What We Become (48 page)

Replacing the binoculars in their case, Max passes close to the building, as if taking a stroll. When he reaches the bottom of the ladder, he looks up. The metal has rusted, leaving orange marks on the wall, but the rungs look sturdy enough. The bottom one is near the ground, above a flower bed. The distance up to the roof is forty meters, and the rungs are quite close together. The amount of effort required seems reasonable: ten minutes to climb up in the dark, taking every kind of precaution. It might be a good idea, he thinks, to carry a snap hook and harness to secure himself halfway up, and to take a rest, if he gets too exhausted. Apart from that, he wouldn't need much equipment: a small rucksack, some mountaineering rope, a few tools, a flashlight, and the right clothing. He looks at his watch. The shops in the center of town are already open, along with the hardware store in Porta Marina. He'll need some sneakers as well, and black shoe polish to dye everything with.

Just like in the good old days, he reflects, turning his back on the building and walking away through the garden. He is excited to be doing something again, or by the imminence of action. That old, familiar flutter of doubt, calmed by a drink or a cigarette, when
the world was still a hunting ground for the clever and intrepid. When life had an aroma of Turkish cigarettes, cocktails in the lounge bar of a Palace Hotel, a woman's perfume. Of pleasure and danger. And now, remembering that, Max has the impression that each step he takes is lighter, that he has regained his agility. But the best of all isn't that. When he looks in front of him, he discovers that his shadow has come back. The sun piercing the tops of the pine trees is projecting it onto the ground, steady and elongated, as it was before. Joined to his feet, where it had been in the past. Timeless, with no signs of aging, or fatigue. And, having recovered his shadow, the former ballroom dancer laughs out loud the way he hasn't laughed for many years.

11

T
he Ways of a Wolf

T
HE RAIN WAS
still falling on Nice. Amid the murky grayness enveloping the old city, clothes hung from the balconies like the tatters of tragic lives. His raincoat buttoned up to the neck and with opened umbrella, Max Costa crossed Place du Jésus, avoiding the rain-pocked puddles, heading for the cathedral steps. Mauro Barbaresco was there, leaning against the locked gates, hands in the pockets of his oilskin sleek with rain, watching Max curiously from beneath the soggy brim of his hat.

“It's tonight,” said Max.

Without uttering a word, Barbaresco began to walk toward Rue Droite. Max followed him. There was a bar on the corner, and two doors down, a dark tunnel-like entrance. They crossed an interior patio and climbed two flights of wooden stairs that creaked beneath their feet. On the second-floor landing, Barbaresco opened a door and ushered Max through. Max left his umbrella propped
against the wall, removed his hat, and shook off the water. The house, dark and uninviting, stank of boiled vegetables and damp, soiled clothing. A corridor led to the kitchen door, then another door, which was ajar, revealing a bedroom with an unmade bed, and finally a sitting room with two old armchairs, a sideboard, and a dining table with the remains of breakfast on it. Seated at the table, vest undone, shirtsleeves rolled up above his elbows, Domenico Tignanello was reading the funnies in
Le Gringoire
.

“He says he's doing it tonight,” said Barbaresco.

Tignanello's gloomy expression appeared to brighten a little. He gave a nod of approval, put the newspaper down on the table, and with a gesture offered Max the coffeepot standing next to a couple of dirty cups, an oil cruet, and the remains of some toast on a plate. Max declined the offer as he undid his raincoat. A dim light was seeping through the open window, casting the corners of the room in shadow. Barbaresco, removing his oilskin, went over to the window, framed in the murky square of light.

“What news of your Spanish friend?” he asked, after he had taken a good look outside.

“He isn't my friend, and I haven't seen him again,” Max replied calmly.

“Not since your meeting at the harbor?”

“That's right.”

Barbaresco had draped his oilskin over the back of a chair, oblivious to the drops of water pooling on the floor.

“We've made some inquiries,” he said. “Everything he told you is true: the nationalist radio station in Monte Carlo, his attempts to redirect the
Luciano Canfora
to a Republican port . . . The only thing we haven't been able to establish, for the moment, is his identity. Our organization has no record of any Rafael Mostaza.”

Max gave him the blank stare of an impassive croupier.

“I suppose you could follow him. I don't know . . . take his photograph, or something.”

