Free Checkmate in Amber by Matilde Asensi Page B

already put the message I was waiting for in clear: ‘-
IRC, #Chess, 09:30h, pass: Govinda. Roi
-’. Automatically, I glanced at my watch. It was eight-thirty in the morning. I still had time to go for a run, so I threw on a T-shirt, put on my sweatpants and training shoes and hit the street. With the fresh morning air bringing me to life, I left the walled city through the gate by the church of San Vicente and headed left towards the Adaja Bridge. I still didn’t feel tired, although the deafening noise of traffic was starting to bother me, not to mention the sky clouding over and going greyer by the minute. I reached the Cuatro Postes monument - where it was said that Saint Teresa had been detained as a girl, to prevent her escape into Moorish territory to the south, searching for martyrdom. I stopped there for a moment, still jogging up and down to keep my rhythm going, and took a last look at the view over the city from on high, before heading back the way I came and re-entering the old town through the gate on Calle Conde Don Ramón.
    At the appointed time, all wrapped up in my bathrobe and still drying my hair with a towel, I sat myself down at my desk again and connected to IRC. Once on the Undernet, I routed and re-routed my way around the world as usual, changing my ID as I went. This time my redirect mode sent me through Pensacola and Singapore, and I arrived at #Chess with all my phony data in Mandarin Chinese. I had to reconfigure my keyboard so that I could type in ‘Govinda’ without freezing the PC. As ever, there was Roi, already waiting for the rest of us.
    ‘Good morning, Peón. You slept well, I hope.’
    Just remembering the horde of blue-eyed toddlers that had plagued my dreams sent a shiver down my spine.
    ‘Good morning, Roi. No, as a matter of fact I had a terrible night. Are we all getting together or is it just the two of us?’
    ‘All of us except our broker, Rook. He is already hard at work in the City.’
    The European stock exchanges had recently crashed in one of the worst financial crises in history. So Rook was working overtime trying to recover his losses. But what with runaway Japanese deflation, the devaluation of the Russian rouble and the weakness of the economic recovery in Latin America, most of the big hitters were still reluctant to put their money back into the market.
    ‘So tell me: how is your aunt?’ Roi asked me, rapidly changing the subject. Rook - our Castle - was Roi’s stockbroker in the UK and thinking about the crisis probably put him into a cold sweat.
    ‘The same as ever. Ruling her monastery with a rod of iron.’
    ‘What a fine woman,’ he said, an admiring note in his voice. I had always suspected that something had gone on between Juana and Roi in the past, but unfortunately I’d never been able to confirm my suspicions. ‘Give her a big hug from me next time you see her.’
    ‘I will, I promise.’
    The others soon began to appear online and the meeting quickly got underway. Cavalo and Läufer greeted me warmly and congratulated me on my German success. Läufer was hell-bent on giving everybody a step-by-step account of my ‘brilliant performance’, but luckily Roi stepped in and firmly called him to order. Heinz’s keyboard was still out of whack, of course, and he happily deafened us with his shouting.
    ‘CAVALO, I DELIVERED THAT
MÄRKLIN
PIECE TO PEÓN JUST AS WE ARRANGED.’
    ‘Right, so how can I get it to you, Cavalo?’ I asked. The truth was that it had completely slipped my mind. It was lying around somewhere in my bedroom closet.
    ‘There’s no hurry. We’ll fix to meet up one of these days, OK?’
    ‘Great,’ I answered. He certainly didn’t need to twist my arm on that one.
    ‘Have you all looked at the photographs that I sent you?’ Roi butted in, bringing us back to business.
    We all replied in the affirmative.
    ‘Any useful comments on this strange painting?’
    For a brief moment, nothing new appeared on screen.
    ‘Fine.