Grandmaster by David Klass Read Free Book Online

bravely to his own execution. Seeing Dad on his knees, retching his guts out, had made me realize for the first time how torturous this must be for him. “Are you sure you’re really okay?” I asked. “Because if you’re sick and need to pull out of the tournament, I’m sure they’ll understand.”
    “I’m sure they won’t understand,” he told me as we left our suite. “We’re in this now, Daniel, and the only thing to do is to keep going forward. Ours is not to reason why; ours is just to do and die.” He raised his right fist and rapped firmly on the Kinneys’ door.
    Brad opened the door. “You’re late, Patzer-face.” Then he saw my dad and said, “Oh…”
    “I’m Grandmaster Patzer-face,” my father told him, holding out his right hand. “And let me guess. You must be our team captain.”
    “We don’t have a team captain,” Brad replied, looking a little uncomfortable as he shook my father’s hand.
    “We do now,” Dad told him. “I’m appointing you captain. Which means you’re in charge of team morale and making sure that all team members treat one another with the proper respect. Got it? ”
    Brad looked like he was on the verge of saying something rude back to my father, but then his own dad appeared behind him.
    “You’re seven minutes late, Morris,” Mr. Kinney scolded.
    “Yes, well, I was strategizing and working on that team prayer, and I also had to puke,” my father told him.
    For a moment, the hedge fund king was knocked off balance. “What? Are you okay?”
    “Never better,” Dad told him, walking by him into their suite. “Where’s the rest of our team?”
    “Over here, behind the couch,” a voice shouted.
    We stepped to the long leather couch and saw that behind it Eric Chisolm and his father were doing sit-ups. Dr. Chisolm was a wiry man with closely cropped graying hair and no visible body fat. “One hundred and ninety-nine, two hundred,” he counted and stood up.
    Eric stayed on his back on the rug.
    “You must be Morris Pratzer,” the spry doctor said. “Sam Chisolm. My son and I were just doing our cardio warm-up sets. Stand up, Eric.”
    Eric was still lying on his back, holding his abdomen and breathing hard. Watching father and son, I started to suspect that Eric was the school’s biggest overachiever because his father was the world’s biggest ballbuster.
    “Don’t let us stop you,” Dad said.
    “We’re done,” the surgeon assured him, taking his own pulse. “Two hundred really gets the blood flowing. On your feet, son. Get vertical.”
    Eric struggled to his knees, looking as if his large intestine had been ripped out.
    “Here’s your kit,” Randolph Kinney said, hurrying up to us and handing out canvas tote bags. “I had an assistant at my firm put this together for us. Team shirts, score pads, pencils, bottled water.”
    I took out the shirt. It said MIND CRIPPLERS . I pulled it on over my shirt, and my dad and I exchanged looks.
    “We didn’t come here to meet future pen pals,” Mr. Kinney told us, picking up on our dubious expressions. “We came to conquer.”
    I glanced at my dad. He shared the belief that chess was war. He should have been nodding. Instead, he was watching Brad’s dad carefully.
    “There are more than four hundred players in this tournament,” Mr. Kinney continued. “Seventy-two teams—and at the end there will be one left standing. That one team will be us. We need to start fast and come away from the first round with five points. Anything less will be unacceptable .”
    “Six points would be even better,” Dr. Chisolm chipped in. “Even though only five will count. There’s medical evidence that winning is addictive. Let’s learn to expect success.”
    Mr. Kinney nodded. “Expect success. I like that. Let’s make it our team motto.” He glanced at his expensive watch. “Seventeen minutes till start time. We’ve got to head down soon. Grandmaster, please deliver the Mind Cripplers’ team