"No."
"Well, don"t. Our boy needs you on top form. So do we."
Perry had debated telling Hector about Gail"s text friendship with Natasha, but wiser counsels, if that"s what they were, prevailed.
The Mercedes stank of stale tobacco smoke. A bottle of leftover mineral water was jammed into the back of the pa.s.senger seat. The chauffeur was a bullet-headed giant. He had no neck, just a few lateral red scars in the stubble like slashes of a razor. Gail was wearing her silk trouser-suit outfit that looked as if it was going to fall off her any minute. Perry had never seen her looking more beautiful. Her long white raincoat an earlier extravagance from Bergdorf Goodman in New York lay at her side. The rain was rattling like hailstones on the car"s roof. The windscreen wipers groaned and sobbed as they tried to keep up.
The bullet-headed giant turned the Mercedes into a slip road, drew up before a fashionable block of flats, and gave a hoot of his horn. A second car pulled up behind them. A chase car? Don"t even think about it Don"t even think about it. A rotund, jovial man in a quilted mackintosh and wide-brimmed waterproof hat came skipping out of the entrance hall, plonked himself in the pa.s.senger seat, swung round and placed his forearm on the seat back, and his double chin on his forearm.
"Well, who"s for tennis, I will will say," he declared in a squeaky drawl. " say," he declared in a squeaky drawl. "Monsieur le Professeur himself, for one. And you are his better half, my dear, of course you are. Even better than yesterday, if I may say so. I propose to hog you for the whole match." himself, for one. And you are his better half, my dear, of course you are. Even better than yesterday, if I may say so. I propose to hog you for the whole match."
"Gail Perkins, my fiancee," said Perry stiffly.
His fiancee? Was she really? They hadn"t discussed it. Perhaps Milton and Doolittle had.
"Well, I"m Dr Popham Dr Popham, Bunny to the world, walking legal loophole to the revoltingly rich," he went on, as his little pink eyes slipped greedily from one to other of them, as if deciding which to have. "You may recall that the bearish Dima had the effrontery to insult me before a cast of thousands, but I flicked him off with my lace handkerchief."
Perry seemed disinclined to reply so Gail jumped in: "So what"s your your connection with him, Bunny?" Gail asked merrily, as their car rejoined the traffic. connection with him, Bunny?" Gail asked merrily, as their car rejoined the traffic.
"Oh, my heart, we"re barely connected at all at all, thank the good Lord. Call me an old chum of Emilio, rallying round in support. He will do do it to himself, poor lamb. Last time it was a batch of r.e.t.a.r.ded Arab princes on a shopping spree. This time it"s a squad of dreary Russian bankers, it to himself, poor lamb. Last time it was a batch of r.e.t.a.r.ded Arab princes on a shopping spree. This time it"s a squad of dreary Russian bankers, Armani kids Armani kids, I ask you! And their dear ladies" dropping his voice for the confidence "and dearer ladies dearer ladies I"ve never seen." His greedy little eyes settled dotingly on Perry. "But pity your poor dear Professor here, most of all" pink eyes tragically on Perry " I"ve never seen." His greedy little eyes settled dotingly on Perry. "But pity your poor dear Professor here, most of all" pink eyes tragically on Perry "What an act of charity! You"ll be rewarded in Heaven, I shall see to it. But how could you resist the poor bear when he"s so cut up by the dreadful killings?" Back to Gail. "Do you stay long in Paris, Miss Gail Perkins?" an act of charity! You"ll be rewarded in Heaven, I shall see to it. But how could you resist the poor bear when he"s so cut up by the dreadful killings?" Back to Gail. "Do you stay long in Paris, Miss Gail Perkins?"
"Oh, I wish we could. It"s back to the grindstone, I"m afraid, come wind or weather" a wry look at the rain pouring down the windscreen. "How about you you, Bunny?"
"Oh, I flit flit. I"m a flitter. A little nest here, a little nest there. I alight, but never for long."
A sign to the CENTRE HIPPIQUE DU TOURING CENTRE HIPPIQUE DU TOURING, another to the PAVILLON DES OISEAUX PAVILLON DES OISEAUX. The rain letting up a bit. The chase car still behind them. A pair of ornate gates appeared on their right-hand side. Opposite the gates was a lay-by, where the chauffeur parked the Mercedes. The ominous car parked alongside. Blackened windows. Perry waited for one of its doors to open. Slowly, one did. An elderly matron got out, followed by her Alsatian dog.
"Cent metres," the chauffeur growled, pointing a filthy finger at the gates.
"We know know, silly," said Bunny.
Abreast, they walked the cent metres cent metres, with Gail sheltering under Bunny Popham"s umbrella, and Perry nursing his new tennis bag to his chest, and the rain streaming down his face. They arrived at a low white building.
