What We Become

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  Fossataro wrinkled his brow.

  “Manually, it’ll take you an hour at least. Do you remember the Panzer in Prague? It nearly drove us crazy.”

  Max grinned. September 1932. Half the night perspiring in a woman’s bed, next to a window looking out over the dome of St. Nicholas, until she fell asleep. Fossataro working noiselessly on the floor below by torchlight, in her absent husband’s study.

  “Of course I remember.”

  “I brought a list of the original combinations for this model, which might save you time and effort.” Fossataro reached down for the leather bag sandwiched between his legs and handed it to Max. “And I brought a set of a hundred and thirty double-sided keys, also straight from the factory.”

  “Goodness . . .” The bag was heavy. Max set it on the ground, by his feet. “How did you get hold of those?”

  “You’d be surprised what a government position can do.”

  Max fished his tortoiseshell cigarette case out of his pocket and placed it on the table. Fossataro opened it without asking and took a cigarette.

  “You look good, Max,” he said, snapping the case shut and motioning toward Barbaresco, who was following their conversation in silence. “My friend Mauro here tells me things are going well for you.”

  “I can’t complain.” Max had leaned forward to offer Fossataro a light. “Or rather, I couldn’t, up until recently.”

  “These are difficult times, my friend.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  Fossataro took a few drags on his cigarette and gazed at it with satisfaction, marveling at the quality of the tobacco.

  “These two aren’t so bad,” he said, pointing toward Tignanello, who was still posted beside the kiosk, then gesturing to include Barbaresco. “Of course, they can be dangerous. But who can’t? I’ve had fewer dealings with the sad southerner, but Mauro and I once worked together, isn’t that so?”

  Barbaresco said nothing. He had taken off his hat and was running his hand over his bald, bronzed head. He looked tired, as though he wanted their chat to end. It occurred to Max that he and his colleague always looked tired. Maybe that was one thing Italian spies had in common, he concluded. Could it be that their English, French, and German counterparts were more enthusiastic about their work? Possibly. Faith can move mountains, people often said. It must a useful thing to have in some lines of work.

  “That’s why he came to me when they were considering you for this job,” Fossataro went on. “I told them you were a good sort, and popular with the ladies. That you look the part in evening clothes, and can outshine the professionals on any dance floor. . . . I also told them that if I had your good looks and gift for the gab, I would have retired years ago: I wouldn’t mind walking some millionairess’s poodle.”

  “Perhaps you talked to them too much.” Max smiled.

  “That’s possible. But consider my situation. Credere, obbedire, combattere . . . Duty to the fatherland, and all that.”

  A silence ensued, which Fossataro used to blow a perfect smoke ring.

  “I suppose you know, or have guessed, that Barbaresco isn’t Mauro’s real name.”

  Max glanced at the Italian spy, who was listening impassively.

  “It doesn’t matter what my name is,” he said.

  “Quite so,” Max agreed evenly.

  Fossataro blew another smoke ring, less perfect than the first, before continuing:

  “Italy is a complex country. The good thing is that we always manage to reach an understanding among ourselves. Guardie e ladri . . . Cops and robbers. And that’s as true before Mussolini as during his time and after, assuming there is an after.”

  Barbaresco was still listening with a blank expression, and Max started to warm toward him. Returning to his comparisons between spies, he imagined holding that same conversation with an Englishman, who would have been filled with patriotic indignation, or a German, who would have looked at them with contemptuous mistrust, or a Spaniard, who, after agreeing vigorously with everything Fossataro said, would have gone running to denounce him, in order to ingratiate himself with someone, or because he envied the tie he was wearing. Max opened his cigarette case and offered it to Barbaresco, who shook his head. Behind him, Tignanello had gone to sit down with a newspaper on one of the wooden benches in the square, as if his legs were aching.

  “You’ve made some good connections, Max,” Fossataro was saying. “If all goes well, you’ll have new friends. In the right camp. It is good to think about the future.”

  “The way you have.”

