What We Become (35 page)

Max took a few steps, glancing around the room with the stealth of a hunter. Although the villa was a typical turn-of-the-century building, the interior was functional and simple, in accordance with the latest fashion: clean, straight lines; bare walls, save for an occasional modern painting; furniture made of steel, polished wood, leather, and glass. The former ballroom dancer's sharp eye, practiced in the art of survival, took in every detail of the house and its guests. Clothes, jewelry, trinkets, conversation. Tobacco smoke. With the excuse of taking out a cigarette, Max paused between the main hall and the entrance to take a look at the staircase leading up to the next floor. According to the plans he had studied in his room at the Negresco, on the other side were the library and the study Ferriol used when he was in Nice. Getting into the library was simple: the door was open, and on the far wall the books with their gilded covers shone on the shelves. He took a few more paces, cigarette case open in his hand, then came to a halt once more, pretending to listen to the five musicians in evening dress playing a slow swing (“I Can't Get Started”) amid some potted plants, near a glass door that gave onto the garden. Max finally lit his cigarette as he leaned against the library door close to where a French couple were speaking in hushed tones (the woman was blonde and attractive, and her eye shadow was too thick). He glanced inside the room and discovered the study door, which according to the information he had was usually locked. Getting in wouldn't be difficult, he concluded. Everything was on the ground floor and there were no bars. The safe was built into a cupboard in the wall, next to a window. He would need to see it from the outside, but this window was a possible entry point. Another was the glass door where the
musicians were playing, which gave onto a patio. A diamond tip or a screwdriver for the window, a picklock for the study door. An hour inside, and with a little luck the job would be done. That part of it, at least.

He had been loitering on his own for too long in the entrance, and that wasn't good. He took a puff on his cigarette and glanced about with an indolent air. The last guests were arriving. He had already spoken with a few people, exchanged the customary smiles and pleasant words. Appropriate gestures for the ladies, and an apparently sincere friendliness toward their husbands and companions. After dinner, a few couples would decide to dance. This generally gave Max the almost perfect opportunity (especially with the married women who got into difficulties, and this smoothed his path as well as spared the need for conversation). However, that evening he wasn't about to venture into such dangerous territory. He couldn't afford to draw attention to himself. Not there. Not with what was at stake. And yet, as he walked around, from time to time he sensed women staring at him. An occasional whispered comment: who is that handsome fellow, and so forth. Max, who was thirty-five then, had been interpreting those kinds of looks for fifteen years. Everyone attributed his presence there to a probable liaison with Asia Schwarzenberg, and it suited him that they think that. He decided to join a woman and two men chatting on a steel-and-leather sofa. The woman and one of the men were sitting; the other man was standing. Shortly after he had arrived, Max had exchanged pleasantries with the seated man—a rather stocky fellow with a thin, blond mustache, closely trimmed hair, and a friendly face. He had given Max his card: Ernesto Keller, Chilean Vice-Consul in Nice. The woman also looked familiar, but not from that evening. An actress, Max seemed to remember. Spanish as well. Beautiful and serious. Conchita something. Monteagudo, perhaps. Or Montenegro.

For an instant, still motionless, Max caught sight of his re
flection in a large mirror with a thin, oval frame hanging above a narrow, glass table: the vivid white of his shirt between black silk lapels, his handkerchief poking out of his top pocket, and the meticulous strip of starched cuff emerging from each sleeve of his waisted tuxedo; a hand casually placed in his right trouser pocket, the other half-raised clutching his smouldering cigarette, and revealing a glimpse of the gold strap and casing of his eight-thousand-franc, slim-line Patek Philippe wristwatch. Then he looked down at the brown-and-white diamond carpet beneath his patent leather shoes, and thought (as he still often did) about his friend and fellow legionnaire, Lieutenant Boris Dolgoruki-Bragation. About what he would have said or how he would have laughed, between glasses of brandy, at seeing Max dressed that way. From the child playing on the banks of the Riachuelo in Buenos Aires, or the soldier climbing, rifle at the ready, amid desiccated corpses up the charred slopes of Mount Arruit, Max had come a long way before stepping onto that carpet in the Riviera villa. And there was still a difficult stretch to cover between him and the closed door awaiting him at the far end of the library, as unfathomable as fate itself. He took a short, precise draw on his cigarette, while also deciding that the risks and hazards of some paths never entirely vanish (he felt another pang of anxiety as he remembered Fito Mostaza and the two Italian spies). And that, in fact, the only truly simple day in his life was the one he managed to leave behind each night as he drifted into an always restless, uncertain sleep.

