‘It wasn’t intended to be, Billy.’
*
Luke never knew what piece of paper it was that Matlock was drawing from the recesses of his jacket, what it said and didn’t say, whether both signed it or only one, whether there was a copy and if so who kept it and where, because Hector reminded him, not for the first time, that he had an engagement, and he had left the room to keep it by the time Matlock was spreading out his wares on the table.
But he would remember all his life the walk back to Hampstead through the last of the evening sunshine, and wondering whether he might just stop by on Perry and Gail at their flat in Primrose Hill on his way, and urge them to run for their lives while there was time.
And from there his thoughts as so often strayed, with no prompting from him, to the booze-sodden sixty-year-old Colombian drug lord who, for reasons neither he nor Luke would ever understand, decided that instead of providing Luke with Intelligence, which he had done for the last two years, he would lock him up in a stinking jungle stockade for a month and leave him to the tender mercies of his lieutenants, then bring him a set of clean clothes and a bottle of tequila and invite him to find his own way back to Eloise.
11
Of the many emotions that Gail had expected to feel as she boarded the 12.29 Eurostar from St Pancras Station bound for Paris on a cloudy Saturday afternoon in June, relief was about the last of them. Yet relief, albeit hedged around with every sort of caveat and reservation, was what she felt, and if Perry’s face opposite her was anything to go by, so did he. If relief meant clarity, if it meant harmony between them restored, and getting back on track with Natasha and the girls and mopping Perry’s brow when he was doing his Land and Liberty number, then Gail was relieved; which didn’t mean she’d tossed her critical faculties out of the window, or was one half as enchanted as Perry patently was by his role as master-spy.
Perry’s conversion to the cause had come as no big surprise to her, though you had to be a Perry-watcher to know just how far he had moved: from high-minded rejection to outright commitment to what Hector referred to as The Job. Sometimes, it was true, Perry would express residual moral or ethical reservations, even doubts – is this really the only way to handle this? Isn’t there a simpler route to the same end? – but he was capable of asking himself the same question halfway up a thousand-foot overhang.
The original seeds of his conversion, she now realized, had been planted not by Hector but by Dima, who since Antigua had acquired the dimensions of a Rousseau-esque noble savage in the Perry lexicon:
‘Just imagine who we’d have been if we’d been born into his life, Gail. You can’t get away from the fact: it’s practically a badge of honour to be selected by him. And I mean, think of those children!’
Oh, she thought of the children all right. She thought of them day and night, and most particularly she thought about Natasha, which was one reason why she had refrained from suggesting to Perry that, stuck out on a headland in Antigua with the fear of God in him, Dima mightn’t exactly have been spoiled for choice when it came to selecting a messenger, confessor, or prisoner’s friend, or whatever it was that Perry had been appointed, or had appointed himself. She’d always known there was a slumbering romantic in him waiting to be woken when selfless dedication was on offer, and if there was a whiff of danger in the air, so much the better.
The only missing character had been a fellow zealot to sound the bugle: until enter on cue Hector, the charming, witty, falsely relaxed, eternal litigant, as she saw him; the archetypal justice-obsessed client who had spent his life proving he owned the land that Westminster Abbey was built on. And probably if her Chambers spent a hundred years on his case he would be proved right and the courts would find for him. But in the meantime the Abbey would remain pretty much where it was, and life would go on as before.
And Luke? Well, Luke was Luke, as far as Perry was concerned, a safe pair of hands, no argument: a good pro, conscientious, savvy. All the same, it had been a comfort to Perry, he had to admit, to learn that Luke was not, as they had at first assumed, the team leader, but Hector’s lieutenant. And since Hector could do no wrong in Perry’s eyes, this was obviously the right thing for Luke to be.
Gail was not so sure. The more she had seen of Luke over their two weeks of ‘familiarization’, the more inclined she was to regard him – despite his twitchiness and exaggerated courtesy and the worry-ripples that flitted across his face when he thought nobody was looking – as the safer pair of hands; and Hector, with his bold assurances and ribald wit and overwhelming powers of persuasion, as the loose cannon.
