That evening, the back corridor had already heard more confessions than in all the years before.
Yet it remained there: grey, cold, secretive. The heating pipes creaked. Behind the walls, the old cooling system hummed, as if the hall were breathing through metal. From the front came applause, music and the bright urgency of a programme that paid no heed to whether its participants were still human beings or already symbols.
Luc Moreau was the first to round the corner.
He had not lost his elegance, but he had shed it like a jacket that had served its purpose for the camera and was now a hindrance. His French team suit fit impeccably, his tie was neat, his hair combed back a little too loosely. Even here, amidst the fumes of cleaning products and cable ducts, he looked like someone who, in a poor room, considered good posture a matter of patriotism.
He stopped in front of the door marked STAFF ONLY.
Not because of the door.
Because of the footsteps behind him.
Cemil Arslan was coming from the other direction. A dark green Ottoman uniform with the obligatory white crescent over the heart, a calm face, empty hands, an alert gaze. He wasn’t walking fast, but every step he took was decisive. Whereas Luc still carried a hint of theatrical cheerfulness about him, Cemil brought with him a stillness that immediately made his gait more physiocratic. They looked at each other.
“You’re late,” said Luc.
Cemil raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know we had a time.”
“We had a look.”
“Looks are unreliable in this hall.”
Luc smiled thinly. “So you understood mine correctly, then?”
Cemil stepped up beside him against the wall, not too close. The men did not stand facing each other, but side by side, like two men watching the same exit and not wanting to discuss who would make the first move.
For a moment they said nothing.
From the front, the loudspeaker crackled. A voice announced the technical preparation of the ice. Then polite applause broke out, distant and detached.
Luc looked up at the ceiling. “He was with you?”
Cemil didn’t answer straight away. “Franklin?”
“Our shared benefactor. Our father. Our patron today, in the depths of emotional distress. Pick the worst title you like.”
“Yes,” said Cemil. “He was with me.”
Luc exhaled. “Of course.”
“With you too?”
“With an urgency that would almost have been touching had it come from another man.”
Cemil looked at him now. “What did he want?”
Luc turned his face towards the grey wall. “For me to win. At any cost.”
“Exactly those words?”
“Almost. He said: ‘You mustn’t lose gracefully today, Luc. Today you must win for your future, for France, for your mother and for everything I couldn’t give you.’” Luc laughed softly, without any joy. “As if he’d ever understood what he hadn’t given.”
Cemil was silent.
Luc looked at him from the side. “And with you?”
“He said I had to show that no one had invited me out of pity.”
Luc’s gaze hardened.
Cemil continued calmly. “Then he said the Ottoman team could prove today that background wasn’t a weakness, that my mother would be proud, that he’d always known I had discipline.”
“Discipline,” Luc repeated. “That’s a pretty word for neglect, if you say it with enough conviction.”
Cemil clasped his hands behind his back. “He had tears in his eyes.”
“Me too.”
“That frightened me more than anything else.”
Luc nodded. “Yes.”
Once again, they fell silent.
They had little practice in sharing silence. Their kinship had not been a family, but a footnote in different lives. Luc had been the son of a marriage: Walter Franklin and Claire de Montferrand, a French country noblewoman from near Bordeaux, whose name sounded better in old wine cellars and even older chapels than in American newspapers. Cemil was the son of Nadira, Claire’s former maid, from a Lebanese family whose history had known more languages, borders and humiliations than Franklin had ever had to pay for.
That could have made them enemies.
Could have.
Instead, their mothers had made the better decision.
Claire de Montferrand was the first to be abandoned by Franklin. Nadira had stayed with her. And both had – irony of history – given birth on the same day, to children of the same father. Both women, as adults, had allowed their lives to be shaped by his absence.
Luc hadn’t understood it for a long time.
Cemil had understood it earlier and kept quiet for longer.
“My mother asked once,” said Luc, “if I hated you.”
Cemil didn’t look at him. “And?”
“I said I didn’t have time. Hockey, university, French relatives with too many opinions.”
“Practical.”
“I was sixteen. Practical was my best feeling.”
The corner of Cemil’s mouth barely moved. “My mother didn’t ask.”
“Because she’s wiser?”
“Because she knew the answer.”
Luc turned his head towards him. “And?”
Cemil looked at him now. Calmly. Directly. “I never hated you. It would have been too convenient.”
Luc took that in, like sour wine from Picardy.
“Neither did I,” he said at last. “Sometimes I was jealous.”
Cemil’s expression turned sceptical. “Of me?”
“At least you didn’t have any aunts who declared at every dinner that an illegitimate half-brother was regrettable, but nothing unusual in the history of family politics.”
“On the other hand, I had uncles in Tyr who told me ice hockey was a girl’s sport.”
Luc grimaced. “Then we were both badly advised.”
“We already knew that.”
A brief cheer came from the main hall. Presumably someone had mentioned the trophy again. The corridor responded with the dripping sound of a leaking pipe.
“He needs something,” said Cemil.
Luc looked at him.
“Franklin?” said Cemil. “He doesn’t speak like that when it’s just a matter of pride.”
“No. He’s never spoken like that before.”
“You know something?”
Luc hesitated.
Not out of mistrust. Out of habit.
Then he said: “It could be that he’s terminally ill. Often, those facing death want to make peace. But then I don’t understand why he’s goading us both to victory, because one thing must be clear to him: only one of us can win.”
“But he hasn’t told anyone that he spoke to the other one as well. Perhaps he’s hoping we won’t talk to each other.”
“I also know that he’s doing a poor job of hiding his despair today. With me, he tried to be fatherly.”
“With me too.”
“He can’t do that. It was embarrassing.”
Cemil nodded. “And sad.”
Luc looked at him sharply. “Do you feel sorry for him?”
“No.” Cemil’s voice remained calm. “I simply refuse to confuse my loathing with blindness.”
Luc fell silent, and this time it wasn’t an evasion. There was something about Cemil that made conversations sobering. Luc sometimes found that exhausting. Probably even because he liked it.
“He appealed to us separately,” said Cemil. “To you for France. To me for the Ottoman Empire.”
“He believes blood is stronger than contempt.”
“That would be a more dangerous mistake.”
Luc pushed himself away from the wall and took two steps down the corridor. He needed to move before his voice gave too much away.
“He said, ‘If you win today, Luc, some things will be easier.’ I asked him, for whom. He didn’t answer. Then he said my mother had always believed in discipline. My mother, Cemil. Claire de Montferrand, who once corrected a French president for poor grammar in a letter of condolence. As if she needed him to explain discipline to me. ”
Cemil’s expression softened. “Nadira says your mother still corrects menus.”
“Only the bad ones.”
“All of them, says Nadira.”
“Then the two of them are eating at the wrong places.”
For a moment there was almost a laugh, real enough to make the corridor seem less hostile for two seconds.
Then Luc grew serious again.
“Did he ask you to play unfairly?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
“But he said: ‘at any cost’.”
“Yes.”
“That could mean a lot of things.”
“With Franklin, it always means: someone else pays the price.”
Cemil looked towards the main hall. “I won’t win for him.”
“Neither will I.”
“But you want to win.”
Luc smiled briefly. “Of course I want to win. I’m French, the captain, and unbearably good.”
“Modesty would have weakened you.”
“I’ve cast it aside for training purposes.”
Cemil took that seriously enough not to laugh. “I want to win too.”
“For him?”
“For my team.”
“Good.”
“For my mother.”
Luc nodded.
“For me and the Sultan,” added Cemil.
“Even better.”
Once again they stood side by side. Two sons of the same man, not close enough to offer comfort, but too honest to overlook the danger.
Luc lowered his voice. “What do we do if he tries to use the game?”
“We play dirty.”
“That sounds like a mine.”
“That’s exactly why it’s pointless.”
“And if he wants to use us against each other?”
Cemil looked at him. “Then we’ll make him fail.”
Luc held his gaze. “That’s easier said than done when you’re standing opposite each other on the ice.”
“That’s where it’s easiest. The rules are clear.”
“You’re playing against the British, I’m playing against the Japanese; at least in the first round, we won’t meet out there.”
“Then we’ll stick to the enemies we don’t like ourselves.”
Luc took a slow breath.
Up front, the applause was growing louder. A sponsor who’d paid enough to get a microphone cleared his throat and sang a dreadful improvisation on ‘Ice, Ice Baby’.
Cemil unclasped his hands from behind his back.
“We should go back.”
Luc nodded, but stayed put. “Cemil.”
“Yes?”
“Has Nadira forgiven my mother for having to keep working as a maid even during their affair?”
Cemil was silent long enough for Luc to regret asking.
Then he said: “My mother says Claire didn’t do anything to her that needed forgiving. Franklin was the coward.”
Luc looked at the floor. “That sounds like her.”
“Which one?”
“Both of them.”
This time Cemil really smiled, a small, warm smile. “Yes.”
A loudspeaker crackled. Eleanor Price’s voice called on the captains to make their way to the ice rink.
Luc adjusted his cuff. The elegant mask returned, but not completely. 
They walked together towards the main hall, not shoulder to shoulder, but no longer casually apart either. Ahead lay the lights and a game that far too many men wanted to use for their own ends.