Our Kind of Traitor (33 page)

We
make him
vor
? Perry repeats to himself. When Dima is sitting in his suburban palace in outer Surrey, with Natasha at Roedean and his boys at Eton,
we
will make Igor a
vor
?

‘Two men are guarding you at present. Niki and a new man.’

‘For Prince. They gonna kill me.’

‘What time is your signing in Berne on Wednesday?’

‘Ten o’clock. Morning. Bundesplatz.’

‘Did Niki and his friend attend the signing this morning?’

‘No way. Wait outside. These guys are stupid.’

‘And in Berne, they won’t be attending the signing either?’

‘No way. Maybe sit in waiting room. Jesus, Tom –’

‘And after the signing the bank will hold a reception in honour of the occasion. Bellevue Palace Hotel, no less.’

‘Eleven-thirty. Big reception. Everybody celebrate.’

‘Got that, Harry?’ Hector calls to Ollie in his corner, and Ollie raises his arm in acknowledgement. ‘Will Niki and his friend attend the reception?’

If Dima’s composure is deserting him, Hector’s has acquired a driven intensity.

‘My fucking guards?’ Dima protests incredulously. ‘They wanna come to the reception? You crazy? Prince not gonna whack me in the fucking Bellevue Hotel. He gonna wait a week. Maybe two. Maybe first he whack Tamara, whack my children. What the fuck I know?’

Hector’s furious stare remains unchanged.

‘So to confirm,’ he insists. ‘You’re confident that the two guards – Niki and his friend – will
not
attend the Bellevue reception.’

With a sag of his huge shoulders, Dima lapses into a kind of physical despair. ‘Confident? I’m not confident of nothing. Maybe they come to reception. Jesus, Tom.’

‘Assume they do. Just for argument’s sake. They’re not going to follow you when you take a piss.’

No answer, but Hector isn’t waiting for one. Stalking to the corner of the room, he places himself behind Ollie’s shoulder and peers at the computer screen.

‘So tell me how this plays for you. Whether or not Niki and his friend accompany you to the Bellevue Palace, halfway through the reception – let’s say twelve o’clock midday, as near as you can make it – you take a piss. Give me the ground floor’ – to Ollie – ‘the Bellevue has two sets of lavatories for ground-floor guests. One set is to the right as you enter the lobby, on the other side of the reception desk. Am I right, Harry?’

‘Bang on target, Tom.’

‘You know the lavatories I mean?’

‘Sure I know them.’

‘That’s the set you
don’t
use. For the other set you turn left and descend a staircase. It’s in the basement and not much used because
it’s inconvenient. The staircase is next to the bar. Between the bar and the lift. D’you know the staircase I mean? Halfway down it there’s a door that pushes open when it isn’t locked.’

‘I drink many times in this bar. I know this staircase. But at night-time they lock. Maybe day too sometimes.’

Hector resumes his seat. ‘On Wednesday morning the door will not be locked. You go down the staircase. Dick upstairs will be following you. From the basement there’s a side exit to the street. Dick will have a car. Where he takes you will depend on the arrangements I make in London tonight.’

Dima again appeals to Perry, this time with tears in his eyes:

‘I want my family to England, Professor. Tell this apparatchik: you seen them. Send the kids first, I follow. That’s OK by me. Prince wanna whack me when my family’s in England, who givva shit?’

‘
We
do,’ Hector retorts vehemently. ‘We want you and all your family. We want you safe in England, singing like a nightingale. We want you happy. We’re in the middle of the Swiss school term. Have you made any plans for the children?’

‘After Moscow funeral, I tell to them, fuck school, maybe we make holiday. Go back to Antigua, maybe Sochi, fool around, be happy. After Moscow, I tell them any shit. Jesus.’

Hector remains unmoved. ‘So they’re at home, out of school, waiting for your return, thinking you may be making a move, but not knowing where to.’

‘Mystery holiday, I tell them. Like secret. Maybe they believe me. I dunno no more.’

‘On Wednesday morning, while you’re at the bank and celebrating at the Bellevue, what will Igor be doing?’

Dima rubs his nose with his thumb.

‘Maybe go shop in Berne. Maybe take Tamara to Russian church. Maybe take Natasha to horse-school. If she don’t be reading.’

