Midnight Empire

by Andrew Croome

  ‘Daniel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  For a moment he didn’t recognise the voice.

  ‘It’s Jake, your liaison.’

  ‘Hello, Jake.’

  ‘How are things? I notice your BlackBerry’s off?’

  ‘Yeah. Um, battery.’

  A pause. ‘Listen,’ the man said. ‘You’re at the loft?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. But, um, you were planning to come to Creech today.’

  Daniel sighed. ‘I’m not feeling well.’

  ‘Oh,’ Jake said. ‘Okay. But listen. There’s someone who’s asked me to find you, who wants to catch up with you. John Henderson.’ The CIA interviewer, bifocals and a gut. ‘Yeah,’ said Jake. ‘So, perhaps just hang around. I’ll tell him you’re at the Nexus.’

  Daniel said nothing.

  ‘All set?’

  ‘Sure thing.’

  ‘Good,’ said Jake.

  ‘Can you tell Gray I’ll be late?’

  ‘Yeah, um, I will. Just wait there for now. Charge your phone if you can.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Okay, good.’

  ‘All set.’

  ‘Top man.’ He hung up.

  Daniel put the phone in its cradle.

  John Henderson—clearly an internal security person of some kind, someone whose job was to watch over programs, to investigate and interrogate, take care of problems.

  There were very few things that it could be about.

  The leak.

  The murder.

  The leak and the murder.

  The interception.

  They knew something. They’d cottoned on. He thought about it, and he understood: he was only moments from everything unravelling.

  He felt unsteady. He sat for a time at the dining table and then lay for a time on the bed. He waited; ended up looking at the wall safe that contained his bankroll, passport, and telephone in pieces.

  It felt like he’d been robbed of something, cheated. If they came for him, what purpose would it serve, spending thirty years in a cell? Who would benefit? Abu Ja’far was dead, and they could argue whatever they wanted about that but he knew it was just, what he’d done. And the intrigue he’d fallen prey to, the body on the floor? Blame his naivety if you had to, but surely what was most at fault was the position he’d been put in, this never-never world between war and peace.

  The fact was, he didn’t deserve it. Whatever would be meted out would be superbly unfair. It would be not punishment but vengeance. It was a case of blurring the lines magnificently, then destroying whoever tripped over them.

  He turned on the secure BlackBerry and rang Jake back.

  ‘Daniel?’

  ‘Can you tell Henderson that I’ll meet him at Creech? I’m going to come out. There’s a lot to do.’

  ‘No. I’ve spoken to Gray. They say you’re fine to stay to meet John, then come out in the afternoon.’

  ‘I’m coming now. Like I say, there’s a lot of work to get done.’

  ‘You—’ He terminated the call, turned the phone off and left it lying on the bed.

  In the car park, the Toyota started with its customary purr. He drove to Flamingo Road. Things were bright out on the Strip. He drove by the Bellagio, where the fountains weren’t firing, and he came to the freeway.

  He drove past the Aria. The Excalibur went by, the Luxor and the Mandalay Bay. He arrived at the Las Vegas Beltway and took it, soon turning along Paradise Road.

  At McCarran he kept in the middle lane, following the red triangles for short-term parking. He pulled into a spot, locked the car and put its keys on top of the front left tyre.

  The man at the ticketing desk hardly looked at him. The next departure was Amsterdam, however the only remaining seats were first class.

  ‘That’s fine.’

  ‘Carry-on only.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Gate seventeen, sir.’

  He queued to remove his shoes and pass through the detectors. He showed his passport at customs, staring blankly into the agent’s face.

  At the gate, the flight was already boarding. US Airways. The people were ready in their comfortable clothes.

  Things you could never imagine yourself doing. He sat in the fourth row, watching the tarmac out the window, wondering whether the flight would take off.

