Our kind of traitor

14

Luke picked up Gail and Perry from Zurich-Kloten Airport at four o'clock on the following afternoon, Tuesday, after they had spent an uneasy night in the flat in Primrose Hill, both wakeful, each worried about different things: Gail mostly about Natasha – why the sudden silence? – but also about the little girls. Perry about Dima and the unsettling thought that Hector would henceforth be directing operations from London, and Luke would have command and control in the field with back-up from Ollie and, by default, himself.

From the airport, Luke drove them to an ancient village Gasthof in a valley a few miles to the west of Berne's city centre. The Gasthof was charming. The valley, once idyllic, was a depressing development of characterless apartment blocks, neon signs, pylons and a porno shop. Luke waited for Perry and Gail to check in, then sat with them over a beer in a quiet corner of the Gaststube. Soon they were joined by Ollie, not in a beret any more, but a broad-brimmed black fedora hat which he wore rakishly over one eye, but otherwise his irrepressible self.

*

Luke quietly delivered himself of the latest news. His manner towards Gail was taut and distant, the very opposite of flirtatious. Hector's preferred option, he informed the gathering, was a non-starter. After taking soundings in London – he did not mention Matlock in front of Perry and Gail – Hector saw no chance of obtaining clearance to fly Dima and family to England immediately after tomorrow's signing, and had therefore set in motion his fall-back, namely a safe house within Switzerland's borders until he got the green light. Hector and Luke had thought long and hard about where this should be, and concluded that, given the family's complexity, remote was not synonymous with secret.

'And Ollie, I believe that is also your opinion?'

'Completely and totally, Luke,' said Ollie, in his not-quite-right foreign-flavoured cockney.

Switzerland was enjoying an early summer, Luke went on. Better then, on the Maoist principle, to take cover among the many than stick out like sore thumbs in a hamlet where every unknown face is an object of scrutiny – all the more so if the face happens to be that of a bald, imperious Russian accompanied by two small girls, two boisterous teenage boys, a ravishingly beautiful teenaged daughter and a semi-detached wife.

Neither did distance offer any protection in the view of the barefoot planners: quite the reverse, since the small airport at Berne-Belp was ideally suited to discreet departure by private plane.

*

After Luke, it was Ollie's turn, and Ollie, like Luke, was in his element, his style of reporting sparse and careful. Having examined a number of possibilities, he said, he had settled on a built-for-rent modern chalet on the outer slopes of the popular tourist village of Wengen in the Lauterbrunnen valley, sixty minutes' drive and a fifteen-minute train journey from where they were now sitting.

'And frankly, if anybody gives that chalet a second look, I'd be giving them one back,' he ended defiantly, tugging at the brim of his black hat.

The efficient Luke then handed each of them a piece of plain card bearing the chalet's name and address and its landline number for essential and innocuous calls to be made in the event of a problem with mobiles, though Ollie reported that in the village itself reception was immaculate.

'So how long are the Dimas going to be stuck up there?' Perry asked, in his role as prisoners' friend.

He hadn't really expected an informative answer, but Luke was surprisingly forthcoming – certainly more than Hector would have been in similar circumstances. There were a bunch of Whitehall hoops that had to be gone through, Luke explained: Immigration, the Justice Ministry, the Home Office, to name but three. Hector's current efforts were directed at bypassing as many of them as he could until after Dima and family were safely housed in England:

'My ballpark estimate would be three to four days. Less if we're lucky, longer if we're not. After that, the logistics begin to fur up a bit.'

'Fur up?' Gail exclaimed incredulously. 'Like a water pipe?'

Luke blushed, then laughed along with them, then strove to explain. Ops like this one – not that any two were ever the same – had constantly to be revised, he said. From the moment Dima dropped out of circulation – as of midday tomorrow, therefore, God willing – there would be some sort of hue and cry for him, though what sort was anyone's guess:

'I simply mean, Gail, that from midday tomorrow on, the clock's ticking, and we have to be ready to adapt at short notice according to need. We can do that. We're in the business. It's what we're paid for.'

Urging the three of them to get an early night and call him at any hour if they felt the least need, Luke then returned to Berne.

'And if you're talking to the hotel switchboard, just remember I'm John Brabazon,' he reminded them, with a tight smile.

*

Alone in his bedroom on the first floor of Berne's resplendent Bellevue Palace Hotel with the River Aare running beneath his window and the far peaks of the Bernese Oberland black against the orange sky, Luke tried to reach Hector and heard his encrypted voice telling him to leave a bloody message unless the roof is falling in, in which case Luke's guess was as good as Hector's, so just get on with it and don't moan, which made Luke laugh out loud, and also confirmed what he suspected: that Hector was locked in a life-and-death bureaucratic duel that had no respect for conventional working hours.

