What We Become (58 page)

And so, the vestiges of a smile still playing on his lips, lulled by the distant echo of all those lives that have been his, Max moves the pearl necklace to one side and picks up the woman's glove beneath it. Deftly, with a touch of elegant whimsy, he arranges it in his top jacket pocket, the fingers protruding like the ends of a handkerchief or the petals of a flower in a buttonhole. Glancing around the room to make sure everything is in order, he gazes one last time at the necklace lying on the chest of drawers and nods briefly toward the window, as though taking leave of an invisible audience clapping their hands in imaginary applause. Such an occasion, he thinks while buttoning his jacket and smoothing it down, might call for the accompaniment of the Old School Tango as he bows out with appropriate nonchalance. But that would be too obvious, he decides. Too predictable. And so he opens the door, picks up his suitcase, and strides down the corridor, into the void, whistling “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.”

Madrid, January 1990

Sorrento, June 2012

Photograph by Victoria Iglesias

Arturo Pérez-Reverte is the #1 internationally bestselling author of many critically acclaimed novels, including 
The Club Dumas
, 
The Queen of the South
, and 
The Siege, 
which won the International Dagger Award from the Crime Writers' Association. A retired war journalist, he lives in Madrid and is a member of the Royal Spanish Academy. His books have been translated into more than forty languages and have been adapted to the big screen.

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

English translation copyright © 2015 by Nick Caistor and Lorenza García Originally published in Spain in 2012 by Santillana Ediciones Generales, S. L. as
El tango de la Guardia Vieja

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First Atria Books hardcover edition June 2016

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Interior design by Kyoko Watanabe

Jacket design by Nicole Caputo

Jacket illustration from poster advertising the Cunard Line (Colour Litho), English School (20th Century)/Private Collection/Bridgeman Images

Lettering by David Wu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pérez-Reverte, Arturo, author. | Caistor, Nick, translator. | Garcia, Lorenza, translator.

Title: What we become / Arturo Pérez-Reverte ; translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia.

Other titles: Tango de la guardia vieja. English

Description: First edition. | New York : Atria Books, 2016. | “Originally published in Spain in 2012 by Santillana Ediciones Generales, S. L. as El tango de la Guardia Vieja”—Verso title page.

Subjects: LCSH: Male dancers—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Romance / Historical. | FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / Suspense.

Classification: LCC PQ6666.E765 T3613 2016 | DDC 863/.64—dc23

LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015037715

ISBN 978-1-4767-5198-6

ISBN 978-1-4767-5200-6 (ebook)