On the top step under an awning stood Emilio dell Oro in a knee-length raincoat with a fur collar. In a separate group stood three of yesterday"s sour young executives. A couple of girls sucked disconsolately at the cigarettes they weren"t allowed to smoke inside the clubhouse. At dell Oro"s side, dressed in grey flannels and blazer, stood a tall, grey-haired, aggressively British man of the ent.i.tled cla.s.ses, holding out a liver-spotted hand.
"Giles," he explained. "Met yesterday across a crowded room. Don"t expect you to remember me. Just pa.s.sing through Paris when Emilio nabbed me. Proof one should never call up one"s chums on spec. Still, we had quite a shindig last night, I will say. Pity you two chaps couldn"t make it" to Perry now "Speak Russian? Fortunately I do a bit. I fear our honoured guests don"t have much else to offer in the way of languages."
They trooped inside, dell Oro leading. A wet Monday lunchtime: not a big day for members. To the left of Perry"s frame, a bespectacled Luke crouched at a corner table. He had a Bluetooth device in his ear, and was poring over a sleek, silver laptop, to all the world a man of affairs attending to a spot of business.
If you happen to see somebody vaguely resembling one of us, it"ll be a mirage, Hector had warned them last night.
Panic. Lurch of the chest. Where in Heaven"s name is Gail? Where in Heaven"s name is Gail? With the nausea rising, Perry cast around for her, only to spot her at the centre of the room, chatting with Giles, Bunny Popham and dell Oro. Just stay cool and stay visible, he told her in his mind. Stay With the nausea rising, Perry cast around for her, only to spot her at the centre of the room, chatting with Giles, Bunny Popham and dell Oro. Just stay cool and stay visible, he told her in his mind. Stay down down, don"t overheat, stay calm. Dell Oro was asking Bunny Popham whether it was too early for champagne and Bunny was saying it depended on the vintage. Everyone exploded with laughter, but Gail"s was loudest. About to go to her aid, Perry heard the now-familiar bellow of "Professor, I swear to G.o.d!" and turned to see three umbrellas coming up the steps.
Under the centre umbrella, Dima with a Gucci tennis bag.
To left and right of him, Niki and the man Gail had christened for all time the cadaverous philosopher.
They had reached the top step.
Dima slammed shut his umbrella, shoved it at Niki to take, and strode alone through the swing-doors.
"See the G.o.ddam rain?" he demanded belligerently of the whole room. "See the sky? Ten minutes, we get sun up there!" And to Perry: "You wanna change into your tennis gear, Professor, or I gonna have to beat the s.h.i.t outta you in that G.o.ddam suit?"
Tepid laughter from the audience. Yesterday"s surreal pantomime was about to enjoy its second run.
Perry and Dima descend a dark wooden staircase, tennis bags in hand. Dima the club member leads the way. Locker-room smells. Pine essence, stale steam, sweated clothes.
"I got racquets, Professor!" Dima bellows up the stairs.
"Great!" Perry bellows back, just as loud.
"Like six! f.u.c.king Emilio"s racquets! The guy plays like s.h.i.t but got good racquets."
"Six of his thirty, then!"
"You got it, Professor! You got it!"
Dima"s telling them we"re on our way down. He doesn"t need to know that Luke"s already tipped them off. At the foot of the staircase, Perry looks back over his shoulder. No Niki, no cadaverous philosopher, no Emilio, n.o.body. They enter a gloomy, timber-panelled changing room, Swedish style. No windows. Economy lighting. Through frosted gla.s.s, two old men showering. One wooden door marked TOILETTES TOILETTES. Two more marked Ma.s.sAGE Ma.s.sAGE. Notices saying occupe occupe on both door handles. on both door handles. You knock on the right-hand door, but not till he"s ready. Now say that back to me You knock on the right-hand door, but not till he"s ready. Now say that back to me.
"Had a good night, Professor?" Dima asks as he undresses.
"Great. How was yours?"
"s.h.i.t."
Perry dumps his tennis bag on a bench, unzips it and starts to change. Stark-naked, Dima stands with his back to him. His torso is a snakes-and-ladders board in blue from the back of his neck to his b.u.t.tocks, inclusive. On the central panels of his back, a girl in a 1940s swimsuit is being a.s.sailed by snarling beasts. Her thighs are wrapped round a tree of life that has its roots embedded in Dima"s rump, and its branches spread over his shoulder blades.
"I gotta p.i.s.s," Dima announces.
"Be my guest," says Perry facetiously.