Then he smelled a woman's soft perfume close by him. He recognized it instinctively as Arpège. And when he turned around (nine years had passed since Buenos Aires), he found Mecha Inzunza standing before him.

8

L
a Vie Est Brève

Y
OU STILL SMOKE
those Turkish cigarettes,” she remarked.

She was gazing at him, with curiosity rather than surprise, as though attempting to fit together disparate fragments: his well-tailored evening suit, his features. The glow from the nearby electric lamps seemed suspended in her eyes, spilling over the ivory-colored satin evening gown that hugged her shoulders and hips, illuminating her naked arms and back above the plunging line of the dress. Her skin was bronzed, and she wore her hair in the latest style, a few inches longer than in Buenos Aires, with a slight wave, parted and pulled back from her face.

“What are you doing here, Max?” she said, after an instant. It wasn't so much a question as a conclusion, and the meaning was clear: this couldn't possibly be happening. The man Mecha Inzunza had met on the
Cap Polonio
could not have made his way naturally to that house.

“I demand to know. . . . What are you doing here?”

There was a harshness in her insistence. And Max, who, after his initial shock (mixed with waves of panic) was starting to regain his composure, realized that remaining silent would be a grave mistake. Suppressing the urge to withdraw and protect himself (he felt like a raw clam having just received a squirt of lemon), he gazed at those luminous eyes, while contriving to refute everything with a smile.

“Mecha,” he said.

Her name and the smile were simply ways to gain time. He was thinking on his feet, or trying to. Without success. He glanced discreetly to either side of him, to see if their conversation had aroused anyone else's interest. She noticed this, for her gleaming eyes hardened beneath her eyebrows plucked in two finely penciled brown lines. She is just as ravishing, Max thought absurdly. More compact, more womanly. He looked at her slightly open mouth, painted bright red (it still appeared less angry than expectant), and then his gaze descended to her neckline. Suddenly he noticed the necklace: splendid pearls with a soft, almost muted glow, in three strands. It was either an exact replica of the one he had sold nine years before, or it was the same one.

That was probably what saved him, he would later conclude. His expression of surprise when he saw the pearls. The sudden flash of triumph in her eyes when she seemed to read his thoughts as if he were transparent. Her initial look of disdain giving way to irony and finally suppressed amusement that caused her throat and lips to quiver as though about to laugh. She had raised a hand (in the other she was holding a snakeskin baguette bag) and her long, slender fingers, with nails painted the same shade as her lips, and adorned with a simple, gold wedding ring, came to rest on the pearls.

“I recovered the necklace a week later, in Montevideo. Armando went to fetch it for me.”

The image of her husband stood out for an instant among Max's memories. Since Buenos Aires, he had seen him in photographs in illustrated magazines, even a few times on newsreels in the cinema, his famous tango playing in the background.

“Where is he?”

He glanced about uneasily as he spoke, wondering how Armando de Troeye's presence might complicate matters. But he was relieved when he saw her shrug, gloomily.

“He isn't here. . . . He's far away, now.”

Max was a resourceful fellow, toughened by the many scrapes he had gotten into over the years. More than once, his calm under pressure had saved him from disaster by the skin of his teeth. Just then, while he was trying to think quickly, the awareness that revealing his unease might bring him uncomfortably close to a French prison gave him added resolve. A way of regaining control of the situation, or of limiting the damage. Ironically, he thought, the necklace can save me.

