Our kind of traitor

13

Climbing into Emilio dell Oro's chauffeur-driven Mercedes which to Madame Mere's fury had been blocking the road outside her hotel for the last ten minutes – and that halfwit of a driver refusing so much as to lower his window to receive her insults! – Perry Makepiece was prey to anxieties far greater than he was willing to acknowledge to Gail, who for the occasion had dolled herself up to the nines in the Vivienne Westwood outfit with harem pants that she'd bought on the day she won her first case: 'If those high-class hookers are going to be on board, I'll need all the help I can get,' she had informed Perry, as she balanced precariously on her bed to see herself in the mirror over the handbasin.

*

Last night, returning to the Quinze Anges from their supper party, Perry had caught Madame Mere's boot-button eyes peering at him from her den behind the reception desk.

'Why don't you have first run of the facilities and I'll follow you up?' he had suggested, and Gail with a grateful yawn complied.

'Two Arabs,' Madame Mere whispered.

'Arabs?'

'Arab police. They spoke Arabic together, and to me French. Arab French.'

'What did they want to know?'

'Everything. Where you were. What you do. Your passport. Your address in Oxford. Madame's address in London. Everything about you.'

'What did you tell them?'

'Nothing. That you are an old guest, you pay, you are polite, you are not drunk, you only have one woman at a time, you have been invited by an artist to the Ile, and you will be late but you have a key, you are trusted.'

'And our English addresses?'

Madame Mere was a small woman, and her Gallic shrug all the greater for it: 'Whatever you wrote on your fiche, they took. If you didn't want them to have your address, you should have written a false one.'

Extracting a promise that she would say nothing of this to Gail – my God, it would never cross her mind, she was a woman too! – Perry contemplated calling Hector at once but, being Perry, and the better for a significant amount of old calvados, he decided on pragmatic grounds that there was nothing anyone could do that wouldn't be better done in the morning, and went to bed. Waking to the aroma of fresh coffee and croissants, he was surprised to see Gail in her wrap sitting on the end of the bed, examining her mobile.

'Anything bad?' he asked.

'Just Chambers. Confirming.'

'Confirming what?'

'You had it in mind to send me home this evening, remember?'

'Of course I remember!'

'Well, I'm not going. I've texted Chambers and they're giving Samson v. Samson to Helga to fuck up.'

Helga her bete noire? Man-eating Helga of the fishnet stockings who played the Chambers' male silks like a lyre?

'What in Heaven's name prompted you to do that?'

'You, partly. For some reason I don't feel inclined to leave you hanging by your eyebrows on a dangerous ridge. And tomorrow I shall be accompanying you to Berne, which I assume is where you're going next, although you haven't told me.'

'Is that all of it?'

'Why shouldn't it be? If I'm in London, you'll still worry about me. So I might as well be where you can see me.'

'And it hasn't occurred to you I might worry more if you're with me.'

That was unkind of him and he knew it, and so did she. In mitigation he was tempted to tell her about his conversation with Madame Mere but feared it would strengthen her determination to remain at his side.

'You seem to have forgotten the children amid all these grown-up goings-on,' she said, moderating her tone to one of reproach.

'Gail, that's utter nonsense! I'm doing everything I can, and so are our friends, to bring about their -' Better not to finish the sentence. Better talk in allusions. After their two weeks of familiarization God alone knew who was listening, when. 'The children are my first concern and always have been,' he said, if not entirely truthfully, and felt himself blush. 'They are why we're here,' he persisted. 'Both of us. Not only you. Yes, I care about our friend and seeing the whole thing through. And yes, it fascinates me. All of it.' He faltered, embarrassed by himself. 'It's about being in touch with the real world. And the children are part of it. A huge part. They are now and they will be after you've gone back to London.'

But if Perry was expecting her to be subdued by this grandiose claim, he was misjudging his audience.

'But the children aren't here, are they? Or in London,' she replied implacably. 'They're in Berne. And according to Natasha, they're in deep mourning for Misha and Olga. The boys are down at the football stadium all day, Tamara communes with God, everyone knows something big's in the air, but they don't know what it is.'

'According to Natasha? What on earth are you talking about?'

'We're text pals.'

'You and Natasha?'

'Correct.'

'You didn't tell me that!'

'And you haven't told me about the arrangements for Berne. Have you?' – kissing him – 'Have you? For my protection. So from now on, we'll protect each other. One in, both in. Agreed?'

*

Agreed only insofar as she would get herself ready while he went off to Printemps to buy tennis gear in the rain. The rest of their discussion, as far as Perry was concerned, emphatically not agreed.

