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.