Our Kind of Traitor
A what? A Maltese Cross? Can he then be a Knight of Malta? Or is it a gallantry medal? Or a foreign order? Or did he buy it as a present to himself? In the small hours of morning, Luke and Yvonne have thought long and hard about it. No, they agreed. He stole it.
Signor Emilio dell Oro, Italian Swiss national, resident in Lugano, reads the subtitle, drafted this time by Luke under strict instructions from Hector to keep the description carbon neutral. International socialite, horseman, Kremlin power-broker.
Once again, Hector has awarded himself the best lines:
‘Real name, far as we can get it, Stanislav Auros. Polish-Armenian, Turkish antecedents, self-educated, self-invented, brilliant. Currently the Prince’s major-domo, enabler, factotum, social advisor and frontman.’ And with no pause or alteration in his voice: ‘Billy, why don’t you take him over from here? You know more about him than I do.’
Is Matlock ever to be outmanoeuvred? Apparently not, for he is back without so much as a second’s thought:
‘I fear I’m losing you, Hector. Be so kind as to remind me, if you will.’
Hector will. He has revived remarkably:
‘Our recent childhood, Billy. Before we become grown-ups. A midsummer’s day, as I recall it. I was Head of Station in Prague, you were Head of Operations in London. You authorized me to drop fifty thousand US dollars in small notes into the boot of Stanislav’s parked white Mercedes at dead of night, no questions asked. Except that in those days he wasn’t Stanislav, he was Monsieur Fabian Lazaar. He never once turned his pretty head to say thank you. I don’t know what he earned his money for, but no doubt you do. He was making his way up in those days. Stolen artefacts, mostly from Iraq. Chaperoning rich ladies of Geneva out of their husbands’ cash. Hawking diplomatic pillow talk to the highest bidder. Maybe that’s what we were buying. Was it?’
‘I did not run Stanislav or Fabian, thank you, Hector. Or Mr dell Oro, or whatever he calls himself. He was not my joe. At the time you made that payment to him, I was merely standing in.’
‘Who for?’
‘My predecessor. Do you mind not interrogating me, Hector? The boot’s on the other foot, if you’ve not noticed. Aubrey Longrigg was my predecessor, Hector, as you well know, and come to think of it will remain so for as long as I’m in this job. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten Aubrey Longrigg, or I’ll think Dr Alzheimer has paid you an unwelcome visit. Sharpest needle in the box, Aubrey was, right up to his somewhat premature departure. Even if he did overstep the mark occasionally, same as you.’
In defence, Luke recalled, Matlock knew only attack.
‘And believe you me, Hector,’ he rode on, gathering reinforcements as he went, ‘if my predecessor Aubrey Longrigg needed fifty grand paying out to his joe just as Aubrey was leaving the Service to go on to higher things, and if Aubrey requested me to undertake that task on his behalf in full and final settlement of a certain private understanding, which he did, I was not about to turn around and say to Aubrey: “Hang on a minute, Aubrey, while I obtain special clearance and check your story out.” Well, was I? Not with Aubrey! Not the way Aubrey and the Chief were in those days, hand in glove, hugger-mugger, I’d be off my head, wouldn’t I?’
The old steel had at last re-entered Hector’s voice:
‘Well, why don’t we take a look at Aubrey as he is today:
Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Member of Parliament for one of his Party’s most deprived constituencies, staunch defender of the rights of women, valued consultant to the Ministry of Defence on arms procurement and’ – softly snapping his fingers and frowning as if he really has forgotten – ‘what else is he, Luke? – something, I know.’
And bang on cue, Luke hears himself trilling out the answer:
‘Chairman designate of the new parliamentary subcommittee on banking ethics.’
‘And not completely out of touch with our Service either, I suppose?’ Hector suggested.
‘I suppose not,’ Luke agrees, though why on earth Hector should have regarded him as an authority at that moment was hard to tell.
*
Perhaps it’s only right that we spies, even our retired ones, do not take naturally to being photographed, Luke reflected. Perhaps we nurture a secret fear that the Great Wall between our outer and inner selves will be pierced by the camera’s lens.
