What We Become (40 page)

“There's something I want you to do for me,” she whispers. “Or, more precisely, for my son.”

The black Fiat ground to a halt in Place Rossetti, next to the tower of the Cathédrale Sainte-Réparate, and three men climbed out of it. Max, who had heard the engine and glanced up from the pages of
L'Éclaireur
(workers demonstrations in France, show trials and executions in Moscow, concentration camps in Germany), watched from beneath his hat brim as they strolled toward him, the taller, skinnier one flanked by the other two. While they were making their way over to his table on the corner of Rue Centrale, Max folded his newspaper and called to the waiter.

“Two Pernods with water.”

The three men stood looking down at him. Mauro Barbaresco, Domenico Tignanello, and in the middle, the tall, skinny fellow dressed in a stylish chestnut-brown, double-breasted suit and a gray taupe Borsalino hat, tilted rakishly over one eye. The collar of his blue-and-white broad-striped shirt was fastened with a gold pin below his tie. He was holding a small, leather bag in one hand, the sort physicians use. For a long time, Max and he studied each other, with a solemn expression. The four men, one seated and the others standing, remained silent until the waiter came over with the drinks, removing Max's empty glass from the table and replacing it with the two Pernods, two glasses of ice water, two teaspoons, and some sugar lumps. Max balanced a teaspoon across one of the glasses, placed a sugar lump on it, and began decanting the water so that it trickled with the dissolved sugar into the greenish liquid. Then he set the glass down opposite the tall, skinny man.

“I assume,” he said, “you take it the same way you always did.”

The other man's face seemed to grow gaunter as he smiled, revealing a row of yellow teeth and receding gums. Then he pushed his hat back, sat down, and raised the glass to his lips.

“I don't know what your friends would like,” Max commented, as he repeated the same procedure with his glass. “I've never seen them drink Pernod.”

“Nothing for me,” Barbaresco said, taking a seat as well.

Max savored the strong, sugary anisette. Tignanello remained standing, glancing around with his usual air of melancholy mistrust. Responding to a gesture from his colleague, he moved away from the table and walked over to the newspaper stand, from where, Max assumed, he could keep a discreet watch over the square.

Max looked again at the tall, skinny man. He had a long nose and big, sunken eyes. He had aged since the last time they met, Max thought. But he still had the same smile.

“I hear you're a fascist now, Enrico,” he said softly.

“In times like these a man has to do something.”

Mauro Barbaresco leaned back in his chair, as though he wasn't sure he was going to like this conversation.

“How about we get on with it,” he suggested.

Max and Enrico Fossataro carried on looking at each other while they drank. Finally, Fossataro raised his glass, as though in a toast, before draining it. Max did likewise.

“If you agree,” he said, “we can dispense with discussions about how long it has been, how much we've aged, and all that.”

“Very well.” Fossataro nodded.

“What are you up to these days?”

“Life isn't so bad. I have an official post in Turin. Civil servant in the Piedmont government.”

“Politics?”

“Public Security.”

“Ah.”

Max smiled at the image of Fossataro in an office. The fox
guarding the chicken coop. The last time they met was three years ago on a job they did together, in two parts: a villa in the hills around Florence and a suite at the Hotel Excelsior (Max provided the charm offensive at the hotel, while Fossataro employed his skills at the villa under cover of darkness), with a view over the Arno and the Piazza Ognissanti where a group of Blackshirts were marching, intoning the “Giovinezza” before beating some poor wretches to death.

“A Schützling,” Max said simply. “From 1913.”

“They already told me: a stylish imitation wood box, with false moldings around the locks. Do you remember the house on Rue de Rivoli? Belonging to that English redhead you took to Le Procope for dinner?”

“Yes. But you were in charge of the hardware that time. I had my hands full with the lady.”

“That doesn't matter. It's an easy one.”

“I don't suppose there's any point in me asking you to do it. Not now.”

The other man revealed his teeth once more. His dark, sunken eyes had a plaintive air.

“I tell you, those safes are easy as pie. They have a trigger lock, a triple combination, and the key.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out some drawings copied from a blueprint. “I have the diagrams here. You'll get the hang of it in no time. Are you working by day or at night?”

“At night.”

“How long do you have?”

“Not long. I need a quick method.”

“Can you use a drill?”

“No tools. There are people in the house.”

Fossataro wrinkled his brow.

“Manually, it'll take you an hour at least. Do you remember the Panzer in Prague? It nearly drove us crazy.”

Max grinned. September 1932. Half the night perspiring in a woman's bed, next to a window looking out over the dome of St. Nicholas, until she fell asleep. Fossataro working noiselessly on the floor below by torchlight, in her absent husband's study.

“Of course I remember.”

“I brought a list of the original combinations for this model, which might save you time and effort.” Fossataro reached down for the leather bag sandwiched between his legs and handed it to Max. “And I brought a set of a hundred and thirty double-sided keys, also straight from the factory.”

“Goodness . . .” The bag was heavy. Max set it on the ground, by his feet. “How did you get hold of those?”

“You'd be surprised what a government position can do.”

Max fished his tortoiseshell cigarette case out of his pocket and placed it on the table. Fossataro opened it without asking and took a cigarette.

“You look good, Max,” he said, snapping the case shut and motioning toward Barbaresco, who was following their conversation in silence. “My friend Mauro here tells me things are going well for you.”

“I can't complain.” Max had leaned forward to offer Fossataro a light. “Or rather, I couldn't, up until recently.”

“These are difficult times, my friend.”

“Don't I know it.”

Fossataro took a few drags on his cigarette and gazed at it with satisfaction, marveling at the quality of the tobacco.