He had a second number to dial in emergency, but there being no emergency he knew of, he left a cheery message to the effect that the roof was thus far holding, Milton and Doolittle were at their posts and in good heart, and Harry was doing sterling work, and give his love to Yvonne. He then took a long shower and put on his best suit before going downstairs to begin his reconnaissance of the hotel. His feelings of liberation were if anything more pronounced than at the Club des Rois. He was barefoot Luke, riding a cloud: no last-minute panic instructions from the fourth floor, no unmanageable overload of watchers, listeners, overflying helicopters and all the other questionable trappings of the modern secret operation; and no cocaine-driven warlord to chain him up in a jungle stockade. Just barefoot Luke and his little band of loyal troops – one of whom he was as usual in love with – and Hector in London fighting the good fight and ready to back him to the hilt:

'If in doubt, don't be. That's an order. Don't finger it, just bloody well do it,' Hector had urged him, over a hasty farewell malt at Charles de Gaulle Airport yesterday evening. 'I won't be carrying the can. I am the fucking can. There's no second prize in this caper. Cheers and God help us.'

Something had stirred in Luke at that moment: a mystical sense of bonding, of kinship with Hector that went beyond the collegial.

'So how is it with Adrian?' he inquired, recalling Matlock's gratuitous intrusion, and wanting to redress it.

'Oh, better, thanks. Much better,' said Hector. 'The shrinks reckon they've got the mixture pretty well right now. Six months, he could be out, if he behaves himself. How's Ben?'

'Great. Just great. Eloise too,' Luke replied, wishing he hadn't asked.

At the hotel's front desk, an impossibly chic receptionist informed Luke that the Herr Direktor was doing his usual round of the bar guests. Luke walked straight up to him. He was good at this when he needed to be. Not your back-door artist like Ollie, maybe, more your front-door, in-your-face, sassy little Brit.

'Sir? My name's Brabazon. John Brabazon. First time I've stayed here. Can I just say something?'

He could, and the Herr Direktor, suspecting it was bad news, braced himself to hear it.

'This is simply one of the most exquisite, unspoiled art nouveau hotels – you probably don't use the word Edwardian! – that I've come across in my travels.'

'You are a hotelier?'

'Afraid not. Just a lowlife journalist. Times newspaper, London. Travel section. Totally unannounced, I'm afraid, here on private business…'

The tour began:

'So here is our ballroom which we are calling the Salon Royal,' the Direktor intoned in a well-trodden monologue. 'Here is our small banqueting room which we are calling our Salon du Palais, and here is our Salon d'Honneur where we are holding our cocktail receptions. Our chef takes very much pride in his finger foods. And here is our restaurant La Terrasse, and actually the must rendezvous for all fashionable Berne, but also our international guests. Many prominent persons have dined here including film stars, we can give you quite a good list, also the menu.'

'And the kitchens?' Luke asked, for he wished nothing to be left to chance. 'May I just take a peep if the chefs don't object?'

And when the Herr Direktor, somewhat exhaustively, had shown him all there was to be shown, and when Luke had duly swooned and taken copious notes, and for his own pleasure a few photographs with his mobile if the Herr Direktor didn't mind, but of course his paper would be sending a real photographer if that was acceptable – it was – he returned to the bar, and having treated himself to an improbably exquisite club sandwich and a glass of Dole, added a few necessary final touches of his own to his journalistic tour, which included such banal details as the lavatories, fire escapes, emergency exits, car-parking facilities and the projected rooftop gymnasium presently under construction, before retiring to his room and calling Perry to make sure all was well their end. Gail was asleep. Perry hoped to be any minute. Ringing off, Luke reflected that he had been as near to Gail in bed as he was ever likely to get. He rang Ollie.

'Everything just lovely, thank you, Dick. And the transport's tickety-boo, in case you were worrying at all. What did you make of those Arab coppers, by the way?'

'I don't know, Harry.'

'Me, neither. But never trust a copper, I say. All well otherwise, then?'

'Till tomorrow.'

And finally Luke phoned Eloise.

'Are you having a good time, Luke?'

'Yes, I am really, thank you. Berne's a really beautiful city. We should come here together sometime. Bring Ben.'

That's how we always talk: for Ben's sake. So that he has the full advantage of happy, heterosexual parents.

'Do you want to speak to him?' she asked.

'Is he up? Don't tell me he's still doing his Spanish prep?'

'You're an hour ahead of us over there, Luke.'

'Ah yes, of course. Well, yes please, then. If I may. Hello, Ben.'

'Hello.'

'I'm in Berne, for my sins. Berne, Switzerland. The capital. There's a really fantastic museum here. The Einstein Museum, one of the best museums I've seen in my life.'

'You went to a museum?'

'Just for half an hour. Last night when I arrived. They were doing a late opening. Just across the bridge from the hotel. So I went.'