Certainly Aubrey Longrigg MP gave that impression. Even caught unawares in poor light by an inferior video camera hand-held fifty metres away across the water, Longrigg seemed to be hugging whatever shadow the fairy-lit deck of the Princess Tatiana afforded.
Not, it must be said, that the poor chap was naturally photogenic, Luke conceded, once more thanking his lucky stars that their paths had never crossed. Aubrey Longrigg was balding, mean and beaky, as became a man famous for his intolerance of lesser minds than his own. Under the Adriatic sun, his unappetizing features have turned a flaming pink, and the rimless spectacles do little to alter the impression of a fifty-year-old bank clerk – unless, like Luke, you have heard tales of the restless ambition that drives him, the unforgiving intellect that had made the fourth floor a swirling hothouse of innovative ideas and feuding barons, and of his improbable attraction to a certain kind of woman – the kind presumably that gets a kick out of being intellectually belittled – of whom the latest example was standing beside him in the person of: The Lady Janice (Jay) Longrigg, society hostess and fundraiser, followed by Yvonne’s shortlist of the many charities that had reason to be thankful to Lady Longrigg.
She wears a stylish, off-the-shoulder evening dress. Her groomed raven hair is held in place by a diamanté grip. She has a gracious smile and the royal, forward-leaning totter that only Englishwomen of a certain birth and class acquire. And she looks, to Luke’s unsparing eye, ineffably stupid. At her side hover her two pre-pubescent daughters in party frocks.
‘She’s his new one, right?’ Matlock the unabashed Labour supporter suddenly sang out, with improbable vigour, as the screen went blank at Hector’s touch, and the overhead light came on. ‘The one he married when he decided to fast-lane himself into politics without doing any of the dirty work. Some Labourite Aubrey Longrigg is, I will say! Old or new!’
*
Why was Matlock so jovial again? – and this time for real? The last thing Luke had expected of him was outright laughter, which in Matlock was at the best of times a rare commodity. Yet his big, tweedy torso was heaving with silent mirth. Was it because Longrigg and Matlock had for years been famously at daggers drawn? That to enjoy the favour of the one had been to attract the hostility of the other? That Longrigg had come to be known as the Chief’s brain, and Matlock, unkindly, as his brawn? That with Longrigg’s departure, office wits had likened their feud to a decade-long bullfight in which the bull had put in la puntilla?
‘Yes, well, always a high-flyer, Aubrey was,’ he was remarking, like a man remembering the dead. ‘Quite the financial wizard too, as I recall. Not in your league, Hector, I’m pleased to say, but getting up there. Operational funds were never a problem, that’s for sure, not while Aubrey was at the helm. I mean, how did he ever come to be on that boat to begin with?’ – asked the same Matlock who only minutes ago had asserted that a man couldn’t be condemned for being on someone’s boat. ‘Plus consorting with a former secret source after departing the Service, which the rule book has some very firm things to say about, particularly if said source is a slippery customer like – whatever he calls himself these days.’
‘Emilio dell Oro,’ Hector put in helpfully. ‘One to remember, actually, Billy.’
‘You’d think he’d know better, Aubrey would, after what we taught him, consorting with Emilio dell Oro, then. You’d think a man of Aubrey’s somewhat serpentine skills would be more circumspect in his choice of friend. How come he happened to be there? Perhaps he had a good reason. We shouldn’t prejudge him.’
‘One of those happy strokes of luck, Billy,’ Hector e
xplained. ‘Aubrey and his newest wife and her daughters were enjoying a camping holiday up in the hills above the Adriatic Coast. A London banking chum of Aubrey’s called him up, name unknown, told him the Tatiana was anchored near by and there was a party going on, so hurry on down and join the fun.’
‘Under canvas? Aubrey? Tell me another.’
‘Roughing it in a campsite. The populist life of New Labour Aubrey, man of the people.’
‘Do you go on camping holidays, Luke?’
‘Yes, but Eloise hates British campsites. She’s French,’ he replied, sounding idiotic to himself.
‘And when you go on your camping holidays, Luke – taking care, as you do, to avoid British campsites – do you as a rule take your dinner jacket with you?’
