Our Kind of Traitor

‘He?’

‘Adam.’

‘The man who called you back. That Adam?’

‘Yes.’

‘Surname or Christian name?’

‘I didn’t ask, he didn’t tell me. He says they’ve got their own set-up for cases like this. A special house. He wouldn’t say where over the telephone. The cab driver would know.’

‘Ollie.’

‘Yes.’

‘Cases like what, actually?’

‘Ours. That’s all I know.’

A black cab goes past but it has its light on. Not a spy cab then. A normal cab. Driven by a man who isn’t Ollie. Disappointed again, Perry rounds on her:

‘Look. What else do you expect me to do? If you’ve got a better suggestion, let’s hear it. You’ve done nothing but snipe since we got back to England.’

‘And you’ve done nothing but keep me at arm’s length. Oh, and treat me like a child. Of the weaker sex. I forgot that bit.’

He has gone back to looking out of the window.

‘Is Adam the only person to have read your letter-document-report-cum-witness statement?’ she asks.

‘I can’t imagine so. I wouldn’t bank on his name being Adam either. He just said Adam like a password.’

‘Really? I wonder how he did that.’

She tries saying Adam as a password in several different ways, but Perry is not drawn.

‘You’re sure Adam’s a man, are you? Not just a woman with a deep voice?’

No answer. None expected.

Yet another taxi passes. Still not ours. Whatever does one wear for spies, darling? as her mother would have said. Cursing herself for even wondering, she has changed out of her office clothes into a skirt and high-necked blouse. And sensible shoes, nothing to stir the juices – well, except Luke’s, but how could she have known?

‘Perhaps he’s stuck in traffic,’ she suggests, and again gets no answer, which serves her right. ‘Anyway, to resume. You gave the letter to an Adam. And an Adam received it. Otherwise he wouldn’t have rung you, presumably.’ She’s being irritating and knows it. So does he. ‘How many pages? Of our secret document? Yours.’

‘Twenty-eight,’ he replies.

‘Handwritten or typed?’

‘Handwritten.’

‘Why not typed?’

‘I decided handwritten was safer.’

‘Really? On whose advice?’

‘I hadn’t had advice by then. Dima and Tamara were convinced they were bugged at every turn, so I decided to respect their anxieties and not do anything – electronic. Interceptible.’

‘Wasn’t that rather paranoid?’

‘I’m sure it was. We’re both paranoid. So are Dima and Tamara. We’re all paranoid.’

‘Then let’s admit it. Let’s be paranoid together.’

No answer. Silly little Gail tries yet another tack:

‘Do you want to tell me how you got on to Mr Adam in the first place?’

‘Anyone can do it. It’s not a problem these days. You can do it on the Web.’

‘Did you do it on the Web?’

‘No.’

‘Didn’t trust the Web?’

‘No.’

‘Do you trust me?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘I hear the most amazing confidences every day of my life. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you don’t exactly hear me regaling our friends at dinner parties with my clients’ secrets, do you?’

‘No.’

Reload:

‘You also know that as a young barrister who is self-employed without a paddle and terrified of where the next job is or is not coming from, I am professionally disposed against mystery briefs that offer no prospect of prestige or reward.’

‘Nobody’s offering you a brief, Gail. Nobody’s asking you to do anything except talk.’

‘Which is what I call a brief.’

Another wrong taxi. Another silence, a bad one.

‘Well, at least Mr Adam invited both of us,’ she says, going for cheerful. ‘I thought you’d airbrushed me out of your document completely.’

Which is when Perry becomes Perry again, and the dagger in her hand turns against herself as he gazes at her with so much hurt love that she is more alarmed for Perry than for herself.

‘I tried to airbrush you out, Gail. I did my absolute damnedest to airbrush you out. I believed I could protect you from being involved. It didn’t work. They’ve got to have us both. Initially anyway. He was – well – adamant.’ Lame laugh. ‘The way you would be about witnesses. “If the two of you were present, then two of you must obviously come.” I’m really sorry.’

And he was. She knew he was. The day Perry learned to fake his feelings would be the day he wasn’t Perry any more.

And she was as sorry as he was. Sorrier. She was in his arms telling him this when a black taxi with its flag down appeared in the street outside, last two numbers 73, and a nearly cockney male voice informed them over the house entryphone that he was Ollie and he had two passengers to pick up for Adam.

* * *

And now she was excluded again. Debarred, debriefed, discarded.

The obedient little woman, waiting for her man to come home, and having another man-sized glass of Rioja to help her do it.

All right, it was in the whole ridiculous contract from the start. She should never have let him get away with it. But that didn’t mean she had to sit and twiddle her thumbs, and she hadn’t.

That very morning, although he didn’t know it, while Perry had been sitting here waiting obediently for the Voice of Adam, she had been busy in her Chambers tapping away at her computer, and not, for once, on the matter of Samson v. Samson.

That she had waited until she got to her office rather than use her own laptop from home – that she had waited at all – was still a puzzle to her, if not a cause for outright self-reproach. Put it down to the Perry-generated prevailing atmosphere of conspiracy.

That she still possessed Dima’s deckle-edged business card was a hanging offence since Perry had told her to destroy it.

That she had gone electronic – and therefore interceptible – was as it now turned out also a hanging offence. But since he had not informed her in advance of this particular branch of his paranoia, he could hardly complain.

The Arena Multi Global Trading Conglomerate of Nicosia, Cyprus, its website informed her in bad, blotchy English, was a consulting company specializing in providing help for active traders. Its