What We Become (29 page)

One of the figures silhouetted against the light stood out among the others, and as it drew closer to the table and to Max, it began to acquire features as well as an aroma of Worth perfume. By then, Max had already risen to his feet, adjusting his tie, and with a luminous smile as dazzling as the light flooding everything around him, he extended both hands in greeting.

“Good God, you look ravishing, Baroness.”

“Flatteur.”

Asia Schwarzenberg sat down and removed her sunglasses. After ordering a whiskey with Perrier water, she gazed at Max with her big, almond-shaped, slightly Slavic eyes. Max gestured toward the menu on the table.

“Shall we go to a restaurant or would you prefer a light lunch?”

“A light lunch here will be fine.”

Max browsed the menu, which had on the back a Matisse drawing of the Palais de la Méditerranée with some palm trees along the Promenade.

“Foie gras and Château d'Yquem?”

“Perfect.”

The baroness smiled, revealing a set of pearl-white teeth, her incisors stained with the ubiquitous red lipstick she left on everything from cigarettes to the rims of glasses and the shirt collars of men she was kissing good-bye. But, perfume aside (in Max's opinion Worth made perfect clothes but their scents were too musky), that was her only indulgence. Unlike the bogus titles many international gold diggers paraded around the Riviera, Baroness Anastasia von Schwarzenberg was the genuine article. A brother of hers, a friend of Prince Yusupov, was among Rasputin's assassins, and her first husband was executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. Her title, however, came from her second marriage to a Prussian aristocrat who died of a heart attack in 1923, bankrupted after his horse Marauder lost the Grand Prix de Deauville by a head. With no other source of income, although well connected, Asia Schwarzenberg, who was tall, slender, and graceful, had modeled for some of the largest fashion houses in France. The old, bound editions of
Vogue
and
Vanity Fair
still found in the reading rooms of transatlantic liners and luxury hotels were full of sophisticated photographs of her by Edward Steichen or the Seebergers. And the fact is that, despite being almost fifty, she still looked stunning in clothes (a dark blue bolero jacket over baggy cream-colored trousers, which Max's trained eye identified as Hermès or Schiaparelli).

“I need an introduction,” he said.

“Man or woman?”

“A woman. Here in Nice.”

“Difficult?”

“Somewhat. A lot of money and social standing. I want to join her circle.”

The baroness listened attentively, with finesse. Weighing up the possible benefits, Max supposed. Besides selling antiques, claiming they belonged to her Russian family, for many years she had made a living from her contacts, obtaining invitations to parties, villa
rentals, a reservation at an exclusive restaurant, or an article in a fashion magazine. On the Riviera, Baroness Asia Schwarzenberg was a kind of society go-between.

“I won't ask what you are up to,” she said, “because I can usually imagine.”

“It's not so simple this time.”

“Do I know her?”

“You'd have no difficulty even if you didn't. But tell me, Asia Alexandrovna, is there anyone you don't know?”

The foie gras and champagne arrived, and Max deliberately left off talking while they sampled them, without the baroness showing any impatience. She and Max had dallied briefly five years before, when they met on New Year's Eve at the embassy in Saint Moritz. Things didn't go any further because they both realized at the same time that the other was a penniless gold digger. And so they had stayed up until dawn, breakfasting on cake and hot chocolate at Hanselmann's, she in a gold lamé gown under her mink coat, and he still formal in his tailcoat. Since then, their relations had been friendly and mutually advantageous, neither encroaching on the other's territory.

“You were photographed together this summer in Long­champs,” Max said at last. “I saw the picture in
Marie Claire
, or another of those magazines.”

The baroness was genuinely surprised, arching her meticulously plucked eyebrows.

“Susana Ferriol?”

“Yes, her.”

The baroness's wicker chair creaked slightly as she leaned back, crossing her legs.

“You are talking big game, darling.”

“Why do you think I came to you?”

Max had opened his cigarette case and was offering it to her. He leaned forward to light her cigarette then lit his own.

“It's not a problem as far as I am concerned,” said the baroness, puffing thoughtfully on her cigarette. “I've known Suzi for years. What exactly do you need?”

“Nothing in particular. The chance to visit her home.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes. The rest is my business.”

A cloud of smoke. Slow. Cautious.

“I have no wish to know about the rest,” she added. “But I warn you she is not a woman of easy virtue. I've never known her to take a lover . . . although, what with the war in Spain, everything has been turned upside down. People are constantly coming and going, refugees and everyone else. . . . Utter chaos.”

That word,
refugees
, was ambiguous, thought Max. It conjured up images of poor people, their photographs published in the foreign press: weathered peasant faces, tears trickling down their furrowed cheeks, families fleeing the bombing, filthy children sleeping on top of wretched bundles of clothes, the misery and despair of those who had lost all but their lives. And yet, many of the Spaniards who sought refuge on the Riviera had nothing in common with those people. Comfortably installed in a climate that resembled their own, they would take villas, apartments, or hotel rooms, bask in the sun, and dine at expensive restaurants. And not only on the Riviera. Four weeks earlier, while Max was preparing a coup that didn't work out as planned, he had met several of those exiles in Florence, an aperitif in Casone followed by dinner in Picciolo or Betti. For those who had managed to flee, and still possessed bank accounts abroad, the Civil War was no more than a temporary inconvenience. A distant storm.

“Do you know her brother, Tomás Ferriol?”

“Of course I do,” she said, and raised a warning finger. “Watch out for him.”

