What We Become (31 page)

He goes on to list a few. At the last world championship, when Sokolov was playing Cohen in Manila, a Soviet embassy employee sat in the front row taking flash photographs in an attempt to put the Israeli off his game. It was also rumored that during the olympiad in Varna, the Russians planted a parapsychologist in the audience with the aim of distracting Sokolov's opponents telepathically. And apparently when he was defending his title against the Yugoslav Monfilovic, his advisers slipped him instructions with the yogurts they ate during the game.

“But the best story of all,” he concluded, “is the one about Bobkov, a player who defected from the Soviet Union during the Reykjavík tournament: they managed to infect his underwear
in the laundry room at the hotel with the bacterium that causes ­gonorrhea.”

Now is the time, thinks Max, to cut to the chase.

“What if,” he suggests nonchalantly, “one of the opponent's analysts were a spy?”

“Analysts?” Lambertucci looks at him, intrigued. “My word, Max, you
are
getting technical.”

“I've been reading about it.”

It does happen sometimes, they confirm. There was a notorious case involving an English analyst called Byrne. He was working for the Norwegian Aronsen, who played Petrosian shortly before Petrosian lost the title to Sokolov. Byrne confessed to having leaked information about Aronsen's game with Petrosian to some alleged Russian bookmakers who were placing two-thousand-ruble bets on each game. It was later discovered that the information had in fact been passed on to the KGB, and in turn to one of Petrosian's assistants.

“Could something like that be going on here in Sorrento?”

“Considering what is at stake between now and the world title, anything is possible,” says Tedesco. “Chess isn't always confined to a board.”

Lambertucci's wife comes in with a broom and dustpan, and turns them out while she airs the room and sweeps between the tables. They drain their glasses and step outside. Beyond the tables and the bamboo canopy, Dr. Hugentobler's Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud flaunts its silver-plated angel on the cherry-red hood.

“Is your boss still away?” asks Lambertucci, admiring the vehicle.

“For now.”

“I envy you. What do you think, Capitano? A spot of work and then time off, until the boss gets back.”

The three men laugh together as they walk along the jetty to the harbor, where a fishing boat has just come in, attracting a crowd of passersby eager to see their catch.

“What's so special about Keller and Sokolov?” Lambertucci asks Max. “And why the sudden interest in chess?”

“The Campanella contest has aroused my curiosity.”

Lambertucci winks at Tedesco.

“The Campanella contest and possibly a certain lady you dined with here the other night.”

“Who didn't seem to be the housekeeper.” Tedesco chortles.

Max glances at Tedesco, who grins archly. Then he turns to Lambertucci again.

“You told him already?”

“Of course. Who else am I to confide in? Besides, I never saw you look so dapper. And there was I, pretending we'd never met. . . . God knows what you were up to!”

“You did your best to find out by eavesdropping.”

“It was all I could do not to laugh out loud, watching you play the lothario at your age. You reminded me of Vittorio De Sica when he puts on aristocratic airs.”

They are standing on the quayside, near the fishing boat. As the crew unloads the crates, a breeze sweeps through the nets and lines piled on the quayside, wafting the smells of fish, salt, and tar.

“You're like a pair of old washerwomen with your gossip.”

Lambertucci nods, brazenly.

“Skip the introduction, Max. Get to the point.”

“She is, or was, an old acquaintance. That's all.”

The two amateur chess players exchange a knowing look.

“She also happens to be Keller's mother,” Lambertucci parries. “And don't pull that face; we saw her photograph in the newspapers.”

“This has nothing to do with chess. Or with her son. . . . I told you, she's an old acquaintance.”

Max's last words elicit a skeptical look from both men.

“An old acquaintance,” says Lambertucci, “who sparks off a half-hour discussion about Russian chess players and the KGB.”

“A fascinating subject, it has to be said,” Tedesco remarks. “So, no complaints.”

“All right. Let's drop it, shall we?”

Lambertucci nods, still in a teasing mood.

“If you insist. We all have our little secrets, and this is your affair. But it will cost you. . . . We want tickets to watch the games in the Vittoria. But we can't afford them. Now you have connections, that changes the situation.”

“I'll do what I can.”

Lambertucci takes a last draw on his cigarette, which is burning down to his fingers. Then he throws it into the water.

“Aging is a tragedy. She was a beautiful woman, wasn't she? You only have to look at her.”

“Yes.” Max watches the cigarette end bobbing on the oily water below. “They say she was very beautiful.”

Through a picture window open on to the Mediterranean, the midday sun cast a light on the Jetée-Promenade—a splendid edifice opposite H
Ô
tel Ruhl, resting on piles dug into the seabed and offering a view of the coastline, the beach, and the Promenade des Anglais, as if the observer were in a boat anchored a few yards offshore. The restaurant window, adjacent to Max's table, overlooked the Bay of Angels to the east, and gave a clear view of the towering castle in the distance, the port entrance, and beyond, Le Cap de Nice with the Villefranche road meandering through its craggy greenery.

He saw the shadow before the man. The first thing he sensed was the smell of English tobacco. Max was leaning over his plate, finishing his salad, when a waft of pipe smoke reached him and the floor creaked slightly as a dark shape loomed on the bright patch. He glanced up and encountered a polite smile, a pair of round, tortoiseshell spectacles, and a hand—the one holding the pipe (the
other was clutching a crumpled panama hat)—pointing toward the empty chair across the table from Max.

“Good afternoon. . . . Might I sit down here for a moment?”

The oddness of the request, made in perfect Spanish, took Max by surprise. Still holding his fork in midair, he stared at the stranger (the intruder, to be more precise), racking his brains for a reply to this impertinence.

