Section 20 Summary

"The Eighth Square"

The title and quote of this section refer to the moment at which a pawn on one side of a chess game arrives at the opposite end of the game board and is crowned a queen. Both the quote and title can be seen as a reference to the action of this section, the one preceding and the one following, in which both Catherine and Mireille arrive at their respective places of fullest power and assume their positions as Black Queens in their respective games.

June 1973. Catherine and Carioca make it to shore, where a patrolling soldier immediately discovers them. Catherine attempts to bully her way past him, but the soldier explains that the hotel is secure because of a conference being sponsored by OPEC - the same conference at which Catherine is supposed to be presenting the computer model...