‘On Wednesday morning, Igor needs to go shopping in Berne. Can you tell that to Tamara over the telephone without making it sound unusual? She should give Igor a long shopping list. Provisions for when you come back from your mystery holiday.’

‘Is OK. Maybe.’

‘Only maybe?’

‘Is OK. I tell Tamara. She’s a bit crazy. She’s OK. Sure.’

‘While Igor’s out shopping, Harry here, and the Professor, will collect your family from the house for their mystery holiday.’

‘London.’

‘Or a safe place. One or the other, depending how quickly arrangements can be made for you all to be brought to England. If, on the strength of the information you have so far given us, I can persuade my apparatchiks to take the rest on trust – particularly the information you are about to obtain in Berne – we shall fly you and your family to London on Wednesday night by special plane. That’s a promise. Witnessed by the Professor here. If not, we shall put you and your family in a safe place and look after you until my Number One says “come to England”. That’s the truth of the situation as best I understand it. Perry, you can confirm that.’

‘I can.’

‘At the second signing in Berne, how will you record the new information that you will receive?’

‘I got no problem. First I be alone with bank manager. I gotta right. Maybe I tell him, make me copies of this shit. I need copies before I sign it over. He’s my friend. If he don’t do it, whatta fuck? I got good memory.’

‘As soon as Dick gets you out of the Bellevue Palace Hotel, he’ll give you a recorder and you record everything you’ve seen and heard.’

‘No goddam frontiers.’

‘You’ll cross no frontiers until you come to England. I promise you that too. Perry, you heard me.’

Perry has heard him, but for a moment nonetheless he remains lost in thought, long fingers bunched to his brow as he stares sightlessly ahead of him.

‘Tom tells the truth, Dima,’ he concedes at last. ‘He’s given me his promise too. I believe him.’

14

Luke picked up Gail and Perry from Zurich-Kloten Airport at four o’clock on the following afternoon, Tuesday, after they had spent an uneasy night in the flat in Primrose Hill, both wakeful, each worried about different things: Gail mostly about Natasha – why the sudden silence? – but also about the little girls. Perry about Dima and the unsettling thought that Hector would henceforth be directing operations from London, and Luke would have command and control in the field with back-up from Ollie and, by default, himself.

From the airport, Luke drove them to an ancient village Gasthof in a valley a few miles to the west of Berne’s city centre. The Gasthof was charming. The valley, once idyllic, was a depressing development of characterless apartment blocks, neon signs, pylons and a porno shop. Luke waited for Perry and Gail to check in, then sat with them over a beer in a quiet corner of the Gaststube. Soon they were joined by Ollie, not in a beret any more, but a broad-brimmed black fedora hat which he wore rakishly over one eye, but otherwise his irrepressible self.

*

Luke quietly delivered himself of the latest news. His manner towards Gail was taut and distant, the very opposite of flirtatious. Hector’s preferred option, he informed the gathering, was a non-starter. After taking soundings in London – he did not mention Matlock in front of Perry and Gail – Hector saw no chance of obtaining clearance to fly Dima and family to England immediately after tomorrow’s signing, and had therefore set in motion his fall-back, namely a safe house within Switzerland’s borders until he got the green light. Hector and Luke had thought long and hard about where this should be, and
concluded that, given the family’s complexity, remote was not synonymous with secret.

‘And Ollie, I believe that is also your opinion?’

‘Completely and totally, Luke,’ said Ollie, in his not-quite-right foreign-flavoured cockney.

Switzerland was enjoying an early summer, Luke went on. Better then, on the Maoist principle, to take cover among the many than stick out like sore thumbs in a hamlet where every unknown face is an object of scrutiny – all the more so if the face happens to be that of a bald, imperious Russian accompanied by two small girls, two boisterous teenage boys, a ravishingly beautiful teenaged daughter and a semi-detached wife.

Neither did distance offer any protection in the view of the barefoot planners: quite the reverse, since the small airport at Berne-Belp was ideally suited to discreet departure by private plane.

*

After Luke, it was Ollie’s turn, and Ollie, like Luke, was in his element, his style of reporting sparse and careful. Having examined a number of possibilities, he said, he had settled on a built-for-rent modern chalet on the outer slopes of the popular tourist village of Wengen in the Lauterbrunnen valley, sixty minutes’ drive and a fifteen-minute train journey from where they were now sitting.