It wasn't only Madame Mere's nocturnal visitors who were nagging at him. It was the awareness of imminent and unpredictable risk that had replaced last night's euphoria. Drenched with rain in the foyer of Printemps, he called Hector and got engaged. Ten minutes later, with a brand-new tennis bag at his feet containing a T-shirt, shorts, socks, a pair of tennis shoes and – he must have been raving mad when he bought it – a sun visor, he tried again and this time got through.

'Any description of them?' Hector inquired, too languidly to Perry's ear, when he had heard him out.

'Arab.'

'Well perhaps they were Arab. Perhaps they were French police too. Did they show her their cards?'

'Didn't say.'

'And you didn't ask?'

'No I didn't. I was a bit pissed.'

'Mind if I send Harry round to have a chat with her?'

Harry? Ah yes, Ollie. 'I think there's been enough drama already, thanks all the same,' Perry said stiffly.

He wasn't sure how to go on. Perhaps Hector wasn't either:

'No wobble otherwise?' Hector asked.

'Wobble?'

'Doubts. Second thoughts. D-day nerves. The heebies, for Christ's sake,' Hector said impatiently.

'On my part, no wobble at all. Just waiting for my fucking credit card to be cleared.' He wasn't. It was a lie and he couldn't fathom why on earth he'd told it, unless he was asking for the sympathy he wasn't getting.

'Doolittle in good heart?'

'She thinks so. I don't. She's pressing to come on to Berne. I'm absolutely sure she shouldn't. She's played her part – wonderfully, as you said yourself last night. I want her to call it a day, go back to London this evening as planned, and stay there till I come back.'

'Well, she won't, will she?'

'Why won't she?'

'Because she rang me ten minutes ago and said you'd be calling me, and that wild horses weren't going to change her mind. So I rather take that as final and I suggest you do. If you can't beat it, go with it. Are you still there?'

'Not entirely. What did you tell her in reply?'

'I was delighted for her. Told her she was absolutely essential equipment. Given it's her choice and nothing on God's earth is going to change her mind, I suggest you take the same line. D'you want to hear the latest news from the front?'

'Go on.'

'We're on schedule. The gang of seven emerged from their big signing with our boy, everybody looking like thunder, but that may be their hangovers. He's currently on his way back to Neuilly under armed guard. Lunch for twenty booked at the Club des Rois. Masseurs standing by. So no change of plan except that, having returned to London ce soir, tomorrow the both of you fly City-Zurich, e-tickets at the airport. Luke will pick you up. Not just you alone, as previously planned. Both of you. With me?'

'I suppose so.'

'You sound grumpy. Are you reeling from the excesses of last night?'

'No.'

'Well, don't. Our boy needs you on top form. So do we.'

Perry had debated telling Hector about Gail's text friendship with Natasha, but wiser counsels, if that's what they were, prevailed.

*

The Mercedes stank of stale tobacco smoke. A bottle of leftover mineral water was jammed into the back of the passenger seat. The chauffeur was a bullet-headed giant. He had no neck, just a few lateral red scars in the stubble like slashes of a razor. Gail was wearing her silk trouser-suit outfit that looked as if it was going to fall off her any minute. Perry had never seen her looking more beautiful. Her long white raincoat – an earlier extravagance from Bergdorf Goodman in New York – lay at her side. The rain was rattling like hailstones on the car's roof. The windscreen wipers groaned and sobbed as they tried to keep up.

The bullet-headed giant turned the Mercedes into a slip road, drew up before a fashionable block of flats, and gave a hoot of his horn. A second car pulled up behind them. A chase car? Don't even think about it. A rotund, jovial man in a quilted mackintosh and wide-brimmed waterproof hat came skipping out of the entrance hall, plonked himself in the passenger seat, swung round and placed his forearm on the seat back, and his double chin on his forearm.

'Well, who's for tennis, I will say,' he declared in a squeaky drawl. 'Monsieur le Professeur himself, for one. And you are his better half, my dear, of course you are. Even better than yesterday, if I may say so. I propose to hog you for the whole match.'

'Gail Perkins, my fiancee,' said Perry stiffly.

His fiancee? Was she really? They hadn't discussed it. Perhaps Milton and Doolittle had.

'Well, I'm Dr Popham, Bunny to the world, walking legal loophole to the revoltingly rich,' he went on, as his little pink eyes slipped greedily from one to other of them, as if deciding which to have. 'You may recall that the bearish Dima had the effrontery to insult me before a cast of thousands, but I flicked him off with my lace handkerchief.'

Perry seemed disinclined to reply so Gail jumped in:

'So what's your connection with him, Bunny?' Gail asked merrily, as their car rejoined the traffic.

