Our kind of traitor

7

In the road above the basement, an ambulance tears past, and the howl of its siren is like a scream for the whole world's pain.

In the wind-beaten, half-hexagon turret overlooking the bay, Dima is unrolling the satin sleeve from his left arm. By the changeful moonlight that has replaced the vanished sun, Perry discerns a bare-breasted Madonna surrounded by voluptuous angels in alluring poses. The tattoo descends from the tip of Dima's massive shoulder to the gold wristband of his bejewelled Rolex watch.

'You wanna know who make this tattoo for me, Professor?' he whispers in a voice husky with emotion. 'Six goddam month every day one hour?'

Yes, Perry would like to know who has tattooed a topless Madonna and her female choir on to Dima's enormous arm, and taken six months to do it. He would like to know what relevance the Holy Virgin has to Dima's quest for a place at Roedean for Natasha, or permanent residence in Britain for all his family in exchange for vital information, but the English tutor in him is also learning that Dima the storyteller has his own narrative arc and that his plots unfold with indirection.

'My Rufina make this. She was zek, like me. Camp hooker, sick from tuberculosis, one hour each day. When she finish, she die. Jesus Christ, huh? Jesus Christ.'

A respectful quiet while both men contemplate Rufina's masterpiece.

'Know what is Kolyma, Professor?' Dima asks, still with a husk in his voice. 'You heard?'

Yes, Perry knows what is Kolyma. He has read his Solzhenitsyn. He has read his Shalamov. He knows that Kolyma is a river north of the Arctic Circle that has given its name to the harshest camps in the Gulag archipelago, before or after Stalin. He knows zek too: zek for Russia's prisoners, the millions and millions of them.

'With fourteen I was goddam zek in Kolyma. Criminal, not political. Political is shit. Criminal is pure. Fifteen years I serve there.'

'Fifteen in Kolyma?'

'Sure, Professor. I done fifteen.'

The anguish has gone out of Dima's voice, to be replaced by pride.

'For criminal prisoner Dima, other prisoners got respect. Why I was in Kolyma? I was murderer. Good murderer. Who I murder? Lousy Sovietsky apparatchik in Perm. Our father suicide himself, got tired, drank lotta vodka. My mother, to give us food, soap, she gotta fuck this lousy apparatchik. In Perm, we live in communal apartment. Eight crappy rooms, thirty people, one crappy kitchen, one shithouse, everybody stink and smoke. Kids do not like this lousy apparatchik who fuck our mother. We gotta stand outside in kitchen, very thin wall, when apparatchik come to visit us, bring food, fuck my mother. Everybody stare at us: listen to your mother, she's a whore. We gotta put our hands over our goddam ears. You wanna know something, Professor?'

Perry does.

'This guy, this apparatchik, know where he get his food?'

Perry does not.

'He's a fucking military administrator! Distributes food in barracks. Carries a gun. Nice pretty gun, leather case, big hero. You wanna try fucking with a gun belt round your arse? You gotta be big acrobat. This military administrator, this apparatchik, he take off shoes. He take off his pretty gun. He put gun in shoes. OK, I think. Maybe you fuck my mother enough. Maybe you don't fuck her no more. Maybe nobody gonna stare at us no more like we're whore's kids. I knock on door. I open it. I am polite. "Excuse me," I say. "Is Dima. Excuse me, Comrade Lousy Apparatchik. Please I borrow your pretty gun? Kindly look me in my face once. You don't look me, how do I kill you? Thank you so much, Comrade." My mother look me. She don't say nothing. Apparatchik look me. I kill the fuck. One bullet.'

Dima's forefinger rests on the bridge of his nose, indicating where the bullet went. Perry is reminded of the same forefinger resting on his sons' noses in the middle of the tennis match.

'Why I murder this apparatchik?' Dima inquires rhetorically. 'Was for my mother who protect her children. Was for love of my crazy father who suicide himself. Was for honour of Russia, I kill this fuck. Was to stop stares they give us in corridor, maybe. Therefore in Kolyma I am welcome prisoner. I am krutoi – good fellow, got no problems, pure. I am not political. I am criminal. I am hero, I am fighter. I kill military apparatchik, maybe also Chekist. Why else they give me fifteen? I have honour. I am not -'

*

Reaching this point in his story, Perry faltered, and his voice became diffident:

'I am not woodpecker. I am not dog, Professor,' he offered dubiously.