‘No.’
‘And Eloise, does she take her diamonds with her?’
‘She hasn’t got any, actually.’
Matlock thought about this. ‘I suppose you bumped into Aubrey quite a lot, did you, Hector, while you were cutting your lucrative swathe in the City, and others of us went on doing our duty? Had the odd jar together now and then, did you, you and Aubrey? The way City folk do?’
Hector gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Bumped into each other now and then. Haven’t got a lot of time for naked ambition, to be honest. Bores me.’
At which Luke, to whom dissembling these days did not come quite as easily as it used to, had to restrain himself from grasping the arms of his chair.
*
Bumped into each other? Dear Heaven, they had fought each other to a standstill – and then gone on fighting. Of all the vulture capitalists, asset-strippers, dawn-raiders and carpet-buggers that ever stepped – according to Hector – Aubrey Longrigg was the most two-faced, devious, backsliding, dishonest and well-connected.
It was Aubrey Longrigg lurking in the wings who had led the assault on Hector’s family grain firm. It was Longrigg who, through a dubious but cleverly assembled network of cut-outs, had cajoled Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs into storming Hector’s warehouses at dead of night, slashing open hundreds of sacks, smashing down doors and terrifying the night shift.
It was Longrigg’s insidious network of Whitehall contacts that had unleashed Health & Safety, the Inland Revenue, the Fire Department and the Immigration Service to harass and intimidate the family employees, ransack their desks, seize their account books and challenge their tax returns.
But Aubrey Longrigg was not mere enemy in Hector’s eyes – that would have been too easy altogether – he was an archetype; a classic symptom of the canker that was devouring not just the City, but our most precious institutions of government.
Hector was at war not with Longrigg personally. Probably he was speaking the truth when he told Matlock that Longrigg bored him, for it was an essential pillar of his thesis that the men and women he was pursuing were by definition bores: mediocre, banal, insensitive, lacklustre, to be distinguished from other bores only by their covert support for one another, and their insatiable greed.
*
Hector’s commentary has become perfunctory. Like a magician who doesn’t want you to look too closely at any one card, he is shuffling swiftly through the pack of international rogues that Yvonne has put together for him.
Glimpse a tubby, imperious, very small man loading up his plate from the buffet:
‘Known in German circles as Karl der Kleine,’ Hector says dismissively. ‘Half a Wittelsbach – which half eludes me. Bavarian, pitch-black Catholic as they say down there; close ties with the Vatican. Closer still with the Kremlin. Indirectly elected member of the Bundestag – and non-executive director of a clutch of Russian oil companies, big chum of Emilio dell Oro’s. Skied with him last year in St Moritz, took his Spanish boyfriend along. The Saudis love him. Next lovely.’
Cut too quickly to a bearded beautiful boy in a glittering magenta cape making lavish conversation with two bejewelled matrons:
‘Karl der Kleine’s latest pet,’ Hector announces. ‘Sentenced to three years’ hard labour by a Madrid court last year for aggravated assault, got off on a technicality, thanks to Karl. Recently appointed non-executive director of the Arena group of companies, same lot that own the Prince’s yacht – ah, now here’s one to watch’ – flick of the console – ‘Doctor Evelyn Popham of Mount Street, Mayfair; Bunny to his friends. Studied law in Neuchâtel and Manchester. Licensed to practise in Switzerland, courtier and pimp to the Surrey oligarchs, sole partner of his own flourishing West End law firm. Internationalist, bon viveur, bloody good lawyer. Bent as a hairpin. Where’s his website? Hold on. Find it in a moment. Leave me alone, Luke. There you are. Got it.’
On the plasma screen, while Hector fumbles and mutters, Dr (Bunny-to-his-friends) Popham continues to beam patiently down on his audience. He is a rotund, jolly gentleman with chubby cheeks and side-whiskers, drawn straight from the pages of Beatrix Potter. Improbably he sports tennis whites and is clutching, in addition to his racquet, a comely female tennis partner.