'Why?'

'I felt like it. The concierge recommended it, so I went.'

'Just like that?'

'Yes. Just like that.'

'What else did he recommend?'

'What d'you mean?'

'Did you have a cheese fondue?'

'Not much fun if you're on your own. I need you and Mum. I need you both.'

'Oh, right.'

'And with any luck I'll be back for the weekend. We'll go to a movie or something.'

'I've got this Spanish essay, actually, if that's all right.'

'Of course it's all right. Good luck with it. What's it about?'

'Don't know really. Spanish stuff. See you.'

'See you.'

What else did the concierge recommend? Did I hear that right? Like is the concierge sending you up a hooker? What's Eloise been saying to him? And why in God's name did I tell him that I'd been to the Einstein Museum simply because I saw the brochure lying on the concierge's desk?

*

He went to bed, turned on the BBC World News and switched it off again. Half-truths. Quarter-truths. What the world really knows about itself, it doesn't dare say. Since Bogota, he had discovered, he no longer always had the courage to deal with his solitude. Maybe he had been holding too many bits of himself together for too long, and they were starting to fall apart. He went to the minibar, poured himself a Scotch and soda, and put it beside his bed. Just the one and that's it. He missed Gail, and then Yvonne. Was Yvonne burning the midnight oil over Dima's trade samples, or lying in the arms of her perfect husband? – if she had one, which he sometimes doubted. Maybe she'd invented him to fend Luke off. His thoughts went back to Gail. Was Perry perfect too? Probably was. Everyone except Eloise has a perfect husband. He thought of Hector, father to Adrian. Hector visiting his son in prison every Wednesday and Saturday, six months to go with luck. Hector the secret Savonarola, as somebody clever had called him, fanatical about reforming the Service he loved, knowing he will lose the battle even if he wins it.

He'd heard that the Empowerment Committee had its own war room these days. It seemed appropriate: somewhere ultra, ultra secret, suspended from wires or buried a hundred feet underground. Well, he'd been in rooms like that: in Miami and Washington when he was trading Intelligence with his chers collegues in the CIA or the Drug Enforcement Agency or the Alcohol, Firearms amp; Tobacco Agency and God knew what all the other agencies had been. And his measured opinion was that they were places that guaranteed collective insanity. He'd watched how the body language changed as the Indoctrinated Ones abandoned themselves and their common sense to the embrace of their virtual world.

He thought of Matlock, who took his holidays in Madeira and didn't know what a black hotel was. Matlock cornered by Hector, pulling Adrian's name out of his pocket and firing it at point-blank range. Matlock sitting at his picture window overlooking Father Thames and droning out his elephantine subtleties, first the stick, then the carrot, then both together.

Well, Luke hadn't bitten and he hadn't bowed either. Not that he had much guile, as he was the first to admit: insufficiently manipulative one of his annual confidential reports had run, and he was secretly rather pleased with it. He did not regard himself as a manipulator. Obstinacy was more his thing. Holding out. Clinging to the one note through thick and thin: no – whether you're chained up in a stockade or sitting in the other armchair of Matlock's comfortable office at la Lubianka-sur-Tamise, drinking his whisky and parrying his questions. A man could drift off into his own thoughts, just listening to them:

'A three-to-five contract down at training school, Luke, nice housing thrown in for your wife, which will help things along after the troubles I needn't refer to, a relocation allowance, nice sea air, good schools in the neighbourhood… You wouldn't have to sell your London house if you didn't want to, not while prices are down… Rent it out is my advice, enjoy the income. Have a little chat with Accounts on the ground floor, say I told you to drop by… Not that we're in Hector's league for property, few are.' A pause for decent anxiety. 'Hector's not dragging you in out of your depth, I trust, Luke, you being somewhat promiscuous in your loyalties, if I may say so?… They do tell me Ollie Devereux's fallen under his spell, incidentally, which I wouldn't have thought prudent of him. Full time, would you say Ollie was? Or more in the line of casual labour…?'

Then repeating it all for Hector's benefit an hour later.

'Is Billy Boy for us or against us by now?' Luke had asked Hector over the same farewell drink at Charles de Gaulle Airport, when they had moved gratefully to less personal topics.

'Billy Boy will go wherever he thinks his knighthood is. If he's got to choose between the gamekeepers and the poachers, he'll choose Matlock. However, a man who hates Aubrey Longrigg as much as he does can't be all bad,' Hector added as an afterthought.

In other circumstances Luke might have questioned this happy assertion but not now, not on the eve of Hector's decisive battle with the forces of darkness.

