Philip Kerr - Hand of God

Seeing me she stood up, smiled a xenon headlight smile, took my hand in hers and shook it; her grip was surprisingly strong. I glanced around in case anyone else had recognised me as quickly as Valentina had done. You can’t be too careful these days; anyone with a mobile phone is Big Brother.

‘I recognised you from the picture Bekim sent me,’ she said.

I resisted the immediate temptation to pay her a dumb compliment; usually, when you meet a really beautiful woman, all you can really hope to do is try to keep your tongue in your mouth. I remembered Bekim showing me her picture on his iPhone. But it was hard to connect something as ubiquitous and ordinary as the image on someone’s phone with the living goddess standing on front of me. All my earlier thoughts of dinner were now gone; I don’t think I could even have spelt the word ‘appetite’.

We sat down and she waved the barman towards us; he came over immediately, as if he’d been watching her, too. Even Alexander the Great was having a hard job keeping his embroidered eyes off her. I ordered a brandy, which was stupid because it doesn’t agree with me, but that’s what she was drinking and at that particular moment it seemed imperative that we should agree about everything.

‘I live not far from here,’ she explained.

‘I had no idea that Mount Olympus was so close,’ I said.

She smiled. ‘You’re thinking of Thessaloniki.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m thinking of Greek mythology.’ I was having a hard job to restrain myself from pouring yet more sugar in her ear; she probably heard that kind of shit all the time.

‘Have you eaten?’

I shook my head.

‘There’s still time to go to dinner,’ she said. ‘Spondi is a five-minute cab ride from here. It’s the best restaurant in Athens.’

The waiter returned with the brandies.

‘Or we could eat here. The roof garden restaurant has the best view in Athens.’

‘The roof garden sounds just fine,’ I said.

We took our drinks upstairs to the roof garden restaurant. The rocky plateau that dominated the city and which was home to the Parthenon, now floodlit, is one of the most spectacular sights in the world, especially at night, from the rooftop of the Grande Bretagne, when you’re having dinner with someone who looks like one of the major deities who were once worshipped there; but I kept that one to myself because it’s not every woman who likes that much cheese. And frankly, after a couple of minutes, I barely even noticed the Acropolis was there at all. We ordered dinner. I don’t remember what I ate. I don’t remember anything except everything about her. For once Bekim had not exaggerated; I don’t think I’d ever met a more beautiful woman. If she’d had any skill with a football I’d have offered to marry her right there and then.

‘What time is the game tomorrow?’ she asked.

‘Seven forty-five.’

‘And how were you planning on spending the day?’

‘I thought I would see the sights.’

‘It would be my pleasure to show you the city,’ she said. ‘Besides, there’s something I want you to see.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s a surprise. Why don’t I come back here at eleven and pick you up?’

‘Sounds like a plan.’

Sweet dreams, she said as we parted on the steps of the hotel and I knew that this was almost a given. I don’t usually remember my dreams but this time I was kind of hoping I would, especially if Valentina featured in any of them.

The following morning I caught a taxi down to Glyfada, just south of Athens, to have breakfast with Bastian Hoehling and the Hertha team at their hotel, a sixties-style high-rise close to the beach but perhaps a little too close to the main road north to Piraeus. Apparently Olympiacos supporters had spent all night driving past the hotel with car horns blaring to prevent the Berlin side from sleeping. The Hertha players looked exhausted; and several of them were also suffering from a severe bout of food poisoning. Bastian and the club doctor had considered summoning the police to investigate, but it was hard to see what the police could have done beyond telling them the Greek for lavatory.

‘You really think it was deliberate?’ I asked, choosing now to ignore the omelette that the hotel waiter had brought to our table.

Bastian, who was feeling unwell himself, shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but we seem to be the only ones in the hotel who’ve gone down with whatever this thing is. There’s a party of local car salesman having a conference here that seems to be quite all right.’

‘That certainly clinches it, I’d have thought.’

‘If this is a friendly,’ he said, ‘I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when you play these guys in the Champions League. You’d better make sure you bring your own chef and nutritionist, not to mention your own doctor.’

‘Our present team doctor is just about to take up a new position in Qatar.’

‘Then you’d better find a new one. And quick.’

‘Perhaps you’re right.’

‘I wouldn’t put anything past these guys,’ said Bastian. ‘The newspapers seem to be treating this whole competition like Greece versus Germany. The Olympiacos manager, Hristos Trikoupis, referred to us as Hitler’s boys.’

‘That surprises me,’ I said. ‘Hristos was at Southampton with me. He’s a decent guy.’

‘Nothing surprises me,’ said Bastian. ‘Not after Thessaloniki: the bastards threw rocks and bottles at our goalkeeper. We had to warm up in a corner of the pitch well away from the crowd. I couldn’t feel less popular in this country if my name was Himmler not Hoehling. So much for the home of democracy.’

‘You’re Germans, Bastian. You must be used to that kind of thing by now. The first thing you learn in the professional game: there’s no such thing as a friendly, especially when there are Germans involved. There’s just war and total war.’

Because I was speaking German I used the phrase totaler Krieg famously coined by Josef Goebbels during the Second World War, and some of the Hertha team glanced nervously my way when they heard it, the way Berliners do when they hear that kind of Nazi shit.

‘If I were you, Bastian,’ I added, ‘I would play tonight’s game the same way. It’s the only language these Greek guys understand and respect. You remember the rest of what was written on Goebbels’s banner? Totaler Krieg — kürzester Krieg . Total war — shortest war.’

‘I think maybe you’re right, Scott. We should fucking run over them. Kick the bastards off the pitch.’

I nodded. ‘Before they do the same to you.’

After breakfast I went back to the Grande Bretagne Hotel, in the centre of Athens. At exactly eleven o’clock I was sitting on a large, biscuit-coloured ottoman in the hotel lobby, texting Simon Page about our first game of the new Premier League season, an away match against newly promoted Leicester City, on 16 August. Simon was just about to take an eight o’clock training session at Hangman’s Wood and I was telling him not to make it a hard one as I was concerned that some of our players were still tired after their World Cup duties, not to mention our disastrous and entirely unnecessary tour of Russia.

‘Did you sleep well?’

I glanced up to find Valentina standing in front of me. She was wearing a plain white shirt, tight blue J-Brand jeans, comfortable snakeskin sandals and black acetate Wayfarers. I stood up and we shook hands.

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘Ready?’ she said.

‘Where are we going?’

‘To see someone you know.’

We took a taxi to the National Archaeological Museum, a five-minute drive north from the hotel. The museum was designed like a Greek temple, a little less run-down than the one on top of the Acropolis, but not far off being a ruin; and like many public buildings in Greece — and quite a few private ones — it was covered in graffiti. Beggars drifted around the unkempt park that was laid out in front of the entrance like so many stray cats and dogs and I handed one old man all of the coins that were in my trouser pocket.