The King's Gambit

By Tom Blenk

Michael Mueller has waited twenty years. He is finally the right age. He is more prepared than any player in history. All he needs is an opponent. It is time to start the game.

The Kings of New York City are dying and Michael, obsessed with Bobby Fischer and the game of chess, is killing them at specific sights on certain dates across the grid of New York City's chess board. The killer wants the ultimate match, in front of the biggest crowd, in the world's most renowned city.

New York City Homicide Detective Paul Worton has seen it all in his thirty years on the force, but when he and his squad are sent to Carnegie Hall to solve the murder of New York City Philharmonic Director Vincent Antonelli, he may have met his match. This first brutal execution blossoms into a string of sensational deaths connected by one distinct clue which signals the presence of a diabolical serial killer.

The stakes are enormous in the final game as New York City landmarks become killing grounds and pressure from the public, the media, and the top brass scream for the capture of the Chess Board Killer. In this race against time, will Worton be able to sift through the moves and counter moves and piece together enough clues to stop this psychopath, or will Mueller fulfill his dream and become the most renowned chess player of all time?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 22, 2009
• ISBN: 9781467867351

Tom Blenk

Tom Blenk is a retired postal worker from New Hampshire currently living in North Carolina. "The Ridge" is the first of two novels by Mr. Blenk, the second being "The King's Gambit" written in 2006. He lives with his wife of 52 years. He makes fudge part time at a friend's beach shop in Surf City North Carolina. In his spare time he runs a weekly trivia game at a local resturaunt, plays golf, and likes nothing better then spending time with friends and a little Captain Morgan by the firepit. Tom is a big sports and spends spare time watching and reading historical novels and documentries

Book preview

The King’s Gambit

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a novel by

Tom Blenk

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AuthorHouse™

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, companies, organizations and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously without any intent to describe their actual content.

© 2009 Tom Blenk. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 7/15/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4389-3756-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4389-3757-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-6735-1 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

The King’s Gambit

Foreword

Prologue

Game 1

July 11th

Game 2

July 13th

Game 3

July 16th

Game 4

July 20th

GAME 5

July 23rd

Game 6

July 27th

Game 7

August 3rd

Game 8

August 6th

Game 9

August 10th

Game 10

September 1st

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

This book is dedicated to the memory of my father

Robert Gerard Blenk

An Uncommon Man

The King’s Gambit 

gam’bit (gam’bit) n [F., f. Pr. cambi an exchange.] 1. A chess move or series of moves in which the first player offers to sacrifice a piece for an opponent’s piece to gain advantage in position.

Foreword 

Long before the Boys of Winter skated to immortality in the 1980 Winter Olympics, a solo American ended the Soviet Union’s dominance in a worldwide competition. In the summer of 1972, in Reykjavik, Iceland, a young American named Bobby Fischer accomplished what many thought was impossible. He handily beat long time defending World Champion Boris Spassky in the World Chess Championship. The Russians dominated the world of chess for more than a half century, and Spassky was the latest in the Soviet’s long line of world champion grandmasters. Solid, stoic, and relentless at the table, he calculated every move and never made a serious blunder. No one ever rattled him.

Fischer was no slouch. Though he had never done well in the qualifying tournaments, he dominated a who’s who of former world champions and grand masters in the 1972 qualifiers. Fischer was young, eccentric and brilliant, but he had never even won a game against the great Spassky. Most experts expected the Russian to win again.

The match drew worldwide attention. People who rarely, or never, played chess, tuned in on a nightly basis to watch chess expert Shelby Lyman move pieces on an over-sized black and white board, as cross-Atlantic calls delivered Fischer’s and Spassky’s every move. Newspapers, most notably The New York Times, allocated daily columns describing each match in detail. In the heart of The Cold War, with the race to the moon decided and the arms race in full swing, it became more than a chess game. The match became the United States versus the Soviet Union. Capitalism versus Communism. Freedom versus Imperialism. The whole world was watching.

After losing game one and forfeiting game two, Fischer dominated the rest of the match, winning five and tying three of the next eight games. With each passing day, between July 11th and September 1st, the world became more and more fascinated with the idea that young American Bobby Fischer was about to end the Russian stranglehold on the world of chess. The game of chess had entered the mainstream.