'Oh, my heart, we're barely connected at all, thank the good Lord. Call me an old chum of Emilio, rallying round in support. He will do it to himself, poor lamb. Last time it was a batch of retarded Arab princes on a shopping spree. This time it's a squad of dreary Russian bankers, Armani kids, I ask you! And their dear ladies' – dropping his voice for the confidence – 'and dearer ladies I've never seen.' His greedy little eyes settled dotingly on Perry. 'But pity your poor dear Professor here, most of all' – pink eyes tragically on Perry – 'What an act of charity! You'll be rewarded in Heaven, I shall see to it. But how could you resist the poor bear when he's so cut up by the dreadful killings?' Back to Gail. 'Do you stay long in Paris, Miss Gail Perkins?'

'Oh, I wish we could. It's back to the grindstone, I'm afraid, come wind or weather' – a wry look at the rain pouring down the windscreen. 'How about you, Bunny?'

'Oh, I flit. I'm a flitter. A little nest here, a little nest there. I alight, but never for long.'

A sign to the CENTRE HIPPIQUE DU TOURING, another to the PAVILLON DES OISEAUX. The rain letting up a bit. The chase car still behind them. A pair of ornate gates appeared on their right-hand side. Opposite the gates was a lay-by, where the chauffeur parked the Mercedes. The ominous car parked alongside. Blackened windows. Perry waited for one of its doors to open. Slowly, one did. An elderly matron got out, followed by her Alsatian dog.

'Cent metres,' the chauffeur growled, pointing a filthy finger at the gates.

'We know, silly,' said Bunny.

Abreast, they walked the cent metres, with Gail sheltering under Bunny Popham's umbrella, and Perry nursing his new tennis bag to his chest, and the rain streaming down his face. They arrived at a low white building.

On the top step under an awning stood Emilio dell Oro in a knee-length raincoat with a fur collar. In a separate group stood three of yesterday's sour young executives. A couple of girls sucked disconsolately at the cigarettes they weren't allowed to smoke inside the clubhouse. At dell Oro's side, dressed in grey flannels and blazer, stood a tall, grey-haired, aggressively British man of the entitled classes, holding out a liver-spotted hand.

'Giles,' he explained. 'Met yesterday across a crowded room. Don't expect you to remember me. Just passing through Paris when Emilio nabbed me. Proof one should never call up one's chums on spec. Still, we had quite a shindig last night, I will say. Pity you two chaps couldn't make it' – to Perry now – 'Speak Russian? Fortunately I do a bit. I fear our honoured guests don't have much else to offer in the way of languages.'

They trooped inside, dell Oro leading. A wet Monday lunchtime: not a big day for members. To the left of Perry's frame, a bespectacled Luke crouched at a corner table. He had a Bluetooth device in his ear, and was poring over a sleek, silver laptop, to all the world a man of affairs attending to a spot of business.

If you happen to see somebody vaguely resembling one of us, it'll be a mirage, Hector had warned them last night.

Panic. Lurch of the chest. Where in Heaven's name is Gail? With the nausea rising, Perry cast around for her, only to spot her at the centre of the room, chatting with Giles, Bunny Popham and dell Oro. Just stay cool and stay visible, he told her in his mind. Stay down, don't overheat, stay calm. Dell Oro was asking Bunny Popham whether it was too early for champagne and Bunny was saying it depended on the vintage. Everyone exploded with laughter, but Gail's was loudest. About to go to her aid, Perry heard the now-familiar bellow of 'Professor, I swear to God!' and turned to see three umbrellas coming up the steps.

Under the centre umbrella, Dima with a Gucci tennis bag.

To left and right of him, Niki and the man Gail had christened for all time the cadaverous philosopher.

They had reached the top step.

Dima slammed shut his umbrella, shoved it at Niki to take, and strode alone through the swing-doors.

'See the goddam rain?' he demanded belligerently of the whole room. 'See the sky? Ten minutes, we get sun up there!' And to Perry: 'You wanna change into your tennis gear, Professor, or I gonna have to beat the shit outta you in that goddam suit?'

Tepid laughter from the audience. Yesterday's surreal pantomime was about to enjoy its second run.

*

Perry and Dima descend a dark wooden staircase, tennis bags in hand. Dima the club member leads the way. Locker-room smells. Pine essence, stale steam, sweated clothes.

'I got racquets, Professor!' Dima bellows up the stairs.

'Great!' Perry bellows back, just as loud.

'Like six! Fucking Emilio's racquets! The guy plays like shit but got good racquets.'

'Six of his thirty, then!'

'You got it, Professor! You got it!'

