‘When you passed through Customs at Gatwick?’
‘Yes.’
‘You thought that’s where everybody keeps their cassettes?’
‘I just thought it would be’ – he shrugged.
‘Less conspicuous in a shaving bag?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Did Gail know?’
‘What? Of course not. No.’
‘I should think not. Is the recording in Russian or English?’
‘How on earth do I know? I didn’t listen to it.’
‘Dima didn’t tell you which language it was in?’
‘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 Allée Marcel-Bernard of Roland Garros enclosure fifteen (15) minutes before commencement of match. There are many shops in this allée. 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 resp
onsible 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.’
‘So why on earth go to Moscow for the funeral?’ Perry objected, in a remote voice.
‘Well, you and I wouldn’t, would we now?’ Hector agreed. ‘But we’re not vory, and vengeance exacts its price. So does survival. For as long as he hasn’t signed, he’s bulletproof. Can we go back to you?’
‘If you must.’
‘We both must. You mentioned a moment ago that you were pretty fucking furious. Well, I think you’ve every right to be pretty fucking furious, and with yourself, because at one level – the level of normal social intercourse – you are behaving, in admittedly difficult circumstances, like a chauvinistic arsehole. No good bristling like that. Look at the hash you’ve made of it so far. Gail’s not aboard, she’s pining to be. I don’t know what century you think you’re living in, but she’s as much entitled as you are to make her own decisions. Were you seriously considering doing her out of a free ticket to the Men’s Final of the French Open? Gail? – your partner in tennis, as in life?’
His hand once more cupped over his mouth, Perry emitted a stifled groan.
‘Quite so. Now for the other level: that of abnormal social discourse. My level, Luke’s level. Dima’s. What you have realized, perfectly correctly, is that you and Gail have wandered by sheer accident into a richly planted minefield. And like any decent person of your stamp, your first instinct is to get Gail the hell out of it, and keep her out of it. You have also worked out, unless I’m mistaken, that you personally, by listening to Dima’s offer, by transmitting it to us, and by being appointed umpire or observer or whatever he wants to call it, are by vory law, by the reckoning of the people Dima is proposing to blow the whistle on, a legitimate case for the extreme sanction. Agreed?’
Agreed.
‘To what extent Gail is potential collateral damage is an open question. You’ve no doubt thought of that too.’
Perry had.
‘So let’s count up the big questions. Big question one: are you, Perry, morally entitled not to acquaint Gail with the peril she’s in? Answer in my view: no. Big question two: are you morally entitled to deny her the choice of coming aboard once she has been so acquainted, given that she has an emotional investment in the children of Dima’s household, not to mention her feelings for yourself? Answer in my view: again no, but we can argue about that later. And three, which is a bit toe-curling but we do have to ask: are you, Perry, is she, Gail, are you as a couple, attracted to the idea of doing something fucking dangerous for your country, for virtually no reward except what is loosely called the honour of it, on the clear understanding that if you ever bubble about it, even to your nearest and dearest, we’ll hound you to the ends of the earth?’ He allowed a pause for Perry to speak, but Perry didn’t, so he went on:
‘You’re on record as believing that our green and pleasant land is in dire need of saving from itself. I happen to share that opinion. I’ve studied the disease, I’ve lived in the swamp. It is my informed conclusion that we are suffering, as an ex-great nation, from top-down corporate rot. And that’s not just the judgement of an ailing old fart. A lot of people in my Service make a profession of not seeing things in black and white. Do not confuse me with them. I’m a late-onset, red-toothed radical with balls. Still with me?’
A reluctant nod.
‘Dima is holding out to you, as I am, an opportunity to do something instead of bleating about it. You in return are straining at the leash while pretending to do no such thing, a posture I consider fundamentally dishonest. So my strong recommendation is: call Gail now, put her out of her misery, and when you get back to Primrose Hill fill her in on every detail, however slight, that you have so far kept from her. Then bring her back here at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. This morning, come to think of it. Ollie will collect you. You then sign an even more draconian and illiterate document than the one you both signed today, and we’ll tell you as much of the remainder of the story as we can without queering your pitch if you do decide between you to take the trip to Paris – and as little as we can get away with if you decide you won’t. If Gail wishes to demur separately, that’s her business, but I’ll give you a hundred to nine she’ll stay aboard to the bitter end.’
