Chess Fight Club, Part II

(Editor’s note: The first part of Ali Karim’s account of his face-off against would-be chess champ and author Charles Cumming can be found here.)

While visiting American novelist Barry Eisler chatted away with his admirers at a table in the J.D. Wetherspoon bar, at London’s O2 Centre, Charles Cumming and I squared up across a chessboard. Cumming (Typhoon, The Spanish Game) had challenged me to this match after I interviewed him in March, but it took the visit from Eisler to make it happen.

Watching my moves, Cumming remarked that I was a very aggressive player, keeping the attack up on his side. He didn’t know that I had sized him up as a top-notch player, one it would take my best strategies to put in his place. Fortunately, I had such a line of attack at hand, provided to me by spy novelist Robert Littell (The Company, Vicious Circle). And I wasn’t afraid to deploy it.

Ten moves into our game, I tried to look worried, shook my head, scratched my arms, and brought my head down close to the board. I started muttering to myself. Cumming stared at me with a puzzled expression and asked if I was all right. I replied by toppling my king, signaling my surrender. I put my hand over to his and thanked him for a tremendous game and told him how masterful his playing was.

Cumming looked at me, studied the board, then looked at me once more, utterly bewildered. “Why’d you quit?” he inquired, observing that I was in a very strong attack position. I said, giving him my best forlorn face, “You were too good.” Cumming was really confused now. He looked up and down the board. “What did you see?” he asked finally. “You beat me fair and square,” I responded, clearing the board. I asked him for a rematch, to which he consented. But Cumming’s face was still a mask of mystification.

The Littell gambit had worked. Cumming was convinced I must be such a good player, that after only 10 moves, I could see something up ahead--something he couldn’t spot himself--that made further play unnecessary, and so I had resigned with my dignity intact. Little did he know that it was all a put-on, my diabolical way of disturbing him and making him fear my strength.

We went on to play two more games in quick succession, both ending in stalemate situations and being declared draws. I could hardly help but smile; I’d knocked the legs out from under Cumming’s confidence with a neat trick. Coming to our final contest, I determined not only to beat him but to decimate him entirely. (Don’t ever let anybody tell you that chess-playing is a peaceful endeavor.) First, though, I went to the bar and ordered more beer, while Cumming set up the board again. To further shake my opponent, I told him that I wanted him to have the advantage, so I’d play black this time.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Eisler, still engaged with his new friends, but taking our game in and knowing that there was something amiss in it all--but not understanding quite what it was.

As we returned to play, I once more opened hard, forcing my pieces at Cumming’s, which irritated him. The best form of defense in chess is offensive play, pushing your opponent back and making him reactive and prone to mistakes. We both castled and exchanged queens, turning the board into less of a minefield. Cumming then started to talk about his time in Madrid, which I realized was a tactic to distract me. He told me that he’d penned an article for The Telegraph about his adventures in the Spanish capital.

Only later would I have a chance to read the piece, of course, which contrasted Madrid with London. Of the former he wrote:

I lived [t]here for three years while writing The Spanish Game, a novel about a British spy who becomes embroiled in a Basque separatist plot. My wife was a teacher at an international school in the city and we still regularly return to visit friends, eat great food and watch Real Madrid at the Bernabéu.

[Since returning to London] I miss the slower pace of life. Madrid may be a capital city, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The emphasis is on good times: long, boozy lunches, late dinners, walks in the Parque Retiro and bars that stay open beyond dawn. Madrileños tend to mind their own business. There’s none of the aggression that you find on the streets of too many British cities.

I realized that Cumming’s chatter across the chessboard was working. I soon found myself in deep trouble. The espionage writer had my king on the run. And it didn’t take long for him to regain some of his confidence and smile, as he placed his knight into position for checkmate. I looked and realized it was all over but the shouting. Cumming’s psy-ops strategy--to confound my concentration with his incessant chatter--was even better than my own.

Thank goodness, Barry Eisler chose that moment to come over and inform us that it was time for us all to have dinner.

As we packed up, I asked Cumming for a rematch and told him that next time, we’ll use tournament clocks--and I’ll bring ear defenders for myself, and a gag for him in case he tries to distract me again.

