What We Become

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  “Not entirely,” she says. “Jorge could have gone on playing, but he didn’t want to take any more risks. The discovery that Irina is working for Sokolov rather unsettled him. . . . Perhaps he didn’t trust himself to resist the pressure until the end. So he accepted the Russian’s offer.”

  “He did well to stick it out. He looked calm up on the podium.”

  “Jorge has nerves of steel. He was prepared for this.”

  “What about when he’s with the girl? How good an actor is he?”

  “Better than she. And, do you know something? With him there’s no pretense, no hypocrisy. You or I would have grilled her then sent her packing. In fact, I would happily have strangled her. . . . I still have an overwhelming urge to do just that. But there he is, poring over a chessboard with her, analyzing and retracing moves, asking her advice with complete naturalness.”

  The street is long and narrow, and where the stores have set up their wares outside it becomes even more restricted. Every now and then, Max slows his pace to allow others through.

  “Isn’t this too big a blow?” he asks. “Will he be able to concentrate and carry on playing as before?”

  “You don’t know Jorge. For him, this coolheadedness is logical. He’s still playing. Sometimes the game takes place in a hotel, sometimes elsewhere.”

  They walk through patches of light and shade, illuminated in places by the yellowish light reflecting off the tall façades of the buildings. Stores selling leather goods, souvenirs, groceries, and fruit and vegetables jostle with fishmongers and salumerias, the smells of which mingle with the leather and spices. Laundry has been hung out to dry from the balconies.

  “He hasn’t said a word about this,” Mecha resumes, after a brief pause, “but I am certain that now, in his head, he is playing two opponents, Sokolov and Irina. A kind of simultaneous chess.”

  She falls silent again, gazing idly at a store selling women’s fashions (hippie-style, Positano linen).

  “Later,” she goes on, “when he has finished here in Sorrento, Jorge will look up from the chessboard and really analyze what happened. The emotional side. That will be the tough moment for him. Until then, I’m not worried about him.”

  “Now I understand Sokolov’s confidence,” Max remarks. “His almost arrogant attitude in the last few games.”

  “He made a mistake. He should have waited longer before making his move. Made some effort at dissimulating. Not even the world champion could take less than twenty minutes to grasp the full complexity of that situation and make the right decision. And it only took him six.”

  “Impetuosity?”

  “Vanity, I suppose. With a longer analysis, Sokolov might conceivably have reached the same conclusion on his own, and that would have made us doubt Irina’s guilt. But I imagine Jorge riled him.”

  “You mean he got up every five minutes in order to provoke him?”

  “Of course.”

  They are near the Sedile Dominova loggia, where half a dozen tourists are listening to a guide giving explanations in German. Sidestepping the group, they turn left into the narrow gloom of Via Giuliani. Ahead of them, the red-and-white bell tower of the Duomo looms, outlined against the intense light. The clock shows eleven twenty in the morning.

  “I never imagined a world champion making that kind of mistake,” Max observes. “I assumed they were less . . .”

  “Human?”

  “Yes.”

  Everyone makes mistakes, she responds. And after a few paces, she adds thoughtfully, “My son exasperates him.” The pressure of the buildup to the world championship is intense, she goes on to explain. Jorge’s apparent frivolity, his walks around the table, the way he makes chess look so effortless. The Russian is the exact opposite: conscientious, methodical, cautious. The sort who sweats blood. But yesterday, despite his habitual calm, the world champion, who has his title, his government, and the International Chess Federation behind him, couldn’t control his urge to teach the contender a lesson, to cut down to size the spoiled brat of the capitalist world, and the Western press. He moved his pawn just as Jorge was about to leave the table again. You’re going to stay right where you are, his gesture was saying. Sit still and keep thinking.

  “In the end, they’re only human,” she says, as if to herself. “They feel hate and love the way we all do.”

  She and Max are walking side by side. Occasionally, their shoulders brush.

  “Or maybe not.” Mecha tilts her head to one side for a moment as if she had noticed a flaw in her own argument. “Maybe it is different for them.”

  “How about Irina? Is she behaving normally?”

  “With utter shamelessness,” she snorts, her voice suddenly hard. “Completely at ease in her role of faithful collaborator and enamored young girl. If it weren’t for what we know, I would believe she was innocent. . . . You haven’t a clue how good women are at pretending when the stakes are high!”

  Max does know, but says nothing. He is content to pull a silent face as he remembers women on the telephone to their husbands or lovers from a hotel room, sprawled naked on or under the sheets, leaning back against the very pillow where he is resting his head listening to them in admiration. Perfectly calm, without a catch in their voice, conducting clandestine relationships that have lasted days, months, or years. Under similar circumstances, any man would have given himself away in seconds.

  “I wonder whether this kind of betrayal is a punishable offense?”

  “To whom would we report it?” She laughs again, skeptically. “To the Italian police? The International Chess Federation? This is a private arena. If we had solid evidence, we could raise a scandal, and possibly annul the contest if Jorge were to lose. But even if we did have proof, we would gain nothing. We would simply poison the atmosphere during the five-month run-up to the world championship. And Sokolov would stay where he is.”