That Luke was also in love with her neither surprised nor discomfited her. Men fell in love with her all the time. There was security in knowing where their feelings lay. That Perry was unaware of this came as no surprise to her either. His lack of awareness was also a kind of security.
What disturbed her most was the passion of Hector’s commitment: the sense that he was a man with a mission – the very sense that so enchanted Perry.
‘Oh, I’m still on the testing-bench,’ Perry had said, in one of his throwaway self-denunciations he was so fond of. ‘Hector’s the formed man’ – a distinction he constantly aspired to, and was so reluctant to bestow.
Hector a formed version of Perry? Hector the raw action man who did the stuff Perry only talked about? Well, who was in the front line now? Perry. And who was doing the talking? Hector.
*
And it wasn’t only Hector that Perry was enchanted by. It was Ollie too. Perry, who prided himself on a shrewd eye when it came to deciding who was a good man on a rope, had simply not been able to believe, any more than Gail had, that lumbering, out-of-condition Ollie with his camp ways and single earring and overintelligence, and the buried foreign accent she hadn’t been able to trace and was too polite to question, should turn out to be the model of a born educator: meticulous, articulate, determined to make every lesson fun and every lesson stick.
Never mind it was their precious weekends that were being hijacked, or it was late evening after a wearying day in Chambers or in court; or that Perry had been in Oxford all day attending ball-breaking graduation ceremonies, saying goodbye to his students, clearing out his digs. Ollie within moments had them in his spell, whether they were walled up in the basement, or sitting in a crowded café on Tottenham Court Road with Luke out on the pavement and big Ollie in his cab with his beret on, while they tested the toys from his black museum of fountain pens, blazer buttons and tiepins that could listen, transmit, record, or all of the above; and for the girls, costume jewellery.
‘Now which ones do we think are us, maybe, Gail?’ Ollie had asked when it came to her turn to be fitted. And when she replied, ‘If you want it straight, Ollie, I wouldn’t be seen dead in any of them,’ off they had trotted to Liberty’s to find something that was more her.
Yet the chances of them ever having to use Ollie’s toys were, as he was anxious to tell her, virtually zero:
‘Hector, he wouldn’t dream of letting you near them for the main event, darling. It’s only for the “in case”. It’s for when all of a sudden you’re going to hear something wonderful that nobody was ever expecting, and there’s no risk to life or property or such, and all we need is to be sure you’ve got the necessary know-how to work it.’
With hindsight Gail doubted this. She suspected that Ollie’s toys were in reality teaching aids for instilling psychological dependency in the people who were being taught to play with them.
‘Your familiarization course will proceed at your convenience, not ours,’ Hector had informed them, addressing his newly recruited troops on their first evening in a pompous voice she never heard him use again – so perhaps he too was nervous. ‘Perry, if you find yourself stuck in Oxford for an unscheduled meeting or whatever, stay stuck and give us a call. Gail, whatever you do at Chambers, don’t push your luck. The message is act natural and look busy. Any alteration in eithe
r of your lifestyles will raise eyebrows and be counter-productive. With me?’
Next, he reiterated for Gail’s benefit the promise he had made to Perry:
‘We shall tell you as little as we can get away with, but whatever we do tell you will be the truth. You’re a pair of innocents abroad. That’s how Dima wants you, and that’s how I want you, and so do Luke and Ollie here. What you don’t know you can’t fuck up. Every new face has got to be a new face to you. Every first time has got to be a first time. Dima’s plan is to launder you the way he launders money. Launder you into his social landscape, make you respectable currency. Effectively, he’ll be under house arrest wherever he goes, and will have been since Moscow. That’s his problem and he’ll have thought hard and long about how to solve it. As ever, the initiative is with the poor bugger in the field. It’s Dima’s job to show us what he can manage, when and how.’ And as a typical Hector afterthought: ‘I’m foul-mouthed. Relaxes me, brings me down to earth. Luke and Ollie here are prudes, so it evens out.’