“Maybe we will.” Barbaresco smirked. “But to do that we'd need to know when your next meeting with him is.”

“There's nothing planned. He turns up and asks me to meet him whenever he pleases. Last time he left a note at the reception desk of the Negresco.”

Barbaresco stared at him in astonishment.

“He doesn't know about you breaking into Susana Ferriol's house tonight?”

“He knows, but he said nothing.”

“Then how does he plan to get the documents?”

“I haven't the faintest idea.”

Barbaresco exchanged a bewildered glance with his colleague before looking back at Max.

“Curious, don't you think? That he doesn't mind you telling us everything? That he even encourages it. And that he hasn't shown up today.”

“Perhaps,” Max conceded coolly. “But it isn't my job to find out these things. You're the spies.”

He took out his cigarette case, contemplating the open box, as though which cigarette he chose was what mattered just then. Finally he placed one in his mouth and put the case away, without offering it to the two men.

“I suppose you know your job,” he said at last, flicking his lighter.

Barbaresco walked to the window and looked outside. He appeared anxious, as if he had fresh cause for concern.

“It certainly isn't normal. Showing one's hand like that.”

“Maybe he's trying to protect him,” Tignanello suggested.

“Protect me? . . . From whom?”

Domenico Tignanello quietly contemplated the hair on his arms. Silent once more, as though the effort of opening his mouth had exhausted him.

“From us.” Barbaresco replied, for him. “From his people. From yourself.”

“Well, when you find out, let me know.” Max calmly exhaled a puff of smoke. “I have other things to think about.”

Barbaresco sat down in one of the armchairs. Pensive.

“We're not being set up, are we?” he said at last.

“By Mostaza or by me?”

“By you, of course.”

“How would I do that? I have no choice in all this. But if I were in your shoes, I'd try to locate this fellow. Clear things up with him.”

Barbaresco exchanged further looks with his colleague, before glancing resentfully at Max's suit, visible beneath his open raincoat.

“Clear things up . . . you make it sound refined.”

Those two, Max thought, always looked as if they'd emerged from a sleepless night, with their crumpled clothes, bloodshot eyes ringed with dark shadows, and their stubbly faces. They probably had.

“Which brings us to the important bit,” Barbaresco added. “How do you propose to enter the house?”

Max looked down at Barbaresco's damp shoes, the soles split at the toes. With all that rain, his socks must be drenched.

“That's my concern,” he replied. “What I need to know is where we're going to meet so that I can hand over the letters, assuming I get them. Assuming everything goes well.”

“This is a good place. We'll be here all night, waiting. And there's a telephone in the bar downstairs. One of us can stay there until it closes, in case there's a change of plan. . . . Will you be able to get into the house without any problem?”

“I imagine so. There's a dinner party at Cimiez, near the old H
Ô
tel Régina. Susana Ferriol is one of the guests. That'll give me plenty of time.”

“Do you have everything you need?”

“Yes. The keys Fossataro brought are perfect.”

Tignanello slowly raised his eyes, fixing them on Max.

“I'd like to see how you do it,” he said unexpectedly. “How you open that safe.”

Max arched his eyebrows, surprised. A flash of interest seemed to light up the swarthy southerner's taciturn face, making him look almost friendly.

“So would I,” Barbaresco said. “Fossataro told us you were good at it. Cool, calm, and collected, he said. With safes and with women.”

Those two made him think of something, Max told himself. He associated them with an image he couldn't quite visualize. Which mirrored their appearance and manner. But he couldn't pin it down.

“You'd be bored watching,” he said. “In both cases, it's slow, routine work. A question of patience.”

Barbaresco grinned. He seemed to like Max's reply.

“We wish you the best of luck, Costa.”

Max gazed at them at length. He had finally found the image that had eluded him: two soaking wet dogs in the rain.

“Yes,” he said, reaching into his pocket for his cigarette case again, and offering it them, open. “I expect you do.”