'He means informant,' Hector explained. 'Woodpecker, dog, hen: take your pick. They all mean informant. He's trying to persuade you that he isn't one when he is.'

With a nod of respect for Hector's superior knowledge, Perry resumed.

*

'One day, after three years, this good boy Dima will become man. How he become man? My friend Nikita will make him man. Who is Nikita? Nikita is also honourable, also good fighter, big criminal. He will be father to this good boy Dima. He will be brother to him. He will protect Dima. He will love Dima. It will be pure love. One day, it is very good day for me, proud day, Nikita bring me to vory. You know what is vory, Professor? You know what is vor?'

Yes, Perry even knows what is vory. He knows vor too. He has read his Solzhenitsyn, he has read his Shalamov. He has read that in the Gulag the vory are the prisoners' arbiters and enforcers of justice, a brotherhood of criminals of honour sworn to abide by a strict code of conduct, to renounce marriage, property and subservience to the State; that the vory venerate priesthood and dabble in its mystique; and that vor is the singular of vory, plural. And that the vory's pride is to be Criminals within the Law, an aristocracy far removed from street riff-raff who have never known a law in their lives.

'My Nikita speak to very big vory committee. Many big criminals are present for this meeting, many good fighters. He tell to vory: "My dear brothers, here is Dima. Dima is ready, my brothers. Take him." So they take Dima, they make him man. They make him criminal of honour. But Nikita must still protect Dima. This is because Dima – is – his -'

As Dima the criminal of honour hunts for the mot juste, Perry the outward-bound Oxford don comes to his assistance:

'Disciple?'

'Disciple! Yes, Professor! Like for Jesus! Nikita will protect his disciple Dima. This is normal. This is vory law. He will protect him always. This is promise. Nikita has made me vor. Therefore he protect me. But he die.'

Dima dabs at his bald brow with his handkerchief, then smears his wrist across his eyes, then pinches his nostrils between his finger and thumb like a swimmer emerging from the water. When the hand comes down, Perry sees that he is weeping for Nikita's death.

*

Hector has called a natural break. Luke has made coffee. Perry accepts a cup, and a chocolate digestive while he's about it. The lecturer in him is in full flood, rallying his facts and observations, presenting them with all the accuracy and precision he can muster. But nothing can quite douse the glint of excitement in his eyes, or the flush of his gaunt cheeks.

And perhaps the self-editor in him is aware of this, and troubled by it: which is why, when he resumes, he selects a staccato, almost offhand style of narrative more in keeping with pedagogic objectivity than the rush of adventure:

'Nikita had picked up a camp fever. It was midwinter. Minus sixty degrees Celsius, or thereabouts. A lot of prisoners were dying. Guards didn't give a damn. The hospitals weren't there to cure, they were places to die in. Nikita was a tough nut and took a long time dying. Dima tended him. Missed his prison work, got the punishment cell. Each time they let him out, he went back to Nikita in the hospital until they dragged him off again. Beating, starving, light deprivation, chained to a wall in sub-zero temperatures. All the stuff you people outsource to less fastidious countries, and pretend you know nothing about,' he adds, in a spurt of semi-humorous belligerence that falls flat. 'And while he was comforting Nikita, they agreed that Dima would induct his own protege into the vory Brotherhood. It was a solemn moment, apparently: the dying Nikita appointing his posterity by way of Dima. A passing of the chalice across three generations of criminals. Dima's protege – disciple, as he was now pleased to call him, thanks to me, I'm afraid – was one Mikhail, alias Misha.' Perry reproduces the moment:

'"Misha is man of honour, like me!" I tell to them,' Dima is proclaiming to the vory's high committee of made men. '"He is criminal, not political. Misha love true Mother Russia not Soviet Union. Misha respect all women. He strong, he pure, he not woodpecker, he not dog, not military, not camp guard, KGB. He not policeman. He kill policemen. He despise all apparatchik. Misha my son. He your brother. Take the son of Dima for your vory brother!"'

