Midnight Empire

by Andrew Croome

  Ac Jc in position facing a three blind raise. 7c, 3c, 10d in the flop. He shoved. Got called by a pair. His club failed to come.

  7h 8h under the gun. He raised and was called in two spots. The flop came a near perfect 5h 6d Ah. Again he shoved. This time he was called by an ace. The turn was dealt and the river. He missed both the straight and the flush.

  Ad As on the button. The hijack limped and Daniel took it to five blinds, trying to portray a steal. The flop arrived 7d 3s 3c. He bet the pot and the hijack pushed with everything. Daniel refused to lay it down and was shown Ah 3h.

  He took a break in the men’s. He wasn’t playing badly, he thought. It was just bad luck, and bad luck was bad luck because it was the thin branch of the tree. Things would turn around.

  9d 9h in the middle. He raised and the button called. 9s Qs 2s. He checked, the button bet, he raised and the button pushed all-in. Daniel put his stack forward to be shown Qd Qc.

  2s 2d in the small blind. Five limpers to him and he followed. The flop came 4d 2c 6d. The big blind bet; the man under the gun called; the button raised three times the pot; Daniel shoved. The button showed 6c 6h. That was set over set, twice in the space of five hands. He tried to calm the tight feeling coursing through his blood.

  Ad Qs in the cut-off with an ace on the flop and no draws. He called a tight big blind on three streets, flop, turn and river, and lost a big pot to As Kh.

  Ah 9h on the button. He called a raise and the flop came Kh 4h 5h. His opponent bet; Daniel raised and the man went all-in. Daniel called to be shown 6h 7h. He was miles ahead until the three of hearts arrived on the turn.

  The table whistled, but he hardly heard. That was one in forty-three. About the same odds as roulette.

  He went to the men’s again and waited there for a long time. When he came back a sympathetic soul had ordered him a drink and he sat trying to be philosophical about the mathematics, which he ought to have been able to do. But it was now three-quarters of his bankroll, vanished in half a night.

  He made the decision to reload. He put every euro he had on the table. It was stupid, but liberating. It was the urge to put himself in the hands of the cards, the higher powers of chance. It was a will and a relief, almost a freedom. It was giving over, predicating one’s self on another order, external and choosing, as mystical as it was understandable, as welcoming as a buoyant light on a vast black sea. It was a resignation and a concession, an admission that he’d done it all badly. It was nothing. It would depend on what was dealt.

  An overcast dawn, no sunrise showing. The light on the buildings along the banks of the Seine was cold and dull. Everything appeared small. There was a drudgery to the morning traffic, a faraway feel.

  It was just after 6 a.m. when he left the Aviation Club. He walked in the direction of the river, taking his time.

  What did he have left? He did not want to count but it was nothing. Eighty euro and change.

  It was bracing, disfiguring. Months lost in the span of an evening—the fact of it was raw and gutting; he didn’t fully comprehend it. Didn’t want to.

  Another in his long list of erroneous beliefs: that he could ever wire a life for himself outside the margins, beyond the system. One look at Dmitri should have taught him that.

  What he had to face was that he did not know what he was doing in the world, that something fundamental had escaped him. There was a secret, a knack that others had. But he was ignorant or obtuse or unwilling. He was manifestly innocent.

  He reached the Père Lachaise Cemetery and then Sacré Coeur, just another figure on the urban horizon. He crossed the Seine over the Passerelle Simone-de-Beauvoir. He walked by the Panthéon and by Foucault’s pendulum, rounded all the way back to the avenue Matignon, went to the Place de la Concorde and rue de Rivoli.

  By the time he’d entered the tight space of rue du Pré aux Clercs, he’d decided that he might as well do it. The least he could do was offer amends.

  Dear Ania

  I wonder if you remember me? We played a few tournaments together years ago in Madrid. You were very good. Myself less so. If I remember, you said I had an incredible number of gaps. I think I got angry, and I should apologise for something I said. My question is, are you in Europe? Can we meet? There are people here who say they miss you on the tour.

