The Bishop’s Gambit

--discussion of sexual violence---

Liz had several problems, but the biggest one was she was losing her mind.

The lack of sleep, the pills Talia gives her to stay awake have confused her waking reality and her dreams. She could still do her job, but she needed to connect with the Bishop, only he could understand what she was going through.   

Her dispatches were sent out, signals into the darkness.  Were they received and understood? Were they even noticed? Dr. Liz Friedman imagined they were. She trusted that her enemy, the Bishop, had the intelligence and ability to find the messages. She was trying to communicate her own needs and her country’s, in code to someone she had never met. Would it work? 

Then one day it happened. Liz was reading a deciphered dispatch from the Bishop and it mentioned they were able to break some of the Allies' codes, and the Bishop made a short aside that the new writer was ‘witty’.  It was a small thing but it meant they were connected. Liz felt seen and appreciated by the one person she felt was her mental equal. It was one of the greatest days of her life.   The small back room of the CCU got a little brighter, she sat up a little straighter. The Bishop called her witty!

What was once only a closet, now enclosed the Counterintelligence and Cryptography Unit of the Allies War effort. One wall was just an 8x8 grid of  monitors, while each of the three workstations had multiple terminals and signal lights.  The CCU smelled of desperation, and sweat, and ozone from the electrical circuits.  It triggered in Liz Friedman a feeling of sad desperation  

Liz had studied and trained for years for this exact work, however she was not prepared for the hours of boredom, the tedium of waiting for the communiques to come in, and then the rush, the stress of working to decipher the code in time to make actionable use of the information. Jonathan, her assistant, played video games in the down time existing in his own world, while Talia, her boss, worked to rewrite Liz’ reports from the week prior to connect them to the reality Liz no longer always lived in.  Liz tried to stay focused, playing online chess to stay sharp, not allowing herself to fall asleep and then dream. She feared her dreams.  The administration staff  of the CCU, a platoon of desk-jockey soldiers, men and women at the workstations outside the CCU chatted and joked and flirted while she was stuck behind the Enigma 6 computer. Liz envied them. She wished for regular human conversations, not just hour after hour of computer programming and parsing the enemies language.   But this is War, everyone made sacrifices. 

Recently, her dreams had turned into horror movies, filled with violent and sexual scenes.  Was it because all she saw were people in uniform, all she talked about was war, death and violence?   Her dreams scared her. What kind of person was she to have such thoughts in her head night after night after night?  In a recurring dream she sees Jonathon wearing the enemy's uniform.  Then she becomes the aggressor, attacking him with a knife, killing him and then improbably raping him in an orgy of blood. In other dreams she imagined the enemy found her, raping her. What scared her, what made her fear closing her eyes at all, was how much she enjoyed it, and looked forward to the sexual release. Her reality began to be filtered by a sense of impending doom.  Sitting at her desk, she had visions of tall, square-jawed enemy soldiers walking into the CCU and ravishing her one by one.

“Dr. Friedman, Dr Friedman!”  Jonathan’s voice broke into her latest X-rated daydream. The vision of Jonathon with her knife in him overlaid the real Jonathon until she blinked several times.  

On Jonathon’s monitor, a first person shooter video game played, now forgotten. “We have a new dispatch! “  

The War was in its fifth year, and finally the Allies were gaining the upper hand after many years of the Axis Powers taking more and more territory.  The CCU was a crucial piece of the Allies efforts to gain an advantage in the War. And it was working.  Thanks to Liz’ efforts they were deciphering close to 75% of the dispatches. Liz had identified the writers of the dispatches, each had a different ‘voice’ as she called it. There was the Admiral, all business, usually writing about naval maneuvers, or the Bulldog, gruff and terse communications without much of anything interesting. But when a dispatch from her favorite came through, Liz got excited. The Bishop she called him, and she could sense his personality and intelligence through his communiques. Through the discussions of troop movements, supply shipments and personnel reports Liz got a feel for the man and felt a strong connection.  She looked forward to Bishop’s dispatches, handling them herself with joy to connect up against a rare intelligence equal to her own.

“Dr. Friedman,” Talia pulled her aside one early morning, “we have a new mission, the highest priority.” Talia’s uniform as always was crisp, her hair perfect even though Liz knew she had been at her desk for over 30 hours straight.

 “General Tonkay needs us to create a mis-information campaign.  The General wants to signal to the Axis a fake invasion site to set up our forces for success.”  Talia’s eyes were red and bloodshot from lack of sleep, her thin hands shook from the stress she was under.

“We know their code breaking team has deciphered an old code, XFG234.  We can use that channel to provide them information we want them to get. Liz, you have the most experience reading the dispatches and understanding their mindset.  We want you to write the messages in the appropriate ‘voice’.” Talia reached out to grip Liz’s hand. Liz had never seen Talia this scared.

“I thought we were winning-” Liz asked, confused. 

“There have been some setbacks.  We need to have the Axis believe our invasion will be coming from the North. This is critical to the success of this war!  General Tonkay wants to use our recent advantage to crush the Axis once and for all.  He is gambling all the Allied forces on this invasion to the South. It can not fail, as we do  not have the resources to recover-”

“-I understand Talia.” Liz said. “The Bishop’s Gambit will begin immediately.” 

Liz knew sending too much information too quickly over an old code would be suspected at once. The Bishop was too smart. So Liz began by providing true information of little importance, dispatches regarding equipment shipments, complaints from field staff needing more ammunition, references to real troop movements.  And to make it even more real, she began to add in some hokey jokes, witty comments for the Bishop, not knowing if he would be the one reading it but happy to imagine communicating back to him. 