*

Perry still determinedly in lecture mode. The following facts for your notebooks, please, ladies and gentlemen. The passage I am about to read to you represents the short version of Dima's personal history, as recounted by him in the lookout of the house called Three Chimneys between slurps of vodka:

'As soon as he was released from Kolyma he hurried home to Perm and was in time to bury his mother. The early 1980s were boom years for criminals. Life in the fast lane was short and dangerous, but profitable. With his impeccable credentials Dima was received with open arms by the local vory. Discovering that he had a natural eye for numbers, he quickly engaged in illegal currency speculation, insurance fraud and smuggling. A fast-expanding folio of petty crime takes him to Communist East Germany. Car theft, false passports and currency deals a speciality. And along the way he equips himself with spoken German. He takes his women where he finds them, but his continuing partner is Tamara, a black-market dealer in such rare commodities as women's clothing and essential foods, resident in Perm. With the assistance of Dima and like-minded accomplices she also runs a sideline in extortion, abduction and blackmail. This brings her into conflict with a rival brotherhood who first take her prisoner and torture her, then frame her and hand her over to the police who torture her some more. Dima explains Tamara's problem:

'"She don't never squeal, Professor, hear me? She good criminal, better than man. They put her in press-cell. Know what is press-cell? They hang her upside down, rape her ten, twenty time, beat the shit outta her, but she don't never squeal. She tell them, go fuck themselves. Tamara, she big fighter, no bitch."'

Again Perry offered the word with diffidence, and again Hector quietly came to his rescue:

'Bitch being even worse than dog or woodpecker. A bitch betrays the underworld code. Dima's getting the serious guilts by now.'

'Then perhaps that's why he stumbled over the word,' Perry suggested, and Hector said perhaps it was.

Perry as Dima again: 'One day the police get so goddam sick of her they strip her naked, leave her in the fucking snow. She don't never squeal, hear me? She go a bit crazy, OK? Talk to God. Buy a lotta icons. Bury money in the fucking garden, can't find it, who givva fuck? This woman got loyalty, hear me? I don't never let her go. Natasha's mother, I loved her. But Tamara, I never let her go. Hear me?'

Perry hears him.

As soon as Dima starts to make serious money he packs Tamara off to a Swiss clinic for rest and rehabilitation, then marries her. Within a year their twin sons are born. Hot upon the wedding comes the betrothal of Tamara's sensationally beautiful, much younger sister, Olga, a high-class hooker greatly prized by the vory. And the bridegroom is none other than Dima's beloved disciple Misha, by now also released from Kolyma.

'With the union of Olga and Misha, Dima's cup was full,' Perry declared. 'Dima and Misha were henceforth true brothers. Under vory law, Misha was already Dima's son, but the marriage made the family relationship absolute. Dima's children would be Misha's children, Misha's children would be his,' Perry said, and sat back decisively, as if waiting for questions from the back of the hall.

But Hector, who had been observing with some amusement Perry's retreat into his academic skin, preferred to offer his own brand of wry comment:

'Which is a bloody odd thing about these vory chaps, wouldn't you say? One minute forswearing marriage, politics and the State and all its works, the next prancing up the aisle in full rig with the church bells ringing. Have another shot of this. Only a teaspoon. Water?'

Business with the bottle and water jug.

'It's who they all were, isn't it?' Perry reflected extraneously, sipping at his very weak whisky. 'All those weird cousins and uncles in Antigua. They were Criminals within the Law who had come to commiserate about Misha and Olga.'

*

Perry's resolute lecture mode again. Perry as capsule historian, and nothing else:

Perm is no longer large enough for Dima or the Brotherhood. Business is expanding. Crime syndicates are forming alliances. Deals are being cut with foreign mafias. Best of all, Dima the bete intellectuelle of Kolyma with no education worth a damn has discovered a natural talent for laundering criminal proceeds. When Dima's Brotherhood decides to open up for business in America, it's Dima they send to New York to set up a money-laundering chain based in Brighton Beach. Dima takes Misha as his enforcer. When the Brotherhood decides to open a European arm of his money-laundering business, it's Dima they appoint to the post. As a condition of acceptance, Dima again requests the appointment of Misha, this time as his number two in Rome. Request granted. Now the Dimas and the Mishas are indeed one family, trading together, playing together, exchanging houses and visits, admiring one another's children.