Dima's telling them we're on our way down. He doesn't need to know that Luke's already tipped them off. At the foot of the staircase, Perry looks back over his shoulder. No Niki, no cadaverous philosopher, no Emilio, nobody. They enter a gloomy, timber-panelled changing room, Swedish style. No windows. Economy lighting. Through frosted glass, two old men showering. One wooden door marked TOILETTES. Two more marked MASSAGE. Notices saying occupe on both door handles. You knock on the right-hand door, but not till he's ready. Now say that back to me.

'Had a good night, Professor?' Dima asks as he undresses.

'Great. How was yours?'

'Shit.'

Perry dumps his tennis bag on a bench, unzips it and starts to change. Stark-naked, Dima stands with his back to him. His torso is a snakes-and-ladders board in blue from the back of his neck to his buttocks, inclusive. On the central panels of his back, a girl in a 1940s swimsuit is being assailed by snarling beasts. Her thighs are wrapped round a tree of life that has its roots embedded in Dima's rump, and its branches spread over his shoulder blades.

'I gotta piss,' Dima announces.

'Be my guest,' says Perry facetiously.

Dima opens the door to the toilet and locks it behind him. He emerges moments later, holding a tubular object in his hand. It's a knotted condom with a memory stick inside it. In full-frontal, Dima has the Minotaur's body. His black bush spreads up to his navel. The rest predictably ample. At a handbasin he washes the condom under the tap, takes it to his Gucci tennis bag and with a pair of scissors snips off the end, pulls it free and hands the two pieces of the condom to Perry to lose. Perry puts them into a side pocket of his jacket and has a flash vision of Gail finding them there in a year's time and asking, 'When's the baby?'

At prisoner's lightning speed Dima dons a jockstrap and a pair of long blue tennis shorts, drops the memory stick into the right-hand pocket of the shorts, pulls on a long-sleeved T-shirt, socks, trainers. The process has taken him no more than a few seconds. A shower door opens. A fat, elderly man emerges with a towel round his waist.

'Bonjour tout le monde!'

Bonjour.

The fat, elderly man pulls open his locker door, lets the towel fall to his feet, takes out a hanger. The second shower door opens. A second elderly man emerges.

'Quelle horreur, la pluie!' the second elderly man complains.

Perry agrees. The rain – a horror indeed. He bangs vigorously on the right-hand massage door. Three short knocks, but good and hard. Dima is standing behind him.

'C'est occupe,' the first elderly man warns.

'Pour moi, alors,' says Perry.

'Lundi, c'est tout ferme,' the second elderly man advises.

Ollie opens the door from inside. They brush past him. Ollie closes the door, gives Perry a reassuring pat on the arm. He has removed his earring and combed his hair straight back. He wears a medic's white coat. It's as if he's taken off one Ollie and put on another. Hector wears a white coat, but has left it carelessly unbuttoned. He is masseur-in-chief.

Ollie is inserting wooden wedges in the door frame, two at the bottom, two at the side. As always with Ollie, Perry has the feeling he's done it all before. Hector and Dima face each other for the first time, Dima leaning backward, Hector forward, the one advancing, the other recoiling. Dima is an old convict awaiting his next dose of punishment, Hector the governor of his gaol. Hector reaches out his hand. Dima shakes it, then keeps it captive with his left hand while he digs in his pocket with his right. Hector passes the memory stick to Ollie, who takes it to a side table, unzips the massage bag, extracts a silver laptop, lifts the lid and inserts the memory stick, all in a single movement. With his white coat, Ollie is larger than ever, yet twice as deft.

Dima and Hector have not exchanged a single word. The prisoner-governor moment has passed. Dima has recovered his backward tilt, Hector his stoop. His steady grey gaze is wide and unflinching, but also inquiring. There is nothing of possession in it, nothing of conquest, nothing of triumph. He could be a surgeon deciding how to operate, or whether to operate at all.

'Dima?'

'Yes.'

'I'm Tom. I'm your British apparatchik.'

'Number One?'

'Number One sends his greetings. I'm here in his place. That's Harry' – indicating Ollie – 'We speak English and the Professor here sees fair play.'

'OK.'

'Then let's sit down.'

They sit down. Face to face. With Perry the fair-play man at Dima's side.

'We have a colleague upstairs,' Hector continues. 'He's sitting alone in the bar behind a silver laptop like Harry's there. His name is Dick. He's wearing spectacles and a Party member's red tie. When you leave the club at the end of the day, Dick will get up and walk slowly across the lobby in front of you carrying his silver laptop and pulling on his dark blue raincoat. Please remember him for the future. Dick speaks with my authority, and with the authority of Number One. Understood?'

'I understand, Tom.'

'He also speaks Russian on demand. As I do.'

Hector glances at his watch, then at Ollie. 'I'm allowing seven minutes before it's time for you and the Professor to go upstairs. Dick will let us know if you're needed before that. Are you comfortable with that?'