Max recalled his most recent conversation, that morning, with the two Italian secret service men at Café Monnot in Place
Masséna, next to the municipal casino. The two men had abstemiously ordered lemonades, and Tignanello sat there gloomily silent as in Monte Carlo, while Barbaresco gave Max the promised details of the job they wanted him to do. Susana Ferriol is the key person, Barbaresco had explained. Her villa at the foot of Mont Boron is a kind of private office for her brother's secret business. It is also where Tomás Ferriol stays whenever he comes to the Riviera, and he keeps the documents in the safe in his study. Your job is to infiltrate their circle of friends, size up the situation, and obtain what we need.

Asia Schwarzenberg continued to observe Max closely, as though weighing his chances. She didn't look willing to lay a five-franc bet on him.

“Ferriol,” she went on, after a brief pause, “isn't the sort of man who will tolerate anyone fooling around with his little sister.”

Max calmly acknowledged the warning.

“Is he here in Nice?”

“He comes and goes. I bumped into him a few times about a month ago. Dining at La Réserve, and then at a party in the Antibes villa that Dulce Martínez de Hoz rented this summer. But he spends most of his time traveling between Spain, Switzerland, and Portugal. He has close ties with the Nationalist government in Burgos. They say, and I believe it, that he continues to bankroll General Franco. Everyone knows he financed the early stages of the military insurrection in Spain . . .”

Max was looking beyond the tables at the cars parked alongside the pavement and the figures strolling continuously up and down the Promenade. Sitting at a nearby table was a couple with a skinny, cinnamon-colored dog with a noble bearing. The young woman had on a flimsy dress and a silk turban hat and was pulling at the dog's leash to stop it from licking the shoes of the man at the next table, who was busy filling his pipe and staring at the sign above the Thomas Cook travel agency.

“Give me a couple of days,” the baroness said. “I have to find the right strategy.”

“I don't have much time.”

“I'll do what I can. I suppose you will cover my costs.”

Max nodded absentmindedly. The man at the nearby table had lit his pipe and was looking at them, perhaps inadvertently, and yet it made Max feel uncomfortable. There was something familiar about that stranger, he decided, although he couldn't pin it down.

“It won't be cheap,” the baroness went on. “You have set your sights high with Suzi Ferriol.”

Max looked back at her.

“How high? . . . I was thinking six thousand francs.”

“Eight thousand, darling. Everything is so expensive these days.”

The man with the pipe appeared to have lost all interest in them, and was smoking as he watched the figures strolling along the Promenade. Max took out the envelope he had prepared from his inside jacket pocket, and, using the table as a shield, added another thousand francs from his wallet.

“I'm sure you'll make do with seven thousand.”

“Yes, I'll make do,” the baroness said with a grin.

She slipped the envelope into her bag and took her leave. Max stood waiting while she moved away, then paid the bill, put on his hat, and made his way between the tables, passing the man with the pipe, who appeared not to notice him. A moment later, on the last of the three steps leading from the terrace to the pavement, he remembered. He had seen the man that morning, sitting outside Café Monnot having his shoes shined, while Max was talking to the two Italian secret agents.

“There's a problem,” Mecha blurts out.

They have been strolling for a while, chatting idly, near the San
Francesco cloister and the gardens of the Hotel Imperial Tramontano. The late-afternoon sun is sinking behind the cliffs overlooking the Marina Grande on their left, casting a golden glow on the haze above the bay.

“A serious problem,” she adds after a moment.

She has just finished her cigarette, and after loosening the ember on the iron safety rail, she throws the remains over the side. Her tone of voice and manner surprise Max, and he studies her motionless expression from the side. She narrows her eyes, staring obstinately at the water.

“That move of Sokolov's,” she says at last.

Max continues to look at her, puzzled. Not knowing what she is talking about. The adjourned game ended yesterday in a draw. A half-point for each player. That is all he knows.

“Bastards,” mutters Mecha.

Max's bewilderment gives way to alarm. Her tone is one of disdain, with a hint of anger. Something he has never seen in her before, he concludes. Although perhaps that isn't entirely true. Voices from a distant shared past bubble up gently out of nowhere. Max has already experienced this. In another world, another life. That cold, polite disdain.

“He already knew the move.”

“Who did?”

Hands thrust into the pockets of her cardigan, she shrugs as if the answer was obvious.

“The Russian, of course. He knew the move Jorge was going to make.”

It takes a moment for the words to sink in.

“Are you telling me . . . ?”

“That Sokolov was prepared. And this isn't the first time.”

A long, stunned silence.

“But he is the world champion,” Max says, struggling to digest the information. “Surely it's only normal for these things to happen.”

Mecha looks away from the bay and fixes him with a silent gaze. There is nothing normal, her eyes are saying, about these things happening or being done in this way.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asks.

“You in particular?”

“Yes.”

She lowers her head, pensive.

“Because I might need your help.”

Max is the one who is stunned now, and he rests his hand on the cliff-top rail. There is an unsteadiness about his gesture, like the sudden awareness of an unexpected, almost threatening, attack of vertigo. The social life Dr. Hugentobler's chauffeur has invented in Sorrento has a specific purpose, which doesn't involve Mecha Inzunza needing him. On the contrary.

“What for?”

“All in good time.”

He tries to gather his thoughts. To plan what to do in this unknown situation.

“I wonder . . .”

Mecha Inzunza cuts across him, calmly.

“I have been asking myself these past few days what you might be capable of.”

Her voice as she speaks is soft, and she holds his gaze, as though watching for him to reply in kind.

“With regard to what?”

“To me.”

A casual gesture of protest, barely expressed. This is the reformed Max, the successful Max, who now acts a little offended. Dismissing any conceivable doubts about his reputation.