  He signed it ‘Chloe’ and sent it from a fresh account while he sat in an internet café in Clichy, using anonymising software and a German IP address.

  It was lunchtime by then and he was hungry. At a store on rue la Fayette he bought bread and cheese. He now had seventy-two euro. Of course he’d never run out of money before, not truly. The idea felt abstract, something he would observe rather than live.

  Come evening, she had not replied. He sat in a small arcade where a television was playing the news, something he’d not seen in months, and it was irregularly distant, all happening on a foreign planet.

  He wondered if they were already closing in on him. For how many men was he the mission? The thought occurred to him that he had one train fare left. What was the best city in which to be fugitive and broke?

  He went to the largest backpackers hostel in the city and walked in like he belonged, planning to sleep on a couch. There were internet terminals under the stairwell.

  Dear Chloe.

  Well, it is interesting to hear from you, and unexpected. It feels to me such a very long time since Madrid. I can hardly remember. Only that it was, in hindsight, all rather strange. I must be upfront. I am not convinced that it would be good for me to come back to the tour to see you. I have done a fair amount of thinking. One decision I have made is to retire. And that has me feeling very differently. I wonder if you would understand? Did you know, a very odd thing occurred. Do you remember a man I married, an American? Well, he was murdered. I do not myself really comprehend it. How it happened. I had left him. He had come to Las Vegas to chase me and cause trouble. But for him to end up dead, it was really quite shocking. How does something like that happen? The police have spoken to me several times now. They have a theory. They believe they know who it was. A man named Peach. Apparently, this person’s gun was recovered from somewhere in the desert and it is a ballistic match. They tell me they are doing their utmost to find him, but he is missing. In fact, one detective said that he may be dead. It is all quite unbelievable. In any case, I do not think I will be coming back to the tour. That won’t surprise you. Really, I don’t know what to think of Madrid. Perhaps you had quite a good result there, considering? Well, try not to be too disappointed. And don’t worry too much. I do wish you the best.

  Ania

  He read her message over and over. Of course he couldn’t blame her for wanting nothing to do with him, it being his fault. He went to reply but his fingers stalled over the keys.

  It was having to encode it in the pretence of Chloe.

  It was not knowing what to say.

  Peach. Could it be that his own hopelessness had saved him, his inept choice of hiding spot? Only Peach and possibly Moore had known he’d had that gun, and both of them were, he was certain, dead. They would probably find Peach somewhere eventually, shot or cut up.

  Was he off the hook for murder? If the police had told it to Ania, it was possible.

  Another thought occurred, a cold spark within. If they mistakenly believed that Peach was responsible for the killing, might they also believe that Arthur Bradley’s treachery was responsible for the leak?

  They easily could. If Bradley had let someone into the network, how simple to add together two and two.

  Could it be that, the entire time since he’d fled, he was only being pursued by imagined ghosts? It might have been possible, he concluded. Except for the fact that he’d run.

  Dear Ania.

  I am sure that it must seem very strange—it probably is very strange—what happened to your husband. I am sure that there must be a good explanation. Perhaps one day you will hear it. I am sorry that you feel the way you do about coming to see us. W
e do talk about it a lot here, and we agree that in Madrid, there wasn’t enough time. The whole place was odd. I made some bad reads in particular. It’s probably surprising that I lasted as long as I did. I can only say that I am sorry. I hope there are no hard feelings, but if there are I would understand.

  C

  He knew it was a little rash, a little open. He didn’t care. He wanted her to know that he truly was sorry. And not just for what he’d said.

  The next morning it must have been in his dreams, for he woke wondering whether he couldn’t convince her to start over.

  The Paris morning had a dusty feel. It felt good to be walking and he began to believe that he could do it: convince Ania to have him back. He imagined them, a quiet existence somewhere, hills in the distance. Was it such a mad vision? If he could explain himself, surely she could forgive.