In his final column on the event, Richard Roberts of The New York Times wrote:

The world of chess suddenly found itself moved into the main arena on almost an equal billing with great political and social events. Never again would tournaments, matches, and Olympiads go back to the dim world of semi-oblivion they had long endured.

Prologue 

From the moment you start to play, the smallest error can be fatal in a top level game of chess.

Shelby Lyman

The long winding access road off highway 395 in Uncasville, Connecticut seems never-ending. The feeling is magnified by the anticipation, or anxiety, of every motorist seeking fun, food, romance, relaxation, and riches—especially riches, because in reality, no one goes to a casino without thoughts of winning.

Suddenly, the Mohegan Sun Resort rises majestically out of the darkness like Atlantis rising from the sea. The casino hotel sits in a valley of bright lights and huge structures surrounded by parking lots and garages, absorbing streams of cars like giant sponges, leaving only a trickle of traffic moving away and into the night. Casino parking is rarely a problem due to the constant turnover of winners and losers leaving in various degrees of happiness and despair.

Winter, summer, and autumn denote the three main access points for patrons entering the resort. Floor to ceiling glass doors open onto marble floors leading to The Casino of the Earth and The Casino of the Sky. These two main gaming rooms flank the Mohegan Sun Arena which serves as the ground floor of the resort’s thirty-four story luxury hotel.

A cavalcade of shops featuring everything from autographed nostalgia to Indian artwork, line both sides of the giant foyer that stretches from The Earth to The Sky. Eat in elegance at Michael Jordan’s, or catch a burger at Johnny Rocket’s Malt Shop. The choices for shopping and food along this corridor are as endless as the crowd that constantly flows back and forth across the Waterfall Bridge, from one end of the resort to the other.

In the middle of all this stands the most prominent and unique piece of art at the resort. Patrons stare at it, point at it, argue about what it is, but most importantly they use it for a point of reference or place to rendezvous. The blown glass structure of blue, green and white stands ten feet tall. It rises above a wishing well and stands in front of the majestic stone waterfall adorning the wall above Tuscany’s Restaurant.

This magnificent sculpture may represent just a splash in a well or a tempest over the ocean, but at 11:58 p.m., all it meant to the tall man dressed in black slacks and gold vest, was a halfway point between the break room and his table. Blackjack dealers get twenty minutes, and Michael was due back at midnight.

He glanced at his watch as he glided through the crowd, turning a hip or shoulder just enough to avoid contact, without breaking stride. Two minutes, perfect, he breathed to himself. He was cutting it close. Exactly as planned.

The pit bosses hated him and Hank would be worried as usual. Hank would be watching and waiting, wondering if, this time, his best dealer would be late. They were morons. He would never be late. He was just practicing. Precision and timing are the keys to the success of any plan, and his plan was about to become reality. After fourteen years, the time was almost at hand. Michael Mueller squeezed by Hank and tapped his relief on the shoulder. His watch read 11:59:58.

***

Kim Soo perched, more than sat, her hundred pound frame on a small wooden chair in the corner of her hotel room. With knees under her chin and arms wrapped around her shins, she stared through the dim light filtering from the edges of the curtains. The Stradivarius gleamed from the open violin case on the glass tabletop. Her parents sold and mortgaged all they had to find this piece of history, and give her talent every opportunity to succeed. From the age of six, her ability was unquestioned. Once in her hands, nothing in life existed beyond the mahogany sheen of the two hundred-year-old instrument. When she played, the violin became a part of her. It became a fifth appendage or a second soul, thinking and feeling the same thoughts and emotions with no conscious effort on her part. From the beginning, the talent was unmistakable. The family became musical nomads traveling throughout Asia and Europe, moving from teaching maestros, to recitals, to concerts. They had sacrificed their lives for her. Through it all she made one promise, to take her talent as far as she could. No matter the sacrifice, she vowed to repay them by reaching the pinnacle of being the greatest concert violinist of her time, if not of all time.

Now the eighteen-year old beauty could not bring herself to touch the violin. She could not talk to her parents. They would not even understand. All she had to do was say yes, and she could step on the stage at Carnegie Hall as first violin for The New York Philharmonic Orchestra on the night of its triumphant return to the great concert hall. Kim Soo could not believe the last twenty-four hours. The ultimate high of a private session with the renowned conductor Vincent Antonelli, followed by a dinner invitation to discuss her future, had been trampled by his disgusting proposal. He made it clear she could fulfill her dream on stage, but she would have to perform in a very different way for him.