Perry takes another sip of whisky.

'That was in the days of the old Prince,' Perry says, almost nostalgically. 'For Dima, the golden age. The old Prince was a true vor. He could do no wrong.'

'And the new Prince?' Hector inquires provocatively. 'The young fellow? Any take on him at all?'

Perry is not amused. 'You know bloody well there was,' he growls. And adds: 'The new young Prince is the bitch of all time. The traitor of traitors. He's the Prince who delivers the vory to the State, which is the worst thing any vor can do. Betraying a man like that is a duty in Dima's eyes, not a crime.'

*

'You like those little kids, Professor?' Dima asks in a tone of false detachment, throwing back his head and affecting to study the flaking panels of the ceiling: 'Katya? Irina? You like?'

'Of course I do. They're wonderful.'

'Gail, she like too?'

'You know she does. She's terribly sorry for them.'

'What they tell her, the little girls, how their father die?'

'In a car smash. Ten days ago. Outside Moscow. A tragedy. The father and mother both.'

'Sure. Was tragedy. Was car smash. Very simple car smash. Very normal car smash. In Russia we get many such car smash. Four men, four Kalashnikov, maybe sixty bullet, who givva shit? That's a goddam car smash, Professor. One body, twenty maybe thirty bullet. My Misha, my disciple, a kid, forty year old. Dima take him to the vory, make him a man.'

A sudden outbreak of fury:

'So why do I not protect my Misha? Why I let him go to Moscow? Let bitch Prince's bastards kill him twenty, thirty bullet? Kill Olga, beautiful sister of my wife Tamara, mother of Misha's little girls. Why I not protect him? You are Professor! You tell me, please, why do I not protect my Misha?'

If it was fury, not volume, that gave his voice such unearthly strength, it is the chameleon nature of the man that enables him to put aside his fury in favour of despondent Slav reflection:

'OK. Maybe Tamara's sister Olga, she not so goddam religious,' he says, conceding a point that Perry hasn't made. 'I tell to Misha: "Maybe your Olga still look at other guys too much, got beautiful arse. Maybe you don't screw around no more, Misha, stay home once, like me now, take a bit care of her."' His voice falls to a whisper again: 'Thirty goddam bullet, Professor. That bitch Prince gotta pay something for thirty bullet in my Misha.'

*

Perry had gone quiet. It was as if a distant bell had sounded for the end of the lecture period, and he had belatedly become aware of it. For a moment he appeared to surprise himself by his presence at the table. Then with a jerk of his long, angular body he re-entered time present.

'So that's basically about it then,' he said, in a tone to wrap things up. 'Dima sank into himself for a while, woke up, seemed puzzled I was there, resented my presence, then decided I was all right, then forgot me again and put his hands over his face and muttered to himself in Russian. Then he stood up, and fished around in his satin shirt, and yanked out the little package I included in my document,' he went on. 'Handed it to me, embraced me. It was an emotional moment.'

'For both of you.'

'In our separate ways, yes, it was. I think it was.'

He seemed suddenly in a hurry to go back to Gail.

'Any instructions to accompany the package at all?' Hector asked, while little B-list Luke beside him smiled to himself over his neatly folded hands.

'Sure. "Take this to your apparatchiks, Professor. A present from World Number One money-launderer. Tell them I want fair play." Exactly as I wrote in my document.'

'Any idea what was in the package?'

'Only guesses, really. It was wrapped in cotton wool, then cling-film. As you saw. I assumed it was an audio cassette – from a baby recorder of some kind. Or that's what it felt like anyway.'

Hector remained unpersuaded. 'And you didn't attempt to open it.'

'God no. It was addressed to you. I just made sure it was firmly pasted inside the cover of the dossier.'

Slowly turning the pages of Perry's document, Hector gave a distracted nod.

'He was carrying it against his body,' Perry continued, evidently feeling a need to fend off the gathering silence: 'It made me think of Kolyma. The tricks they must have got up to. Secreting messages and so on. The thing was dripping wet. I had to wipe it dry on a towel when I got back to our cabin.'

'And you didn't open it?'

'I said I didn't. Why should I? I'm not in the habit of reading other people's letters. Or listening to them.'

