Our kind of traitor

'Got a minute?'

Luke leads Perry to the kitchen, where Ollie is wrestling with an obstinate deep fryer that refuses to achieve the desired heat for the home-made chips.

'Mind giving us a minute, Harry?'

'No problem, Dick.'

'Great news at last, thank God,' Luke began, when Ollie had departed. 'Hector's got a small plane standing by at Belp from eleven p.m. tomorrow GMT, Belp-Northolt. Cleared for take-off and landing and a clean walk both ends. God knows how he's swung it, but he has. We'll jeep Dima over the mountain to Grund once it's dark, then drive him straight to Belp. As soon as he touches down in Northolt they'll take him to a safe house, and if he delivers what he says he'll deliver, they'll officially land him, and the rest of the family can follow.'

'If he delivers?' Perry repeated, tilting his long head quizzically to one side in a way that Luke found particularly irksome.

'Well he will, won't he? We know that. It's the only deal on the table,' Luke went on when Perry said nothing. 'Our masters in Whitehall won't have the family round their necks until they know Dima's worth his salt.' And when Perry still failed to respond: 'It's as far as Hector can get them to move without due process. So I'm afraid that's it.'

'Due process,' Perry repeated at last.

'That's what we're dealing with, I'm afraid.'

'I thought it was people.'

'It is,' Luke retorted, flaring. 'Which is why Hector wants you to be the person who tells Dima. He thinks it's best coming from you rather than me. I fully agree. I suggest you don't do it now. Early tomorrow evening will be quite soon enough. We don't need him brooding all night. I suggest six-ish, to give him time to make his preparations.'

Has the man no give in him? Luke wondered. How long am I supposed to meet this lopsided stare?

'And if he doesn't deliver?' Perry inquired.

'Nobody's got that far. It's step by step. That's the way these things are played, I'm afraid. Nothing's a straight line.' And letting himself slip, and instantly regretting it: 'We're not academics here. We do action.'

'I need to talk to Hector.'

'That's what he said you'd say. He's standing by for your call.'

*

Alone, Perry walked up the path to the woods where he had walked with Dima. Reaching a bench, he swept away the evening dew with the flat of his hand, sat down, and waited for his thoughts to clear. In the lighted house below him, he could see Gail, the four children and Natasha squatting in a ring on the floor of the sun room with the Monopoly board at their centre. He heard a squawk of outrage from Katya, followed by a bark of protest from Alexei. Dragging his mobile from his pocket he stared at it in the twilight before touching the button for Hector and immediately hearing his voice.

'You want the dolled-up version, or the hard truth?'

This was the old Hector, the one he relished, the one who had berated him in the safe house in Bloomsbury.

'The hard truth will do fine.'

'Here it is. If we bring our boy over, they'll listen to him and they'll form a judgement. It's the best I can get out of them. As of yesterday they weren't prepared to go that far.'

'They?'

'The authorities. The them. Who the fuck d'you think? If he doesn't measure up, they'll throw him back in the water.'

'What water?'

'Russian probably. What's the difference? The point is, he will measure up. I know he will, you know he will. Once they've decided to keep him, which won't take more than a day or two, they'll buy into the whole catastrophe: his wife, kids, his pal's kids, and his dog if he's got one.'

'He hasn't.'

'The nub of it is, they've accepted the whole package in principle.'

'What principle?'

'D'you mind? I've been listening to over-educated arseholes from Whitehall splitting hairs all morning and I don't need another. We've got a deal. As long as our boy comes through with the goods, the rest of them follow with due expedition. That's their promise, and I've got to believe them.'

Perry closed his eyes and took a breath of mountain air.

'What are you asking me to do?'

'No more than you've done from day one. Compromise your noble principles for the greater good. Soft-soap him. If you tell him it's a maybe, he won't come. If you tell him we accept his terms without qualification, but there will be a short delay before he's reunited with his loved ones, he will. Are you still there?'

'Partly.'

'You tell him the truth, but you tell it selectively. Give him half a chance to think we're playing dirty on him, he'll grab it. We may be fair-play English gentlemen, but we're also perfidious Albion shits. Did you hear that or am I talking to the wall?'

'I heard it.'

'Then tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I'm misreading him. Tell me you know a better plan. It's you or nobody. This is your finest hour. If he won't believe you, he won't believe anyone.'

*

They lay in bed. It was after midnight. Gail, half asleep, had barely spoken.

'It's been taken away from him somehow,' Perry said.

'Hector?'

'That's how it feels.'

'Perhaps it was never his in the first place,' Gail suggested. And after a while: 'Have you decided yet?'

'No.'

'Then I think you have. I think no decision's a decision. I think you've decided, and that's why you can't sleep.'

*

It was the next evening, quarter to six. Ollie's cheese fondue had been enjoyed and cleared away. Dima and Perry remained alone in the dining room, standing face to face under a multi-coloured metal alloy chandelier. Luke was taking a tactful stroll in the village. The girls, with Gail's encouragement, were watching Mary Poppins again. Tamara had removed herself to the sitting room.

'It's all the apparatchiks can offer,' said Perry. 'You go ahead to London tonight, your family follows in a couple of days. The apparatchiks insist on that. They have to obey the rules. Rules for everything. Even this.'

He was using short sentences, watching for the smallest change in Dima's features, for a hint of softening, or a glimmer of understanding, even of resistance, but the face before him was unreadable.

'They want I go alone?'

'Not alone. Dick will be flying to London with you. As soon as the formalities are completed, and the apparatchiks have satisfied their rules, we all follow you to England. And Gail will look after Natasha,' he added, hoping to allay what he imagined would be Dima's first concern.

'She ill, my Natasha?'

'Good Lord no. She's not ill! She's young. She's beautiful. Temperamental. Pure. She'll need a lot of looking after in a strange country, that's all.'

'Sure,' Dima agreed, nodding his bald head to confirm this. 'Sure. She beautiful like her mother.'

Then jerked his head abruptly sideways, then downwards, as he stared into some dark gulf of anxiety or memory to which Perry was not admitted. Does he know? Has Tamara, in a fit of spite or intimacy or forgetfulness, told him? Has Dima, contrary to all Natasha's expectations, taken her secret and pain upon himself instead of tearing off in search of Max? What was certain to Perry was that the outburst of fury and refusal that he had anticipated was giving way to a prisoner's dawning sense of resignation in the face of bureaucratic authority; and this realization disturbed Perry more deeply than any violent outburst could have done.

'A couple days, huh?' Dima repeated, making it sound like a life sentence.

'A couple of days is what they say.'

'Tom say that? Couple days?'

'Yes.'

'He's some good fellow, Tom, huh?'

'I believe he is.'

'Dick too. He nearly kill that fucker.'

They digested this thought together.