The home page of The Dr Popham & No Partners website, when it finally appears, is mastered by the same cheerful face, smiling over the top of a quasi-royal coat of arms featuring the scales of justice. Beneath him runs his Mission Statement:
My expert team’s professional experience includes:
– successfully protecting the rights of leading individuals in the international entrepreneurial banking sphere against Serious Fraud Office investigations
– successfully representing key international clients in matters regarding offshore jurisdiction, and their right to silence at international and UK tribunals of inquiry
– successfully responding to importunate regulatory inquiries and tax investigations and charges of improper or illegal payments to influence-makers.
‘And the buggers can’t stop playing tennis,’ Hector complains as his rogues’ gallery recovers at its former spanking pace.
*
In short order, we’re in the sporting clubs of Monte Carlo, Cannes, Madeira and the Algarve. We’re in Biarritz and Bologna. We’re trying to keep up with Yvonne’s captions, and her album of fun photographs plundered from society magazines, but it’s hard, unless like Luke you know what to expect and why.
But however swiftly faces and places change under Hector’s volatile management, however many beautiful people in state-of-the-art tennis gear whisk by, five players repeatedly assert themselves:
– jocular Bunny Popham, your lawyer of choice for responding to importunate regulatory inquiries and charges of illegal payments to influence-makers
– ambitious, intolerant Aubrey Longrigg, retired spy, Member of Parliament and family camper, with his latest aristocratic and charitable wife
– Her Majesty’s Minister-of-State-in-Waiting, and specialist-to-be in banking ethics
– the self-taught, self-invented, vivacious and charming socialite and polyglot Emilio dell Oro, Swiss national and globe-trotting financier, addicted – we are told by a scanned press cutting that you have to be quick as lightning to read – to ‘adrenalin sports from bareback riding in the Ural Mountains, heli-skiing in Canada, tennis in the fast lane, and playing the Moscow Stock Exchange’, who gets longer than his due, owing to a technical hitch, and finally:
– patrician, urbane public-relations maestro Captain Giles de Salis, Royal Navy, retd., influence-pedlar, specialist in bent peers – presented to the background music of: ‘one of the slimiest buggers in Westminster’ from Hector.
Light on. Change memory stick. House rules dictate: one subject, one stick. Hector likes to keep his flavours separate. Time to go to Moscow.
10
Hector has for once taken a vow of silence: which is to say that, released from his mawkish technical preoccupations, he is sitting back in his chair and allowing the baritone-voiced Russian news commentator to do his work for him. Like Luke, Hector is a convert to the Russian language – and, with reservat
ions, the Russian soul. Like Luke, each time he watches the film that is running, he is by his own admission awestruck in the presence of the classic, timeless, all-Russian, bare-faced whopping lie.
And the Moscow-based television news service can manage very well on its own, without help from Hector or anybody else. The baritone voice is more than capable of imparting its revulsion at the grisly tragedy it is recounting: this senseless drive-by shooting, this wanton cutting-down of a brilliant and devoted Russian couple from Perm in their very prime of life! Little had the victims known, when they decided to visit their beloved homeland from distant Italy where they were based, that their journey of the soul would end here in the ivy-clad graveyard of the ancient seminary they had always loved, with its onion domes and thuja trees, set on a hillside outside Moscow at the edge of gently swelling forest:
On this dark, unseasonable afternoon in May, all Moscow is in mourning for two blameless Russians and their two small daughters who, by the mercy of God, were not present in the car when their parents were shot to pieces by terrorist elements of our society.
See the shattered windows and bullet-riddled doors, the burned-out carcass of a once-noble Mercedes car tossed on to its side between silver birch trees, the innocent Russian blood mingling in brutal close-up with the fuel oil on the tarmac; and the disfigured faces of the victims themselves.
The outrage, the commentator assures us, has aroused the justified anger of all responsible Moscow citizens. When will this menace end? they ask. When will decent Russians be free to travel their own roads without being gunned down by marauding bands of Chechen desperadoes bent on spreading terror and mayhem?
Mikhail Arkadievich – rising international oil and metals trader! Olga L’vovna – selflessly engaged in procuring charitable food supplies on behalf of Russia’s needy! Loving parents of little Katya and Irina! Pure Russians, homesick for the Motherland they will never leave again!