But she had no time for lamenting. She picked up the phone and dialed a fourteen-digit number.
“Mr. Jay,” she said. “I assume you heard about the Chessmaster.”
“I did, and I don’t like it.” The answer came in low tone on the phone.
“Let me guess. You don’t like it because we don’t know who he really is?”
“That’s exactly it. I’ve never heard of a Chessmaster in Wonderland. True, Lewis had been obsessed with chess after visiting Russia, where he invented the famous zashchishchaiushchikhsya None Fu move, but he never revealed the Chessmaster’s identity.”
“Not even in Alice Through the Looking Glass?”
“I’m sure not.”
“So, all we know is that the Chessmaster knows what the Six Keys are for?”
“That’s all Lewis mentioned in his diaries, but I’m starting to doubt that. I’m not sure.”
“If I may ask, Sir,” the Queen said. “Aren’t you supposed to know what the keys are for?”
“Of course I do - so do you and most of those interested in the Wonderland Wars.”
“So why is the Chessmaster important. We can nuke him like we did Hiroshima when you advised the Americans to do so, and get rid of him. I know we’d lose the world leaders, but I’ve already planted their substitutes of my mad men all over the world. We could rule the world tomorrow afternoon.”
“It’s not about knowing what the keys’ ultimate purpose is – we both know what that is. The problem is what do they open to get to our ultimate purpose.”
“Ah.” The Queen scratched her head. “So even knowing their location now isn’t enough, because we don’t know where to stick them.”
“Stick them, yes,” Mr. Jay sounded irritated with her. “Call me when you know something. I have other concerns at the moment.”
“Really?”
“Someone kidnapped Alice on her way to my castle, and I need to know who he is, then get her back.”
Chapter 9
Lifespan Hospice, London.
After the Dude drives me to The Pillar’s location, he guns the Corvette into the streets and disappears, leaving me with my mouth agape, staring at the hospice where I am supposed to find The Pillar.
I enter, not sure what The Pillar is doing here, so I ask the receptionist about him.
“Oh, Mr. Pillar,” she cheers. “Such a charming man. He is in Ward Six.”
“Charming indeed,” I mumble, a little envious of everyone finding him so, not pointing out that he is utterly bonkers – and a serial killer.
Inside, I try to smile at everyone I pass by in the rooms. I mean what consolation can you give to a dying person, though I totally respect the work done here.
Then, there I find him, in Ward Six. He is standing on top of a patient’s bed, dancing with his cane up in the air and the hookah in his other hand. I can’t hear what he’s saying, since I am behind a looking glass. But I can surely see what the other patients are doing.
They are simply dancing as well, half of them smoking hookahs — and coughing ferociously afterwards.
I rap on the glass but no one’s paying attention. The Pillar’s dance moves are imitated by each person in the room, all of them standing on their beds.
Pushing the glass door open, the first sound that attacks my ears is a well-known song, booming out of an 80’s cassette player that most youngsters of my generation only see in old movies. The player is crackling with the badly equalized version of Don’t Fear the Reaper.
I call out for The Pillar, but still no one pays attention. Everyone is dancing and smoking as if they’re reckless teenagers with no respect for what time does to us in this world. None of them look like they’re dying soon actually.
“Listen. Listen!” The Pillar waves at them. “We’ve danced enough.
“No!” They pout.
“Seriously,” he coughs with beady eyes. “I need to tell you something.”
“That you’re handsome?” An old woman, who’d ripped off her IV from her arm, giggles.
“Thank you, darling, but I already know that,” he says. “What I want to tell you is a phrase, which I want you to repeat whenever you feel your time has come and that you’re about to die.”
The room falls silent, even the song ends on its own.
“Don’t worry,” The Pillar tells them. “When death comes creeping up to your bed, under the sheets, telling you it’s time, all you have to say is the following…”
The patient’s eyes are all on him.
“You say ‘I will die when I say so’,” The Pillar says, and I feel embarrassed. The man must have smoked too much and now is only talking nonsense.
But the patients surprise me by loving it. They all start saying, ‘I’ll die when I say so!’
Rolling my eyes, I pull at The Pillar’s trousers while he is standing on the bed. He kicks me off, grunting, “What do you want? Get out of here.”
“Seriously?” I say. “This Chessmaster is threatening to kill the leaders of the world and you’re playing games with those poor people?”
“He isn’t fooling us,” the old woman glares at me. “Carter is one of us. He knows how we feel.”
I shrug, speechless, unable to comment. What does she mean? Is The Pillar dying?
“Wait outside, Alice,” The Pillar intervenes before I get a chance to ask. “You have no idea what’s going on.”
Chapter 10
Outside the Lifespan Hospice, London.
“What was that all about?” I ask The Pillar, once he walks outside on the pavement.
“What?” He shakes his shoulders, pacing ahead.
“You’re deluding people by promising them they can stand in the face of death. I find it unethical.”
“Unethical?” He rolls his eyes. “I’m sure death is pretty unethical, too.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Fight unethical with unethical,” he tells me. “Or better, fight death with nonsense. Laugh at it. I’m pretty sure Einstein said that.”
“I’m sure he didn’t. And what did the woman mean by saying you’re one of them?”
“Forget about it, Alice.”
“I want to know,” I grab his arm, stopping him. “Are you dying?”
The Pillar shoots me a flat stare. It’s the one he uses to conceal a big secret. I know him well enough to tell by now.
“Pillar,” I say gently. “If you’re dying, you have to tell me. Is it that skin issue you have?”
“Someone is going to kill me.” He knocks his cane once on the ground, his face strangely unreadable.
“Are you psychic now, knowing someone is going to kill you?”
“I’ve seen it in the future.” His chin is up, avoiding my eyes.
The realization strikes me hard. “Is that why you were the same age when we time travelled in the future? Because you weren’t supposed to be there?” I cup my hands on my mouth. God, The Pillar will be dead fourteen years from now.
“I saw my grave, Alice.”
“And it said you were killed, not a normal death?”
The Pillar nods, though I still feel he isn’t telling me the whole truth.
“So you feel like you basically belong in the hospice, waiting for your death? That’s not like you.”
His flat expression lasts a whole minute, torturing me with his silence, as I fail to read his mind. It ends with him walking away toward the street.
“Where are you going?”
The Pillar doesn’t answer but stops at a café a little later. I stop next to him, watching the café’s TV broadcasting the latest news about the incident in Russia. The host comments on the Pope’s bad moves in the game and that he may be the next to die. The screen shows the world leaders sweating at their chessboards, most of them having played two moves out of the seven. Most of them have also sipped that poison that might eventually kill them.