And then the homily:
‘This is not, repeat not, a training session. We don’t happen to have a couple of years to spare: just a few hours spread over a couple of weeks. So it’s familiarization, it’s confidence-building, it’s establishing trust in all weathers. You in us, us in you. But you are not spies. So for Christ’s sake don’t try to be. Don’t even think about surveillance. You are not surveillance-conscious people. You’re a young couple enjoying a spree in Paris. So don’t for fuck’s sake start dawdling at shop windows, peering over your shoulders or ducking into side alleys. Mobiles are a slightly different matter,’ he went on, without a blip. ‘Did either of you use your phones in front of Dima or his gang?’
They had used their mobiles from the balcony of their cabin, Gail to call her Chambers concerning Samson v. Samson, Perry to call his landlady in Oxford.
‘Did anyone in Dima’s lot ever hear either of your phones go off?’
No. Emphatic.
‘Do Dima or Tamara know either or both of your mobile numbers?’
‘No,’ said Perry.
‘No,’ Gail replied, if slightly less confidently.
Natasha had Gail’s number and Gail had Natasha’s. But within the four corners of the question, her reply was truthful.
‘Then they can have our encrypted jobs, Ollie,’ Hector said. ‘Blue for Gail, silver for him. And you two people please hand over your SIM cards to Ollie and he’ll do the necessary. Your new phones will be encrypted for the calls between the five of us only. You’ll find the three of us pre-set under Tom, Dick and Harry. Tom’s me. Luke’s Dick. Ollie’s Harry. Perry, you’re Milton after the poet. Gail’s Doolittle after Eliza. All pre-set. Everything else on the phones functions as per usual. Yes, Gail?’
Gail the barrister:
‘Will you be listening to our calls from now on, if you haven’t been already?’
Laughter.
‘We shall be listening only on the pre-set encrypted lines.’
‘No others? Sure?’
‘No others. Truth.’
‘Not even when I call my five secret lovers?’
‘Not even, alas.’
‘How about our personal texts?’
‘Absolutely no. It’s a waste of time and we’re not into that stuff.’
‘If our pre-set lines to one another are encrypted, why do we need our funny names?’
‘Because people on buses earwig. Any more questions from the prosecution? Ollie, where’s the bloody malt?’
‘Got it right here, Skipper. Actually, I got a new bottle already’ – in that irritatingly unplaceable voice.
*
‘So your family, Luke?’ Gail had asked him over soup and a bottle of red in the kitchen one evening before they went home.
It amazed her that she hadn’t asked him the question before. Perhaps – dark thought – she hadn’t wanted to, preferring to keep him on a hook. It evidently amazed Luke too, because his hand rose sharply to his forehead to comfort a small, livid scar that seemed to come and go of its own accord. A fellow spy’s pistol butt? Or an angry wife’s frying pan?
‘One child only, I’m afraid, Gail,’ he said, as if he should be apologizing for not having more. ‘Boy. Marvellous little chap. Ben, we call him. Taught me everything I know about life. Beats me at chess too, I’m proud to say. Yes.’ Twitch of the stray eyelid. ‘Trouble is, we never get around to finishing a game. Too much of this.’
This? Did he mean booze? Spying? Or falling in love?
She had briefly suspected him of having a thing with Yvonne, largely from the way Yvonne discreetly mothered him. Then she decided they were just a man and a woman working side by side: until an evening when she caught his eyes staring now at Yvonne, now at herself, as if they were both some sort of higher being, and she thought she’d never seen such a sad face in all her life.
*
It’s last night. It’s end of term. It’s end of school altogether. There will never be another two weeks like these. In the kitchen, Yvonne and Ollie are cooking a sea bass in salt. Ollie is singing from La Traviata, rather well, and Luke is doing appreciation, smiling at everyone and shaking his head in exaggerated marvel. Hector has brought a grand bottle of Meursault – actually, two bottles. But first of all, he needs to talk to Perry and Gail alone in the Headmaster’s chintzy drawing room. Do we sit or stand? Hector is standing so Perry, ever the formalist despite himself, stands too. Gail selects an upright chair under a Roberts print of Damascus.