  It was a seemingly throwaway remark, made while Max was lighting a cigarette, but Fossataro looked at him intently. Moments later, he wore the melancholy smile of someone with an unshakable belief in the limitless stupidity of mankind.

  “I’m growing old, my friend. The world we knew, the one that sustained us, is doomed. And if another war breaks out in Europe, it will sweep everything away. You agree, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “Then put yourself in my place. I am fifty-two years old. Too old to be breaking locks and tiptoeing round other people’s houses in the dark. What’s more, I’ve spent seven of those behind bars. I’m a widower, with two unmarried children. There’s nothing like it for encouraging a man to be a patriot. Making him raise his arm in the Roman salute to anyone they put in front of him. Italy has a future, we are the good guys. There are jobs, we’re constructing buildings, sports stadiums, battleships, and we give the communists castor oil and a kick up the backside (here, to lighten the tone of his discourse, Fossataro winks at Barbaresco, who continues to listen, stony-faced). And it feels good to have the carabinieri on my side for a change.”

  Two smartly dressed women went by, heels clattering as they walked down Rue Centrale: hats, bags, narrow skirts. One of them was very pretty, and for a moment her eyes met Max’s. Fossataro stared at them until they turned the corner. Never mix sex with business, he had heard Max say in the old days. Except when sex makes business easier.

  “Remember Biarritz?” Fossataro said. “That affair at the HÔtel Miramar?”

  The memory brought a smile to his lips, making him look younger for a moment, enlivening his gaunt face.

  “How long ago was that?” he went on. “Five years?”

  Max nodded. Fossataro’s contented expression brought back memories of wooden rails along the seafront, beach bars with punctilious waiters, women in pajama suits with narrow waists and flared trousers; naked, suntanned backs; familiar faces; parties with film stars, singers, people from the business and fashion worlds. Like Deauville and Cannes, Biarritz offered rich pickings in summer, plenty of opportunities for those who knew where to look.

  “The actor and his girlfriend,” Fossataro remembered, still grinning.

  Then he proceeded to tell Barbaresco, with great eloquence, how in the summer of 1933 Max and he had planned a sophisticated job involving a movie actress called Lili Damita, whom Max had met at the Chiberta golf course, and with whom he had spent three mornings on the beach, three afternoons at the bar, and three evenings on the dance floor. On the all-important evening when Max was supposed to take her dancing at the HÔtel Miramar while Fossataro broke into her villa and made off with cash and jewelry to the tune of fifteen thousand pounds, her boyfriend, a famous Hollywood actor, arrived unannounced at the hotel, having walked off a set in the middle of filming. However, Max was lucky on two counts. Firstly, the jealous boyfriend had drunk too much on the journey there, and when his betrothed stepped out of a taxi on Max’s arm, the punch he aimed at the elegant seducer’s jaw missed its target because he lost his balance. And secondly, Enrico Fossataro was ten yards away from the scene, at the wheel of a hired car, ready to drive off to burgle the villa. When he saw what was going on, he climbed out of the car, walked over to the group, and, while Lili Damita squawked like a mother hen watching her chick bei
ng slaughtered, he and Max calmly gave the American a systematic beating, as the hotel receptionists and bellboys looked on with satisfaction (the actor, who habitually drank too much, was unpopular with the staff), out of revenge for the fifteen thousand dollars that had just slipped through their fingers.

  “And do you know who the fellow was?” Fossataro was still talking to Barbaresco, who by then had pricked up his ears. “None other than Errol Flynn!” He laughed out loud, clapping Max on the arm. “You have before you the two fellows who gave Captain Blood a drubbing!”

  “Do you know what the book is, Max? In chess. Not a book, the book.”

  They are in the gardens of the Hotel Vittoria, strolling along one of the side paths that runs like a tunnel between the varieties of trees, bright patches of sunlight filtering through their branches. Beyond the trellises laden with vines, seagulls are wheeling above the cliffs of Sorrento.

  “A player is the sum of all his or her games and analyses,” Mecha Inzunza goes on to explain. “Hundreds of hours of study go into each move on the board, countless strategies and variants, the result of working with a team or alone. A grand master can remember thousands of things: moves made by his predecessors, games played by his opponents. All of it, regardless of memory, is kept as a record.”

