What We Become

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  He pauses before the last stretch, making a renewed effort to calm himself.

  Above the pounding in his head, he thinks he can hear a distant, muffled sound. Perhaps a radio or television is on. He peers down the stairwell again, descends the remaining steps, and creeps toward the corner of the lobby. There is a door on the far side, undoubtedly the one leading to the garden. On the left is a long, gloomy corridor and on the right, a set of frosted-glass doors, through which a light glimmers. That is where the sound of the radio or television is coming from, louder now. Max takes off the scarf still tied around his head, uses it to wipe the sweat from his face, then stuffs it into his pocket. His mouth is so dry that his tongue is almost stuck to the roof of his mouth. He closes his eyes for a few seconds, takes three deep breaths, crosses the foyer, opens the door silently, and goes outside. The cool night air, the scent of lushness beneath the trees in the garden, embraces him like a wave of optimism and vitality. Holding on to the rucksack, he begins to sprint between the shadows.

  “Sorry about the mess,” Fito Mostaza said as he closed the door.

  Max didn’t reply. He was gazing with horror at Mauro Barbaresco’s body. The Italian was lying sprawled on his back, in his shirtsleeves, in a pool of semicongealed blood. His face was the color of wax, his eyes two glassy slits, his lips parted, his throat slit from ear to ear.

  “Go on through,” Mostaza prompted. “And careful where you put your feet. It’s rather slippery.”

  They advanced down the corridor, toward the end room where Tignanello’s body was blocking the doorway to the kitchen, one arm stretched out at a right angle, the other beneath his body. He was lying facedown in a pool of brownish-red blood that had trickled in a long stream under the table and chairs. There was an almost metallic odor in the room, subtle yet pervasive.

  “Approximately five liters per body,” Mostaza remarked with distaste, as if he found this truly regrettable. “That makes ten in total. Quite a spillage.”

  Max slumped onto the nearest chair. Mostaza stood watching him intently. Then he picked up a bottle of wine from the table, half filled a glass, and offered it to Max, who shook his head. The idea of drinking with all that just under his nose made him retch.

  “At least take a sip,” Mostaza insisted. “It’ll do you good.”

  Eventually, Max obeyed, barely taking a sip before leaving the glass on the table. Mostaza, who was in the doorway (Tignanello’s blood inches from his shoes) had taken his pipe out of one of his pockets and was calmly filling it with tobacco.

  “What happened here?” Max stammered.

  The other man shrugged.

  “Occupational hazards,” he replied, pointing at the body with the stem of his pipe. “Theirs, in this instance.”

  “Who did this?”

  Mostaza looked at him with faint surprise.

  “Why, I did, naturally.”

  Max leapt to his feet, knocking over the chair, but froze instantly at the sight of the object Mostaza had just taken out of his jacket pocket. With his unlit pipe still in his left hand, his right held a small, shiny nickel-plated pistol. And yet the gesture wasn’t threatening. He was simply showing the gun in the palm of his hand, almost apologetically. He wasn’t pointing it at Max: his finger wasn’t even on the trigger.

  “Pick up the chair and sit down again, will you? . . . Let’s not be melodramatic.”

  Max did as Mostaza said. By the time he was seated once more, the pistol had disappeared into Mostaza’s right pocket.

  “Did you find what you went looking for?” he asked.

  Max was gazing at Tignanello’s body, facedown in a pool of semicongealed blood. One of his feet had lost a shoe, which lay on the floor, farther away. The exposed sock had a hole in the heel.

  “You didn’t shoot them,” Max said.

  Mostaza, who was lighting his pipe, contemplated him through a puff of smoke, shaking the match until the flame went out.

  “Of course not,” he said. “A pistol, even a small-caliber one like this, is noisy. No need to alert the neighbors.” He opened one flap of his jacket to reveal the handle of a knife tucked inside, next to his suspenders. “This is messier, of course. But more discreet.”