*

Somehow Wednesday morning had arrived. Somehow Gail and Perry had slept a little, and risen bright and ready for breakfast with Ollie, who had then gone off in search of their royal coach, as he called it, while they made a list and went shopping for the children in the local supermarket. Unsurprisingly, they were reminded of a similar expedition they had made to St John's on the afternoon Ambrose set them on the overgrown wood path to Three Chimneys, but their selections this time were more prosaic: water, still and fizzy, soft drinks – and oh, all right, let them have Coca-Cola (Perry) – picnic foods – kids in general prefer savoury to sweet even if they don't know it (Gail) – small backpacks for everybody, never mind they're not Fair Trade; a couple of rubber balls and a baseball bat which was the nearest they could hope to get to cricket but, if needs must, we'll teach them rounders – or more likely, since the boys are baseball players, they'll teach us.

Ollie's royal coach was an old twenty-foot green horsebox with wooden sides, a canvas roof and spaces for two horses in the back with a partition between them, and cushions and blankets on the floor for human beings. Gail sat herself down cautiously on the cushions. Perry, pleased at the prospect of riding rough, sprang in after her. Ollie put up the ramp and bolted it into place. The purpose of his wide-brimmed black hat became clear: he was Ollie the merry Roma, off to the horse show.

They drove for fifteen minutes by Perry's watch, and stopped with a jolt on soft ground. No hanky-panky and no peeking, Ollie had warned them. A hot wind was blowing and the canvas roof above them billowed like a spinnaker. By Ollie's calculation they were ten minutes from target.

*

Luke Alone, his teachers had called him at his preparatory school, after the derring-do hero of some long-forgotten adventure novel. It struck him as a bit unfair that, at the age of eight, he should have manifested the same sense of solitude that haunted him at forty-three.

But Luke Alone he had remained, and Luke Alone he was now, wearing horn-rimmed spectacles and a red-hot Russian tie, tapping away at a silver laptop as he sat under the splendidly illuminated glass canopy of the great lobby of the Bellevue Palace Hotel, with a blue raincoat slung conspicuously over the arm of a leather chair pitched midway between the glass entrance doors and the pillared Salon d'Honneur, the scene of a midday apero presently being hosted by the Arena Multi Global Trading Conglomerate, see the handsome bronze signpost pointing guests the way. It was Luke Alone, keeping an eye on arrivals by way of the many elegant door mirrors, and waiting to exfiltrate single-handed a red-hot Russian defector.

For the last ten minutes, he had looked on in a kind of passive awe as first Emilio dell Oro and the two Swiss bankers, immortalized by Gail as Peter and the Wolf, made their deliberately inconspicuous entrances, followed by a clutch of grey suits, then two young Saudis, by the look of them, then a Chinese woman and a swarthy man with broad shoulders whom Luke had arbitrarily appointed Greek.

Then in a single bored flock the Armani kids, the Seven Clean Envoys, unprotected save by Bunny Popham with a carnation in his buttonhole, and the languidly charming Giles de Salis with a silver-handled walking stick to go with his offensively perfect suit.

Aubrey Longrigg, where are you now they need you? Luke wanted to ask him. Keeping your head down? Wise fellow. A safe seat in Parliament and a free ticket to the French Open is one thing, so is a multi-million offshore kickback and a few more diamonds for your witless wife, not to speak of a non-executive directorship in a fine new City bank with billions of freshly laundered money to play with. But a full-dress, front-line signing in a Swiss bank with the spotlights on you is a bit too rich for your blood: or so Luke was thinking as the lank, bald-headed, ill-tempered figure of Aubrey Longrigg, Member of Parliament, came stalking up the steps – the man himself, no longer a picture – with Dima, the world's number-one money-launderer at his side.

As Luke buried himself a little deeper in his leather chair, and raised the lid of his silver laptop a little higher, he knew that if there had ever been such a thing as a Eureka moment in his life, it was here and now, and there would never be another like it, while once more thanking the gods he didn't believe in that in all his years in the Service he had never once set eyes on Aubrey Longrigg, and nor had Longrigg, so far as he knew, on him.

Even so, it was not until the two men were safely past him on their way to the Salon d'Honneur – Dima had almost brushed against him – that Luke dared raise his head and take a quick reading of the mirrors and establish the following nuggets of operational Intelligence:

Nugget One: that Dima and Longrigg weren't talking to each other. And probably they hadn't even been talking as they arrived. They had simply happened to be close to each other as they came up the steps. Two other men were following – sound, middle-aged Swiss-accountant types – and it was more likely, in Luke's view, that Longrigg had been talking to one or both of them, rather than to Dima. And although the point was tenuous – they could have been talking to one another earlier – Luke was cautiously consoled, because it's never comfortable to discover, just as your operation is reaching fruition, that your joe has a personal relationship with a main player that you didn't know about. Otherwise, on the subject of Longrigg, he had no further thoughts above the exultant, blindingly obvious: he's here! I saw him! I am the witness!