  Disconnection

  He crossed the river using the old bridge and arrived at the café. He took a table under the shade of the awning and asked for eggs. The sky was blue and he watched the river. When the eggs came, he ate them. Then he studied a small map. Having left money at the table, he crossed the street and entered the train station. He bought a ticket for the next town and boarded the train. When he arrived in the next town he found a small hotel and took a room. He showered then sat on the bed, looking out the window. The porter knocked at the door with someone else’s bags. It was a quarter past two.

  The casino was not large. When he arrived there was no game. ‘Six o’clock,’ said the cashier. ‘Come back at six o’clock.’ He returned to the hotel. He took a newspaper from the lobby but when he got to his room he did not read it. Instead he kicked his shoes off and fell asleep.

  He woke when a cleaner came in.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said in English. ‘I am thinking it is unoccupied.’

  ‘It’s alright,’ he said. ‘I’m going out.’

  At six o’clock there were four others and a game was underway. He sat down and folded a dozen hands. He was small-statured and quiet and he knew that if he was conservative to begin with they would extend him credit the whole night.

  Ac 4d in the cut-off. Fold.

  Qd 10h in the hijack. Fold.

  Three players were old men. One wore glasses to see the cards.

  The other player was young, perhaps twenty, and French. At some point in the evening, he could already tell, the Frenchman would make a very large and very aggressive bluff.

  Ad Qd in middle position. Raise three blinds.

  By eight o’clock the table had filled and another had opened beside it. Daniel drank coffee and stayed tight, watching events unfold. The man with the glasses bet a flat thirty euro if he raised pre-flop and missed, more than thirty euro if he hit—this was his rule. The man in the next seat held his cards in his left hand if he was going to fold them when his turn came. He checked the flop if he did not connect, sometimes checked it when he did.

  These would be the rhythms of the session, what to watch to pass the time.

  Ad Ac on the button. Raise three blinds and hope for a re-steal.

  The dealers changed tables. At the roulette wheel there was an argument over a late bet. The Frenchman pushed everything when a flush draw completed on the river. Daniel called with top-pair, top-kicker and won the hand. That had him five hundred euro up. Later, he was three hundred up, then six. When he returned to his hotel it was empty, the reception deserted. He took a beer from the fridge behind the front desk and drank it in his room before going to bed.

  Two days later he changed cities by train. He watched the landscape go by the windows and it made him feel hollow, cleft from something, hills and riverways sliding past, barns and squares of fields cut by furrows and stonework and channels for irrigation. Beyond small towns where the train did not stop he felt an urge for distance, a yearning for dimension. He imagined himself out there, standing centrally on the earth, it sinking underfoot, and by the time he’d arrived in the next city he was desperate for the tables.

  Ac 9c on the button. He raised and the big blind called. The flop came Ad 7h 7s. The big blind checked and Daniel checked behind. 4d. The big blind checked again and Daniel bet three-quarters of the pot, taking it.

  A pair of fours under the gun. He limped and was raised by the cut-off. He called and hit a set: 4h 10s Ad, the ace for bait. He check raised when his opponent bet. The man called and Daniel bet the next two streets, beating As Ks for three hundred euro. Bad luck for the cut-off but by no means unavoidable.
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  5c 6c late. He called behind a skinny Spaniard and the flop was 4d 3c Kc: an open-ended straight and flush draw combined. Daniel went all in. The Spaniard took his time. He put his stack in the middle and showed a pair of queens. On the turn and the river both draws missed and Daniel was down for the session and down for the day.

  The blood of conjured places. He ate on terraces, ate in port towns overlooking the water, on river fronts and along boulevards. He stuck with the tourist crowds. He stayed in fringe hotels, used a student ID that a Norwegian had dropped.

  He kept the map in the back pocket of his jeans and never planned ahead.

  He drank the beer of the country he was in. Duvel, Budvar, Kronenbourg, Castello.

  He never flew. His credit cards, he burned.