Dima opens the door to the toilet and locks it behind him. He emerges moments later, holding a tubular object in his hand. It"s a knotted condom with a memory stick inside it. In full-frontal, Dima has the Minotaur"s body. His black bush spreads up to his navel. The rest predictably ample. At a handbasin he washes the condom under the tap, takes it to his Gucci tennis bag and with a pair of scissors snips off the end, pulls it free and hands the two pieces of the condom to Perry to lose. Perry puts them into a side pocket of his jacket and has a flash vision of Gail finding them there in a year"s time and asking, "When"s the baby?"
At prisoner"s lightning speed Dima dons a jockstrap and a pair of long blue tennis shorts, drops the memory stick into the right-hand pocket of the shorts, pulls on a long-sleeved T-shirt, socks, trainers. The process has taken him no more than a few seconds. A shower door opens. A fat, elderly man emerges with a towel round his waist.
"Bonjour tout le monde!"
Bonjour.
The fat, elderly man pulls open his locker door, lets the towel fall to his feet, takes out a hanger. The second shower door opens. A second elderly man emerges.
"Quelle horreur, la pluie!" the second elderly man complains.
Perry agrees. The rain a horror indeed. He bangs vigorously on the right-hand ma.s.sage door. Three short knocks, but good and hard. Dima is standing behind him.
"C"est occupe," the first elderly man warns.
"Pour moi, alors," says Perry.
"Lundi, c"est tout ferme," the second elderly man advises.
Ollie opens the door from inside. They brush past him. Ollie closes the door, gives Perry a rea.s.suring pat on the arm. He has removed his earring and combed his hair straight back. He wears a medic"s white coat. It"s as if he"s taken off one Ollie and put on another. Hector wears a white coat, but has left it carelessly unb.u.t.toned. He is ma.s.seur-in-chief.
Ollie is inserting wooden wedges in the door frame, two at the bottom, two at the side. As always with Ollie, Perry has the feeling he"s done it all before. Hector and Dima face each other for the first time, Dima leaning backward, Hector forward, the one advancing, the other recoiling. Dima is an old convict awaiting his next dose of punishment, Hector the governor of his gaol. Hector reaches out his hand. Dima shakes it, then keeps it captive with his left hand while he digs in his pocket with his right. Hector pa.s.ses the memory stick to Ollie, who takes it to a side table, unzips the ma.s.sage bag, extracts a silver laptop, lifts the lid and inserts the memory stick, all in a single movement. With his white coat, Ollie is larger than ever, yet twice as deft.
Dima and Hector have not exchanged a single word. The prisonergovernor moment has pa.s.sed. Dima has recovered his backward tilt, Hector his stoop. His steady grey gaze is wide and unflinching, but also inquiring. There is nothing of possession in it, nothing of conquest, nothing of triumph. He could be a surgeon deciding how to operate, or whether to operate at all.
"Dima?"
"Yes."
"I"m Tom. I"m your British apparatchik."
"Number One?"
"Number One sends his greetings. I"m here in his place. That"s Harry" indicating Ollie "We speak English and the Professor here sees fair play."
"OK.".
"Then let"s sit down."
They sit down. Face to face. With Perry the fair-play man at Dima"s side.
"We have a colleague upstairs," Hector continues. "He"s sitting alone in the bar behind a silver laptop like Harry"s there. His name is d.i.c.k. He"s wearing spectacles and a Party member"s red tie. When you leave the club at the end of the day, d.i.c.k will get up and walk slowly across the lobby in front of you carrying his silver laptop and pulling on his dark blue raincoat. Please remember him for the future. d.i.c.k speaks with my authority, and with the authority of Number One. Understood?"
"I understand, Tom."
"He also speaks Russian on demand. As I do."
Hector glances at his watch, then at Ollie. "I"m allowing seven minutes before it"s time for you and the Professor to go upstairs. d.i.c.k will let us know if you"re needed before that. Are you comfortable with that?"
"Comfortable? You G.o.ddam f.u.c.king crazy?" You G.o.ddam f.u.c.king crazy?"
The ritual began. Never in his dreams had Perry supposed that such a ritual existed. Yet both men seemed to acknowledge its necessity.
Hector first: "Are you now, or have you ever been, in touch with any other foreign Intelligence service?"
Dima"s turn: "I swear to G.o.d, no."
"Not even Russian?"
"No."
"Do you know of anyone in your circle who has been in touch with any other Intelligence service?"
"No."
"No one is selling similar information elsewhere? To anybody police, a corporation, private individual, anywhere in the world?"
"I don"t know n.o.body like that. I want my kids to England. Now. I want my G.o.ddam f.u.c.king deal."
"And I want you to have your deal. d.i.c.k and Harry want you to have your deal. So does the Professor here. We"re all on the same side. But first you have to persuade us, and I have to persuade my fellow apparatchiks in London."