‘And frankly, if
anybody
gives that chalet a second look, I’d be giving them one back,’ he ended defiantly, tugging at the brim of his black hat.

The efficient Luke then handed each of them a piece of plain card bearing the chalet’s name and address and its landline number for essential and innocuous calls to be made in the event of a problem with mobiles, though Ollie reported that in the village itself reception was immaculate.

‘So how long are the Dimas going to be stuck up there?’ Perry asked, in his role as prisoners’ friend.

He hadn’t really expected an informative answer, but Luke was surprisingly forthcoming – certainly more than Hector would have
been in similar circumstances. There were a bunch of Whitehall hoops that had to be gone through, Luke explained: Immigration, the Justice Ministry, the Home Office, to name but three. Hector’s current efforts were directed at bypassing as many of them as he could until after Dima and family were safely housed in England:

‘My ballpark estimate would be three to four days. Less if we’re lucky, longer if we’re not. After that, the logistics begin to fur up a bit.’

‘Fur up?
’ Gail exclaimed incredulously. ‘Like a
water pipe
?’

Luke blushed, then laughed along with them, then strove to explain. Ops like this one – not that any two were ever the same – had constantly to be revised, he said. From the moment Dima dropped out of circulation – as of midday tomorrow, therefore, God willing – there would be some sort of hue and cry for him, though what sort was anyone’s guess:

‘I simply mean, Gail, that from midday tomorrow on, the clock’s ticking, and we have to be ready to adapt at short notice according to need. We can do that. We’re in the business. It’s what we’re paid for.’

Urging the three of them to get an early night and call him at any hour if they felt the least need, Luke then returned to Berne.

‘And if you’re talking to the hotel switchboard, just remember I’m John Brabazon,’ he reminded them, with a tight smile.

*

Alone in his bedroom on the first floor of Berne’s resplendent Bellevue Palace Hotel with the River Aare running beneath his window and the far peaks of the Bernese Oberland black against the orange sky, Luke tried to reach Hector and heard his encrypted voice telling him to
leave a bloody message unless the roof is falling in
, in which case Luke’s guess was as good as Hector’s,
so just get on with it and don’t moan
, which made Luke laugh out loud, and also confirmed what he suspected: that Hector was locked in a life-and-death bureaucratic duel that had no respect for conventional working hours.

He had a second number to dial in emergency, but there being no emergency he knew of, he left a cheery message to the effect that the
roof was thus far holding, Milton and Doolittle were at their posts and in good heart, and Harry was doing sterling work, and give his love to Yvonne. He then took a long shower and put on his best suit before going downstairs to begin his reconnaissance of the hotel. His feelings of liberation were if anything more pronounced than at the Club des Rois. He was barefoot Luke, riding a cloud: no last-minute panic instructions from the fourth floor, no unmanageable overload of watchers, listeners, overflying helicopters and all the other questionable trappings of the modern secret operation; and no cocaine-driven warlord to chain him up in a jungle stockade. Just barefoot Luke and his little band of loyal troops – one of whom he was as usual in love with – and Hector in London fighting the good fight and ready to back him to the hilt:

‘If in doubt,
don’t
be. That’s an order. Don’t finger it, just bloody well
do
it,’ Hector had urged him, over a hasty farewell malt at Charles de Gaulle Airport yesterday evening. ‘I won’t be carrying the can. I
am
the fucking can. There’s no second prize in this caper. Cheers and God help us.’

Something had stirred in Luke at that moment: a mystical sense of bonding, of kinship with Hector that went beyond the collegial.

‘So how is it with Adrian?’ he inquired, recalling Matlock’s gratuitous intrusion, and wanting to redress it.

‘Oh, better, thanks.
Much
better,’ said Hector. ‘The shrinks reckon they’ve got the mixture pretty well right now. Six months, he could be out, if he behaves himself. How’s Ben?’

‘Great. Just great. Eloise too,’ Luke replied, wishing he hadn’t asked.

At the hotel’s front desk, an impossibly chic receptionist informed Luke that the Herr Direktor was doing his usual round of the bar guests. Luke walked straight up to him. He was good at this when he needed to be. Not your back-door artist like Ollie, maybe, more your front-door, in-your-face, sassy little Brit.