Since Eisler looked tired, and I was a bit deflated from my chess defeat, I suggested that we eat close by. So, after bidding Eisler’s table of fans good-bye, we all headed to a burger bar within the O2 complex. There we organized a table for five, as Shots contributor Ayo Onatade was joining us, and UK thriller author Boris Starling (Visibility) had called earlier in the evening and arranged to meet us for dinner, as well, wherever we wound up.

Thrill masters Barry Eisler, Boris Starling, and Charles Cumming

As we tucked into our meals, Eisler having opted for something much healthier than either Cumming or I chose (chess competition really takes the energy out of you), conversation turned to the subject of this year’s U.S. presidential election. Eisler, who often blogs about politics in The Heart of the Matter, complained that deadline pressures were preventing him from saying as much as he wanted about the race. It seems that, despite his being a self-described “conservative,” he’s a big Barack Obama supporter, believing that the U.S. senator’s principles are in line with America’s (and the world’s) needs right now. It was good listening to Eisler’s thoughtful analysis of the campaign, if in part because it allowed me to scarf down my burger without feeling the need to chime in.

Once we’d finished and were being served coffee, though, I decided to take the opportunity to whip out my tape recorder and ask Eisler a few things about book jackets, his future standalone stories, and the changing titles of his novels.

Ali Karim: Barry, you look so tired. Why so?

Barry Eisler: Yes, I am a bit knackered, as I think you say in these parts ... but that’s what finishing a set of revisions on a flight to Frankfurt, two days of interviews and meetings in Amsterdam, and then a day of signings in London will do to you! Ah, the sacrifices we authors must make ...

AK: As a veteran of book touring and the conference and convention circuit, can you tell us any funny things that have happened while you’ve been out and about?

BE: Well, any number of funny things could happen to a traveler in Amsterdam (and a few did happen to John Rain there in Requiem for an Assassin). But somehow I stayed focused on the matter at hand and managed to avoid any diplomatic incidents.

AK: So, I finally had a chance to read Requiem for an Assassin, now that it’s available in Britain. And--not to spoil anything--but when I turned the final page, I felt that this might well be the last we see of John Rain. Am I right?

BE: The truth is, I’m not sure myself. But I will say this: If there’s an overarching theme to the Rain series, it’s a question: Is redemption possible for a man who’s done the things Rain has done? I don’t know the answer, but if the series ever arrives at one, I think it’ll be time for Rain to take a rest. And at the end of Requiem, an answer was beginning to suggest itself--not definitively, but enough for me to feel the character was coming to rest. And if Rain comes to rest, he can’t drive the stories anymore. That leaves several possibilities: a standalone, like the one I just finished; a Delilah- or Dox-centric story, with Rain in a supporting role; and a Rain prequel. On that last possibility, I’ve never told the whole story of how Rain became who and what he is. There are fragments of the story in the books, but not the whole thing, and it’s a tale I’d like to discover and tell.

AK: Why did Penguin UK retitle some of your books?

BE: Neither Penguin nor I have been a fan of the U.S, approach, which might loosely be described mostly as “Rain This, Rain That.” So we agreed to use new titles instead, which are hopefully a bit more evocative of what’s actually in the books. [For more on this subject, click here and here.]

AK: And the new UK covers--they’re just great. Can you tell us about the problems with the original covers? I heard that Langley objected to one of them.

BE: Yeah, after a dismal initial effort, Penguin UK really nailed the packaging when they reissued the books. On the first iteration of the new packaging, they had included in the background the seal of the CIA. Someone at Penguin made the mistake of contacting the CIA for permission, which, unsurprisingly, the Langley bureaucracy refused. The statute the CIA cited as justification was inapposite, but Penguin didn’t want to take a chance on running afoul of the Agency. I begged my editor to issue the books anyway, with a big florescent sticker on the front reading, “The author’s previous employer, the Central Intelligence Agency, has not authorized, approved, or endorsed this book.” That would have satisfied the criteria of the (anyway inapposite) statute and made for an eye-catching cover hook, but alas ...