Once she knew he was reading her messages, her dreams changed, now they were of the man she called the Bishop. In the enemy’s uniform his strong arms grabbed her, throwing her to the ground and holding her down while he ripped her dress-

She woke up suddenly in her small military cot, flushed, wet with sweat, her heart racing.  Her dreams were getting more vivid, more violent. What kind of person was she to have such dreams of being a victim to the enemy? Yet, she loved it. 

When they received the news of the loss of men it was a huge blow, but it proved the Bishop’s Gambit was working.  When she heard the 3rd Battalion's motorized Company was overcome and annihilated during the night by a drone attack, Liz knew her messages were being read.  The only way the Axis forces could have known the Company was vulnerable on that day was from a dispatch she had sent. She had sent the entire Company to their deaths, just like pawns on a chessboard to set up a future move. She hoped it would work. 

Inspired, she continued her dispatches.  Now with the invasion date soon approaching, she began sending the fake messages of troops and equipment movements to the North.  To write a vague and ordinary fake equipment order, Liz spent hours crafting each dispatch, putting in just the right amount of incorrect information to direct the enemy’s attention North, while including a funny comment, a joke for her Bishop to have the message ring true.   

With the intensity of the battle approaching, Liz got fewer and fewer hours of sleep. And her mind compensated for this by creating more vibrant and shocking dreams.  The visitor in her dreams became more violent, more extreme. The Bishop in her dreams was all hard muscle and brutality, demeaning her in exotic ways as he took her over and over each night.  The dreams were so realistic she often expected to see the Bishop come around a corner or walkthrough the door.  

“Talia, have the pills affected your dreams?” Liz asked her boss one day after they submitted a dispatch to be sent out. “I mean made them more vivid, or extreme?”

“Dreams? You mean if I sleep?” Talia said, confused.

“Yes, lately my dreams have become more intense than ever before, and I am imagining meeting the Bish-, an enemy soldier.” Liz needed to talk to someone about her dreams.  “And can you believe it- having sex with him? Am I crazy?”

Talia looked at Liz carefully. “ When was the last time you got laid?”  

Liz shook her head, not knowing how to give the answer, never.   

“I sleep with Jonathon." Talia nodded. "You should try him out. He is very agreeable and maybe it will stop your wet dreams.”

“Jonathon?” Liz said, pulling back. “But he is- all he does is play video games? And something is off with him-”

“-There is a war on.” Talia shrugged. “Jonathon is weak, but I trust him.  But do not discount him- those video games have given him strong fingers.”   Talia nodded and left the room.  

Liz looked over at Jonathan, thin and scrawny bent over his keyboard. He looked back and gave her a crooked smile.  I am not that desperate, she thought. 

The final dispatch was being prepared to be sent. This one was to be as clear as possible about the invasion to occur in the north.  Talia reviewed it twice and even General Tonkay wanted to be involved.  Liz tried to keep the light witty voice she had been using but it was stripped out, the message had to be clear and decisive for the Axis to know about the fake invasion.  An entire company was being diverted to move fake equipment and armored vehicles north along roadways so the Axis satellites could see the physical manifestation of the Bishop’s Gambit.  

All of HQ, including the CCU was moving to support the invasion.  “Do you want to come down with the Mobile HQ”  Talia asked. “You could stay here. Jonathan is staying to monitor communications.  

It could give you a chance, to you know-” Talia said.

“No!  I am packed and ready. I think we have a good chance to turn this War around!” Liz said, her eyes blazed red She tried to stop sleeping entirely.

“It will all be thanks to you.” Talia said, grabbing Liz’ hand. “You're the Queen!” 

************************

The communications from the invasion came fast and quick to the mobile HQ located just behind the Front lines. It was an absolute disaster. Not only did the Axis know about the Southern invasion, they knew when they were coming and how.  It was a trap.

Talia and Liz sat dumbfounded as the messages came through of entire battalions wiped out, of their friends and and colleagues massacred.  Soon enough even the Mobile HQ was under attack. The explosions and small arms fire came closer and closer. Several of the HQ military staff ventured out to take their chances in the field. They never came back.

Suddenly the blockaded door flew open and the Axis troops came in. The black masks of the invading troops made them look like long insects, quick and fierce.  A short, fat man walked in with them carrying only a handgun, his scared face held a cruel grin. 

Liz cowered behind her workstation.

“Is the Queen here? The code breaker? The man shouts into the room.  

Liz slowly stood up to face the man.  His eyes were dark brown and she could see the evil in them.  “The Queen. ” He snarled, hunger in his eyes, you broke our codes. You were good.”

“I called you the Bishop.” I- I imagined you differently,” Liz said as he walked up. “I felt like we got to know each other, our jokes, you said I was witty-”

“You got to know me? From troop orders!" He laughed, loud and insane. "I only know who you are for one reason."

“I have to say, I pictured you differently too.” The Bishop said, grabbing her chin roughly and lifting it up. “Jonathan said you were better looking, I hoped you would be blond, with more curves-” He leered at her and fear shot through her.

“Jonathon said…?” Liz asked. “Does that mean…” She had never felt fear for herself before, it was always for her country, or for the soldiers she tried to protect.  This personal fear was more than she could handle. She began to cry and shake. 

“Yes, he was my pawn.”  The Bishop ripped off his belt and swung the end hitting her across the face. "All those dispatches you sent went straight to the trash. “ I do like the name Bishop.

Liz wiped her mouth and the sight of her blood on her hand energized her whole body, scaring her all over again.

Checkmate!” The Bishop reached out and ripped her dress off her. His thin weak arms still had enough strength to grab her and throw her back across her desk. 

Even in her fear, her body reacted against her conscious mind, joy shooting through her as her dreams became reality in a nightmare of blood and horror.