  “A kind of manual?” Max asks.

  “Exactly.”

  They are making their way back to the hotel, unhurriedly. A few bees are hovering around the oleanders. As they penetrate farther into the garden, the traffic sounds behind them on Piazza Tasso grow more distant.

  “A chess player can’t travel or function without his or her personal papers,” she continues. “What they are able to carry with them from place to place. A grand master’s book contains the work of a lifetime: opening moves and variants, studies of opponents, analysis. Usually kept as notebooks or files. In Jorge’s case, eight thick leather-bound notebooks, containing seven years’ worth of annotations.”

  They linger in the rose garden, where a tiled bench encircles a table blanketed with leaves.

  “A player is defenseless without that book,” Mecha adds, placing her bag on the table and sitting down. “Not even someone with the most prodigious memory can retain everything. There are things in Jorge’s book without which it would be hard for him to play Sokolov: previous games, analyses of his attacks and defenses. Years of work. Imagine, for example, that the Russian doesn’t like playing the king’s gambit, an opening based on the sacrifice of a pawn. And that Jorge, who has never used the king’s gambit, considers doing so at the Dublin championship.”

  Max is standing in front of her, listening attentively.

  “All that would be in Jorge’s book?”

  “Of course. What a disaster if it fell into Sokolov’s hands. All that work for nothing. His secrets and analyses in his opponent’s possession.”

  “Couldn’t the book be rewritten?”

  “It would take a whole lifetime. Not to mention the psychological blow: the knowledge that your opponent is aware of all your strategies, your thoughts.”

  She looks behind Max, who turns, following the direction of her gaze. The apartment house occupied by the Soviet delegation is close, only thirty feet away.

  “Don’t tell me Irina has given Jorge’s book to the Russians . . .”

  “No. Thank goodness. Otherwise he would be finished against Sokolov, here and in Dublin. This is something else.”

  A brief silence. Mecha fixes Max with her glittering gaze as the sunlight spills through the trellis.

  “This is where you come in,” she says, in a strange, mysterious voice, a faint smile on her lips.

  Max raises his hand as though demanding silence in order to make out a note or some obscure sound.

  “I’m afraid . . .”

  He pauses for a second, unable to go on, and Mecha interrupts, impatiently. She has opened her bag and is riffling through it.

  “I want you to get hold of the Russian’s book for my son.”

  Max’s jaw drops. Literally.

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Then I’ll spell it out for you.” She extracts a pack of Murattis from her bag and puts one in her mouth. “I want you to steal Sokolov’s notebook with all his openings in it.”

  She has uttered these last words with tremendous calm. Max’s hand reaches automatically for his lighter, but he freezes.

  “And how do I do that?”

  “By walking into the Russian’s apartment and taking it.”

  “Just like that.”

  “Just like that.”

  A buzzing of bees, close by. Oblivious to them, Max is staring at Mecha. With an overwhelming desire to sit down.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you’ve done it before.”

  He sits down beside her, still in shock.

  “I’ve never stolen a Russian chess book.”

  “But you’ve stolen lots of other things,” says Mecha, who has plucked a box of matches from her bag and is lighting her own cigarette. “One of them mine.”

  Max removes his hand from his pocket and rubs his chin. What is this foolishness, he thinks, completely at a loss. What the hell is he getting into, or are they getting him into?

  “I’m no longer a . . . I don’t do that anymore.”

  “But you know how to. Remember Nice.”

  “That’s absurd. Nice was nearly thirty years ago.”

  Mecha says nothing. She smokes, watching him very calmly, as though everything had been said and the ball was in his court. She’s enjoying this, he realizes with sudden horror. She finds this situation and Max’s bewilderment amusing. And yet she’s deadly serious.

  “Are you suggesting I break in to the Soviet delegation’s apartments, find Sokolov’s chess book, and hand it over to you? And how am I to do that? How on earth do you propose I do that?”