'Not even before you passed through Customs at Gatwick?'

'Certainly not.'

'But you felt it.'

'Of course I did. I just told you I did. What's this about? Through the plastic film. And the cotton wool. When he gave it to me.'

'And when he'd given it to you, what did you do with it?'

'Put it in a safe place.'

'Where was that?'

'I'm sorry?'

'The safe place. Where was it?'

'In my shaving bag. The moment I got back to our cabin, I went straight into the bathroom and put it there.'

'Next to your toothbrush, as it were.'

'As it were.'

Another long silence. Was it as long for them as it was for Perry? He feared not.

'Why?' Hector demanded finally.

'Why what?'

'The shaving bag,' Hector replied patiently.

'I thought it would be safer.'

'When you passed through Customs at Gatwick?'

'Yes.'

'You thought that's where everybody keeps their cassettes?'

'I just thought it would be' – he shrugged.

'Less conspicuous in a shaving bag?'

'Something like that.'

'Did Gail know?'

'What? Of course not. No.'

'I should think not. Is the recording in Russian or English?'

'How on earth do I know? I didn't listen to it.'

'Dima didn't tell you which language it was in?'

'He offered no description of it whatever, other than the one I've given you. Cheers.'

He took a last swig of his very thin Scotch, then set his glass heavily on the table, signifying finality. But Hector did not at all share his haste. Quite the contrary. He turned back a page of Perry's document. Then forward a couple.

'So why again?' Hector pursued.

'Why what?'

'Why do it at all? Why smuggle a dicey package through British Customs for a Russian crook? Why not chuck it in the Caribbean and forget about it?'

'I'd have thought it was pretty obvious.'

'It is to me. I wouldn't have thought it was for you. What's so pretty obvious about it?'

Perry searched, but seemed to have no answer to the question.

'Well how about because it's there?' Hector suggested. 'Isn't that why climbers are supposed to climb?'

'So they say.'

'Load of bollocks, actually. It's because the climbers are there. Don't blame the bloody mountain. Blame the climbers. Agree?'

'Probably.'

'They're the chaps who see the distant peak. The mountain doesn't give a bugger.'

'Probably not, no' – an unconvincing grin.

'Did Dima discuss your own personal involvement in these negotiations at all, should they transpire?' Hector inquired, after what seemed to Perry an endless delay.

'A bit.'

'In what terms – a bit?'

'He wanted me to be present for them.'

'Present why?'

'To see fair play, apparently.'

'Whose fair play, for fuck's sake?'

'Well, yours I'm afraid,' said Perry, reluctantly. 'He wanted me to hold you people to your word. He has an aversion to apparatchiks, as you may have noticed. He wants to admire you because you're English gentlemen, but he doesn't trust you because you're apparatchiks.'

'Is that how you feel?' – peering at Perry with his oversized grey eyes. 'That we're apparatchiks?'

'Probably,' Perry conceded, yet again.

Hector turned to Luke, still seated strictly at his side. 'Luke, old boy, I rather think you have an appointment. We shouldn't keep you.'

'Of course,' said Luke and, with a brisk smile of farewell for Perry, obediently left the room.

*

The malt whisky was from the Isle of Skye. Hector poured two stiff shots and invited Perry to help himself to water.

'So,' he announced. 'Tough question time. Feel up to it?'

How could he not?

'We have a discrepancy. A king-sized one.'

'I'm not aware of any.'

'I am. It concerns what you have not written to us in your alpha-plus essay, and what you have so far omitted from your otherwise flawless viva voce. Shall I spell it out, or will you?'

Noticeably ill at ease, Perry shrugged again. 'You do it.'

'Gladly. In both performances you have failed to report a key clause in Dima's terms and conditions as relayed to us in the package you ingeniously smuggled through Gatwick Airport in your shaving bag or, as we oldies prefer to call it, sponge bag. Dima insists – not a bit, as you suggest, but as a breakpoint – and Tamara insists, which I suspect is even more important, despite appearances – that you, Perry, be present at all negotiations, and that the said negotiations be conducted in the English language for your benefit. Did he happen to mention that condition to you in the course of his meanderings?'

'Yes.'

'But you saw fit not to mention it to us.'