Perry finally lifted his head.
‘How?’
‘How what?’
‘Save England how? From what? All right, from itself. What bit of itself?’
Now it was Hector’s turn to reflect. ‘You’ll just have to take our word for it.’
‘Your Service’s word?’
‘For the time being, yes.’
‘On the strength of what? Aren’t you supposed to be the gentlemen who lie for the good of their country?’
‘That’s diplomats. We’re not gentlemen.’
‘So you lie to save your hides.’
‘That’s politicians. Different game entirely.’
8
At midday of a sunny Sunday, ten hours after Perry Makepiece returned to Primrose Hill to make his peace with Gail, Luke Weaver renounced his place at the family lunch table – his wife Eloise having cooked a plump free-range chicken and bread sauce specially, his son Ben having invited an Israeli school friend – and with his apologies ringing in his ears, abandoned the red-bricked terrace house on Parliament Hill that he could ill afford, and set off for what he believed was the decisive meeting of his chequered Intelligence career.
His destination, as far as Eloise and Ben were allowed to know, was his Service’s hideous riverside headquarters in Lambeth, dubbed by Eloise, who was of aristocratic French extraction, la Lubianka-sur-Tamise. In reality it was Bloomsbury, as it had been for the last three months. His chosen mode of transport, either in spite of the tension brewing in him or because of it, was neither tube nor bus, but shanks’s pony, a habit he had acquired during his stints in Moscow where three hours of pavement-bashing in all weathers were standard fare if you were looking to clear a dead letter box or sidestep into an open doorway for a thirty-second breathless handover of cash and materials.
To reach Bloomsbury from Parliament Hill on foot, a walk for which Luke customarily allowed himself a good hour, it was his practice, so far as possible, to take a different route each day, the purpose being not to shake off notional pursuers, though the thought was seldom far from his head, but to savour the byways of a city he was keen to get to know again after years of service overseas.
And today, what with the sunshine and the need to clear his head for action, he had decided on a stroll thro
ugh Regent’s Park before swinging eastwards across town; and to that end had added an extra half-hour to his journey. His mood, shot through with anticipation and excitement, was also one of dread. He had slept little if at all. He needed to steady the kaleidoscope. He needed ordinary, unsecret folk to look at, flowers, and the world outside.
‘A wholehearted yes from him, and a wholehearted yes, damn you from her,’ Hector had enthused over the encrypted phone. ‘Billy Boy will hear us out at two this afternoon and the Lord is in His Heaven.’
*
Six months ago, when Luke was back on home leave after three years in Bogotá, the Queen of Human Resources, disrespectfully known throughout the Service as the Human Queen, had informed him that he was headed for the shelf. He had expected no less. All the same, her message took him a few painful seconds to decode:
‘The Service is surviving the recession with its usual proverbial resilience, Luke,’ she assured him, in a tone so blithely optimistic that he could have been forgiven for thinking that, far from being thrown out on his ear, he was about to be offered a Regional Directorship. ‘Our stock in Whitehall has frankly never been higher, I’m pleased to say, nor our job of recruitment easier. Eighty per cent of our latest intake of young hopefuls have got First Class Honours degrees from decent universities and nobody talks about Iraq any more. Some of them Double Firsts. Would you believe it?’
Luke would believe it, but forbore from saying that he had acquitted himself pretty decently for twenty years on the strength of a modest Second.
The only real problem these days, she explained, in the same determinedly upbeat tone, was that men of Luke’s calibre and pay grade who had reached their natural watershed were becoming harder and harder to place. And some just couldn’t be placed at all, she lamented. But what was she to do – tell her – with a young Chief who liked his staff to have no Cold War baggage attached to them? It was just too sad.
So the very best she could manage, she was afraid, Luke, superb as he’d been in Bogotá, and terribly brave – and incidentally the way he conducted his private life was nothing whatever to do with her, provided it didn’t affect his work, which patently it hadn’t – all spoken in a gabble between brackets – would be a temporary vacancy in Administration until the present incumbent returned from her maternity leave.