Nugget Two: that Dima has decided to go out with a bang. For his great occasion he sports a custom-built blue pinstripe double-breasted suit; and for his delicate feet a pair of black calf Italian slip-ons with tassels – not ideal, in Luke's teeming mind, for making a dash for it, but this isn't going to be a dash, it's going to be an orderly withdrawal. Dima's manner, for a fellow who reckons he's just signed his own death warrant, struck Luke as improbably carefree. Perhaps it was the foretaste of vengeance he was enjoying: of an old vor's pride soon to be restored, and a murdered disciple atoned for. Perhaps, amid all his anxieties, he was glad to be done with the lying, ducking and pretending, and was already thinking of the green-and-pleasant England that awaited him and his family. Luke knew that feeling well.

The apero is getting under way. A low baritone burble issues from the Salon d'Honneur, starts to grow, and drops again. Some honourable Salon guest is making a speech, first in Russian blur, now in English blur. Peter? The Wolf? De Salis? No. It's the honourable Emilio dell Oro; Luke recognizes his voice from the tennis club. Handclapping. Church silence while an honourable toast is drunk. To Dima? No, to honourable Bunny Popham, who is responding; Luke knows that voice too, and the laughter confirms it. He looks at his watch, takes out his mobile, presses the button for Ollie:

'Twenty minutes if he's on time,' he says, and once more settles to his silver laptop.

Oh, Hector. Oh, Billy Boy. Wait till you hear who I bumped into today.

*

Mind a bit of off-the-cuff pontification before I go, Luke? Hector is asking, draining his malt at Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Luke doesn't mind a bit. The topics of Adrian, Eloise and Ben are behind them. Hector has just passed judgement on Billy Boy Matlock. His flight is being called.

In operational planning, there are two opportunities only for flexibility – with me, Lukie?

With you, Hector.

One, when you draw up your plan. We've done that. Two, when the plan goes belly up. Until it does, stick like glue to what we've decided to do, or you're fucked. Now shake my hand.

*

So here was the question in Luke's mind as he sat staring at a lot of gobbledegook on the screen of his silver laptop and, with zero minutes to go, waited for Dima to emerge alone from the Salon d'Honneur: did the memory of Hector's parting homily come to him before he saw the baby-faced Niki and the cadaverous philosopher taking up their positions in the two tall-backed chairs either side of the glass doors? Or was it instigated by the shock of seeing them there?

And who first called him the cadaverous philosopher anyway? Was it Perry or Hector? No, it was Gail. Trust Gail. Gail has all the best lines.

And why was it that, precisely at the moment when he spotted them, the burble in the Salon d'Honneur swelled into a babble, and the great doors opened – actually only one of them, he now saw – to disgorge Dima alone?

Luke's confusion was not only one of time, but of place. While Dima was approaching from behind him, Niki and the cadaverous philosopher were rising to their feet in front of him, leaving Luke hunched at mid-point between them, not knowing which way to look.

A furious bark of Russian obscenities from over his right shoulder informed him that Dima had drawn to a halt beside him:

'What the fuck d'you want with me, you shit-ants? You want to know what I'm doing, Niki? I'm taking a piss. You want to watch me piss? Get out of here. Go piss on your bitch Prince.'

Behind his desk, the concierge's head discreetly lifted. The impossibly chic German receptionist, showing no such discretion, swung round to take a look. Determinedly deaf to all of it, Luke tapped meaninglessly at his silver laptop. Niki and the cadaverous philosopher remained standing. Neither had stirred. Perhaps they suspected Dima was about to make a straight dash for the glass doors and the street. Instead, with a subdued 'fuck your mothers,' he resumed his walk across the lobby and into the short corridor leading to the bar. He passed the lift and drew up at the top of the stone staircase that led to the basement lavatories. By then he was no longer alone. Niki and the philosopher were standing behind him, and a few feet behind Niki and the philosopher stood meek, unnoticed little Luke with his laptop under his arm and his blue raincoat over it, needing to go to the loo.

His heart is no longer beating vigorously, his feet and knees feel good and springy. He is hearing and thinking clearly. He is reminding himself that he knows the terrain and the bodyguards don't, and that Dima knows it too, which gives extra incentive to the bodyguards, if they ever needed it, to be behind Dima rather than in front of him.

Luke is as astonished by their unscripted appearance as Dima patently is. It defeats him, as it does Dima, that they should be harassing a man who is of no further use to them, and will by his own reckoning and probably theirs shortly be dead. Just not here and now. Just not in broad daylight with the entire hotel looking on, and the Seven Clean Envoys, a distinguished British Member of Parliament, and other dignitaries, putting back the champagne and canapes twenty metres away. Besides which, as is well attested, the Prince is fastidious in his killing. He likes accidents, or random acts of terror by marauding Chechen bandits.