  “Does Karapetian know about Irina yet?”

  Jorge spoke to him last night, Mecha confirms. And he didn’t appear all that surprised. These things happen, he said. Remember, he has come across cases of spying before. Emil is a calm, pragmatic man. And he isn’t in favor of throwing the girl out on her ear.

  “He and Jorge agree that we should let Irina and the Russians think they have the upper hand. Pass on doctored information through her, prepare false opening moves. Use her rather like a double agent without her knowing.”

  “Only they’ll catch on in the end,” Max ventures.

  “They might be able to keep up the deception for a couple of more games. They have played six already, two wins to Sokolov, one to Jorge, and three draws, so the Russian is only one point ahead. They still have four left to play. That offers interesting possibilities.”

  “What could happen?”

  “If we prepared the right kind of traps and Sokolov walked into them, the deception would work once, maybe twice. They might put it down to a mistake, a slip, or a last-minute change of tactic. The second or third time they would start to smell a rat. If we made it too obvious, they would assume that Irina was working with Jorge, or that we were manipulating her. . . . But there’s another way: we don’t make full use of what we know, we ration the doctored information through Irina, and take her with us to Dublin.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Of course. This is chess. The art of lying, assassination, and warfare.”

  They weave through the traffic on Corso Italia. Scooters and cars, exhaust fumes. Max takes Mecha’s hand as they cross to the other side. When they reach the pavement, Mecha stays close to him, casually taking his arm. They gaze at their reflection, side by side, in a store window cluttered with television sets. After a moment, she gently lets go of Max’s arm, as nonchalantly as she had taken it.

  “The important thing is the world championship,” she continues very calmly. “This is merely a preliminary skirmish,
a probing of the challenger in a kind of unofficial final. It would be wonderful to reach Dublin with the Russians still thinking they can count on Irina. Imagine Sokolov finding out there that we have been controling his spy since Sorrento. . . . What a splendid coup. A fatal blow.”

  “Will Jorge be able to withstand all that pressure? Being around her for the next five months?”

  “You don’t know my son. His coolheadedness when it comes to chess. Irina is just another piece on the board now.”

  “And what will you do with her afterward?”

  “I don’t know.” Once more, there is a hard, metallic tone in her voice. “And I don’t care. Of course we will expose her once the world championship is over. Whether privately or publicly remains to be seen. Irina is finished as an international chess player. She might as well crawl into a hole for the rest of her life. I’ll do everything in my power to make life unbearable for the little bitch wherever she tries to hide.”

  “I wonder what made her do it? How long she has been working for Sokolov.”

  “My dear . . . where Russians and women are concerned there is no way of knowing.”

  She says this with a joyless, almost unpleasant laugh. Max responds with a elegant, good-natured gesture.

  “It’s the Russians who interest me,” he explains. “I know less about them than I do about women.”

  She bursts out laughing at his remark.

  “Good God, Max. You may no longer look the part, but you’re still an incorrigible womanizer. An old-school gigolo.”

  “I wish I were.” He is laughing now, too, straightening Dr. Hugentobler’s silk cravat beneath his open shirt collar.

  “They could have gotten to Irina early, as part of a long-term strategy,” says Mecha, returning to the subject. “Or they may have recruited her later on, with money or other inducements. A girl like Irina, who has a flair for chess, could, with the backing of the Russians who control International Chess Federation, have a future. And she is as ambitious as the next person.”

  They are in front of the cathedral’s iron gates, which are open.

  “It isn’t easy playing second fiddle,” she remarks. “And the chance not to is tempting.”

  Bells start to ring in the stone belfry. Mecha looks up, covering her head with her scarf as she crosses the threshold. Max follows, and together they penetrate the huge empty nave, his slow footfall echoing on the marble floor.

  “What will you do?”

  “I’ll help Jorge, as always . . . to play. To win here and in Dublin.”

  “That will have an end, I suppose.”

  “What?”

  “You always being at his side.”

  Mecha gazes up at the ornate ceiling. The light seeping through the windows illuminates the golds and blues around the biblical scenes. At the other end of the church, the sanctuary lamp shines in the gloom.

  “We’ll know that when we come to it.”

  They circle the columns and walk down one of the side aisles, taking a look at the chapels and the oil paintings. The air is musty and smells of warm candle wax. In a niche in the wall, above some lighted candles, there are votive offerings from sailors, tin and wax effigies.

  “Five months is a long time,” Max insists. “Are you sure Jorge will be able to keep up the deception?”

  “Why not?” She looks at him with what appears to be genuine surprise. “Isn’t that exactly what Irina has been doing?”

  “I’m talking about his feelings as well. They share the same room. The same bed.”

  A strange expression. Distant. Almost cruel.

  “I told you before. He isn’t like us. He lives in a compartmentalized world.”

  A priest emerges from the sacristy, and crosses himself before the main altar after looking at them curiously. Mecha lowers her voice to a whisper as they walk back the way they came, toward the exit.

  “When it comes to chess, Jorge is able to view things with extraordinary detachment. As if he were walking in and out of different rooms, without taking anything from one to the other.”