“Of course not,” he said at last. “I mean of course you can't.”

The man hesitated, as if he had been expecting a different response. He hadn't stopped smiling but looked somewhat flustered and pensive. He wasn't very tall, Max thought, and calculated that if he stood up, he would be a head higher. The man had a neat, inoffensive appearance, accentuated by his spectacles, and the brown suit he wore with a waistcoat and bow tie, all of which seemed to hang loosely from his bony, delicate-looking frame. His hair was parted in the middle, seemingly with a ruler, dividing his black, slicked-back hair into two precise halves.

“I fear I got off to a bad start,” the stranger said, smiling doggedly. “Please forgive my clumsiness, and give me another chance.”

At which, casually, without awaiting a response, the man walked away a few paces and then returned. Suddenly he no longer seemed so innocuous, thought Max. Or so fragile.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Costa,” he said calmly. “My name is Rafael Mostaza and I have something important I wish to discuss with you. If you'll allow me to sit down, we can talk more easily.”

The smile was identical, only now Max observed an additional, almost metallic glint, behind his spectacles. Max had set his fork down on his plate. Having regained his composure, he leaned back in the wicker chair, wiping his mouth with his napkin.

“We have mutual interests,” the other man went on. “In Italy as well as here in Nice.”

Max looked at the waiters in their white aprons standing far off,
next to the potted plants beside the entrance. There was no one else in the restaurant.

“Do sit down.”

“Thank you.”

When the strange fellow ensconced himself in the chair and began emptying his pipe, tapping the bowl lightly against the window frame, Max realized where he had seen him before. In fact, he had seen the man twice in the past few days: once while he was talking to the Italian agents at Café Monnot, and again when he was lunching with Baroness Schwarzenberg on the terrace of La Frégate, opposite the Promenade.

“Please, carry on eating,” the man said, shaking his head at one of the waiters, who was walking toward them.

Leaning back in his chair, Max studied him with veiled unease.

“Who are you?”

“I just told you. Rafael Mostaza, commercial traveler. Call me Fito, if you prefer. Everyone else does.”

“And who is everyone?”

The man winked, without replying, as if they shared an amusing secret. Max had never heard the name before.

“A commercial traveler, you say.”

“Just so.”

“What sort of commerce?”

Mostaza's smile broadened slightly. He seemed to wear it with the same ease he wore his bow tie: openly, pleasantly enough, and possibly a little loose. Yet the metallic glint remained, as though the lenses in his glasses chilled his gaze.

“All commerce is related nowadays, don't you think? But never mind about that. What's important is the story I am about to tell you. A story involving the financier Tomás Ferriol.”

Max registered the name calmly as he raised his glass of wine (a splendid burgundy) to his lips. He replaced it on the exact spot where it had left an indentation on the white tablecloth.

“I beg your pardon. Whom did you say?”

“Oh, come now. Believe me, it is an interesting story. Allow me to tell it to you.”

Max touched the wineglass, without picking it up this time. Despite the open window, he felt suddenly flushed. Uncomfortable.

“You have five minutes.”

“Don't be grudging. Listen first, and you'll see how you grant me more time.”

In a hushed voice, occasionally biting down on his unlit pipe, Mostaza began his tale. Tomás Ferriol, he said, was among the group of monarchists who, the year before, had supported the military uprising in Spain. In fact, it was Ferriol who bore the initial cost, and had continued to finance the rebels. It was common knowledge that his immense fortune had turned him into the rebels' unofficial paymaster.

“Admit it,” Mostaza broke off, pointing the stem of his pipe at Max, “my story is beginning to intrigue you.”

“Perhaps.”

“I told you. I'm good at telling stories.”

Mostaza resumed his tale, saying that Ferriol's opposition to the Republic wasn't simply ideological: he had made several failed attempts to reach an agreement with successive republican governments. But they didn't trust him, and they were right. In 1934, a judicial investigation would have sent him to prison had he not used his money and influence to avoid a sentence. After that, his political position could be summed up in the words he pronounced at a private dinner among friends: “The Republic, or me.” And that was what he had been doing for the past year and a half: destroying the Republic. Everyone knew he had bankrolled the July uprising. After a meeting held in San Juan de Luz with a messenger sent by the conspirators, Ferriol had paid out of his own pocket, through an account at the Kleinwort bank, for the plane and the pilot that flew Franco from the Canary Islands to Morocco. And while that
plane was in the air, five Texaco oil tankers on course to deliver twenty-five thousand tons of crude to the Spanish state oil company Campsa changed direction and headed to the area under rebel control. The order conveyed by telegram said,
Don't worry about payment.
Tomás Ferriol had footed the bill and was continuing to do so. It was estimated that in fuel alone he had already given the rebels a million dollars.

“But this isn't only about fuel,” Mostaza resumed after pausing for a moment so that Max could assimilate the information. “We know Ferriol had a meeting with General Mola at his headquarters in Pamplona in the early days of the uprising. During that meeting Ferriol showed Mola a list of guarantees he had signed, totaling six hundred million pesetas. Interestingly, true to Ferriol's style, he didn't give or offer Mola any money. He simply showed him his solid credentials as a guarantor. Proposing to bankroll everything. And that included using his commercial and financial contacts in Germany and Italy.”

Mostaza fell silent, sucking on his unlit pipe, his eyes fixed on Max, as a waiter came to take away Max's empty plate while another arrived with the second course—entrec
Ô
te
à
la niçoise
. The square of light had moved up from the floor onto the white tablecloth. The brightness was now illuminating Mostaza's face from below, revealing an ugly scar Max hadn't noticed before on the left side of his neck, below the jaw.