  April he spent in France and Spain. The games in Paris were easy. The French played with plaques for their bigger denominations and they liked to use them and he built his initial bankroll there. In Barcelona, the world series was finishing and he arrived to find tables full of would-be champions throwing a weight of euros around, angry young men whose tournament it had not been and who had taken the fact as a personal slight. He stayed at a guest house off La Rambla, visited the beach in the dying afternoons, climbed the hill and saw Gaudi’s cathedral through a haunted red haze.

  In Rome the crowds were tremendous. He played at the Cotton Club. The Italians wore scarves and played with unparalleled aggression, even in the cash games. He was outmatched. He gave away too many winning hands, offered too much credit, saw pocket aces everywhere and was reduced to playing premium holdings—became an easy-read and none of his hands were paid off. But he enjoyed it: the challenge and the fireworks and the machismo it took to win here, the lack of viable counter-strategies, the pure gamble. Only here was he prepared to believe in the romance of the player, the live-by-your-wits ideal.

  The days got longer. More light. He left casinos and card rooms in brighter dawns, into rumbling cities. Sometimes there was the smell of the sea, briny and cut.

  Occasionally, he spotted the planes above, the flighted webbing. It was a strange feeling, discomforting, seeing these machines and their white, vaporous trails.

  Returning to Amsterdam, he decided to pare down his belongings. One small backpack. One pair of jeans. One pair of shorts.

  Three T-shirts, one jacket, underwear and socks. A wallet. A money belt. His passport. The less he carried, the less burdened he felt.

  He sought the anonymity of crowds, of the stranger in the city.

  At a card room off the Amstel he won a four-way pot with a straight flush against a player holding four of a kind and two others holding full houses. Two thousand, seven hundred and fifty euro: his biggest take in a single hand. The man who had four of a kind did not take it well. He looked at first puzzled and then crippled, then heartbroken. He sat very still for a long time. Normally a player had to rebuy or leave his seat but this man, after a beat like that, they let go.

  Except for his passport, all his possessions were new. He went weeks without shaving and he was letting his hair grow long. He had not touched his virtual self because he was sure that they’d be watching his bank account, his email.

  In Cologne, he lost seven days running, some of them big losses, and it was hard to know who you were when something like that happened: it seemed that your soul had been swallowed and that you were suddenly an empty vessel.

  He continued to whittle himself away, found methods to make his imprint even less: smaller tubes of toothpaste; nail clippers that were purchased only when needed then thrown away. He saw it as a form of self-erasure, a meditative practice, a philosophical enlightenment of an unknown kind.

  Ac Ks on the button facing a short-stack’s three-blind raise. Move all-in.

  He gave the question serious consideration: At the table, was it a help or hindrance to know who you were?

  Let the cards choose, he thought. Let the habits of the other players. These are the DNA. At the tables it is who we are.

  Sometimes, his decisions had little logic. They were impulse—whichever path of neurons switched on in the mind. This was a deep function of his consciousness. He had no problem believing it. It sounded like self-help or a new-age mantra, but to really win—to destroy the competition by making that far edge move, the perfect play—the mind and the game had to be one.

  8c 9c in middle position facing two limpers and a loose big blind.

  A straight on the turn, out of position against the pre- and now post-flop aggressor.

  He ate breakfast in piazzas. Ate in front of monuments, ate before famous fountains, celebrated galleries and ancient steps.

  He ate where crowds queued for renaissance art, for surrealist art, for classics in marble, Roman and Greek.

  He stayed in quiet hotels along laneways, down side streets. He took the occasional ferry, stood on deck and watched the huge and gushing slabs of water running along the hulls, ocean spray on the balustrades and a known feeling of heaviness.

  In Düsseldorf he entered a two-hundred-player tournament and came fourth.

  In Arzon, fifty players, and tenth.

  In Calais, three hundred and eleven and two hundred and twenty-eighth.

  Did he believe he could do this forever? Tracing an existence at the edges, days of scant light in the great West, a life that was zero sum?

  It was not a question that he asked. Rather, he wondered whether his success at the tables was in fact a virtue of the future’s complete absence, a product of the pure present.