'Comfortable? You goddam fucking crazy?'

The ritual began. Never in his dreams had Perry supposed that such a ritual existed. Yet both men seemed to acknowledge its necessity.

Hector first: 'Are you now, or have you ever been, in touch with any other foreign Intelligence service?'

Dima's turn: 'I swear to God, no.'

'Not even Russian?'

'No.'

'Do you know of anyone in your circle who has been in touch with any other Intelligence service?'

'No.'

'No one is selling similar information elsewhere? To anybody – police, a corporation, private individual, anywhere in the world?'

'I don't know nobody like that. I want my kids to England. Now. I want my goddam fucking deal.'

'And I want you to have your deal. Dick and Harry want you to have your deal. So does the Professor here. We're all on the same side. But first you have to persuade us, and I have to persuade my fellow apparatchiks in London.'

'Prince gonna kill me, fuck's sake.'

'Did he tell you that?'

'Sure. At the fucking funeral: "Don't be sad, Dima. Soon you gonna be with Misha." Like joke. Bad joke.'

'How did this morning's signing go?'

'Great. One half my fucking life gone already.'

'Then we're here to arrange the rest of it, aren't we?'

*

Luke knows for once exactly who he is and why he is here. So do the Club authorities. He is Monsieur Michel Despard, a man of means, and he is waiting for his eccentric elderly aunt to arrive and give him lunch, the famous artist nobody has heard of who lives on the Ile St-Louis. Her secretary has booked a table for them, but being an eccentric aunt she may not appear. Michel Despard knows that of her; so does the Club, for a sympathetic headwaiter has directed him to a quiet corner of the bar where, it being a wet Monday, he is welcome to wait, and discharge a little business while he is about it – and thank you kindly, sir, thank you very much indeed: with a hundred euros, life becomes a little easier.

Is Luke's aunt really a member of the Club des Rois? Of course she is! Or her late protector the Comte was a member, what's the difference? Or so Ollie has spun it to them in his persona as Luke's aunt's secretary. And Ollie, as Hector has rightly observed, is the best back-door man in the business, and the aunt will confirm whatever is necessary to confirm.

And Luke is content. He is at his calm, unflurried operational best. He may be a mere tolerated guest, tucked into an unsociable corner of the club room. With his horn-rimmed spectacles and Bluetooth earpiece and open laptop, he may resemble any harassed Monday-morning executive catching up on work he should have done over the weekend.

But safely inside himself, he is in his element: as fulfilled and liberated as he will ever be. He is the steady voice amid the unheard thunder of the battle. He is the forward observation post, reporting to HQ. He is the micro-manager, the constructive worrier, the adjutant with an eye for the vital detail that his beleaguered commander has overlooked or doesn't want to see. To Hector, those two 'Arab policemen' were the product of Perry's overheated concerns for Gail's safety. If they existed at all, they were 'a couple of French coppers with nothing better to do on a Sunday night'. But to Luke they were untested operational Intelligence, neither to be confirmed nor dismissed, but stored away till further information is available.

He glances at his watch, then at the screen. Six minutes since Perry and Dima entered the changing-rooms staircase. Four minutes twenty seconds since Ollie reported them entering the massage room.

Raising his eye-line he takes stock of the scene playing itself out before him: first the Clean Envoys, better known as the Armani kids, sulkily bolting canapes and swilling champagne, not much bothering to talk to their expensive escorts. Their day's work is already over. They have signed. They are halfway to Berne, their next stop. They are bored, hungover and restless. Their women last night were a let-down: or so Luke imagines them to have been. And what is it Gail calls those two Swiss bankers sitting all alone in a corner, drinking sparkling water? Peter and the Wolf.

Perfect, Gail. Everything about her perfect. Look at her now, working the room like a trooper. The fluid body, sweet hips, the endless legs, and the oddly motherly charm. Gail with Bunny Popham. Gail with Giles de Salis. Gail with both of them. Emilio dell Oro, drawn like a moth, attaches himself to their group. So does a stray Russian who can't take his eyes off her. He's the podgy one. He's given up on the champagne and started hitting the vodka. Emilio's eyebrows have risen as he asks a comic question Luke can't hear. Gail comes back with a jokey reply. Luke loves her hopelessly, which is how Luke loves. Always.

Emilio is glancing over Gail's shoulder at the changing-room door. Is that what their joke was about? – Emilio saying, Whatever are those boys doing down there? Shall I go and break it up? And Gail replying, Don't you dare, Emilio, I'm sure they're having a lovely time – which is what she'd say.

Luke into his mouthpiece:

'Time's up.'

