Is Luke's aunt really a member of the Club des Rois? Of course she is! Or her late protector the Comte was a member, what's the difference? Or so Ollie has spun it to them in his persona as Luke's aunt's secretary. And Ollie, as Hector has rightly observed, is the best back-door man in the business, and the aunt will confirm whatever is necessary to confirm.
And Luke is content. He is at his calm, unflurried operational best. He may be a mere tolerated guest, tucked into an unsociable corner of the club room. With his horn-rimmed spectacles and Bluetooth earpiece and open laptop, he may resemble any harassed Monday-morning executive catching up on work he should have done over the weekend.
But safely inside himself, he is in his element: as fulfilled and liberated as he will ever be. He is the steady voice amid the unheard thunder of the battle. He is the forward observation post, reporting to HQ. He is the micro-manager, the constructive worrier, the adjutant with an eye for the vital detail that his beleaguered commander has overlooked or doesn't want to see. To Hector, those two 'Arab policemen' were the product of Perry's overheated concerns for Gail's safety. If they existed at all, they were 'a couple of French coppers with nothing better to do on a Sunday night'. But to Luke they were untested operational Intelligence, neither to be confirmed nor dismissed, but stored away till further information is available.
He glances at his watch, then at the screen. Six minutes since Perry and Dima entered the changing-rooms staircase. Four minutes twenty seconds since Ollie reported them entering the massage room.
Raising his eye-line he takes stock of the scene playing itself out before him: first the Clean Envoys, better known as the Armani kids, sulkily bolting canapes and swilling champagne, not much bothering to talk to their expensive escorts. Their day's work is already over. They have signed. They are halfway to Berne, their next stop. They are bored, hungover and restless. Their women last night were a let-down: or so Luke imagines them to have been. And what is it Gail calls those two Swiss bankers sitting all alone in a corner, drinking sparkling water? Peter and the Wolf.
Perfect, Gail. Everything about her perfect. Look at her now, working the room like a trooper. The fluid body, sweet hips, the endless legs, and the oddly motherly charm. Gail with Bunny Popham. Gail with Giles de Salis. Gail with both of them. Emilio dell Oro, drawn like a moth, attaches himself to their group. So does a stray Russian who can't take his eyes off her. He's the podgy one. He's given up on the champagne and started hitting the vodka. Emilio's eyebrows have risen as he asks a comic question Luke can't hear. Gail comes back with a jokey reply. Luke loves her hopelessly, which is how Luke loves. Always.
Emilio is glancing over Gail's shoulder at the changing-room door. Is that what their joke was about? – Emilio saying, Whatever are those boys doing down there? Shall I go and break it up? And Gail replying, Don't you dare, Emilio, I'm sure they're having a lovely time – which is what she'd say.
Luke into his mouthpiece:
'Time's up.'
Ben, if only you could see me now. See the best of me, not always the bad stuff. A week ago, Ben had pressed a Harry Potter on him. And Luke had tried to read it, really tried. Coming home dog-tired at eleven at night, or lying wakefully alongside his irretrievable wife, he'd tried. And fallen at the first fence. The fantasy stuff made no sense to him – understandably, he might argue, given that his whole life was a fantasy, even his heroism. Because what was so brave about being caught, and allowed to run away?
'So it's good, isn't it?' Ben had said, tired of waiting for his father's response. 'You enjoyed it, Dad. Admit.'
'I did and it's terrific,' Luke said handsomely.
Another lie and they both knew it. Another step away from the person he most loved in the world.
*
'Stop talking, everybody, at once, please. Thank you!' Bunny Popham, queen of the roost, is addressing the unwashed. 'Our brave gladiators have finally agreed to grace us with their presence. Let us all immediately adjourn to the Arena!' A patter of knowing laughter for Arena. 'There are no lions today, apart from Dima. No Christians either, unless the Professor is one, which I can't vouch for.' More laughter. 'Gail, my dear, kindly show us the way. I have seen many gorgeous outfits in my day but none, if I may say, so nicely filled.'
Perry and Dima lead. Gail, Bunny Popham and Emilio dell Oro follow. After them, a couple of clean envoys and their girls. How clean can you get? Then the podgy boy all alone except for his vodka glass. Luke watches them into a coppice of trees and out of sight. A shaft of sun lights up the flowered pathway and goes out.
*
It was the Roland Garros all over again: if only in the sense that neither then nor afterwards did Gail have any consecutive awareness of the great tennis-match-in-the-rain that she was so diligently following. Sometimes she wondered whether the players had any either.
She knew Dima won the toss because he always did. She knew that he chose to stand with his back to the advancing clouds rather than serve.
She remembered thinking that the players put up a pretty good show of competitiveness to begin with and then, like actors when their concentration flags, forgot that they were supposed to be engaged in a life-or-death duel for Dima's honour.
She remembered worrying about Perry sliding on the slippery wet tape that marked out the court. Was he going to do something as bloody silly as sprain his ankle? Then about Dima doing the same thing.
And although, like yesterday's sporting French spectators, she was meticulous in applauding Dima's shots as well as Perry's, it was Perry that she kept her eyes glued on: partly for his protection, partly because she had a notion that she might be able to tell by his body language what sort of luck they'd been having down there in the changing room with Hector.
She remembered also the faint squelch of the slowing ball as it slurped into the wet clay, and how now and then she let herself be transported to the last phase of yesterday's Final, and had to relocate in time present.
And how the balls themselves got increasingly ponderous as the game dragged on. And how Perry in his distraction kept playing the slow ball too early, either hitting it out or – a couple of times to his shame – missing it altogether.
And how Bunny Popham at some point had leaned over her shoulder to ask her whether she would prefer to make a run for it now before the next cloudburst, or stay with her man and go down with the ship?
And how she had taken his invitation as an excuse for vanishing to the loo and checking her mobile on the off-chance that Natasha might have expanded on her most recent communication. But Natasha hadn't. Which meant that matters stood where they had stood at nine this morning, in the ominous words that she knew by heart, even while she reread them: This house is not bearable Tamara is only with God Katya and Irina are tragic my brothers do only football we know a bad fate awaits us all I shall never look at my father in his face again Natasha
Press green to reply, listen to a vacuum, ring off.
*
She was also conscious that, after the second rain break – or was it the third? – gouges began to appear in the sopping clay, which had evidently reached a point where it simply couldn't take any more water. And that in consequence an official gentleman of the Club appeared and remonstrated with Emilio dell Oro, pointing to the state of the court and telling him with sideways brushing movements of the hands 'no more'.