  He glanced thoughtfully at the pool of blood at his feet. Apparently contemplating the appropriateness of the word messier.

  “It wasn’t pleasant, I assure you,” he added after a moment.

  “Why?” Max insisted.

  “We can discuss all that later, if you wish. Now tell me whether you managed to get hold of the letters. Have you got them with you?”

  “No.”

  Mostaza straightened his glasses with one finger and gave Max an appraising look.

  “I see,” he said at last. “Foresight or failure?”

  Max remained silent. At that moment he was busy calculating how much his life would be worth once he handed over the letters. Doubtless about as much as those poor wretches who had bled to death on the floor.

  “Stand up and turn around,” Mostaza ordered.

  His tone betrayed a hint of irritation, although he still didn’t sound threatening. He was merely carrying out a tedious but necessary formality. Max obeyed, and Mostaza enveloped him in a puff of smoke when he approached from behind to frisk him, without result, while Max secretly congratulated himself for having the precaution to leave the letters under one of the car seats.

  “You can turn around now. . . . Where are they?” Mostaza’s pipe was clenched between his teeth, distorting his voice, as he wiped his hands, moist from Max’s raincoat, on his jacket. “At least tell me you have them in your possession.”

  “I do.”

  “Splendid. I’m glad to hear it. Now tell me where, and we can get this over with.”

  “Get what over with?”

  “Don’t be so suspicious, it’s a figure of speech. There’s nothing to prevent us from parting on civilized terms.”

  Max looked again at Tignanello’s corpse. He remembered the man’s sad, silent expression. A melancholy type. He was almost sorry to see him like that, facedown in his own blood. So still and defenseless.

  “Why did you kill them?”

  Mostaza frowned uneasily, and the scar beneath his jaw seemed to deepen. He opened his mouth to say something unpleasant, but apparently thought better of it. He glanced at the bowl of his pipe, to make sure it was burning evenly, then looked at Tignanello’s body on the floor.

  “This isn’t a novel.” His tone was almost patient. “And so I have no intention of explaining everything in the final chapter. You don’t need to know what happened, and I don’t have time to stand around telling spy stories. Tell me where the letters are and we can wash our hands of this.”

  Max pointed at the dead body.

  “Is that how you plan to wash your hands of me once you have them?”

  Mostaza appeared to give the question some serious thought.

  “You’re right,” he agreed. “No one has given you any guarantees, of course. And I presume my word isn’t good enough, is it?”

  “You presume correctly.”

  “Aha.”

  Mostaza sucked thoughtfully on his pipe.

  “I should set you straight on a few details regarding my résumé,” he said at last. “In fact, I don’t work for the Spanish Republic, but for the government in Burgos. For the other side.”

  He winked, roguishly, behind his spectacles. It was clear he was enjoying Max’s discomfort.

  “You could say,” he added, “it was a family affair.”

  Max was still gazing at him, horrified.

  “But they’re Italians. Fascist agents. Your allies.”

  “Look. It seems you’re a little naïve. When you work at this level there are no alliances. Their bosses wanted the letters and so did mine. Jesus said we should be brothers, but he neve
r said anything about cousins. I imagine my bosses consider these letters demanding a commission for selling aircraft a powerful ace up their sleeve. A way of having the Italians, or their foreign minister, by the balls.”

  “Why didn’t you simply ask Ferriol for them—he’s their banker, isn’t he?”

  “I’ve no idea. They give me orders, not explanations. I expect Ferriol has his own plans. Maybe he was going to demand some other form of payment. From the Spanish and the Italians. He’s a businessman, after all.”

  “And what was that strange story about the boat?”

  “The Luciano Canfora? . . . Unfinished business, which you helped resolve. It’s true the captain and his chief engineer wanted to deliver the consignment to a Republican port. I persuaded them myself, posing as an agent of the Republic. We’d had our suspicions about them, and we were right. Afterward I used you to pass the information on to the Italians, who acted swiftly. The traitors were arrested, and the ship is now on its original course.”

