Games Traitors Play

28

Giuseppe Demuro was good at recognising guests. It was part of his job, one of the reasons they came back to his resort year after year. Guests liked to be remembered. Some of his colleagues kept notes on the high rollers, hoping that a personal aside on arrival — namechecking the children, asking after a relative — would secure a more generous tip. But Demuro was in no need of any props. He also had a unique manner, honed over the years into what he hoped was a self-respecting obsequiousness, somewhere between a butler and the boss. But it was his memory for faces that had helped him rise to become manager of one of the most luxurious resorts in Sardinia. It was also why he was in the employ of several of the world’s intelligence agencies, who provided more reliable revenue streams than gratuities.

These organisations weren’t after state secrets or sexual scandal. (A friend of his at a nearby resort made even more money by tipping off the newspapers whenever politicians came to stay with unsuitable companions, but that was beneath Demuro.) All they wanted to know about was unusual combinations of visitors: patterns. In recent years, the resort had become popular with Russians, from oligarchs who moored their yachts offshore to extended families who paid in cash, stayed mostly in their rooms (always sea-facing), lifted weights in the gym and consumed vast quantities of watermelon and cucumber. If an oligarch’s holiday overlapped with a prominent politician’s, Demuro would ring the relevant contact.

He liked working for the British the most. There was something glamorous — almost Italian — about the MI6 officers he had met, particularly the man they called the Vicar. He would have preferred working for a priest, of course, but he didn’t complain, provided his monthly retainer was in euros.

Demuro had no hesitation, then, in dialling a secure London number after the young American woman checked in to a sea-facing room with a recuperating guest. It wasn’t that he recognised her as CIA. Nor that she had a sick companion. The Americans had brought injured people before. It was the fact that a young Russian couple had arrived shortly after them, asking to be near the sea, too.

Normally, he would have greeted the couple in fluent Russian. The previous winter, in the off-season, he had been sent to study at a language school in St Petersburg for three months. There were now more Russian than Italian guests at the resort during July and August. But something made Demuro hold back, and speak in broken English. As he walked with the couple to their room, pointing out the tennis courts, pool and restaurant, he overheard a brief exchange between them. It was only a few Russian words, but when he repeated them on the phone, the Vicar hinted at a bonus and Demuro offered a quiet prayer of thanks.