  “You have the knowledge and the experience. You’ll find a way.”

  “Look at me.” He touches his face as he leans over, as if it weren’t plain to see. “I’m not the man you remember from Buenos Aires or from Nice. I have . . .”

  “Things to lose?” She looks at him from very far away, disdainful and unfeeling. “Is that what you are trying to tell me?”

  “I stopped taking certain kinds of risk a long time ago. I live peacefully, without any problems with the law. I am fully retired.”

  He stands up abruptly, ill at ease, and takes a few paces around the arbor. Gazing nervously at the yellow walls (suddenly they look menacing to him) of the apartment house occupied by the Russians.

  “Besides, I’m too old for this game,” he adds, genuinely despondent. “I haven’t the strength, or the heart for it.”

  He has turned toward Mecha, who remains seated, smoking calmly as she watches him.

  “Why should I do it?” he protests. “Give me one good reason why I should expose myself to such danger at my age.”

  She opens her mouth to speak, but stops herself almost instantaneously. She stays like that for a few seconds, pensive, her cigarette smoking between her fingers, studying Max. At last, with infinite scorn and sudden vehemence, as though venting a long-pent-up rage, she puts out the cigarette on the marble tabletop.

  “Because Jorge is your son. Stupid.”

  He had gone to see her in Antibes, concealing his desire to explain himself beneath the guise of caution. It was dangerous, he told himself, for her to be on the loose over the next few days. In case some remark or secret she might confide to Susana Ferriol placed him at risk. It was easy enough finding her address. A brief telephone call to Asia Schwarzenberg, who made a few inquiries, and two days after his meeting with Mecha Inzunza, Max was stepping out of a taxi outside the gates of a villa surrounded by laurel bushes, acacias, and mimosas, near La Garoupe. He walked across the garden down a beaten
earth driveway, where the Citröen two-seater was parked, bordered by cypress trees whose dark foliage contrasted with the calm, shimmering surface of the sea beyond. The house was a bungalow built on a small, rocky outcrop, with a broad terrace and a sunny veranda beneath wide arches, overlooking the garden and the bay.

  Mecha Inzunza didn’t look surprised. She welcomed him with unnerving ease after the maid who had opened the door vanished in silence. She was wearing a Japanese, silk pajama suit with a narrow waist, which accentuated her slender lines, discreetly hugging her hips. She had been watering the plants in one of the inside patios, and her bare feet left damp traces on the black-and-white tiles as she led Max through to the living room. It was decorated in the safari style that for the past few years had been all the rage on the Riviera: folding chairs and tables, built-in shelves, glass and chrome everywhere, with a couple paintings on otherwise bare walls, in a house that was beautiful, uncluttered, and simple, and in which only the very rich could afford to live. Mecha poured him a drink; they smoked and tacitly agreed to engage in polite chitchat, as though their recent encounter at Susana Ferriol’s dinner party, and subsequent farewell, had been the most normal thing in the world. They discussed the villa she had rented while the conflict in Spain dragged on, how ideal it was to spend the winter there, the mistral, which made the skies a cloudless blue. Afterward, when they had run out of small talk, and the conversation was beginning to pall, Max proposed they have lunch somewhere nearby, at Juan-les-Pins or Eden Roc, and continue chatting. Mecha responded to his suggestion with a lengthy silence, then repeated the last word he had said under her breath with a contemplative air. Finally, she told Max to pour himself a drink while she changed to go out. I’m not hungry, she said. But a walk would do me good.

  And there they were, strolling amid the grove of pines rooted in the sand, the rocks and clumps of seaweed on the shore in the shimmering midday sun, the azure waters of the bay open to the skies, and the sandy beach stretching as far as the old city wall. Mecha had changed out of her pajamas into a pair of black trousers and a blue-and-white-striped sailor’s top. She wore sunglasses (and a hint of eye shadow beneath the dark lenses) and her sandals crunched on the gravel alongside Max’s brown brogues. He was in shirtsleeves, hair slicked back, hatless, his jacket folded over his arm, and his sleeves turned up twice over his bronzed wrists.