  Max pointed at Tignanello’s body.

  “And these two . . . was it necessary to kill them?”

  “Technically, yes. I couldn’t control this situation with three people involved, two of whom were professionals. I had no choice but to take some of you out.”

  He took the pipe from his mouth. It seemed to have gone out. He turned it upside down and tapped the bowl gently against the table, emptying it. Then he took a last puff before putting it in the pocket not containing the pistol.

  “Let’s get this over with,” he said. “Give me the letters.”

  “You’ve seen they aren’t here.”

  “And you’ve heard my side of the story.”

  “So, where are they?”

  It was absurd to go on refusing, Max realized. And dangerous. All he could do was try to gain more time.

  “In a safe place.”

  “Well, take me there.”

  “And after that? . . . What will happen to me?”

  “Nothing in particular.” Mostaza looked at him, as though offended by his misgivings. “Like I said, you go your way, I go mine. Game over.”

  Max shuddered, vulnerable to the point of self-pity. For a moment his knees felt like jelly. He had deceived too many men and women in his life not to recognize the warning signals. He could see in Mostaza’s eyes how precarious his future was.

  “I don’t trust your promises,” he protested feebly.

  “It makes no difference, because you have no choice.” Mostaza patted the bulge in his jacket pocket, to remind Max of the pistol. “Even if you’re convinced I’m going to kill you, it’s up to you to decide whether I do it now or later . . . although I insist that isn’t my intention. With the letters in my possession, there’d be no point. It would be an unnecessary act. Superfluous.”

  “What about my money?”

  Max was making a last desperate attempt to gain time. To draw things out. But as far as Mostaza was concerned, the discussion was over.

  “That’s none of my business.” He picked up his hat and raincoat from a chair. “Let’s go.”

  Mostaza gave his pocket another pat as he motioned toward the door with his other hand. All of a sudden, he appeared tenser, more serious. Max went first, stepping over Tignanello and his pooled blood, and made his way along the corridor until he was standing next to Barbaresco’s corpse. While he was reaching for the handle to open the door, Mostaza at the rear, Max took a last look at the glassy eyes and half-open mouth of the Italian, and was seized once more by that strange feeling of pity, of sympathy, which he had felt before. He’d grown fond of those two, he realized. Dripping wet dogs in the rain.

  The door was stuck fast. Max gave it a tug, and the sudden movement, as it opened abruptly, caused him to stagger backward. Mostaza, who was behind him putting on his raincoat, also took a precautionary step back, one arm in his coat sleeve, his free hand half inside the pocket containing the pistol. As he did so, he trod in the semicongealed blood on the floor and lost his balance. Not completely: only a slight wobble as he tried to regain his footing. In that instant, Max realized with gloomy certainty that this was his only chance. In an act of blind desperation, he threw himself at Mostaza.

  The two men slipped on the blood and fell to the floor. Max’s first thought as he grappled Mostaza was to prevent him from taking out his pistol, but he quickly realized that his adversary was trying to reach for his knife. Fortunately, Mostaza’s other arm was tangled up in the sleeve of his raincoat. Max made the most of this to gain a slight advantage by punching Mostaza repeatedly in the face, on his spectacles. They shattered with a crunch, eliciting a groan from Mostaza, who was clasping hold of Max as tightly as he could, trying to roll him over on his back. His skinny, wiry body, only deceptively fragile, was in fact dangerously strong. That knife in his hands would be the equivalent of a death sentence. Max’s punches were relatively well placed and he managed to fend off the attack. They continued to wrestle, Max attempting to hold his opponent down and punch him, while Mostaza fought to free his trapped arm, as the two of them slid around in Barbaresco’s blood. Frantic, his strength beginning to ebb, aware that if and when Mostaza succeeded in freeing his other hand he could consider himself a dead man, Max’s long-forgotten reflexes came to his aid: the street kid from Calle Vieytes and the soldier who had defended himself with a knife in the Foreign Legion’s brothels. Things he had done or seen others do. And so, with all the strength he could muster, he jabbed his thumb in one of his enemy’s eyes. As it plunged deep into the socket there was a soft squelch and a savage howl from Mostaza, who slackened his grip. Max attempted to sit up, but slipped over again in the blood. He kept on until he managed to sit astride Mostaza, who was squealing like an enraged animal. Then, using his right elbow as a weapon, Max began hitting his adversary in the head as hard as he could, until the pain in his elbow became unbearable, Mostaza stopped resisting, and his battered, broken face lolled to one side.