“These two aren't so bad,” he said, pointing toward Tignanello, who was still posted beside the kiosk, then gesturing to include Barbaresco. “Of course, they can be dangerous. But who can't? I've had fewer dealings with the sad southerner, but Mauro and I once worked together, isn't that so?”

Barbaresco said nothing. He had taken off his hat and was running his hand over his bald, bronzed head. He looked tired, as
though he wanted their chat to end. It occurred to Max that he and his colleague always looked tired. Maybe that was one thing Italian spies had in common, he concluded. Could it be that their English, French, and German counterparts were more enthusiastic about their work? Possibly. Faith can move mountains, people often said. It must a useful thing to have in some lines of work.

“That's why he came to me when they were considering you for this job,” Fossataro went on. “I told them you were a good sort, and popular with the ladies. That you look the part in evening clothes, and can outshine the professionals on any dance floor. . . . I also told them that if I had your good looks and gift for the gab, I would have retired years ago: I wouldn't mind walking some millionairess's poodle.”

“Perhaps you talked to them too much.” Max smiled.

“That's possible. But consider my situation.
Credere
,
obbedire
,
combattere
 . . . Duty to the fatherland, and all that.”

A silence ensued, which Fossataro used to blow a perfect smoke ring.

“I suppose you know, or have guessed, that Barbaresco isn't Mauro's real name.”

Max glanced at the Italian spy, who was listening impassively.

“It doesn't matter what my name is,” he said.

“Quite so,” Max agreed evenly.

Fossataro blew another smoke ring, less perfect than the first, before continuing:

“Italy is a complex country. The good thing is that we always manage to reach an understanding among ourselves.
Guardie e ladri
 . . . Cops and robbers. And that's as true before Mussolini as during his time and after, assuming there is an after.”

Barbaresco was still listening with a blank expression, and Max started to warm toward him. Returning to his comparisons between spies, he imagined holding that same conversation with an Englishman, who would have been filled with patriotic indignation,
or a German, who would have looked at them with contemptuous mistrust, or a Spaniard, who, after agreeing vigorously with everything Fossataro said, would have gone running to denounce him, in order to ingratiate himself with someone, or because he envied the tie he was wearing. Max opened his cigarette case and offered it to Barbaresco, who shook his head. Behind him, Tignanello had gone to sit down with a newspaper on one of the wooden benches in the square, as if his legs were aching.

“You've made some good connections, Max,” Fossataro was saying. “If all goes well, you'll have new friends. In the right camp. It is good to think about the future.”

“The way you have.”

It was a seemingly throwaway remark, made while Max was lighting a cigarette, but Fossataro looked at him intently. Moments later, he wore the melancholy smile of someone with an unshakable belief in the limitless stupidity of mankind.

“I'm growing old, my friend. The world we knew, the one that sustained us, is doomed. And if another war breaks out in Europe, it will sweep everything away. You agree, don't you?”

“I do.”

“Then put yourself in my place. I am fifty-two years old. Too old to be breaking locks and tiptoeing round other people's houses in the dark. What's more, I've spent seven of those behind bars. I'm a widower, with two unmarried children. There's nothing like it for encouraging a man to be a patriot. Making him raise his arm in the Roman salute to anyone they put in front of him. Italy has a future, we are the good guys. There are jobs, we're constructing buildings, sports stadiums, battleships, and we give the communists castor oil and a kick up the backside (here, to lighten the tone of his discourse, Fossataro winks at Barbaresco, who continues to listen, stony-faced). And it feels good to have the
carabinieri
on my side for a change.”

Two smartly dressed women went by, heels clattering as they
walked down Rue Centrale: hats, bags, narrow skirts. One of them was very pretty, and for a moment her eyes met Max's. Fossataro stared at them until they turned the corner. Never mix sex with business, he had heard Max say in the old days. Except when sex makes business easier.

“Remember Biarritz?” Fossataro said. “That affair at the H
Ô
tel Miramar?”

The memory brought a smile to his lips, making him look younger for a moment, enlivening his gaunt face.

“How long ago was that?” he went on. “Five years?”

Max nodded. Fossataro's contented expression brought back memories of wooden rails along the seafront, beach bars with punctilious waiters, women in pajama suits with narrow waists and flared trousers; naked, suntanned backs; familiar faces; parties with film stars, singers, people from the business and fashion worlds. Like Deauville and Cannes, Biarritz offered rich pickings in summer, plenty of opportunities for those who knew where to look.

“The actor and his girlfriend,” Fossataro remembered, still grinning.

Then he proceeded to tell Barbaresco, with great eloquence, how in the summer of 1933 Max and he had planned a sophisticated job involving a movie actress called Lili Damita, whom Max had met at the Chiberta golf course, and with whom he had spent three mornings on the beach, three afternoons at the bar, and three evenings on the dance floor. On the all-important evening when Max was supposed to take her dancing at the H
Ô
tel Miramar while Fossataro broke into her villa and made off with cash and jewelry to the tune of fifteen thousand pounds, her boyfriend, a famous Hollywood actor, arrived unannounced at the hotel, having walked off a set in the middle of filming. However, Max was lucky on two counts. Firstly, the jealous boyfriend had drunk too much on the journey there, and when his betrothed stepped out of a taxi on Max's arm, the punch he aimed at the elegant seducer's jaw missed
its target because he lost his balance. And secondly, Enrico Fossataro was ten yards away from the scene, at the wheel of a hired car, ready to drive off to burgle the villa. When he saw what was going on, he climbed out of the car, walked over to the group, and, while Lili Damita squawked like a mother hen watching her chick being slaughtered, he and Max calmly gave the American a systematic beating, as the hotel receptionists and bellboys looked on with satisfaction (the actor, who habitually drank too much, was unpopular with the staff), out of revenge for the fifteen thousand dollars that had just slipped through their fingers.