The last game (2 page)

She woke up with a start a while
later.
A strange feeling
of alarm, racing through her body. Maybe she´d had a nightmare? She
half sat up and rubbed her eyes. It was still day, so she couldn’t
have slept too long. But the fire was all but out. Only a couple of
embers still burning among the ashes. The logs had been consumed.
There was nothing left. But was that possible? She rubbed her eyes
again, thinking she should have stayed asleep, because what she was
looking at now didn´t make any sense.

Judith kneeled down next to the fireplace
and took the black envelope with the white borders out that was
partially buried under the ashes. It shouldn’t still be there
!

She opened the envelope quickly,
excitedly, and extracted a simple sheet of paper and looked at its
clear handwriting. Then read the letter carefully.

When she had finished, she dropped the
letter on the floor, went to her bedroom and changed clothes then
left the house.

* * *

The first thing Hector
did was go to the bank to find out how
much he could borrow. It was a pretty disappointing sum.

It didn´t
surprise him to find out how little his life was
worth. He had offered everything he had of value to ask for a loan
for the largest amount possible.

“
If you have a guarantee we could increase
the amount.” The efficient bank employee that attended him in the
bank said. “Perhaps some family member could help.”

“
No! “ Hector yelled. “I want the maximum
that I can borrow on my own, without involving anyone
else."

His house was the only thing that the bank
considered valuable. And that wasn´t worth that much either. The
sad apartment in which he lived was barely forty square meters and
was his thanks to an inheritance. That was all he´d managed to put
together in forty-three years.

He
took the relevant documentation to the bank and spent a
week at home, waiting. He went out twice, once to buy some food,
and on the other occasion to go to the doctor. His psychiatrist
always asked him the same old questions. Hector answered them with
his mind on something else, then went to the pharmacy with the
prescriptions and bought tranquillizers and
anti-depressants.

H
e got the loan in the end, ten days after delivering the
documentation and formalizing the application. Hector transferred
the whole amount to another bank account in a different bank and
only left one euro in his account.

“
It´s a big sum of money.” The cashier said
raising her eyebrows. “The commission for this will be very
high.”

“It doesn´t matter.” Hector replied.

Then he went to the other bank and asked
if he could withdraw all the money in cash. Again eyebrows were
raised. The teller asked him to wait while he spoke to another bank
employee. Hector imagined he was speaking to the
manager.

“The money will be ready in three days.” The
cashier informed him.

Hector went home and waited patiently.
Three days later he returned to the bank, dressed in the same
clothes, and withdrew the money. It was all very simple. He had
imagined that many papers would have had to be signed and that he
would have had to answer questions. But that hadn´t happened. They
gave him the money and asked him to count it.

“
That’s not necessary. I trust you.” Hector
said.

He signed the payment receipt and left the
bank with the money in an orange
backpack that looked like it belonged to a
schoolboy.

He took a taxi that took him to
hi
s destination in
twenty minutes, paid the taxi driver, and then sat down in front of
the stairs to an office building, holding the backpack against his
chest with both arms. On two occasions passers-by dropped coins on
the footpath in front of him. But Hector didn´t bother to pick them
up.

He stayed there for two hours until he saw
his objective on the other side of the street. A very thin, blond
woman, accompanied by a little boy with a limp. The boy appeared to
be around ten years old and had a prosthesis that had replaced his
right leg.

Hector stood up
as soon as he saw them and crossed the street
without looking. A car jammed its brakes on to avoid hitting
him.

“
Your mother was a slut!“ The driver yelled
out the window. “Watch where you´re going, madman.”

The blond woman turned around attracted by
the ruckus and saw Hector walking towards her.

“
Don´t be afraid.” He said, trying to sound
relaxed. “I´ve only come here to give you this.” He said, offering
her the backpack.

The woman looked at it strangely. An
indescribable mix of emotions drawn on her face. Hector was worried
that she was going to run off. Maybe she would have, if her son
hadn´t been with her.

“
Who is this man,
mummy?” The boy asked. “He´s very dirty and his
clothes are torn.”

The mother didn´t answer. She was frozen
with fear and anger, doing her best not to show it. But Hector
could see through that.

“
I could only put this amount together.
That´s all I have in this bag.” He said seriously. “I couldn´t get
anymore. There´s around seventy-two thousand Euros here.” He said
pushing the backpack towards her.

The woman didn´t move.

“
I don´t know why you´re doing
this
.” She managed to
say with difficulty.

“
I
t´s the right thing to do. Even if it´s only for your son
you´ve got to accept it.” He left it on the ground and stepped
back. The boy limped over to his mother and bent down to pick up
the backpack. Hector looked at his false leg and added. “I wish I
could have done more.”

He walked off
without saying another word, returned to his house
and waited. Two days later he received the letter. He found it in
the morning when he woke up, on the floor, as if someone had
slipped it under the door. It was a black envelope with white
edges. Hector read it, then left the house.

He didn´t bother to close the door.

* * *

Dante´s neck was always covered
by an impeccable shirt and a
tie with a perfect Windsor knot. That was why it was so surprising
to see him enter his office with the button of his shirt undone and
the tie loose, without its usual pin, bouncing against his chest as
he walked.