"Prince gonna kill me, f.u.c.k"s sake."
"Did he tell you that?"
"Sure. At the f.u.c.king funeral: "Don"t be sad, Dima. Soon you gonna be with Misha." Like joke. Bad joke."
"How did this morning"s signing go?"
"Great. One half my f.u.c.king life gone already."
"Then we"re here to arrange the rest of it, aren"t we?"
Luke knows for once exactly who he is and why he is here. So do the Club authorities. He is Monsieur Michel Despard, a man of means, and he is waiting for his eccentric elderly aunt to arrive and give him lunch, the famous artist n.o.body has heard of who lives on the ile St-Louis. Her secretary has booked a table for them, but being an eccentric aunt she may not appear. Michel Despard knows that of her; so does the Club, for a sympathetic headwaiter has directed him to a quiet corner of the bar where, it being a wet Monday, he is welcome to wait, and discharge a little business while he is about it and thank you kindly, sir, thank you very much indeed: with a hundred euros, life becomes a little easier.
Is Luke"s aunt really a member of the Club des Rois? Of course she is! Or her late protector the Comte was a member, what"s the difference? Or so Ollie has spun it to them in his persona as Luke"s aunt"s secretary. And Ollie, as Hector has rightly observed, is the best back-door man in the business, and the aunt will confirm whatever is necessary to confirm.
And Luke is content. He is at his calm, unflurried operational best. He may be a mere tolerated guest, tucked into an unsociable corner of the club room. With his horn-rimmed spectacles and Bluetooth earpiece and open laptop, he may resemble any hara.s.sed Monday-morning executive catching up on work he should have done over the weekend.
But safely inside himself, he is in his element: as fulfilled and liberated as he will ever be. He is the steady voice amid the unheard thunder of the battle. He is the forward observation post, reporting to HQ. He is the micro-manager, the constructive worrier, the adjutant with an eye for the vital detail that his beleaguered commander has overlooked or doesn"t want to see. To Hector, those two "Arab policemen" were the product of Perry"s overheated concerns for Gail"s safety. If they existed at all, they were "a couple of French coppers with nothing better to do on a Sunday night". But to Luke they were untested operational Intelligence, neither to be confirmed nor dismissed, but stored away till further information is available.
He glances at his watch, then at the screen. Six minutes since Perry and Dima entered the changing-rooms staircase. Four minutes twenty seconds since Ollie reported them entering the ma.s.sage room.
Raising his eye-line he takes stock of the scene playing itself out before him: first the Clean Envoys, better known as the Armani kids, sulkily bolting canapes and swilling champagne, not much bothering to talk to their expensive escorts. Their day"s work is already over. They have signed. They are halfway to Berne, their next stop. They are bored, hungover and restless. Their women last night were a let-down: or so Luke imagines them to have been. And what is it Gail calls those two Swiss bankers sitting all alone in a corner, drinking sparkling water? Peter and the Wolf.
Perfect, Gail. Everything about her perfect. Look at her now, working the room like a trooper. The fluid body, sweet hips, the endless legs, and the oddly motherly charm. Gail with Bunny Popham. Gail with Giles de Salis. Gail with both of them. Emilio dell Oro, drawn like a moth, attaches himself to their group. So does a stray Russian who can"t take his eyes off her. He"s the podgy one. He"s given up on the champagne and started hitting the vodka. Emilio"s eyebrows have risen as he asks a comic question Luke can"t hear. Gail comes back with a jokey reply. Luke loves her hopelessly, which is how Luke loves. Always.
Emilio is glancing over Gail"s shoulder at the changing-room door. Is that what their joke was about? Emilio saying, Whatever are those boys doing down there? Shall I go and break it up? Whatever are those boys doing down there? Shall I go and break it up? And Gail replying, And Gail replying, Don"t you dare, Emilio, I"m sure they"re having a lovely time Don"t you dare, Emilio, I"m sure they"re having a lovely time which is what she"d say. which is what she"d say.
Luke into his mouthpiece: "Time"s up."
Ben, if only you could see me now. See the best of me, not always the bad stuff. A week ago, Ben had pressed a Harry Potter on him. And Luke had tried to read it, really tried. Coming home dog-tired at eleven at night, or lying wakefully alongside his irretrievable wife, he"d tried. And fallen at the first fence. The fantasy stuff made no sense to him understandably, he might argue, given that his whole life was a fantasy, even his heroism. Because what was so brave about being caught, and allowed to run away?
"So it"s good good, isn"t it?" Ben had said, tired of waiting for his father"s response. "You enjoyed it, Dad. Admit."
"I did and it"s terrific," Luke said handsomely.
Another lie and they both knew it. Another step away from the person he most loved in the world.