“The necklace,” he said.

He spoke without knowing what he would say next. Simply another attempt to gain time, to establish a defensive point. But it was enough. She touched the pearls again. There was no incipient laughter this time; instead she recovered her look of defiance. Her triumphant smile.

“The Argentinian police were extremely helpful when my husband reported the pearls missing. They put him in contact with their Uruguayan counterparts, and Armando traveled to Montevideo to recover the necklace from the man you had sold it to.”

Max had finished his cigarette, and was holding the smouldering end in his fingers, looking around purposefully for somewhere to put it. Finally he stubbed it out in a heavy, crystal ashtray on a nearby table.

“Have you given up dancing, Max?”

He turned to face her, at last. Looking straight into her eyes
with as much serenity as he could muster. And he must have done so with sufficient aplomb, because, after posing the question in a sour voice, she continued to contemplate him, then nodded in silent affirmation of some thought he was unable to make out. As though at once surprised and amused by the man's composure. His cool audacity.

“I live a different kind of life,” he said.

“The Riviera isn't a bad place to do that in. How do you know Suzi Ferriol?”

“I came here with a friend.”

“Which friend?”

“Asia Schwarzenberg.”

“Ah.”

The guests were beginning to head toward the dining room. The young blonde who had been speaking in French walked past, leaving a whiff of cheap perfume in her wake, followed by her companion who was studying his pocket watch.

“Mecha. You are . . .”

“Leave it, Max.”

“I've heard that tango. A thousand times.”

“Yes. I imagine you have.”

“I'd like to explain a few things to you.”

“Explain?” Her eyes flashed once more. Two golden darts. “That doesn't sound like you. When I saw you, I thought you might have improved somewhat over time. I prefer your cynicism to your explanations.”

Max thought it wiser to say nothing. He remained by her side, erect and apparently relaxed, four fingers of his right hand thrust into his jacket pocket. Then he saw her smile faintly, as though laughing at herself.

“I was observing you for a while,” she said, “before I came over.”

“I didn't see you. I'm sorry.”

“I know you didn't see me. You were concentrating, pensive. I
wondered what you were thinking about. What you were doing here, and what you were thinking about.”

She isn't going to give me away, Max decided. Not tonight, anyway. Or not until after the coffee and cigarettes. And yet, despite that momentary certainty, he knew he was on treacherous ground. He needed more time to think. To figure out whether Mecha Inzunza's arrival on the scene would make things difficult for him.

“I recognized you at once,” she was explaining. “I just wanted to decide what to do.”

She pointed toward a flight of stairs on the other side of the entrance that led to the upper floors. At its foot were large fig trees in pots and a table where a waiter was clearing away empty glasses.

“I noticed you as I came down the stairs, because you didn't sit. You were one of the exceptions. Some men sit, others stand. I usually mistrust the latter.”

“Since when?”

“Since I met you. . . . I scarcely recall having seen you sit. Not on the
Cap Polonio
or in Buenos Aires.”

They walked a few paces toward the dining room, pausing in the doorway to check their places on the seating plan. Max kicked himself for having failed to check beforehand all the names around the table. And there she was:
Mrs. Inzunza
.

“And what are you doing here?” he asked.

“I live nearby, because of the situation in Spain. I rent a house in Antibes, and I occasionally visit Suzi. We've known each other since high school.”

Inside the dining room, the guests were taking their places around the table, where the silver cutlery lay shining on the tablecloth beside candelabra with red, green, and blue spirals of glass. Susana Ferriol, who was attending to her guests, glanced at Mecha and Max with a look of faint consternation—surprised to see him (Max was sure his hostess wouldn't have remembered his name) conversing with her friend.

“What about you, Max? You still haven't told me what brings you to Nice. Although I think I can imagine.”

He smiled. A world-weary, affable smile. Calculated to the millimeter.

“Perhaps your imaginings are mistaken.”

“I can see you've perfected that smile.” She was looking him up and down now with a mixture of scorn and admiration. “What else have you been busy perfecting all this time?”

