozen king. The French call it mat.”

The lighter had made its way from Mousavi’s hand to his desk, and the minister was more animated than at any time since the Canadians had entered his office. He continued, “The first chess pieces artifacts were found in what is now Eastern Iran, near Baluchistan. The oldest chess pieces are in a museum in Samarkand, which was then under Persian culture and pre-date any evidence of chess in India by at least four hundred years.”

Mousavi stood and everyone followed suit. “Give the name of your company to my aide.” He walked toward the chess table with Steve and said, “Giuoco Siciliano. You are white, what is your next move?”

Steve looked at the board for an instant trying to remember anything from the summer in Moldova when Kristina had taught him to play. Then he took the King’s Knight and moved it to Bishop’s third. “I haven’t played in a long time,” he said apologetically.

Mousavi smiled again, “Tut tut. That is the old move. Modern players prefer Pawn to Queen’s fourth, or even Pawn to King Bishop’s fourth.”

Mousavi turned to the ambassador, “Mr. Hill, thank you for your visit. You will hear from me soon, I promise.”

Back in the car, Ambassador Hill asked, “Mr. Breton, allow me to call you Christopher, I thought for a second we were all going to be thrown out, not only from his office but from the country. That was quite a gamble, or should I say a gambit. How did you come by this expertise?”

“I wasn’t sure myself where this was going to go, frankly. Sorry about that. I just reacted to that chess board by the door. After my Master’s at ULB, the Université Libre de Bruxelles, I worked for NATO in Brussels, and then I was sent to Moldova to open the NATO office under the Partners for Peace program. That’s where I met Kristina, a Russian girl. Her father had been a chess master. She taught me the game.”

Mulcahy said, “And that’s not all I bet.”

“Well, live-in teachers are definitely best.”

Steve looked out the car window and hoped that he would be allowed to experience the horrific Tehran traffic a while longer.

* **

When Steve returned to his hotel room and poured himself a glass of water, his hands were shaking. It wasn’t until he looked for a clean shirt that he realized that his room had been searched by someone who didn’t bother to conceal his interest. The room search had taken place when he was at the ministry, still on the short list to be hustled out. The search was probably to find confirming evidence of interference. Or perhaps this was an uncoordinated event by cops checking out a new arrival in town. If so, it was more of a warning signal than a search, Steve concluded.

 

20. Washington: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Deuel and LaFont arrived at the Capitol in a black CIA car with darkened windows and a guard in the front passenger seat. The clandestine service’s Near East Division Chief Morris Radu and the head of CIA’s Office of Congressional Affairs Richard Montgomery, an experienced operations officer and a devoted fan of Kansas University basketball, preceded the limousine with another guard in the front.

As the group entered the Capitol Visitor Center on their way to the spacious underground meeting room, simply called a SCIF by those in the know, for the unwieldy bureaucratic term “Sensitive and Compartmented Information Facility”, Dorothea Langdon, from California, the Majority Leader and Chairwoman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Fred Warner, from West Virginia, the committee’s minority ranking member, left the House Visitor Center Room HVC 304, the committee’s home base in the building, and also headed for the SCIF where guards checked clearances and badges before collecting cell phones and other personal electronic