Ben, if only you could see me now. See the best of me, not always the bad stuff. A week ago, Ben had pressed a Harry Potter on him. And Luke had tried to read it, really tried. Coming home dog-tired at eleven at night, or lying wakefully alongside his irretrievable wife, he'd tried. And fallen at the first fence. The fantasy stuff made no sense to him – understandably, he might argue, given that his whole life was a fantasy, even his heroism. Because what was so brave about being caught, and allowed to run away?

'So it's good, isn't it?' Ben had said, tired of waiting for his father's response. 'You enjoyed it, Dad. Admit.'

'I did and it's terrific,' Luke said handsomely.

Another lie and they both knew it. Another step away from the person he most loved in the world.

*

'Stop talking, everybody, at once, please. Thank you!' Bunny Popham, queen of the roost, is addressing the unwashed. 'Our brave gladiators have finally agreed to grace us with their presence. Let us all immediately adjourn to the Arena!' A patter of knowing laughter for Arena. 'There are no lions today, apart from Dima. No Christians either, unless the Professor is one, which I can't vouch for.' More laughter. 'Gail, my dear, kindly show us the way. I have seen many gorgeous outfits in my day but none, if I may say, so nicely filled.'

Perry and Dima lead. Gail, Bunny Popham and Emilio dell Oro follow. After them, a couple of clean envoys and their girls. How clean can you get? Then the podgy boy all alone except for his vodka glass. Luke watches them into a coppice of trees and out of sight. A shaft of sun lights up the flowered pathway and goes out.

*

It was the Roland Garros all over again: if only in the sense that neither then nor afterwards did Gail have any consecutive awareness of the great tennis-match-in-the-rain that she was so diligently following. Sometimes she wondered whether the players had any either.

She knew Dima won the toss because he always did. She knew that he chose to stand with his back to the advancing clouds rather than serve.

She remembered thinking that the players put up a pretty good show of competitiveness to begin with and then, like actors when their concentration flags, forgot that they were supposed to be engaged in a life-or-death duel for Dima's honour.

She remembered worrying about Perry sliding on the slippery wet tape that marked out the court. Was he going to do something as bloody silly as sprain his ankle? Then about Dima doing the same thing.

And although, like yesterday's sporting French spectators, she was meticulous in applauding Dima's shots as well as Perry's, it was Perry that she kept her eyes glued on: partly for his protection, partly because she had a notion that she might be able to tell by his body language what sort of luck they'd been having down there in the changing room with Hector.

She remembered also the faint squelch of the slowing ball as it slurped into the wet clay, and how now and then she let herself be transported to the last phase of yesterday's Final, and had to relocate in time present.

And how the balls themselves got increasingly ponderous as the game dragged on. And how Perry in his distraction kept playing the slow ball too early, either hitting it out or – a couple of times to his shame – missing it altogether.

And how Bunny Popham at some point had leaned over her shoulder to ask her whether she would prefer to make a run for it now before the next cloudburst, or stay with her man and go down with the ship?

And how she had taken his invitation as an excuse for vanishing to the loo and checking her mobile on the off-chance that Natasha might have expanded on her most recent communication. But Natasha hadn't. Which meant that matters stood where they had stood at nine this morning, in the ominous words that she knew by heart, even while she reread them: This house is not bearable Tamara is only with God Katya and Irina are tragic my brothers do only football we know a bad fate awaits us all I shall never look at my father in his face again Natasha

Press green to reply, listen to a vacuum, ring off.

*

She was also conscious that, after the second rain break – or was it the third? – gouges began to appear in the sopping clay, which had evidently reached a point where it simply couldn't take any more water. And that in consequence an official gentleman of the Club appeared and remonstrated with Emilio dell Oro, pointing to the state of the court and telling him with sideways brushing movements of the hands 'no more'.

But Emilio dell Oro must have had special powers of persuasion, because he took the official gentleman confidingly by the arm and led him under a beech tree, and by the end of the conversation the official was scurrying back to the clubhouse like a chastened schoolboy.

And amid these scattered observations and rememberings there was the ever-present lawyer in her, at it again, fretting about the membrane of plausibility that seemed from the outset to be on the point of breaking, which didn't necessarily signify the end of the free world as we know it, just as long as she was able to get to Natasha and the girls.

And then, while she's having these random thoughts, lo and behold, Dima and Perry are shaking hands across the net and calling it a day: a handshake not of reconciled opponents, to her eye, but of accomplices in a deception so blatant that the last few loyal survivors huddled on the stands should be booing rather than applauding.