  He wrote another email. In it he threw caution to the wind. He used the nom de plume but attempted to encode nothing, wrote only as himself. He begged for an audience. He told her there was a future that could be salvaged, and he could explain what had happened, because he had to. He told her how much of a fool he was. He said he’d always been a follower, doing only what was asked of him, what he was told. He said he’d never really believed in anything, he’d never been able to decide. It had made him easy to push around. But from this moment onward his only objective was to be with her. Of that he was certain. The city in which they’d met had never been the place for them. It was, as she’d said, a town skin deep, a place that didn’t allow for feelings. She could claim to have moved on, but really, had they ever got started? There’d been too much distraction and trauma. But now, through a stroke of magnificent luck, they could put it behind them, take on a new form, make of themselves whatever they wanted. And he loved her. He wrote that because he suddenly knew it, hard as glass. She might not believe it but he could show her, if she’d only allow him to prove it.

  By the end of the message he felt light-headed, almost dizzy. It was all things—liberation, release, impatience, longing. It was living.

  He sent it, and waited. The email that came back was close to instantaneous. It was as if she’d been by her computer, ready.

  In Vilaine. Come. 86 rue de Bellevue.

  It was a deep elation. He felt a near euphoria, looking up the town on the map. It was close, only the third stop on one of the northern, regional lines; it was so fortuitous it felt like a blessing.

  He was quickly at Gare du Nord. His ticket was twenty-six euro and with the change he bought a sandwich from a vending machine and ate it fast, suddenly very hungry.

  The train broke from the station slowly then gathered pace. His carriage was almost empty. They reached the countryside. He paid little attention, thought instead about Ania, her pearly skin, the depth of her eyes. He saw himself speaking; her cool expression warming. He wondered where she was living. The address was on a road not far out of town. He pictured a house atop a slow rise, something in stone, firm in the landscape. He imagined the bowl of a rich valley that was unadulterated and real, earthly vistas shaped by the seasons, honest skies. He saw them in it. A life in balance between horizons, long days in a great land.

  By the time the train arrived in Vilaine he was enamoured.

  Here was a vision of destiny and he watched the trees, the fields and the hills.

  A half-dozen passengers disembarked as he consulted the map. The way was over a bridge and then uphill, through the centre of town, afterwards north. He felt as if he could take as long as he wanted. The sun was warm but not oppressive. He left the station and crossed a small road. Ania had picked a beautiful place. There were hills and then the width of the valley and the town nestled down by a small river. He crossed the bridge. Below, the water broke up the sunlight as it passed quickly over rocks. In the town there was some kind of marketplace, vans and tables, but it wasn’t particularly busy. He started to walk uphill. He could imagine him and Ania coming down here of a morning. He stopped at an intersection to get his bearings. A man who had been walking on the other side of the street kept going up rue des Vignes and Daniel checked the map—that was the way.

  The higher he got the deeper into the valley he could see. He passed a shop of some kind and a woman said hello to him from within. He smiled but did not stop. The sun had become a little brighter and he wished for sunglasses. Behind him, he heard the woman say hello to someone else and he looked over his shoulder: a man had stopped at the shop. There was the blare of a horn somewhere in the town. He climbed the road looking up for his bearings, down at his shadow. It was taking longer than he’d expected. He looked again at the map. Rue de Bellevue was up ahead. The man who’d gone by him had almost reached it, was almost out of sight.

  The valley was now hazy below him. On his left, he passed the last few houses of the town proper. If the house where Ania was happened to be anything like these, he’d soon be looking at a cottage of some kind. On his right was a low wall, above it the hilltop. The road curved against the wall and then ran straight, rising in a gradual incline. Gangs of small birds fluttered about the wall. Finally he came to the crest of the hill. The last intersection was a road that fell away left. He passed it, put the map away. Not far now and he was smiling. One look at this place, one step into its old beauty—he felt that she could only be happy to see him.