  Finally, Max slumped, exhausted, to the floor. He lay still for a long while, trying to regain his strength, until in the end he felt himself slipping out of consciousness and everything around him went black. He passed out slowly, as if he were falling down a bottomless well. And when he came to, a square of dirty, gray light was seeping in through the tiny window in the hallway, announcing the dawn. He moved away from the lifeless body, and dragged himself out onto the landing. Behind him was a trail of his own blood, for he had (he realized, painfully groping his leg) a gash on one thigh, a hair’s breadth from his femoral artery. Somehow, in the last instant, Fito Mostaza had managed to pull out his knife.

  12

  The Blue Train

  IT IS SIX in the morning and the telephone in Max’s room at the Hotel Vittoria rings for the second time in fifteen minutes. This makes him uneasy. The first time he picked up the receiver, there was no voice at the other end, only a silence followed by the click of the connection being broken. This time he lets the telephone ring until it goes quiet. He knows it isn’t Mecha Inzunza, because they have agreed to keep their distance. They decided that last night, on the terrace of Il Fauno. The chess game had ended at ten-thirty. Soon after that, the Russians must have discovered the break-in, the hole cut in the glass door, and the rope dangling from the roof. And yet, sometime after eleven o’clock, when, having showered and changed his clothes, a nervous Max had walked through the garden toward Piazza Tasso, he saw no sign of any commotion in the building occupied by the Soviet delegation. Apart from a few lighted windows, all was seemingly calm. Possibly Sokolov hadn’t yet returned to his suite, he concluded, as he approached the main gate. Or (and this could prove more worrying than police cars parked outside) the Russians had decided to deal with the incident discreetly. In their own way.

  Mecha was sitting at one of the far tables, her suede jacket draped over the back of her chair. Max went over and sat down next to her without saying a word.
He ordered a Negroni and glanced about with an air of quiet satisfaction, avoiding Mecha’s inquisitive gaze. His hair, still damp, was carefully combed, and a silk scarf showed beneath his open shirt collar, under his navy-blue blazer.

  “Jorge won this afternoon,” she said after a few moments.

  Max admired her composure.

  “That’s good news,” he said.

  He turned to look at her, smiling as he did so, and Mecha guessed what that smile meant.

  “You have it?” she said.

  The question was rhetorical. He beamed. His lips hadn’t displayed that look of triumph for years.

  “Oh, darling,” she said.

  The waiter arrived with his cocktail. Max took a sip, savoring it at length. A little heavy on the gin, he noticed contentedly. Just what he needed.

  “How was it?” Mecha asked.

  “Difficult.” He put his drink down on the table. “I told you. I’m too old for this kind of escapade.”

  “But you did it all the same. You got the book.”

  “Yes.”

  She leaned over the table, eagerly.

  “Where is it?”

  “In a safe place, as we agreed.”

  “Won’t you tell me where?”

  “Not yet. Just for a few hours, to be on the safe side.”

  She looked at him intently, studying his response, and Max knew what was going through her mind. He recognized the old, almost familiar look of distrust in her eyes. But it only lasted an instant. Then Mecha lowered her head, as though ashamed.

  “You’re right,” she admitted. “You shouldn’t give it to me straightaway.”

  “No. We spoke about it before. That’s what we agreed.”

  “Let’s see how they respond.”

  “I just walked past the apartment block. Everything seems quiet.”