Our kind of traitor

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 funeraclass="underline" "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.