But that discussion is for another time. If the plan has gone belly up, in Hector's words, then it is a time for Luke to exercise flexibility, a time not to finger it but to do it, to quote Hector again, a time to remember the stuff that has been dinned into him on successive unarmed combat courses over the years, but he has never been obliged to put into effect except the once in Bogota, when his performance had been fair to middling at best: a few wild blows, then darkness.

But on that occasion it had been the drug baron's henchmen who'd had the advantage of surprise, and now Luke had it. He didn't have the odd pair of paper scissors handy, or the pocketful of small change, or the knotted bootlaces, or any other of the fairly ridiculous bits of household killing equipment that the instructors were so enthusiastic about, but he did have a state-of-the-art silver-cased laptop and, thanks not least to Aubrey Longrigg, huge anger. It had come over him like a friend in need, and at that moment it was a better friend to him than courage.

*

Dima is reaching out to shove the door in the middle of the stone staircase.

Niki and the cadaverous philosopher stand close behind him, and Luke stands behind them, but not as close as they are to Dima.

Luke is shy. Descending to a lavatory is a man's private business, and Luke is a private person. Nevertheless, he is having a life-moment of spiritual clarity. For once, the initiative is his, and no one else's. For once, he is the rightful aggressor.

The door they are standing in front of is occasionally locked for security reasons, as Dima rightly pointed out in Paris, but today it isn't. It's guaranteed to open, and that's because Luke has the key in his pocket.

Therefore the door opens, revealing the rather poorly lit staircase beneath. Dima is still leading the way but that situation changes abruptly when a truly massive blow from Luke with the laptop sends the cadaverous philosopher clattering without complaint past Dima down the staircase, unbalancing Niki and providing Dima with a chance to seize his hated blond turncoat of a bodyguard by the throat in the manner that, according to Perry, he had fantasized about when describing how he proposed to murder the husband of Natasha's late mother.

With one hand still round his throat, Dima drives Niki's astonished head left and right against the nearside wall until his useless, worked-out body collapses under him, and he lands speechless at Dima's feet, prompting Dima to kick him repeatedly and very hard, first in the groin and then on the side of the head, with the toe of his inappropriate Italian right shoe.

All of this happening quite slowly and naturally for Luke, though somewhat out of sequence, but with a cathartic and mysteriously triumphant effect. To take a laptop in both hands, raise it above his head at full stretch, and bring it down like an executioner's axe on the cadaverous bodyguard's neck conveniently placed a couple of steps beneath him was to repay every slight that had been done to him over the last forty years, from his childhood in the shadow of a tyrannical soldier-father, through the catalogue of English private and public schools that he had detested, and the scores of women he had slept with and wished he hadn't, to the Colombian forest that had imprisoned him, and the diplomatic ghetto in Bogota where he had performed the most idiotic and compulsive of his life-sins.

But in the end, it was undoubtedly the thought of rewarding Aubrey Longrigg for betraying the Service's trust that, irrational though it might be, delivered the greatest impetus because Luke, like Hector, loved the Service. The Service was his mother and father and his bit of God as well, even if its ways were sometimes imponderable.

Which, come to think of it, was probably how Dima felt about his precious vory.

*

Someone should be screaming, but no one is. At the foot of the stairs, the two men slump across one another in seeming defiance of vory homophobic code. Dima is still kicking Niki, who is underneath, and the cadaverous philosopher is opening and closing his mouth like a beached fish. Turning on his heel, Luke treads cautiously back up the steps and relocks the swing-door, returns the key to his pocket, then joins the tranquil scene downstairs.

Grabbing Dima by the arm – who must have just one last kick before he goes – Luke leads him past the lavatories, up some steps and across an unused reception area until they arrive at the iron-clad delivery door marked EMERGENCY EXIT. This door requires no key but has instead a tin green box mounted on the wall, with a glass front and a red panic button inside for emergencies such as fire, flood or an act of terrorism.

Over the last eighteen hours Luke has devoted serious study to this green box with its panic button, and has also taken the trouble to discuss with Ollie its most likely properties. At Ollie's suggestion, he has loosened in advance the brass screws attaching the glass panel to its metal surround, and snipped through a sinister-looking red-clad wire that leads back into the bowels of the hotel with the purpose of connecting the panic button with the hotel's central alarm system. In Ollie's speculative view, the effect of snipping the red wire should be to open the emergency exit without provoking an emergency exodus of staff and guests from the hotel.

Removing the loosened pane of glass with his left hand, Luke makes to push the red button with his right, only to discover that his right hand is temporarily out of service. So he again uses his left hand, whereupon with Swiss efficiency the doors fly open precisely as Ollie has speculated, and there is the street, and there is the sunny day, beckoning to them.

