Our Kind of Traitor

Is Perry supposed to be shocked? He tries to be. Is this really sufficient reason to drag him to a rickety lookout bombarded by the wind? He doesn’t believe so. Neither, he suspects, does Dima. The story sounds more like some kind of sighting shot for whatever lies ahead.

‘Know what my friends do with this cash, Professor?’

No, Perry does not know what Dima’s friends do with the profits from smuggling lobsters from the Bay of Mexico to Afghan warlords.

‘They bring this cash to Dima. Why they do that? Because they are trusting Dima. Many, many Russian syndicate trust Dima! Not only Russian! Big, small, I don’t give a shit! We take all! You tell your English spies: you got dirty money? Dima wash it for you, no problem! You wanna save and conserve? Come to Dima! Out of many little roads, Dima make one big road. Tell this to your goddam spies, Professor.’

* * *

‘So how are you reading the bugger at this stage?’ Hector asks. ‘He’s sweating, bragging, drinking, joking. He’s telling you he’s a crook and a money-launderer and he’s boasting about his bent chums – what are you really seeing and hearing? What’s going on inside him?’

Perry considers the premise as if it has been set for him by a higher examiner, which is how he is beginning to see Hector. ‘Anger?’ he proposes. ‘Directed at a person or persons yet to be defined?’

‘Keep going,’ Hector orders.

‘Desperation. Also to be defined.’

‘How about honest-to-God hatred, always good?’ Hector insists.

‘To come, one suspects.’

‘Vengeance?’

‘Is somewhere in there, definitely,’ Perry agrees.

‘Calculation? Ambivalence? Animal cunning? Think harder!’ – spoken in jest, but received in earnest.

‘All of the above. No question.’

‘And shame? Self-disgust? None of that about?’

Taken aback, Perry ponders, frowns, peers about him. ‘Yes,’ he concedes in a long-drawn-out voice. ‘Yes. Shame. The apostate’s shame. Ashamed to be dealing with me at all. Ashamed of his treachery. That’s why he had to boast so much.’

‘I’m a goddam clairvoyant,’ says Hector with satisfaction. ‘Ask anyone.’

Perry doesn’t need to.

* * *

Perry is describing the long minutes of silence, the conflicting grimaces of Dima’s sweated face in the half- darkness, how he pours himself another vodka, chucks it back, mops his face, grins, glowers indignantly at Perry as if questioning his presence, reaches out and grabs him by the knee in order to hold his attention while he makes a point, relinquishes it, and forgets him again. And how finally, in a voice of deepest suspicion, he growls out a question that must be squarely answered before any other business can be conducted between them:

‘You see my Natasha?’

Perry has seen his Natasha.

‘She beautiful?’

Perry has no difficulty assuring Dima that Natasha is indeed very beautiful.

‘Ten, twelve book a week, she don’t givva shit. Read them all. You wanna get a few student like that, you be goddam happy.’

Perry says he would indeed be happy.

‘Ride horse, dance ballet. Ski so beautiful like goddam bird. Wanna know something? Her mother. She got dead. I loved this woman. OK?’

Perry makes noises of regret.

‘Maybe I fuck too many women once. Some guys, they need a lotta women. Good women, they wanna be the only one. You screw around, they go a bit crazy. That’s a pity.’

Perry agrees it’s a pity.

‘Jesus God, Professor!’ He is leaning forward, stabbing at Perry’s knee with his index finger. ‘Natasha’s mother, I love that woman, I love her so much I explode, hear me? Love like make your guts on fire. Your prick, balls, heart, brain, your soul: they live only for this love.’ He makes another pass of the back of his hand across his mouth, mutters ‘like your Gail, beautiful’, takes a shot of vodka and continues. ‘Her bastard husband kill her,’ he confides. ‘Know why?’

No, Perry does not know why Natasha’s mother’s bastard husband killed Natasha’s mother, but he is waiting to discover, just as he is waiting to discover whether he really is in a madhouse.

‘Natasha she my child. When Natasha’s mother tell this to him because she cannot lie, the bastard kill her. One day, maybe I find this bastard. Kill him. Not with gun. With these.’

He holds up his improbably delicate hands for Perry’s inspection. Perry dutifully admires them.

‘My Natasha go to Eton School, OK? Tell this to your spies. Or no deal.’

For a brief moment, in a violently rotating world, Perry feels himself on firm ground.

‘I’m not absolutely sure that Eton takes girls yet,’ he says cautiously.

‘I pay good. I give swimming pool. No problem.’

‘Even so, I don’t think they’ll change the rules for her.’

‘So where she go?’ Dima demands recklessly, as if it’s Perry and not the school who is making the difficulties.

‘There’s a place called Roedean. It’s supposed to be the girls’ equivalent of Eton.’

‘Number one for England?’

‘People say so.’

‘Kids of intellectuals? Lords? Nomenklatura?’

‘It’s a school for the high end of British society, put it that way.’

‘Cost lotta money?’

‘A great lot.’

Dima is only half appeased.

‘OK,’ he growls. ‘When we make deal with your spies. Number-one condition: Roedean School.’

* * *

Hector’s mouth is wide open. He gawps at Perry, then at Luke beside him, then at Perry again. He passes his hand through his unkempt mop of white hair in frank disbelief.

‘Holy fucking cow,’ he murmurs. ‘How about a commission in the Household Cavalry for his twin sons while he’s about it? What did you tell him?’

‘I promised I’d do my absolute best,’ Perry replies, feeling himself drawn to Dima’s side. ‘It’s the England he thinks he loves. What else was I supposed to say to him?’

‘You did marvellously,’ Hector enthuses. And little Luke agrees, marvellous being a word they share.

* * *

‘You remember Mumbai, Professor? Last November? The crazy Pakistani guys, kill the whole goddam world? Take orders over their cells? The goddam cafe they shoot up? The Jews they kill? Hostages? The hotels, train stations? The goddam kids, mothers, all dead? How the fuck they do that, those crazy bastards?’

Perry has no suggestions.

‘My kids cut a finger, bleed a bit, I wanna throw up,’ Dima protests indignantly. ‘I done enough death in my life, hear me? Whadda they wanna do that for, the crazy fucks?’

Perry the unbeliever would like to say ‘for God’ but says nothing. Dima steels himself, then takes the plunge:

‘OK. You tell this once to your goddam English spies, Professor,’ he urges with another lurch into aggression.