Grandmaster by David Klass Read Free Book Online Page B

feet like a mountain goat leaping off a rock. “No doubt about it, family love is the most important thing here. Now come on, Eric. Let’s go slaughter them!”

 
    9
     
    The elevator doors opened to a mob scene. We stepped out onto the common area of the tournament floor where a crowd was clustered around large pairings sheets taped to the walls. Nervous fathers and sons jostled one another to try to get close enough to read what board they’d been assigned to and who they were supposed to play.
    I wormed my way forward and finally made it close enough to find my name. This tournament would follow the Swiss System—in every round players would be matched against opponents who had the same win-loss record. In the first round, since everyone had zero wins and zero losses, higher-rated players had been matched against lower-rated ones. I was supposed to play a guy named Liu Hong, who was rated more than three hundred points higher than me and who would most probably crush me.
    I scanned the list for my dad’s name and saw that he was matched against an expert named Marciano on board three. Experts are rated just below masters—which means they really know what they’re doing. A grandmaster wouldn’t normally have much trouble beating an expert, but I wondered how Dad would fare in such a tough first game after not playing for three decades.
    I forced my way out of the scrum and looked around for my father. He had wandered over to where the tournament rankings were posted. A series of computer printouts listed all four hundred and thirty-two players in order of their Chess Federation ratings, from highest to lowest. At the very top were five grandmasters. Morris W. Pratzer—with an asterisk next to his name because he hadn’t played for so long—was third, beneath Grandmaster Salvador Sanchez and Grandmaster George Liszt. I was ranked near the bottom, but there were several dozen players beneath me. Most of those players were just starting out and didn’t yet have ratings.
    Dad didn’t notice me walk up—he was studying the printout intently. I stepped next to him. “You’re pretty high up there, Killer.”
    He shrugged. “Don’t get hung up on ratings…”
    “By God, is that you, Morry?” a deep voice boomed from behind us. I turned and saw a burly man in what looked like a red flannel hunter’s shirt, with an untrimmed black beard that tumbled to his chest. Everything about him was big, from his loud voice to his ponderous stomach to his hands that seemed as large as baseball mitts. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw your name. But it really is you, isn’t it? I figured you had died back in the nineties.”
    “Hello, George,” my father said, and I noticed that despite the fact that they obviously knew each other from long ago, neither of them seemed inclined to shake hands.
    “And this must be your son.”
    “Daniel, this is George Liszt. An old…” My father searched for the right word.
    “Rival?” the big man suggested with a slight smile. “And admirer. I was always a big fan of your father’s, Daniel.” He smiled at me, but it was an ironic smile, as if he was signaling to me that his words had a hidden and quite opposite meaning. “He was the best of us,” Grandmaster Liszt told me. “No one ever played like him … with such all-consuming zeal…”
    “Enough, George,” my father warned. “Where’s your own son?”
    “Already at his board,” Liszt said. “At least I hope he is. His teammates call him the ‘Ghost’ because he’s impossible to find between rounds. He’s addicted to all sports and he just sits in our bedroom flipping through sports channels…”
    A buzzer sounded from inside the ballroom, and a voice announced over loudspeakers: “Round one will begin in five minutes. Chess players, find your boards.”
    My father put his arm around my shoulder. “Come.”
    We had to walk around the walrus of a grandmaster to get to the ballroom doors, and for a