  In Brittany, gelatin light in the streets. In Normandy, the D-day beaches. He stood on Omaha and Sword, failing to imagine how it all must have been. In pastel sunlight he visited the graves, row on row, Australian, American, a sweeping singularity, a monument to authentic death. He stood by a marker, a German position, and he shut his eyes to conjure the sound of machine-gun fire.

  He decided to go up in stakes. Paris was the place. In the Aviation Club de France there were tables that demanded ten thousand euro to sit down. In the opulently furnished room, there was a heavy sense of something impending. Poor luck perhaps, or something even more serious. It was the heightened realm of the small gesture. The place of eyebrows up or down. Of the low-tap hand-beat of your hole cards before they went gently into the muck.

  His first playable holding was As Qd in the cut-off, facing a four-hundred-euro raise. Generally, he would call. But here he wasn’t comfortable. He glanced down at the thousand-euro plaques and it bothered him: he was nervous, afraid even. He looked at the cards again and ditched the hand.

  Three hours in, he was winning but playing terribly. He was getting lucky. He’d called a large bet on the turn holding 9c 9s when he was practically dead—managing the 9d on the river, a one-in-twenty chance. There was also a back-door flush he’d made holding onto an ace with a low kicker when he had no right to be in the hand.

  He should have stopped. He thought he could play through it. He was careful about his gestures, the way he stacked his chips.

  Ah 9h in the big blind facing a button raise.

  Kh Qd on the button looking at a single limper.

  The player to his right was a smoker who turned away to draw on his cigarette in the empty space behind his shoulder, an ash tray clipped before him on the cushion.

  The colour of the table felt was a strong azure blue. Cocktail waitresses delivered coffee and stimulant drinks, freshly squeezed juices, a bottled water named H2Go.

  A pair of twos under the gun.

  Pocket sevens facing a nine-hundred-euro 3-bet.

  He took a piss and told his mirror-self to be more alert, more thinking.

  Very few hands were ending in a showdown. It was difficult to know who was playing how.

  Cowboys in middle position, first in. 3d 4d on the button against an early raise, a cold call and now two diamonds on the flop.

  He played for six hours, winning three thousand, seven hundred.

  When he racked his chips and wen
t to the cashier, another of the players followed: one of the more serious men with a hard wired focus, a God-given impenetrable façade. Definitely Russian.

  They sat at a restaurant on the Champs-Élysées and paid a small fortune to order à la carte—but what did that matter? They were aware, in a modern way, of their skewed relation to cash.

  Dmitri was slender and had sandy hair that was almost buzz cut. He spoke in a short, declarative way. They drank Duvel, then Forst. Dmitri informed Daniel that he, Daniel, had played very badly. If this was the general standard of his game (‘garbage decisions’) then he should stop, immediately, and drop back to the lower levels.

  At first, Daniel wondered if it wasn’t a ploy. Spike the newcomer’s confidence then watch him fall to bits. But Dmitri’s critique continued throughout their entrees and two rounds of beer. It became brutal. Hand by hand, the Russian guessed Daniel’s cards precisely or gave a very narrow range, and hand by hand he complained about what Daniel had done. ‘You should have raised this.’ ‘What were you even doing here?’ ‘You must bet now when the river comes.’

  By the time their main arrived, Daniel felt almost naked, completely exposed. An idiot. How had he not realised?

  ‘Now you are white,’ said Dmitri. ‘But do not worry. The others today, they do not notice all of what I notice. And maybe you are a better player than some of them. But if you do again what you did today you will lose. You will go broke in Paris. Down and out.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  Dmitri shrugged. ‘Why are we meeting after the game? Because, if you allow it, poker can be the loneliest living in the world. It is nine men around a table at the very edge of disconnection. This I know. So it is better to talk. It is better to have friends. You have a stony look about you like you haven’t had a conversation in years.’

  ‘I haven’t been playing that long.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Months.’

  ‘Months. This can be anything. Two months, four months?’

  ‘A number of months.’

  ‘You don’t know?’