A Handful of Kings by MARK JACOBS

Author:MARK JACOBS
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SIMON & SCHUSTER Rockefeller Center
Published: 2004-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

12

Game point, am I right?”

With Juan Manuel Portillo it was always game point, and he was always right. He bounced the scuffed blue racquetball on the hard-wood floor, letting Marc catch his breath. The Spanish intelligence officer looked charitably away from the American, hunched hands on knees and breathing like a gaffed fish in the floor of the boat just before it relinquished its sense of selfhood. For two years they had played against each other once a week. Marc had beaten Portillo maybe seven times.

“There’s an expression in English,” Marc told him. He didn’t have enough air in his lungs to propel the words up and out of his throat. They blooped, dropped on the floor.

Unlike most of the professional Spaniards Marc knew, Juan Manuel insisted on speaking English with him. Practice was only part of it. Mastering the language gave him a tactical advantage. He spoke it well, storing up idioms, phrases, even puns, but the words had a certain odd sound, more burr than accent.

“I’m all ears,” Juan said.

“I’ll give you the second half first.”

“Go ahead.”

“And the horse you rode in on.”

“Fuck you.”

“Congratulations. You pass the cultural adaptation test. You’re ready for your assignment to Omaha.”

“Nebraska, am I right?”

If the Spaniards were thoroughbred dogs, Portillo was the champion of his class, a show animal with no visible defects. Two meters tall, with the build of a gymnast in his prime, he looked like a composite sketch of Zorro, the foxy lover who scaled the side of the evil king’s house to whisper jokes into the ear of the princess, who’d been waiting for him. He was too good-looking to do undercover work.

“You ready?” he asked Marc.

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”

When the Spaniard served, Marc caught the ball off the wall with the edge of his racket so that it caromed weakly, giving Juan Manuel the time he needed to place it in a corner beyond Marc’s reach.

“One more game, Marquitos.”

“Isn’t total domination enough?”

“It’s never enough. One more game.”

But Marc was played out. They went toward the showers. Playing racquetball in the middle of the afternoon let Portillo score another point in their marathon match. The point had to do with freedom, which had to do with dynamism. The American intelligence organism, he liked to point out, had atrophied into bureaucracy.

“Let’s have a conversation,” he proposed.

“There’s only one subject I want to talk about, Juan Manuel.”

“Me, too. And your subject is my subject. We’re cooperating now, we’re not competing. My boss talked with your boss. Madrid called Washington, Washington called Madrid. We’re on the same side. We’re introducing a new candor into the relationship. If you liked me before, you’re going to love me now. It feels different, doesn’t it?”

“What feels different?”

“You do. After the terror hits you at home, you understand what vulnerable means. It’s no longer just an idea. Suddenly it’s as real as, let’s say, some ETA prick murdering a policeman who has three kids and his wife is pregnant with their fourth.

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