Hand of God (7 page)

The receptionist on duty checked me in and then handed me an envelope that had been in my pigeonhole. Inside the envelope was a handwritten message on scented stationery:

Bekim told me what time you were arriving in Athens and since I was in the vicinity of your hotel I thought I would stop by and say hello. I am in Alexander’s Bar, behind the front desk. I shall wait until 2.15 a.m. Valentina (00.55)

PS, If you’re too tired from your journey, I shall quite understand, but please send this note back via the bellboy.

I went up to my room with the porter and pondered my next move. I wasn’t particularly tired: Athens is two hours ahead of London time and having scorned the plastic in-flight meal, I was now hungry for something more substantial than a handful of peanuts from the minibar. Greeks tend to eat quite late in the evening and I was sure I could still get some dinner, but I felt less certain about eating on my own; an attractive dining companion would surely be a pleasant alternative to my iPad. So I cleaned my teeth, changed my shirt and went back downstairs to find her.

In spite of what Bekim had said I still suspected that I was about to meet a hooker. For one thing there was his own priapic reputation to consider, for another there was her nationality. I don’t know why so many Russian women become hookers but they do; I think they feel it’s the only thing that will get them out of Russia. After our pre-season tour I never wanted to see the country again either. I’ve never minded the company of prostitutes – after you’ve been in the nick for something you didn’t do, you learn never to judge anyone – it’s just sleeping with them I object to. It doesn’t make me better than Bekim – or any of the other guys in football who succumb to all the temptations made possible by a hundred grand a week. I was just older and perhaps a little wiser and, truth be told, just a little less pussy-hungry than I used to be. You get older, your sleep matters more than what’s laughingly called your libido.

Alexander’s Bar looked like something out of an old Hollywood movie. The marble counter was about thirty feet long, with proper bar stools for some serious, lost weekend drinking, and more bottles than a bonded warehouse. Behind the bar was a tapestry of a man in a chariot I assumed was Alexander the Great; some attendants were carrying a Greek urn beside his chariot that looked a lot like the FA Cup which probably explained why everyone looked so happy.

It wasn’t hard to spot Valentina: she was the one in the grey armchair with legs up to her armpits, coated tweed minidress and Louboutin high heels. Louboutins are easy to identify; I only knew the minidress was a three-grand Balmain because I liked to shop online and it was a rare month when I didn’t buy something for Louise on Net-a-Porter. The blonde hair held in a loose chignon gave Valentina a regal air. If she was a hooker she wasn’t the kind who was about to give a discount for cash.

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.

‘It’s something I always do back home,’ I said, seeing Valentina’s sceptical look. ‘For luck. You can’t get any if you don’t give any. Football’s cruel, sometimes very cruel. You have to make sure the capricious gods of football are properly appeased. You shouldn’t even be in the game unless you’re an optimist and to be an optimist means you cannot be a cynic. You have to believe in people.’

‘You don’t strike me as the superstitious sort, Scott.’

‘It’s not superstition,’ I said. ‘It’s just pragmatic to take a balanced approach to good luck and to careful preparation. It’s actually the clever thing to do. Luck has a way of favouring the clever.’

‘We’ll see, won’t we?’

‘Oh, I think Hertha will win. In fact, I’m sure of it.’

‘Is that because you’re half German?’

‘No. It’s because I’m clever. And because I believe in
totaler Krieg
. Football that takes no prisoners.’

Inside the museum were the treasures of ancient Greece, including the famous gold mask of Agamemnon that Bastian Hoehling had mentioned, back in Berlin. It looked like something made by a child out of gold foil from a chocolate bar. But it was another treasure that Valentina had brought me to see. As soon as I saw it I gasped out loud. This was a life-size bronze statue of Zeus that many years before had been recovered from the sea. What struck me most was not the rendering of motion and human anatomy but the head of Zeus, with its shovel beard and cornrow haircut.

‘My God,’ I exclaimed, ‘it’s Bekim.’

‘Yes.’ Valentina laughed delightedly. ‘He could have modelled for this bronze,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t he?’

‘Even the way he stands,’ I said, ‘mid-stride, in the act of throwing a spear or hurling a thunderbolt, that’s exactly the way Bekim always celebrates scoring a goal. Or nearly always.’

‘I thought it would appeal to you.’

‘Does he know?’

‘Does he know?’ Valentina laughed again. ‘Of course he does. It’s his secret. He grew his beard so he would look like this statue; and when he scores he always thinks of Zeus.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m not sure he actually thinks he’s a god, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised.’

I walked around the statue several times, grinning like an idiot as I pictured Bekim adopting this same pose.

And yet, perfect as the statue was, there was something wrong with it, too. The more I looked at it the more it seemed that the outstretched left hand was wrong, that it was attached to an arm several inches too long; later on, I bought a postcard and measured the approximate length of the arm, and realized that the hand would actually have reached down as far as the god’s knee. Had the sculptor got it wrong? Or had the original display angle of the figure required an extended arm to avoid a foreshortened look? It was hard to be sure but to my critical eye, the hand of God appeared to be reaching just a little too far.

She nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier, about being lucky.’

‘Yes? What about it?’

‘I think you’re going to be lucky,’ she said, and taking my hand she squeezed it, meaningfully.

‘When?’

‘Tonight.’

I lifted her hand to my mouth and kissed it. The nails were short, but immaculately varnished, while the skin on the palm of her hand was like soft leather, which struck me as strange. ‘And I thought you were talking about the football.’