And somewhere in the middle of the mix – since there are no limits to the day's incongruities – up pops the podgy Russian man who's been following her around, and tells her he would like to fuck her. In those very words: 'I would like to fuck you,' then waits to hear yes or no: an over-earnest thirty-something city boy with bad skin and an empty vodka glass in his hand and bloodshot eyes. She thought she misheard him first time round. There was hubbub inside her head as well as outside. She actually asked him to repeat himself, God help her. But by then he'd lost his nerve, and confined himself to trailing after her at five yards' distance, which was why she had been content to place herself under the wing of Bunny Popham, the least bad option available to her.

And that in turn was how she came to confess to him that she too was a lawyer, a moment she always dreaded, since it resulted in awkward mutual comparisons. But for Bunny Popham it was just an excuse to be shocking:

'Oh, my dear' – lifting his eyes to Heaven – 'I am overcome! Well, all I can say is, you can have my briefs any time.'

He asked which Chambers, so she told him, which was only natural. What else was she supposed to do?

She had thought a lot about packing. That too, she remembered. Stuff like whether she would use Perry's new tennis bag for their dirty clothes, and equally weighty matters associated with getting out of Paris and on the road to Natasha. Perry had kept on their room for tonight so that they could pack last thing this evening before catching the train back to London, which in the world they had entered was how normal people travelled to Berne when they are potentially under surveillance and not supposed to be going there.

*

The massage room supplied bathrobes. Perry and Dima were wearing them. They were sitting three at the table again, where they had been sitting for the last twelve minutes by Perry's watch. Ollie in his white coat was bowed over his laptop in the corner with his massage bag at his feet, and occasionally he scribbled a note and passed it to Hector, who added it to the pile in front of him. The claustrophobic atmosphere was reminiscent of the Bloomsbury basement without the smell of wine, and there was something similarly reassuring about the noise of real lives near by: the grumble of pipes, voices from the locker room, the flushing of a lavatory, the putter of a faulty air conditioner.

'How much does Longrigg get?' Hector asks, after glancing at one of Ollie's notes.

'One half one per cent,' Dima replies tonelessly. 'On the day Arena get its banking licence, Longrigg get first money. After one year, second money. Year later, finish.'

'Paid to where?'

'Switzerland.'

'Know the account number?'

'Till Berne I don't know this number. Sometimes I get only name. Sometimes only number.'

'Giles de Salis?'

'Special commission. I hear this only, no confirmation. Emilio say to me: de Salis get this special commission. But maybe Emilio keep it for himself. After Berne I know for sure.'

'A special commission of how much?'

'Five million cold. Maybe not true. Emilio is fox. Steal everything.'

'US dollars?'

'Sure.'

'Payable when?'

'Same as Longrigg but cash down, not conditional, two year not three. One half on official foundation Arena Bank, one half after one year trading. Tom.'

'What?'

'Hear me, OK?' The voice suddenly alive again. 'After Berne I get everything. For signing, I gotta be willing party, hear me? I don't sign nothing I'm not willing party to, I gotta right. You get my family to England, OK? I go Berne, I sign, you get my family out, I give you my heart, my life!' He swung round on Perry. 'You seen my children, Professor! Jesus God, who the fuck they think I am any more? They fucking blind or something? My Natasha she go crazy, don't eat nothing.' He returns to Hector. 'You get my kids to England now, Tom. Then we make deal. Soon as my family's in England, I know everything. I don't givva shit!'

But if Perry is moved by this appeal, Hector's aquiline features are set in rigid rejection.

'No bloody way,' he retorts. And riding roughshod over Dima's protests: 'Your wife and family stay where they are until after the signing on Wednesday. If they disappear from your house before the Berne signing, they put themselves at risk, you at risk, and the deal at risk. Do you have a bodyguard at your house, or has the Prince taken him away?'

'Igor. One day we make him vor. I love this guy. Tamara love him. Kids too.'

We make him vor? Perry repeats to himself. When Dima is sitting in his suburban palace in outer Surrey, with Natasha at Roedean and his boys at Eton, we will make Igor a vor?

'Two men are guarding you at present. Niki and a new man.'

'For Prince. They gonna kill me.'

'What time is your signing in Berne on Wednesday?'

'Ten o'clock. Morning. Bundesplatz.'

'Did Niki and his friend attend the signing this morning?'

'No way. Wait outside. These guys are stupid.'

'And in Berne, they won't be attending the signing either?'

'No way. Maybe sit in waiting room. Jesus, Tom -'

'And after the signing the bank will hold a reception in honour of the occasion. Bellevue Palace Hotel, no less.'

'Eleven-thirty. Big reception. Everybody celebrate.'

'Got that, Harry?' Hector calls to Ollie in his corner, and Ollie raises his arm in acknowledgement. 'Will Niki and his friend attend the reception?'

If Dima's composure is deserting him, Hector's has acquired a driven intensity.