She shows up in midafternoon, while Max is preparing the equipment for his nocturnal foray. Hearing the knock he looks through the peephole, slips on his jacket, and opens the door. Mecha Inzunza is standing there, a smile on her face, hands in the pockets of her knitted cardigan. A gesture which, as though time had stood still (although it could be Max confusing the past and the present), reminds him of that distant morning, almost forty years ago, at the Caboto boardinghouse in Buenos Aires. When she went to see him on the pretext of picking up the glove she herself had tucked into his top pocket, like some strange white flower, before he danced a tango at La Ferroviaria. Even her manner as she enters the room and walks around (calm, curious, slowly glancing about)
resembles that other way she once had: tilting her head in order to survey Max's simple, orderly world; pausing in front of the open window with its view over Sorrento; or suddenly losing her smile as she glimpses the objects which he, with the meticulousness of a soldier preparing for combat (and the ambivalent pleasure of reliving, through that old campaign ritual, the thrill of uncertainty in the face of his imminent mission), has laid out on the bed: a small rucksack, a flashlight, a thirty-meter length of nylon mountaineering rope, already knotted, a tool bag, some dark clothes, and a pair of sneakers, which he has dyed with shoe polish that afternoon.

“Good Lord,” she exclaims. “You're really going to do it.”

She says this pensively, with admiration, as though until that moment she hadn't quite believed in Max's promises.

“Of course,” he says simply.

There is nothing artificial or forced about his tone. Nor is he seeking that day to cover himself in glory. Ever since he made his decision, and found a way of implementing it, or thought he had, he has found an inner calm. A professional fatalism. His old ways, the gestures that before were a sign of youthful vigor, have in the last few hours restored an astonishing sense of self-assurance. A past, renewed feeling of pleasurable peace, where the risks of the exploit, the dangers of a blunder or a stroke of misfortune, dissolve in the face of the intensity of what is to come. Even Mecha Inzunza, Jorge Keller, or Mikhail Sokolov's chess book aren't in the forefront of his mind. What matters is the challenge Max Costa (or whoever he was in the past) has thrown down to the aging man with gray hair who gazes back at him occasionally from the mirror.

She is still watching him intently. With a different kind of expression, Max thinks he notices. Or perhaps one he had considered impossible.

“The game starts at six,” she says at last. “If all goes well, you'll have two hours of darkness. More, with any luck.”

“Or less?”

“Possibly.”

“Does your son know I'm doing this?”

“No.”

“What about Karapetian?”

“He doesn't know, either.”

“How are things with Irina?”

“They've prepared an opening gambit with her, which Jorge won't use, not all of it anyway. The Russians will think he has changed his game plan at the last moment.”

“Won't that make them suspicious?”

“No.”

She runs her fingers over the mountaineering rope, as though it suggested unusual situations she hadn't thought of before. All of a sudden she seems anxious.

“Listen, Max. It's true what you said just now. The game could finish sooner than we envisage—if there's an unexpected stalemate, or one of them resigns. In which case, you run the risk of still being there when Sokolov and his people return.”

“I understand.”

Mecha seems to hesitate further.

“If things go wrong, forget about the book,” she says at last. “Just get out of there as quickly as you can.”

He looks at her gratefully. He likes hearing her say that. This time, the old fraud in him can't resist adjusting his lips into an appropriate, stoical smile.

“I trust it will be a long drawn-out game,” he says. “Complete with postmortem analysis, as you call it.”

She looks at the tool bag. It contains half a dozen implements, including a diamond glass cutter.

“Why are you doing this, Max?”

“He's my son,” he replies without thinking. “You said so yourself.”

“You're lying. You couldn't care less if he's your son or not.”

“Perhaps I'm indebted to you.”

“You? Indebted?”

“I may have loved you back then.”

“In Nice?”

“Always.”

“You have a strange way of showing it, my friend . . . then as well as now.”

Mecha has sat down on the bed, next to Max's equipment. All of a sudden, he feels the urge to explain once more what she already knows full well. To let some of his old bitterness float up to the surface.

“You never wondered how those without money see the world, did you? What life looks like when they open their eyes in the morning.”

She gazes at him in surprise. There is no trace of harshness in Max's tone, more a certain coldness. Detachment.

“You were never tempted,” he goes on, “to wage a private war against those who sleep peacefully without worrying about what they will eat the next day. Against those fair-weather friends who come to you when they need you, flatter you when it suits them, then don't let you hold your head up high.”

Max has stepped over to the window and is pointing at the view of Sorrento and the luxury villas dotted over the green slopes of Punta del Capo.