He spots Irina Jasenovic from a distance, near Sorrento cathedral: sunglasses, patterned miniskirt, flat sandals. She is looking in the window of a clothes store on Corso Italia. Max stays close by, watching her from the other side of the street until she continues walking toward Piazza Tasso. He isn't following her for any particular reason; he simply feels the need to observe her discreetly, now that he knows she might be secretly linked to the people on the Russian player's team. Curiosity, perhaps. A desire to get closer to the center of the intrigue. He has already managed to do that with Emil Karapetian, whom he came across after breakfast in one of the small lounges at the hotel, surrounded by newspapers, his ample frame ensconced in an armchair. The sum of their encounter was a polite exchange of greetings, a comment about the mild weather, and a brief chat about how the games were going, which prompted Karapetian to leave the newspaper open on his lap (even where chess is concerned, he seems averse to conversations requiring anything more than monosyllables), and speak for a moment, somewhat diffidently, with the courteous, gray-haired gentleman with the friendly smile, who it seems is an old acquaintance of his protégé's mother. And when Max finally stood up, leaving Karapetian in peace, with his nose once more buried in his newspaper, the only conclusion he drew was that the Armenian has a blind belief in Jorge's superiority over his Russian
opponent, and that regardless of the outcome of the Sorrento contest, he is certain that in a few months' time Keller will be the world champion.

“He is the chess of the future,” he concluded, encouraged by Max, in what was his longest monologue in the entire conversation. “After his contribution to the game, the Russian's defensive tactics will smell of mothballs.”

Karapetian doesn't seem like a traitor, is Max's conclusion. Certainly not a man who would sell his former disciple for thirty pieces of silver. And yet, life has taught Dr. Hugentobler's chauffeur, to his own detriment and to that of his fellow men, how flimsy the ties are that prevent human beings from lying or betraying. How easy it is, moreover, for the traitor who is still undecided to receive a final push, a helping hand, from the very person he is about to betray. No one is immune to this, he concludes with almost dispassionate relief as he strolls along the Corso Italia, keeping his distance from Jorge Keller's girlfriend. Who can look themselves in the eye in a mirror and say,
I have never betrayed
, or
I will never betray
?

The young woman has sat down at one of the tables outside the Fauno bar. After reflecting for a moment, Max saunters across to her and strikes up a conversation. Before doing so, he instinctively glances around. Not because he is expecting Soviet spies to be lurking behind the palm trees in the square, but because that kind of vigilance is part of his old training. I may be a mangy, toothless old wolf, he tells himself perversely, but that doesn't mean my hunting grounds are any less fraught with peril.

Memories of young women, he thinks as he sits down. What he has retained. What he knows. She is a generation or several generations younger, he concludes, looking down at her miniskirt, her bare knees, as he orders a Negroni and talks about the first thing that comes into his head.

“Sorrento is a nice town. . . . Have you been to Amalfi yet?
What about Capri?” Old, tried and tested smiles, polite gestures rehearsed and deployed a thousand times. “There are fewer tourists at this time of year. . . . I promise, you won't be disappointed.”

Not particularly pretty, he notices again. Nor ugly. Just young-looking, fresh-faced, like an ad for Peggy Sage. In brief, the allure of a twenty-something-year-old for whoever finds twenty-something-year-olds alluring. Irina has taken off her sunglasses (oversized, white frames), and the only makeup she is wearing is the thick black eyeliner around her big, expressive eyes. Her hair is tied back in a ribbon that has the same op-art pattern as her skirt. A plain face, friendly looking now. Chess doesn't confer character, Max reflects. On either men or women. A superior intellect, a mathematical brain, a prodigious memory can just as easily produce an ordinary smile, an anodyne word, a vulgar gesture as the men and women for whom such things are as habitual as the course of life itself. Even chess players are no more intelligent than the rest of us mortals, he had heard Mecha Inzunza say a couple of days earlier. Theirs is simply a different kind of intelligence. Wirelesses that pick up different frequencies.