Games Traitors Play

35

Marchant knew that there was something wrong with his room twenty yards before he reached it. The sliding doors were open, and he could hear a couple inside, the unmistakeable soundtrack of sexual pleasure. At least, he could hear a woman; the man sounded more subdued, set upon. The Russian couple had told him to rest, agreed to meet for a drink before dinner, talking as if he had the liberty to do as he pleased. But he knew it was a pretence, that he had no freedom. They were already back at the villa next door, watching, waiting. Marchant wasn’t a guest at the resort, he was a prisoner.

As he approached the sliding glass doors, he could see the blue flicker of a TV screen reflecting off his apartment’s white walls. Had he got the wrong number? The layout of the sprawling resort, each house set back from the smooth-tiled paths that meandered through them, was confusing, but the number by his apartment matched the key in his hand.

He stepped into the small garden, careful not to touch the half-open iron gate, and edged towards the glass doors. He knew what was going on now, but he still kept his approach silent, in case he was wrong, in case there really were people in his room. But he knew there weren’t. Not in the flesh.

He looked at the large TV screen for a second, distracted by the rhythmic movement of Nadia’s taut buttocks, the winking recesses. Then he realised that it was his body beneath them, and felt sick. He stepped into the room and grabbed the remote, which was on the table beside a replenished bowl of watermelon. It was only as he turned away that he saw Hugo Prentice standing by the bathroom door, arms folded, watching the screen with a smirk on his fifty-something face.

‘It’s showing in my room, too,’ Prentice said, careful to remain out of sight from the window. ‘On a loop. Every room in the resort, nationwide release. It’s the most exciting thing I’ve seen on an in-house hotel channel in years.’

‘You took your time,’ Marchant said, turning off the TV and dropping the remote onto the bed, which had been freshly made. ‘Fielding send you by boat?’

‘Take off your shirt and close the curtains. You’re tired, remember? Sent to your room for a sleep.’

Marchant looked at Prentice for a moment, then pulled off his shirt, threw it on the bed and walked to the glass doors. Nadia was sitting outside her villa now, sunbathing topless, waiting to see how he would react to the video. She gave him a coy wave. He didn’t wave back, but drew the thick curtains.

Prentice remained by the bathroom door as Marchant went over to the pedestal sink and splashed water on his face. He didn’t want to dwell on the video, the fact that Prentice had just witnessed him having sex. Strangely, he found that more troubling than the implications for his career, the consequences of being compromised by a textbook honeytrap. Perhaps it was because Prentice had been a good friend of his father, who had perfected the knack during Marchant’s teenage years of striding into the sitting room whenever he was watching a sex scene on television.

‘It’s OK, I looked away for the money shot,’ Prentice said, trying to lighten the mood. ‘Fielding sends big love and kisses.’

Marchant wasn’t sure if he was pleased that London had sent Prentice. On balance, he thought he was. To look at, Prentice was smoothness personified, from the swept-back hair to the cut of his safari suit: old-school spy. Just the sort Marchant needed to help him out of the old-school fix he found himself in. Prentice had recently returned from a three-year tour of Poland, where he had helped Marchant escape from a black site, but he was too old for regular deskwork in Legoland, too much of a troublemaker for a management role. Human Resources had branded him a ‘negative sneezer’, spreading dissent rather than ’flu. Fielding had ignored the warning memos, as he usually did with anything sent from HR, and deployed him as a firefighter, ready to be dispatched to global trouble spots at the drop of a panama.

‘They want me to meet someone,’ Marchant said. ‘A friend of my father’s.’

‘That narrows it down,’ Prentice replied. ‘Your old man was a popular Chief. Any other clues?’

‘The meeting’s in London.’ He decided not to tell Prentice about the private view. In his current situation, it helped him to feel in control if he knew at least something that others around him didn’t. ‘I presume it’s with one of theirs, given the need to persuade me,’ Marchant continued, glancing at the television.

‘Moscow still rules. Christ, it’s a while since I’ve seen Eva Shirtov in action. Makes me feel almost nostalgic.’

‘I need to sort it.’ Marchant wasn’t in the mood for flippancy. He was embarrassed.

‘It’s already taken care of.’ Prentice walked over to the TV and ejected a disc from the player in the cabinet below it. ‘Master copy,’ he said, throwing it onto the bed next to the remote.

‘I thought you said it was being broadcast around the resort.’

‘That was their plan. I retrieved the disc while you were having lunch.’

Marchant felt a wave of relief, but he was also irritated. He hated being indebted to anyone.

‘Aren’t they going to notice?’ He knew it was a pointless question, that Prentice would have tied off any loose ends. He had more experience of the Russians than anyone in the Service. Marchant remembered listening to him at the Fort, which he visited every year to address the new IONEC recruits. They had sat in rapt silence as he spoke of brush passes in Berlin, dangles, and how, as a young officer, he had played Sibelius’s Finlandia on the car stereo to let a defecting KGB officer called Oleg Gordievsky, who was hidden in the boot, know that they had safely crossed into Finland. ‘And you know what actually got us past the border guard? A nappy full of crap. My colleague’s wife started to change her baby on the car boot when the guard asked to see inside. One whiff and he changed his mind.’

Sure enough, Prentice didn’t reply to Marchant’s question, letting its foolishness grow in the silence. Instead, he went to the window and peered through the curtain at the Russians’ villa. Marchant joined him.

‘When the Russians cross the line, you have to respond with interest,’ Prentice said, watching as a suited man approached the villa with a posse of local Italian police behind him. ‘Remind them where the line is. Otherwise it moves. They’ll respect you more, too. They don’t like weak enemies.’

‘Who’s that with the police?’

‘Giuseppe Demuro, manager of the resort, old friend of the family. He received an anonymous tip-off half an hour ago that the occupants of villa 29 were trying to broadcast pornographic videos across the resort.’

‘But we’ve got the disc.’

‘I swapped it for a different one.’

Prentice turned and picked up the remote from the bed, then clicked onto the resort’s in-house channel. The footage was grainy, but it was possible to see an older man with a younger woman, lying on a bed. It was also possible to see that the man was the Prime Minister of Russia and the young woman wasn’t his wife.

‘The oligarch currently staying in the penthouse by the sea is a close friend of the Kremlin. He won’t be amused. Come, we must go.’