'Yes.'

'Was that by any chance because Dima and Tamara also stipulate the participation not merely of Professor Makepiece but of a lady they are pleased to describe as Madam Gail Perkins?'

'No,' Perry said, his voice and jaw rigid.

'No? No what? No, you didn't unilaterally edit that condition out of your written and oral accounts?'

Perry's response was so vehement and precise that it was apparent he had been preparing it for some time. But first he closed his eyes as if to consult his inner demons. 'I'll do it for Dima. I'll even do it for you people. But I'll do it alone or not at all.'

'While in the same rambling diatribe addressed to us,' Hector pursued, in a tone that took no account of the dramatic statement of which Perry had just delivered himself, 'Dima also refers to a scheduled meeting in Paris this coming June. The 7th, to be precise. A meeting not with us despised apparatchiks at all, but with yourself and Gail, which struck us as a bit peculiar. Can you account for that by any chance?'

Perry either couldn't or wouldn't. He was scowling into the half-darkness, one long hand cupped across his mouth as if to muzzle it.

'He appears to be proposing a tryst,' Hector went on. 'Or more accurately, referring to one that he's already proposed and you have apparently agreed to. Where's it to be, one wonders? Under the Eiffel Tower at the stroke of midnight and bring a copy of yesterday's Figaro?'

'No, it bloody well wasn't.'

'So where?'

With a muttered 'sod it, then' Perry dipped a hand into his jacket pocket, drew out a blue envelope, and slapped it gracelessly on to the oval table. It was unsealed. Picking it up, Hector meticulously drew back the flap with his skinny white fingertips, extracted two pieces of printed blue card, and unfolded them. Then a sheet of white paper, also folded.

'And these tickets are for where exactly?' he inquired after a perplexed study that by any normal standards would long ago have given him his answer.

'Can't you read it? Men's Final of the French Open. Roland Garros, Paris.'

'And you came by them how?'

'I was settling our bill at the hotel. Gail was packing. Ambrose handed them to me.'

'Together with this nice note from Tamara?'

'Correct. Together with the nice note from Tamara. Well done.'

'Tamara's note was enclosed in the envelope with the tickets, I take it. Or was it separate?'

'Tamara's note was in a separate envelope, which was sealed, and which I have since destroyed,' Perry said, his voice clotting in anger. 'The two tickets to the Roland Garros Tennis Stadium were in an envelope that was unsealed. That is the envelope you are holding in your hand now. I discarded the envelope containing Tamara's letter, and placed her letter inside it with the tickets.'

'Marvellous. May I read it?'

He did anyway:

'We invite you please to bring Gail for your companion. We shall be happy to reunite with you.' 'For God's sake,' Perry muttered.

'Please be available in Allee Marcel-Bernard of Roland Garros enclosure fifteen (15) minutes before commencement of match. There are many shops in this allee. Please pay particular attention to display of Adidas materials. It will appear big surprise to meet you. It will appear coincidence ordained by God. Please discuss this matter with your British officials. They will understand this situation.

'Please also accept hospitality at special box of Arena company representative. It will be convenient if responsible person of secret authority of Great Britain will be in Paris at this period for very discreet discussion. Please enable this.

'In God we love you,

'Tamara.'

'Is this all of it?'

'All.'

'And you're distressed. Embittered. Pissed off at having to show your hand.'

'As a matter of fact, I'm pretty fucking furious,' Perry agreed.

'Well, before you explode completely, let me give you a bit of gratuitous background. It may be all you get.' He was leaning forward across the table, his grey, zealot's eyes gleaming with excitement. 'Dima has two vitally important signings coming up at which he will formally pass over his entire, extremely ingenious money-laundering system to younger hands: namely, the Prince and his retinue. The sums of money involved are astronomic. The first signing is in Paris on Monday June 8th, the day after your tennis party. The second and final signing – we may say terminal – takes place in Berne two days later on Wednesday June 10th. Once Dima has signed away his life's work – ergo, post the Berne signing on June 10th – he will be ripe for the same unfriendly treatment dealt out to his friend Misha: whacking, in other words. I mention this in parenthesis in order to make you aware of the depth of Dima's planning, the desperate straits he's in, and the accrued billions – literally – at stake. Until he's signed, he's immune. You can't shoot your milk-cow. Once he's signed, he's dead meat.'