Her promise pounded in her head. No matter what the sacrifice. Softly crying, she buried her head on her knees.

***

The young blackjack dealer waited patiently. Much more so than the other six players sitting in various degrees of anticipation at his table. Two Asian men chain smoked and chattered incessantly in a maddening combination of their native tongue and broken English. They were self professed experts on the game of blackjack and spent most of their time criticizing the other players and shuffling their chips. Three brothers from New Jersey occupied the other end of the table. They were in the midst of a four day drunken bachelor party, and really didn’t care what anyone had to say about how they played their cards, especially the two dudes opposite them. In the middle sat the object of everyone’s attention: Gramps and his wife. Gramps had to be seventy if he was a day, and he might get to eighty by the time he made his decision. Michael let a little smile play at the corners of his mouth. It never ceased to amaze him how hard people worked to try and beat the game of blackjack. He wanted to scream luck and percentages. Play the percentages and hope for some luck. There is no more to it, you can’t outsmart the cards. It is a simple game. What do you have? What does the dealer have, and should you take a card? If the dealer has six or less showing, and you have twelve or more, don’t take a card. If the dealer has seven or more showing, and you have 16 or less, take a card. It is that simple with a few variations.

Gramps’ situation screamed out for one of these variations. Double down. Double your bet and hope the one card you get is a ten and that the dealer will bust. Gramps had the six of diamonds and the four of spades, adding up to ten. The dealer showed the five of spades.

What do you think, son? Gramps asked.

I’m sorry, sir, I’m not allowed to sway your decision, he replied.

No braina! No braina! Ol’ man. You dubba down. Go! Asian number one prodded.

The dealer’s smile disappeared as Gramps made his bet. Staring down the Asian loud mouth, he turned up the next card to Gramps. Five of hearts. Fifteen, not good for Gramps. He turned up his hole card. A ten of spades, also giving him fifteen. In Blackjack the dealer must take a card on anything below seventeen and must stay on seventeen or more. The ace of spades followed by the five of diamonds put the dealer on twenty one exactly, drawing an array of muttering, groaning and swearing from everyone at the table. The anguished Oh no! from Gramps caught at Michael for a second, but only for a second, he had no time for sentiment. These people had no idea what a real game was. A game of intelligence and strategy where every move is scrutinized by the whole world. His game. His recreation. His legacy. He glanced at his watch again. This time he looked for the date: July 10th. Soon, he thought. Just one more day.

***

Carnegie Hall officially opened its doors on May 5th, 1891, in a five day musical extravaganza never before seen in the United States, and maybe not seen anywhere in the world. After arriving in their ornate horse drawn carriages, and armed with their $1 or $2 box seat tickets, the audience settled in to an evening unmatched in artistic splendor and luxury. The on-stage talent featured twenty-nine year old Walter Damrosch leading the Symphony Society of New York in an opening rendition of Beethoven’s Overture No. 3, followed by famed Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky conducting his own composition of Marche, solemnly. But the next day’s critical reviews and gossip concentrated on the new Music Hall itself, and the incredible sound it generated.

Many experts believed the unique architecture of the building was directly responsible for the extraordinary acoustics in the main hall. Architect William Burnet Tuthill used a Guastavino process in the construction of Carnegie Hall, which called for thick walls of masonry and concrete instead of steel beams. The sound generated by the main hall prompted the renowned artist and benefactor Isaac Stern to comment, It has been said that the hall itself is an instrument.

Vincent Antonelli stood in the front row of the fifth tier of seats, one hundred and five steps above the main floor, looking down on the stage where he would lead The New York Philharmonic Orchestra in its triumphant return to Carnegie Hall. The Philharmonic and The Symphony Society of New York merged in 1928 to form The New York Philharmonic and spent the next seventy years headlining the main room at Carnegie Hall. In 1962, the orchestra moved to Philharmonic Hall, later moving to Avery Fisher Hall, at Lincoln Center. Today, the New York Philharmonic performs more than one hundred eighty times a year, mostly at Lincoln Center, during their September to June subscription season. Vincent Antonelli followed a prestigious list of conductors to lead The New York Philharmonic. From Damrosch and Tchaikovsky on opening night, the leaders of the orchestra included the greatest conductors of all time. Mahler, Klemperer, Strauss, Mengelberg, Toscanini, Stravinsky, and Leonard Bernstein all graced the stage as conductors of the most renowned symphony orchestra in the world. Now it was Antonelli’s turn. After seven years at the helm, he finally convinced the powers that be to bring the orchestra back to the place it belonged.