Luke hustles Dima ahead of him and – either out of courtesy to the hotel or a desire to look like a couple of honourable Bernese citizens in suits who happen to be stepping into the street – he pauses to close the door after him, and at the same time establish, with grateful acknowledgements to Ollie, that no siren call for a general evacuation of the hotel is resounding behind him.

Fifty metres across the road from them stands an underground car park called, rather oddly, Parking Casino. On the first level, directly facing the exit, stands the BMW car that Luke has rented for this moment, and in Luke's numb right hand lies the electronic key that unlocks the car's doors before you reach them.

'Jesus God, Dick, I love you, hear me?' Dima whispers through his panting.

With his numb right hand, Luke fishes in the hot lining of his jacket for his mobile, hauls it out, and with his left forefinger touches the button for Ollie.

'The time to go in is now,' he orders, in a voice of majestic calm.

*

The horsebox was backing down a hard incline and Ollie was warning Perry and Gail that they were going in. After the wait in the lay-by they had driven up a tortuous hill road, heard cowbells and smelled hay. They had stopped, turned, and backed, and now they were waiting again, but only for Ollie to ratchet up the tailgate, which he did slowly in order to be quiet, revealing himself by stages up to his wide-brimmed black fedora hat.

Behind Ollie stood a stables, and behind it a paddock and a couple of good-looking young horses, chestnuts, which had trotted over to take a look at them, then bounced off again. Next to the stables loomed a large modern house in dark red timber with overhanging eaves. There was a front porch and a side porch, both closed. The front porch faced the road and the side porch didn't, so Perry chose the side porch and said, 'I'll go first.' It had been agreed that Ollie, as the stranger to the family, would stay with the van till summoned.

As Perry and Gail advanced, they noticed two closed-circuit television cameras looking down on them, one from the stables and one from the house. Igor's responsibility, presumably, but Igor has been sent out shopping.

Perry pressed the bell and at first they heard nothing. The stillness struck Gail as unnatural so she pressed it herself. Perhaps it didn't work. She gave one long ring then several short ones to hurry everyone up. And it worked after all, because impatient young feet were approaching, bolts were being shot and a lock was turned, and one of Dima's flaxen-haired sons appeared: Viktor.

But instead of greeting them with a buckwheat grin all over his freckled face, which was what they would have expected, Viktor stared at them in nervous confusion.

'Have you got her?' he demanded, in his internat's American English.

The question was directed at Perry not Gail because by now Katya and Irina had come through the doorway and Katya had grabbed one of Gail's legs and was squeezing her head against it, and Irina was reaching up her arms to Gail for an embrace.

'My sister. Natasha!' Viktor shouted impatiently at Perry, suspiciously eyeing the horsebox as if she might be hiding in it. 'Have – you – seen – Natasha, for Christ's sakes?'

'Where's your mother?' Gail said, breaking free of the girls.

They followed Viktor down a panelled corridor that smelled of camphor into a low-beamed living room on two levels with glass doors leading to a garden and the paddock beyond. Crammed into the darkest part of the room between two leather suitcases sat Tamara, wearing a black hat with a piece of veil round it. Advancing on her, Gail saw beneath the veil that she had dyed her hair with henna and rouged her cheeks. Russians traditionally sit down before a journey, Gail had read somewhere, and perhaps that was why Tamara was sitting down now, and why she remained sitting when Gail stood in front of her, staring down at her rouged, rigid face.

'What's happened to Natasha?' Gail demanded.

'We do not know,' Tamara replied, to the void before her.

'Why not?'

Now the twins took over, and Tamara was temporarily forgotten:

'She went to riding school and didn't come back!' Viktor insisted, as his brother Alexei clattered into the room after him.

'No, she didn't, she only said she was going to riding school. She only said, asshole! She lies, you know she does!' – Alexei.

'When did she go to riding school?' asked Gail.

'This morning. Early! Like eight o'clock!' Viktor yelled, before Alexei could get his word in. 'She had a date there. Some kind of demo lesson on dressage! Dad had called like ten minutes earlier, said we'd gotta be ready midday! Natasha says she's got this date at riding school. Gotta go there, an unbreakable deal!'

'So she went?'

'Sure. Igor took her in the Volvo.'

'Bullshit!' – Alexei again. 'Igor took her to Berne! They never fucking went to riding school, you idiot! Natasha lied to Mama!'

Gail the lawyer forced her way back: 'Igor dropped her in Berne? Where did he take her to?'

'The train station!' Alexei shouted.

'Which train station, Alexei?' said Perry severely. 'Calmly now. At which train station in Berne did Igor drop Natasha?'

'Berne main station! The international train station, Jesus Christ! It goes all over. Goes to Paris! Budapest! Goes to Moscow!'

'Dad told her to go there, Professor,' Viktor insisted, lowering his voice in deliberate counterpoint to the hysterical Alexei's.