  The town’s last house was ahead on the left. It would only be a few minutes’ walk past that. He wondered how he looked. He should have cleaned himself up a bit in the bathroom at the train station. At the last house, a pair of feet were sticking out onto the pathway. He got closer and saw that it was the man who had paced so fast up rue des Vignes, resting now on the step. He was wearing an old jacket and a felt cap. Daniel walked past him and along the road. Its surface here was crumbling and soon there was just gravel on the roadside. There was hardly anything in his backpack but it began to feel heavy. He was sweating under its straps. He looked down again into the valley and squinted. He heard the kick of a stone and behind him another man was walking on the road a fair way back. He guessed that Ania’s place was not alone out there ahead, or might it be some kind of hotel? Surely it could not be far now.

  The man who had been resting on the step was up again. Over his shoulder Daniel glimpsed the two men walking in column—walking not, as he was, on the roadside, but on the road itself, almost at its centre. Another stone went pebbling across the road. The men were a good distance back, but travelling faster than he was. It felt as if he should step a little quicker. It must have been nearing midday. The sky was a bright, almost primitive blue.

  He came to a long stretch of road, fields on either side. There was a corner up ahead, and he thought that the house would be beyond that.

  When he looked back again the two men had changed places. The one in the jacket with the hat was now walking more quickly, was about halfway to him.

  Daniel kept walking. There were few clouds. The man in the jacket was almost level with him, walking on the other side of the road. Half a minute later Daniel was overtaken. He glanced over and the man was looking at his own feet. When he got twenty or so yards in front, he slowed to Daniel’s pace, which was essentially when Daniel knew it.

  He looked and the man behind had advanced. Beyond him, at the edge of visible distance, was a third figure on the road, closing the gap. Not strictly a C-man, but near enough.

  He decided that he would not stop walking.

  He wondered whether he was getting any closer to Ania, whether she had sent the message or was it all them, that which lay ahead.

  His knees felt heavier, harder to move. He sucked his breath in to get the air he needed.

  He could hear the men getting closer. He decided that he would not look again, that he would keep his eyes on the valley and straight ahead. It really was a beautiful place.

  Soon, all four of them were walking together. The road stretched long in front and they didn’t seem to be getting much closer to the corner. The slight breeze
that had been blowing had now stopped. Things were suddenly rather quiet, except for the sound of their feet. He didn’t wonder yet about what was going to happen. He concentrated on this, what he could see: the fence lines, the belting green fields.

  He’d tried to do the right things, hadn’t he?

  The car appeared at the top of the road. A grey sedan. It came on fast, ripping towards them, its engine humming and stones being thrashed under its wheels, and Daniel felt like saying, ‘Listen, you don’t need to bother with that.’ He hoped that the men walking would realise this, but, with the car coming, the two behind grabbed his arms suddenly and he felt sharp pain. He was shoved. He stumbled.

  They didn’t tell him what to do. Didn’t say anything. He wanted to stay upright and this provoked a hellish twist, his elbow almost out of its socket. He lost balance. The road came up to meet his temple. There was the shock of it and then the splitting pain. From the men came no instruction or sound. There was a knee in his back. He couldn’t shout. There was the iron taste of blood. He moved his tongue and felt sour pain as if it had been opened by a blade.

  His impulse was to move. He took a watery breath as though he was drowning. He wanted to tell them it wasn’t necessary. He wanted them to stop so that he could explain.

  He was being lifted. The way they’d played this—he felt vacant, almost missing. The car was before him with a lurch. He was being pushed into its back seat.

  The engine revved. He saw blunt walls and fortresses, midnight flights and frost. They were trying to make him sit upright, shunting him hard across. He could have done it himself but his hands had been tied. He tried to say this but he wasn’t able to speak. He wanted to explain that he’d cooperate, seek salvation. He was nobody but he wanted to say that there was really no need for cruelty if they were going to do this.

  Acknowledgements

  Firstly, my thanks go to Annette Barlow, Catherine Milne and everyone at Allen & Unwin. For helping me to see a much better book, I am especially grateful to Ali Lavau.