"His shift hasn't started yet," Bragin said. "He'll be on duty when he needs to be. Now, go on so we can concentrate."
Sylvia didn't appear happy to be dismissed. She gave Jax a steely glare. "Make sure you're not late for your shift."
"I won't be," he promised.
Daniel smiled when Sylvia left. "Did I get you in hot water?"
"Yes. Sylvia is not my biggest fan."
"She takes her job here far too seriously." Daniel tipped his head toward the board. "Why don't you begin?"
He looked down at the board, and lessons from a very long time ago came into his head. His father's voice echoed in his mind. A surprise start will set the other player immediately back on his heels. It will damage his preconceived plan of attack, and he'll get nervous. Nerves always bring mistakes.
He moved his pawn to E4. Daniel played his pawn to E5. Jax then moved his next pawn to F4 as a sacrificial lamb.
Daniel's eyes widened in surprise. "The Markov gambit."
He stiffened. "What?"
"That move was made famous by a young man a very long time ago." A gleam entered his eyes. "That's it. That's who you remind me of—Andrei Markov."
He had to work hard not to show a reaction to Bragin's words. "Never heard of him," he muttered.
"He was a brilliant chess player, one of the best who has ever lived."
"I'm not up on famous chess players. It's your move."
Bragin glanced back down at the board. "You want me to take your pawn. And then you'll move your bishop to C4."
"Maybe I will," he said, although that had been the play. He just couldn't quite remember what happened after that. It had been a very long time since he had played this game.
Bragin decided to ignore his forfeited pawn, making a move that Jax didn't know how to counter. "Uh-oh," he said.
Bragin smiled. "It's always unnerving when someone doesn't do what you expect them to do."
Was there something behind Bragin's words? Because he definitely felt unnerved.
"You have Markov's eyes," Bragin said. "They were the blue of the deep sea. I remember thinking that I could never read his mysterious gaze."
To maintain his cover, he would have preferred that Bragin stop talking about his father. On the other hand, it had been twenty-five years since anyone outside of the two people who had raised him had spoken of his father or his mother. "Where did you meet him?" he asked.
"Right here, at a chess tournament a long time ago. It must have been thirty or forty years now. He ran through all of us and even some astonishingly good guests. For two days, he showed us how a master works. I never forgot it."
He could hardly believe that his father had been at the club when it was the Russia House. But he had gone to weekend chess tournaments, so it wasn't all that surprising. And he was Russian. But he didn't like that his father had known any of these guys, one of whom he was sure had killed Natasha.
He made another move and then said, "It looked like you and your friends were having an intense conversation a while ago."
Bragin took his pawn off the board. "That was not a Markov move," he said. "And, yes, we received some bad news. Someone I used to know died today." Bragin's lips drew into a line as he sucked in a breath and let it out. "I don't really want to think about it, which is why I pressed you into a warm-up match. My daughter Lindsay hates chess and she was eager to join her friends upstairs for mojitos."
"It's a nice day for mojitos. I'm sorry about your friend."
"I haven't seen her in years, but it's still shocking." He paused. "What did you say your last name was?"
"Kenin," he replied, not liking that Bragin couldn't seem to let the similarity between him and his father go. He actually didn't think he looked all that much like his dad, but then again, he hadn't looked at a photo of his father in a decade or more.
"You're Russian?"
"Yes, but I was born in Virginia. What about you? Do you have Russian roots?"
"My parents were from Ukraine. I was born here in Los Angeles. My father was an engineer. He worked at Lockheed."
"Are you in tech as well?"
"I was. I turned my sizable corporation over to my daughter two years ago."
"Lucky her."
"What do your parents do? Are they alive and well?"