8: The Third Day: Le Directeur du Match
Late morning, Daniel and Petra each received a call from M. Étaix to come down to his office for 1.15 pm. The stated reason was to review arrangements for the final and deciding game. This was no surprise of course: media interest was now intense. Petra’s surprise win plus her glamour had captivated TV channels and major print outlets alike. There had been a steady stream of taxis and limousines arriving from the airport to the Cité de Carcassonne all morning.
The Director’s office was a small conference room off the hotel’s concourse. Daniel had been summoned fifteen minutes earlier at one o’clock to explain further his startling allegations and M. Étaix reluctantly agreed that a prima facie case had indeed been established. Daniel was feeling pleased with himself - rather vindicated - as they waited for Petra to turn up.
At the appointed time, as the quarter hour tolled on the bells of the Basilica, Petra, accompanied by her parents, knocked and entered. Her appearance was even more stunning than the previous day. She was draped in a red dress colour-coordinated with her auburn hair. One strap fell artfully off her shoulder. The weave varied in mesh across the contours of her body, both concealing and revealing. Tight and very, very short, it forced the question as to whether it might be the only garment she was wearing. And on her ears were pearl decorations, as red as the rest of her outfit.
The Director now fell to his difficult and worrisome task. It was not just that he felt personally nervous, it was also the thought that a whiff of scandal would certainly destroy this championship and ruin months of effort and the reputations of those involved: perhaps even that of France herself.
As he haltingly outlined the suggestion, the charge which had just been made, he was even half-prepared for violence from the accused’s family. He cast a cautionary look at two of his stewards and put out his hand, “If the mademoiselle could just hand over her earrings? We have machines here which can test…”
And indeed they had: electronic sniffers, portable X-ray machines and more.
Petra, her face a furious glacial white, removed the requested pieces and handed them across. Hans and Anne-Marie glared at the assembled officials as if they had never been so insulted. Her father’s bare hands were balled into fists, his aggression only restrained by iron discipline.
And Daniel? His cheeks were burning. He wished himself anywhere else in the world but here. What if he was wrong? But how could he be?
Everyone stood still as the technicians did their work. One came forward with an airport-type scanner and waved the wand all around the two contenders and Petra’s parents. But there were no lights, no beeps, no audible warnings of any kind. Finally the person who had been working the complex equipment looked up and addressed the Director.
“M. Directeur, they are all clean. As far as I can tell they are exactly how they look, a pair of rather expensive earrings.”
The Director looked at Daniel appraisingly. Daniel felt the Director's changing mood, his new assessment: Daniel Brown, the loser who accuses his victorious opponent of cheating. His world imploding, Daniel turned and bolted from the room.
Petra glared as the Director stammered his apologies, “We always have to act when accusations such as these are made…“
In a frigid voice she replied: “You keep them!”
She and her parents exited the Director’s bureau with considerably more dignity than Daniel.
9: Intermission 2
The scene earlier that morning, at 9.30 am when Daniel is playing with his chess engines trying to emulate Petra’s quirky, devastating plays.
Petra is sitting in her parents’ suite on the top floor of the hotel. The red earrings - so useful yesterday - have been comprehensively destroyed: rendered to powder, the remains flushed down the toilet. A substitute pair - red and beautiful, perfectly genuine, perfectly innocuous - await any unlikely inspection.
Anne-Marie starts the meeting with an assessment of Daniel Brown’s state of mind and likely course of action.
“He’s a classic introvert, on the spectrum. Yesterday’s events will have knocked him stupid but by now he’ll have recovered. He’ll figure out what was done to him - there were clues enough - and then he’ll complain to the authorities. We should expect a call shortly.”
Petra now listens with close attention as her father takes up the narrative.
“Here is how we do it today,” He holds up the tampon. “The communicator is embedded - no more audible cues. And no-one is going to ask to take a look.”
He smiles.
“You apply it just before the game, just before you go down. And excuse yourself afterwards and dispose of it.”
Her mother adds practically, “We’ve practiced in the past so you need no reminders. Wear plenty of perfume. That will also keep him off balance.”
Hans sums it up: “Today we go in hard.”
10: The Third Day: the Game
The Basilica has been transformed. Cables now flex across stone paving, snaking their way to TV cameras and lights. A press of observers crowds the wall at the back. Feeding an already febrile atmosphere there are new rumours of cheating: rebutted claims which make Petra a Wronged Woman. In the audience’s eyes, an audience now global, Daniel Brown’s name is already mud.
And Daniel is more sensitive than people imagine. He feels the hostility; dare he say it, the contempt of the crowd. His morale, already at rock bottom, takes a further tumble. His being is dominated by his guts which knot and writhe. He feels he cannot stay but of course he cannot flee.
He sits in the spotlights (he is as early as ever). Sits at his place by the table on the dais, and waits, unable to concentrate, battling abhorrent emotions.
Three minutes to two and Petra walks into that cavernous crowded space. She wears her vêtements du jour, that red fishnet dress already shown to the Director. She wears no earrings. At first only those near the side door spot her. They stand up to get a better view, bringing their cameras to bear. As she turns into the main aisle, advancing to the front of the assembly, awed silence accompanies her.
She daintily sits as before on the seat to the left and gives Daniel a warm, magnanimous smile. TV cameras, in extreme close-up, linger over it. Daniel’s face is turned resolutely to the board, however. The Director says a few words - Daniel will be playing black again - and the game gets underway.
A wronged Petra, an exonerated Petra, will this time show no mercy. Right from the off she plays an out-of-book opening, something only machine-chess has made possible. Tiny, exciting twinges in her abdomen instruct her: she is Leela’s slave now - and Leela is an alien.
Daniel is immediately off-balance. Normally when a player goes off-piste, ignoring the learning of centuries, they rapidly fall into error. There is a reason humans don’t do that, why those forays into novelty never made it into the book. But Leela has a different book: so much bigger and better.
In Daniel’s visual comprehension the board before him is a city experiencing an earthquake. Positions he thought secure crumble like sand; volcanoes arise on plains he thought backwaters spewing lethal ash and lava on his forces.
He is a chess grandmaster, still an excellent player. Occasionally he grits his teeth, feels his way to a killer counterblow, prepares to strike back. The audience draws in its breath; commentators murmur excitedly, the audience waits on Daniel’s move.
And Petra leans forward. Her flushed breasts, so eager to escape, settle on the table. Cameras and Daniel’s unwilling eyes cannot avoid them. Her perfume wafts across the board, assaulting his over-delicate senses.
His crystal city of abstraction collapses into fog. Pieces poised to pivot and crash through Petra’s defences are now just… pieces. He had screened out the clicking clock; the lights had long ago become invisible. But assailed by super-stimuli - and a terminal sense of his own worthlessness - his talent has fled. He looks at the board and sees it as a novice.
He stands up. Noises in the room deaden, subside to nothing: an anechoic chamber. Mechanically, he pushes his chair back and slowly walks off the dais, moves between the rows of stupefied onlookers, departs the Basilica into the afternoon sun of medieval Carcassonne, escapes into centuries of deep time and a square which knows nothing of chess.
The full story text (part two of my novel) is also available here: