The Goalkeeper's Confession

Tomislav Horvat had stopped a thousand shots in his life, and not one of them had frightened him the way the envelope on the kitchen table did.

It was an ordinary brown envelope, fat in the middle, and it had been sitting there since the man in the grey suit had set it down two nights ago and walked back out into the rain without raising his voice once. Tomo had not opened it. He had not needed to. The man had told him, quietly, pleasantly, exactly what was inside — more money than a thirty-one-year-old goalkeeper for an unfashionable club like Sokol could earn in five honest seasons — and exactly what it would cost. Four goals. Or three, if the third was ugly enough to look like the others. Whatever it took, in tomorrow's championship final, to make sure that Sokol lost to Dinamo and the right people collected on the right side of a very large bet.

"You are a wonderful keeper, Mr Horvat," the man had said, in the doorway, almost sadly. "That is the whole point. No one suspects the wonderful ones. They only say he had a bad night. Even great men have bad nights." And he had nodded at the closed door of the back bedroom, where Mila was asleep, and added, "Especially men with a great deal on their minds."