Dante took a
thirteen page financial report out of a drawer and
put it in an empty folder and left his office. He went down the
corridor to the meeting unaware of the looks that his employees
were giving him.

He hardly had a hair on his head and the
few locks that still resisted the ravages of time were totally
white. His face was furrowed by a sea of wrinkles. An enormous
stomach, a wide back and two dark eyes were the first things one
noticed about him. Dante was sixty-three years old and his
retirement in two years was foremost in his thoughts.

In the meeting room his lawyer and only
friend waited for him with his main financial assessor.

“
Have you checked the information that I
sent you?” The advisor asked.

“
I´ve got it right here.” Dante said waving
the folder in front of him. He sat down and then took the report
out. “Is this the report you´re referring to?”

The financial advisor confirmed with a
quick glance that it was the complex analysis that his
te
am had put together
during the last two weeks.

“
That´s it. As you can see the numbers are
correct and they reveal that . . .”

“
Everything’
s in order. I agree with everything I´ve
read.”

“
Then it would appear that we’re all of the
same opinion.” The lawyer said.

The financial advisor could barely contain
his happiness.

“
It´s a safe property deal. In five years,
when the land is revalued, the value will increase tenfold. You
won´t regret it.”

“
Definitely not.” Dante replied. “Because
we´re not going to do this deal.”

An uncomfortable silence followed his
words.

“
I don´t
understand.” The advisor said. “If you agree with
the report, what´s the problem? We´ve bribed all the key people.
There´s no risk.”

“
Can´t you see it?” The lawyer asked
confused. “It´s your type of operation. You´ve done thousands like
this.”

“
That´s true. I know that well enough.”
Dante agreed. “But I´m not getting involved with this one. I want
to sell.”

“
What?
That doesn´t make any sense.” The advisor said. “We´ve only
got to wait five years and we´ll make a packet. You can´t pass that
up.”

“
Yes, I
can.” Dante rebuked him. “I´m not interested in investing
in this. I just want to sell.”

“
But that’s
absurd.”

The advisor said nothing more. He was
aware that he´d just exploded in front of his boss. Even so it
wasn´t easy to contain himself. The rejection of an opportunity
like this was almost impossible for an ambitious man like him to
accept.

The lawyer interrupted the two of them
before things got any further out of hand, convincing the financial
advisor to leave the room before it was too late.

“
You have to admit
he was right.” The lawyer said to Dante
after the advisor had left. ”It was a great deal. Besides,
thousands of families will be without a home if we pull
out.”

“
That´s not my problem,” Dante informed
him. “Someone else will go ahead with the project. I´ve got other
priorities.”

“I´ve seen a change in you in the last few
months.” The lawyer reflected. “What´s happened here today doesn´t
seem like you at all.”

“That´s my business.”

Dante picked the report up off the table
and opened the
folder to
put the report back inside but didn’t get that far. His hand
remained in the air.

“
Is something wrong?” The lawyer asked,
looking at Dante´s hand suspended in the air.

Dante didn´t answer him. He kept on
looking at a letter that was sitting inside the folder and that he
was sure he hadn´t put there. He put the report down and took the
envelope out. It was black with white edges, without any address.
He opened it and took a sheet of paper with a note written in red
ink out. He was amazed at the exceptional handwriting. He began to
read it carefully.

“
What are you reading?” The lawyer asked
out of curiosity. “It´s a blank sheet.”

Dante finished reading and dropped the sheet
of paper on the table. He crossed the meeting room without looking
back at the lawyer and disappeared.

Two minutes later, he left through the front
door of the building with his coat on.

* * * * *

When Alvaro arrived at his destination it
was already night.
He
felt completely disorientated.

He´d left the hospital only a short while
before, a half an hour at the most. He´d only gone three subway
stops. He remembered having shielded his eyes from the sunshine
shortly before starting down the stairs. So how was it possible
that it was already night time?

He looked up at the large moon in the sky
while he walked along the street. There was no one else around. The
sound of his steps echoing as he went, breaking the overwhelming
silence around him. He stopped under the intermittent light of a
bent streetlamp, that looked as if it was about to collapse, and
checked the number of the house.

It was i
mpossible to mistake. The address had been
engraved in his memory in red fire from the color of the ink with
which it had been written.

The house that stood in front of him had
nothing in common with the
rest of the houses along the street. Or the whole suburb
for that matter Flanked by two enormous blocks of concrete, at
least ten floors high, the small simple wooden building in between
seemed to come from an older, different time. A wooden cross, that
seemed to have been carved by hand, and which hung at a dangerous
angle, crowned the roof. The house stood on its own rather small
block of land, framed by a rusty wrought iron gate, overgrown with
a wild tangle of ivy, that looked on the edge of collapsing at any
minute.

Alvaro walked to the gate and pushed it
open. He crossed the garden, treading on a line of smooth stones,
covered here and there by grass, which formed a rough path to the
main door of the house. His steps echoed strangely against the
stones beneath his feet. When he was halfway to the door, something
caught his attention. The silhouette of something that didn´t go
with the rest of the garden was to his left. The dim light didn’t
help him make out what the shape was, but after observing it for a
few seconds, Alvaro realized that it was a very large stone cross
on the top of a tomb. And that wasn´t all there was to see in this
garden. He looked behind him and heard something that sent a sharp
chill up his spine.