‘So,’ says Hector.
So, they agree.
‘Last words, then. Without witnesses. The Job is dangerous. I’ve told you before but I’m telling you again now. It’s fucking dangerous. You can still jump ship and no hard feelings. If you stay aboard, we’ll wet-nurse you all we can, but we’ve got no logistical support worth a hoot. Or as we say in the trade, we’re going in barefoot. You don’t have to say your goodbyes. Forget Ollie’s fish. Get your coats from the hall, walk out of the front door, none of it happened. Last call.’
The last of many, if he did but know. Perry and Gail have discussed the same question every night of the last fourteen. Perry was determined she should answer for them both, so she does:
‘We’re all right. We’ve decided. We’ll do it,’ she says, sounding more heroic than she means to, and Perry does a big, slow nod and says, ‘Yup, definitely,’ which doesn’t sound like him either – a thing he must know, because he promptly turns Hector’s question back on him:
‘So how about you people?’ he demands. ‘Don’t you ever have doubts?’
‘Oh, we’re fucked anyway,’ Hector replies carelessly. ‘That’s the point, isn’t it? If you’re going to be fucked, be fucked in a good cause.’
Which for Perry, of course, is balm to his puritan ear.
*
And to judge by the expression on Perry’s face as they pulled into the Gare du Nord, the same balm was still working, because there was a suppressed I-am-Britain look about him that was completely new to Gail. It wasn’t till they reached the Hôtel des Quinze Anges – a typical Perry choice: scruffy, narrow, five rickety floors high, tiny rooms, twin beds the size of ironing boards, and a stone’s throw from the rue du Bac – that the full impact of what they had signed up to hit them. It was as if their sessions in the Bloomsbury house with its chummy family atmosphere – a cosy hour with Ollie, another with Luke, Yvonne has dropped by, Hector’s on his way over for a nightcap – had instilled in them a sense of immunity which, now they were alone, had evaporated.
They also discovered that they had lost the power of natural speech and were talking to each other like an ideal couple in a television commercial:
‘I’m really looking forward to tomorrow, aren’t you?’ says Doolittle to Milton. ‘I’ve never seen Federer in the flesh before. I’m really thrilled.’
‘I just hope the weather will hold,’ Mi
lton replies to Doolittle with a worried glance at the window.
‘Me too,’ Doolittle agrees earnestly.
‘So how’s about we unpack this lot and find ourselves a spot of food?’ Milton suggests.
‘Good idea,’ says Doolittle.
But what they’re really thinking is: if the match is rained off, what on earth will Dima do?
Perry’s mobile is ringing. Hector.
‘Hi, Tom,’ says Perry idiotically.
‘Checked in OK, Milton?’
‘Fine, just fine. Good trip. Everything went perfectly,’ Perry says with enough enthusiasm for both of them.
‘You’re on your own tonight, OK?’
‘You said.’
‘Doolittle in the pink?’
‘Blooming.’
‘Call if you need anything. Service round the clock.’
*
In the hotel’s minuscule hallway on their way out, Perry discusses his anxieties about the weather with a formidable lady named Madame Mère after the mother of Napoleon. He has known her from his student days and Madame Mère, if she is to be believed, loves Perry like a son. She stands four foot nothing in her bedroom slippers and nobody, according to Perry, has ever seen her without a headscarf over her curlers. Gail enjoys hearing Perry rattling away in French, but his fluency has always been a challenge to her, perhaps because he is not forthcoming about his early instructors.
At a tabac in the rue de l’Université, Milton and Doolittle eat indifferent steak frites and a tired salad and agree it’s the best in the world. They don’t finish their litre of house red, so take it back to their hotel.
‘Just do whatever you’d normally do,’ Hector had told them airily. ‘If you’ve got Paris-based buddies and want to hang out with them, why not?’
Because we wouldn’t be doing what we normally do, is why not. Because we don’t want to be hanging out in a St Germain café with our Paris-based buddies when we’ve got an elephant called Dima sitting in our heads. And because we don’t want to have to lie to them about where we got our tickets for tomorrow’s Final.