'Dima did, Viktor?' – Gail.

'Dima told her to go to the train station. That's what Igor said. You want I call Igor again and you talk to him?'

'He can't, you asshole! The Professor don't speak Russian!' – Alexei, by now nearly in tears.

Perry again, firmly as before: 'Viktor – in a minute, Alexei – Viktor, just say that to me again – slowly. Alexei, I'll be yours just as soon as I've listened to Viktor. Now, Viktor.'

'It's what Igor says she told him, and that's why he dropped her at the main station. "My dad says, I gotta go to the main train station."'

'And Igor's an asshole too! He don't ask why!' Alexei shouted. 'He's too fucking stupid. He's so frightened of Dad he just drops Natasha at the station and goodbye! He don't ask why. He goes shopping. If she never comes back it's not his fault. Dad told him to do it, so he did it, so it's not his fault!'

'How d'you know she didn't go to the riding demo?' Gail asked, when she had weighed their testimony this far.

'Viktor, please,' Perry said quickly, before Alexei could butt in again.

'First the riding school calls us, where's Natasha?' Viktor said. 'It's a hundred and twenty-five an hour, she hasn't cancelled. She's supposed to do this dressage shit. They got the horse all saddled and waiting. So we call Igor on his cell. Where's Natasha? At the train station, he says, Dad's orders.'

'What was she wearing?' – Gail, turning to the distraught Alexei out of kindness.

'Loose jeans. And like a Russian smock. Like a kulak. She's into totally shapeless. Says she don't like boys looking at her ass.'

'Has she any money?' – still to Alexei.

'Dad gives her whatever. He spoils her totally! We get like a hundred a month, she gets like five hundred. For books, clothes, shoes she's nuts about; last month Dad bought her a violin. Violins cost like millions.'

'And you've all tried calling her?' – Gail to Viktor now.

'Repeatedly,' says Viktor, who by now has cast himself as the calm, mature man. 'Everyone has. Alexei's cell, my cell, Katya's, Irina's. No answer.'

Gail to Tamara, remembering her presence: 'Have you tried to call her?'

No answer from Tamara either.

Gail to the four children: 'I think you should please all go to another room while I talk to Tamara. If Natasha rings, I need to speak to her first. Agreed everyone?'

*

There being no other chair in Tamara's dark corner, Perry pulled up a wooden bench supported by two carved bears, and the two of them sat on it, watching Tamara's tiny, black eyes move between them without engaging.

'Tamara,' said Gail. 'Why is Natasha frightened to meet her father?'

'She must have a child.'

'Has she told you that?'

'No.'

'But you've noticed.'

'Yes.'

'How long ago did you notice?'

'It is immaterial.'

'But in Antigua already?'

'Yes.'

'Have you discussed it with her?'

'No.'

'With her father?'

'No.'

'Why have you not discussed it with Natasha?'

'I hate her.'

'Does she hate you?'

'Yes. Her mother was whore. Now Natasha is whore. It is not surprising.'

'What will happen when her father finds out?'

'Maybe he will love her more. Maybe he will kill her. God will decide.'

'Do you know who the father is?'

'Maybe it is many fathers. From the riding school. The ski school. Maybe it is the postman, or Igor.'

'And you have no idea where she is now?'

'Natasha does not confide in me.'

*

Outside in the stable yard it had come on to rain. In the paddock the two handsome chestnut horses were playfully head-butting each other. Gail, Perry and Ollie stood in the shadow of the horsebox. Ollie had spoken to Luke on his mobile. Luke had had a problem talking because he had Dima with him in the car. But the message that Ollie now relayed brooked no argument. His voice remained calm but his flawed cockney became a tangle in the tension:

'We're to get the hell out of here right now. There's been serious developments and we can't hold up the convoy for one single ship no more. Natasha's got their mobile numbers, and they've got hers. Luke don't want us to run into Igor, so we bloody don't do that. He says you got to get everybody aboard now, please, Perry, and we hightail it now, got it?'

Perry was halfway back to the house when Gail drew him aside:

'I know where she is,' she said.

'You seem to know quite a lot I don't.'

'Not that much. Enough. I'm going to get her. I want you to back me up. No heroics, no little-woman stuff. You and Ollie take the family, I'll follow you with Natasha when I find her. That's what I'm going to tell Ollie, and I need to know I've got your support.'

Perry put both his hands to his head as if he'd forgotten something, then let them fall to his sides in surrender: 'Where is she?'

'Where's Kandersteg?'

'Go to Spiez, take the Simplon railway up the mountain. Have you got money?'

'Plenty. Luke's.'

Perry looked helplessly at the house, then at big Ollie in his fedora waiting impatiently beside the horsebox. Then back at Gail.

'For God's sake,' he breathed in bewilderment.

'I know,' she said.