On July 13th the New York Philharmonic would return after almost forty-five years, to the most famous music hall in the world, for a season ending gala. At thirty nine, the Italian American protégé had conquered the world of classical music, and held the elite of New York Society in the palm of his hands. No one dared to question his on-stage antics, his brutal criticism of individual orchestra members, or the veiled accusations of certain former female employees. In the eyes of the experts, Vincent Antonelli stood with the great conductors of all time. His reputation on stage forgave what they considered to be his minor foibles.

Antonelli moved slowly down the four flights to the corridor behind the box seats, above the main mezzanine. He unlocked the door to the private box centered above the stage in the Main Hall. He knew every inch of the small ornate room, from the rich burgundy rugs and wall coverings, to the gold railings and overstuffed chairs. This was Andrew Carnegie’s private box. Here, he and his young wife, Louise, watched every concert. Vincent spent every evening relaxing in the darkness of Box Thirty-Three after each rehearsal. It was here that he would wait for young Kim Soo to make her decision. What else could she do, he thought, First Violin for this orchestra, in this format, at her age. No. She would have to give in. It was the chance of a lifetime.

Vincent Antonelli unbuttoned his coat and sat with his feet on the rail facing the stage. He smiled an evil grin.

Power is so intoxicating, he thought.

***

Michael filled his lungs slowly, then released. Eyes closed trying to ease his racing heartbeat he let his arms hang to the floor on either side of the padded bench. The intense hour and fifteen minute workout always ended with a maximum bench press. A three mile, half hour run on the treadmill followed by fifteen high-speed minutes on the Stair Master began his daily workout. Then, a half hour of free weights, which ended today with thirty reps at one hundred and thirty-five pounds, completed the task.

Dragging himself off the bench, he stripped the soaked t-shirt and gym shorts off and threw them in the laundry basket in the corner. The room was small, but comfortable. A queen-sized bed with matching dresser and night stand were the only furniture in the room. He stood in the middle of the circular braided rug and surveyed his naked body in the full length wall mirror. His lean muscular body glistened and rippled with each move, and he felt and saw his arousal growing. Turning away, he headed for the shower. He would not give into any weakness with the game so close. It had been a long day followed by a three hour trip home, an hour and twenty minutes spent on the Cross Sound Ferry from New London to Orient Point. Driving to Greenport and island-hopping the two mini ferries across to Sag Harbor, always took its toll on him. He was thankful that his mother was out, probably bowling or playing bridge with her cronies. He had grabbed a bottle of water and headed straight for his room. Two hours later, tired from the workout and comforted by the hot shower, he crawled under the covers to sleep, hoping this time the dream would not come.

***

Game 1

July 11th 

When the first pieces begin to move out on each side, a precarious situation is immediately created. You can’t relax your attention for a moment.

Shelby Lyman

The young boy’s smile filled the room. Master will be so proud. Only great players make such bold moves in such a crucial moment.

Sir! Look! Look! I’ve been so anxious for you to see. Isn’t it the most beautiful move? the young boy pleaded.

No, Michael. I am very sorry, but you have failed to see far enough ahead. Your king will be in serious jeopardy within six moves and you will be forced to resign. Once again, you are overanxious when you should have played a waiting game. I’m afraid it is a serious blunder, the great Grand Master said, patting the boy on the head.

His water-filled eyes darted to his father sitting hunched over in a small straight back chair, watching the board intently. He watched his father’s pleading eyes climb to match the Grand Master’s steely gaze.

I am sorry, the Master said but the boy will never be the player you dreamed of, Sir. He is very gifted, but not a candidate for Grand Master or even national competition. You are wasting your money. You must stop for the sake of the boy and yourself.

The dejected Jefferson Mueller dropped his head to his hands as the young boy heard the Grand Master’s final words pounding over and over in his mind.

"I cannot waste any more of my valuable time on