  The sun dazzles them as they cross the threshold. Mecha lets her scarf fall onto her shoulders and ties it loosely around her neck.

  “How will the Russians treat Irina when this all comes out?” Max asks.

  “That’s not my concern. . . . But I hope they throw her in the Lubyanka prison, or somewhere equally ghastly, and then send her to Siberia.”

  She has walked through the gates, ahead of Max, and is hurrying down Corso Italia, as if she had remembered some urgent matter. Quickening his pace, he draws level with her.

  “Which brings us,” he hears her say, “to the Max variant.”

  With these words, she pulls up abruptly, and Max can’t help but gaze at her, uneasily. Then, astonishingly, she moves her face so close that she almost brushes his shoulder. Her eyes have the hardness of amber now.

  “There’s something I want you to do for me,” she whispers. “Or, more precisely, for my son.”

  The black Fiat ground to a halt in Place Rossetti, next to the tower of the Cathédrale Sainte-Réparate, and three men climbed out of it. Max, who had heard the engine and glanced up from the pages of L’Éclaireur (workers demonstrations in France, show trials and executions in Moscow, concentration camps in Germany), watched from beneath his hat brim as they strolled toward him, the taller, skinnier one flanked by the other two. While they were making their way over to his table on the corner of Rue Centrale, Max folded his newspaper and called to the waiter.

  “Two Pernods with water.”

  The three men stood looking down at him. Mauro Barbaresco, Domenico Tignanello, and in the middle, the tall, skinny fellow dressed in a stylish chestnut-brown, double-breasted suit and a gray taupe Borsalino hat, tilted rakishly over one eye. The collar of his blue-and-white broad-striped shirt was fastened with a gold pin below his tie. He was holding a small, leather bag in one hand, the sort physicians use. For a long time, Max and he studied each other, with a solemn expression. The four men, one seated and the others standing, remained silent until the waiter came over with the drinks, removing Max’s empty glass from the table and replacing it with the two Pernods, two glasses of ice water, two teaspoons, and some sugar lumps. Max balanced a teaspoon across one of the glasses, placed a sugar lump on it, and began decanting the water so that it trickled with the dissolved sugar into the greenish liquid. Then he set the glass down opposite the tall, skinny man.

  “I assume,” he said, “you take it the same way you always did.”

  The other man’s face seemed to grow gaunter as he smiled, revealing a row of yellow teeth and receding gums. Then he pushed his hat back, sat down, and raised the glass to his lips.

  “I don’t know what your friends would like,” Max commented, as he repeated the same procedure with his glass. “I’ve never seen them drink Pernod.”

  “Nothing for me,” Barbaresco said, taking a seat as well.

  Max savored the strong, sugary anisette. Tignanello remained standing, glancing around with his usual air of melancholy mistrust. Responding to a gesture from his colleague, he moved away from the table and walked over to the newspaper stand, from where, Max assumed, he could keep a discreet watch over the square.

  Max looked again at the tall, skinny man. He had a long nose and big, sunken eyes. He had aged since the last time they met, Max thought. But he still had the same smile.

  “I hear you’re a fascist now, Enrico,” he said softly.

  “In times like these a man has to do something.”

  Mauro Barbaresco leaned back in his chair, as though he wasn’t sure he was going to like this conversation.

  “How about we get on with it,” he suggested.

  Max and Enrico Fossataro carried on looking at each other while they drank. Finally, Fossataro raised his glass, as though in a toast, before
draining it. Max did likewise.

  “If you agree,” he said, “we can dispense with discussions about how long it has been, how much we’ve aged, and all that.”

  “Very well.” Fossataro nodded.

  “What are you up to these days?”

  “Life isn’t so bad. I have an official post in Turin. Civil servant in the Piedmont government.”

  “Politics?”

  “Public Security.”

  “Ah.”

  Max smiled at the image of Fossataro in an office. The fox guarding the chicken coop. The last time they met was three years ago on a job they did together, in two parts: a villa in the hills around Florence and a suite at the Hotel Excelsior (Max provided the charm offensive at the hotel, while Fossataro employed his skills at the villa under cover of darkness), with a view over the Arno and the Piazza Ognissanti where a group of Blackshirts were marching, intoning the “Giovinezza” before beating some poor wretches to death.

  “A Schützling,” Max said simply. “From 1913.”

  “They already told me: a stylish imitation wood box, with false moldings around the locks. Do you remember the house on Rue de Rivoli? Belonging to that English redhead you took to Le Procope for dinner?”

  “Yes. But you were in charge of the hardware that time. I had my hands full with the lady.”

  “That doesn’t matter. It’s an easy one.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any point in me asking you to do it. Not now.”

  The other man revealed his teeth once more. His dark, sunken eyes had a plaintive air.

  “I tell you, those safes are easy as pie. They have a trigger lock, a triple combination, and the key.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out some drawings copied from a blueprint. “I have the diagrams here. You’ll get the hang of it in no time. Are you working by day or at night?”

  “At night.”

  “How long do you have?”

  “Not long. I need a quick method.”

  “Can you use a drill?”

  “No tools. There are people in the house.”