Our kind of traitor

'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.'