The good news is, the second iteration of the new covers was dramatically better than the first, and for this I suppose I must thank some anonymous toiler in the bowels of Langley. [For more on, check out the article “How to Package a Book.”]

AK: And what’s this about your publishing a standalone novel next year? Would you care to enlighten us a bit on that subject?

BE: It’s a thriller, though not set in Rain’s universe. Haven’t quite decided on a title yet, but the book is the story of two brothers, estranged by old but still-simmering family hurts and by conflicting cultural and life choices, who are forced to put aside their grievances, and to confront their own painful secrets, when one of them becomes a target in an international struggle for control of a powerful new technology. Here’s some jacket copy I’ve been noodling around with:

“In Silicon Valley, the eccentric inventor of a new encryption program is murdered in an apparent drug deal.

“In Istanbul, a cynical undercover operative receives a frantic call from his estranged brother, a patent lawyer who believes he is the next victim.

“And on the sun-drenched slopes of Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley’s nerve center of deal-making and finance, cultures collide in a desperate contest for control of a new technology--a technology with the power to create unimaginable wealth, or to destroy global information systems, all at the click of a mouse ...”

AK: Will we ever see Rain’s good-ol’ boy sniper partner, Dox [introduced in 2005’s One Last Kill, aka Killing Rain], featured in his own adventure? He could certainly carry one.

BE: You’ll see him soon--in a short story I’m doing for Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Press. And I wouldn’t rule out future outings, as well.

AK: And didn’t I hear something about a Japanese film adaptation of the John Rain novels coming soon?

BE: Glad to say the rumors are true--Sony is in preproduction now, with Gary Oldman signed to play Rain’s CIA nemesis, William Holtzer. The word is the movie will be released in March 2009--keep your fingers crossed!

AK: Since you are passionate about politics, can you tell us where and when this passion originated?

BE: Good question, and the truth is, I’m not really sure where it comes from. I wasn’t all that interested in or engaged by the world until I was in college, and then something happened--a kind of intellectual puberty, you might say. Since then, politics and foreign affairs have been a serious hobby of mine, part of what led me to a job with the CIA. Blogging is good for me: besides being just plain fun, it helps me focus my ideas, some of which form back-story for my novels, and the outlet is a kind of release valve for the pressure that builds up in my mind from all the things I read.

AK: And your prediction for this year’s U.S. presidential election ...?

BE: Obama looks unstoppable to me, and that’s a good thing.

AK: What books have passed over your table lately, that you’ve been especially pleased to read?

BE: So many it’s hard to know where to start. But one in particular I read recently that blew me away--in fact, I’d call it one of the best books I’ve ever read. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, by Jean-Dominique Bauby. Dictated solely by eye blinks by the 43-year-old editor of Elle in France after he was struck down by a massive stroke and afflicted with what is aptly (and horrifyingly) known as Locked-In Syndrome, this short book is by turns surprisingly funny, bitterly painful, and always achingly beautiful. Have you ever watched, say, Cirque de Soleil and marveled at the capabilities of the human body? Multiply that astonishment and wonder by an order of magnitude and apply it to the human spirit--that’s this book.

A little closer to home, lately I’ve discovered two terrific writers everyone else seems to know about: Charlie Huston and James Lee Burke. If you haven’t read their crime fiction yet, check ’em out and see what you’ve been missing.

* * *

Just as the waitress was clearing our table, author Boris Starling finally arrived, apologizing profusely for his tardiness. Starling is a fan of Eisler’s work, and Eisler has seen and enjoyed the TV editions of Messiah, the 1999 book most associated with Starling and which featured Ken Stott (who now plays Scottish detective John Rebus on television). So they had lots to talk about. But after a while, the exhaustion created by my tournament with Cumming caught up with me, and I had to say my farewells. As I left in company with Eisler and Ayo Onatade, I saw Cumming pulling out his chessboard once more and gesturing to Starling for a game. He was feeling awfully confident after trouncing me, it seems.

Only later did I hear that Starling beat my erstwhile opponent two games out of two.

READ MORE: “Quiet Death in Xinjiang,” by Charles Cumming (The Guardian).