'So why on earth go to Moscow for the funeral?' Perry objected, in a remote voice.

'Well, you and I wouldn't, would we now?' Hector agreed. 'But we're not vory, and vengeance exacts its price. So does survival. For as long as he hasn't signed, he's bulletproof. Can we go back to you?'

'If you must.'

'We both must. You mentioned a moment ago that you were pretty fucking furious. Well, I think you've every right to be pretty fucking furious, and with yourself, because at one level – the level of normal social intercourse – you are behaving, in admittedly difficult circumstances, like a chauvinistic arsehole. No good bristling like that. Look at the hash you've made of it so far. Gail's not aboard, she's pining to be. I don't know what century you think you're living in, but she's as much entitled as you are to make her own decisions. Were you seriously considering doing her out of a free ticket to the Men's Final of the French Open? Gail? – your partner in tennis, as in life?'

His hand once more cupped over his mouth, Perry emitted a stifled groan.

'Quite so. Now for the other level: that of abnormal social discourse. My level, Luke's level. Dima's. What you have realized, perfectly correctly, is that you and Gail have wandered by sheer accident into a richly planted minefield. And like any decent person of your stamp, your first instinct is to get Gail the hell out of it, and keep her out of it. You have also worked out, unless I'm mistaken, that you personally, by listening to Dima's offer, by transmitting it to us, and by being appointed umpire or observer or whatever he wants to call it, are by vory law, by the reckoning of the people Dima is proposing to blow the whistle on, a legitimate case for the extreme sanction. Agreed?'

Agreed.

'To what extent Gail is potential collateral damage is an open question. You've no doubt thought of that too.'

Perry had.

'So let's count up the big questions. Big question one: are you, Perry, morally entitled not to acquaint Gail with the peril she's in? Answer in my view: no. Big question two: are you morally entitled to deny her the choice of coming aboard once she has been so acquainted, given that she has an emotional investment in the children of Dima's household, not to mention her feelings for yourself? Answer in my view: again no, but we can argue about that later. And three, which is a bit toe-curling but we do have to ask: are you, Perry, is she, Gail, are you as a couple, attracted to the idea of doing something fucking dangerous for your country, for virtually no reward except what is loosely called the honour of it, on the clear understanding that if you ever bubble about it, even to your nearest and dearest, we'll hound you to the ends of the earth?' He allowed a pause for Perry to speak, but Perry didn't, so he went on:

'You're on record as believing that our green and pleasant land is in dire need of saving from itself. I happen to share that opinion. I've studied the disease, I've lived in the swamp. It is my informed conclusion that we are suffering, as an ex-great nation, from top-down corporate rot. And that's not just the judgement of an ailing old fart. A lot of people in my Service make a profession of not seeing things in black and white. Do not confuse me with them. I'm a late-onset, red-toothed radical with balls. Still with me?'

A reluctant nod.

'Dima is holding out to you, as I am, an opportunity to do something instead of bleating about it. You in return are straining at the leash while pretending to do no such thing, a posture I consider fundamentally dishonest. So my strong recommendation is: call Gail now, put her out of her misery, and when you get back to Primrose Hill fill her in on every detail, however slight, that you have so far kept from her. Then bring her back here at nine o'clock tomorrow morning. This morning, come to think of it. Ollie will collect you. You then sign an even more draconian and illiterate document than the one you both signed today, and we'll tell you as much of the remainder of the story as we can without queering your pitch if you do decide between you to take the trip to Paris – and as little as we can get away with if you decide you won't. If Gail wishes to demur separately, that's her business, but I'll give you a hundred to nine she'll stay aboard to the bitter end.'

Perry finally lifted his head.

'How?'

'How what?'

'Save England how? From what? All right, from itself. What bit of itself?'

Now it was Hector's turn to reflect. 'You'll just have to take our word for it.'

'Your Service's word?'

'For the time being, yes.'

'On the strength of what? Aren't you supposed to be the gentlemen who lie for the good of their country?'

'That's diplomats. We're not gentlemen.'

'So you lie to save your hides.'

'That's politicians. Different game entirely.'