'My fucking guards?' Dima protests incredulously. 'They wanna come to the reception? You crazy? Prince not gonna whack me in the fucking Bellevue Hotel. He gonna wait a week. Maybe two. Maybe first he whack Tamara, whack my children. What the fuck I know?'

Hector's furious stare remains unchanged.

'So to confirm,' he insists. 'You're confident that the two guards – Niki and his friend – will not attend the Bellevue reception.'

With a sag of his huge shoulders, Dima lapses into a kind of physical despair. 'Confident? I'm not confident of nothing. Maybe they come to reception. Jesus, Tom.'

'Assume they do. Just for argument's sake. They're not going to follow you when you take a piss.'

No answer, but Hector isn't waiting for one. Stalking to the corner of the room, he places himself behind Ollie's shoulder and peers at the computer screen.

'So tell me how this plays for you. Whether or not Niki and his friend accompany you to the Bellevue Palace, halfway through the reception – let's say twelve o'clock midday, as near as you can make it – you take a piss. Give me the ground floor' – to Ollie – 'the Bellevue has two sets of lavatories for ground-floor guests. One set is to the right as you enter the lobby, on the other side of the reception desk. Am I right, Harry?'

'Bang on target, Tom.'

'You know the lavatories I mean?'

'Sure I know them.'

'That's the set you don't use. For the other set you turn left and descend a staircase. It's in the basement and not much used because it's inconvenient. The staircase is next to the bar. Between the bar and the lift. D'you know the staircase I mean? Halfway down it there's a door that pushes open when it isn't locked.'

'I drink many times in this bar. I know this staircase. But at night-time they lock. Maybe day too sometimes.'

Hector resumes his seat. 'On Wednesday morning the door will not be locked. You go down the staircase. Dick upstairs will be following you. From the basement there's a side exit to the street. Dick will have a car. Where he takes you will depend on the arrangements I make in London tonight.'

Dima again appeals to Perry, this time with tears in his eyes:

'I want my family to England, Professor. Tell this apparatchik: you seen them. Send the kids first, I follow. That's OK by me. Prince wanna whack me when my family's in England, who givva shit?'

'We do,' Hector retorts vehemently. 'We want you and all your family. We want you safe in England, singing like a nightingale. We want you happy. We're in the middle of the Swiss school term. Have you made any plans for the children?'

'After Moscow funeral, I tell to them, fuck school, maybe we make holiday. Go back to Antigua, maybe Sochi, fool around, be happy. After Moscow, I tell them any shit. Jesus.'

Hector remains unmoved. 'So they're at home, out of school, waiting for your return, thinking you may be making a move, but not knowing where to.'

'Mystery holiday, I tell them. Like secret. Maybe they believe me. I dunno no more.'

'On Wednesday morning, while you're at the bank and celebrating at the Bellevue, what will Igor be doing?'

Dima rubs his nose with his thumb.

'Maybe go shop in Berne. Maybe take Tamara to Russian church. Maybe take Natasha to horse-school. If she don't be reading.'

'On Wednesday morning, Igor needs to go shopping in Berne. Can you tell that to Tamara over the telephone without making it sound unusual? She should give Igor a long shopping list. Provisions for when you come back from your mystery holiday.'

'Is OK. Maybe.'

'Only maybe?'

'Is OK. I tell Tamara. She's a bit crazy. She's OK. Sure.'

'While Igor's out shopping, Harry here, and the Professor, will collect your family from the house for their mystery holiday.'

'London.'

'Or a safe place. One or the other, depending how quickly arrangements can be made for you all to be brought to England. If, on the strength of the information you have so far given us, I can persuade my apparatchiks to take the rest on trust – particularly the information you are about to obtain in Berne – we shall fly you and your family to London on Wednesday night by special plane. That's a promise. Witnessed by the Professor here. If not, we shall put you and your family in a safe place and look after you until my Number One says "come to England". That's the truth of the situation as best I understand it. Perry, you can confirm that.'

'I can.'

'At the second signing in Berne, how will you record the new information that you will receive?'

'I got no problem. First I be alone with bank manager. I gotta right. Maybe I tell him, make me copies of this shit. I need copies before I sign it over. He's my friend. If he don't do it, whatta fuck? I got good memory.'

'As soon as Dick gets you out of the Bellevue Palace Hotel, he'll give you a recorder and you record everything you've seen and heard.'

'No goddam frontiers.'

'You'll cross no frontiers until you come to England. I promise you that too. Perry, you heard me.'

Perry has heard him, but for a moment nonetheless he remains lost in thought, long fingers bunched to his brow as he stares sightlessly ahead of him.

'Tom tells the truth, Dima,' he concedes at last. 'He's given me his promise too. I believe him.'