Our Kind of Traitor

‘October two thousand eight. Remember the fucking date. A friend call me. OK? A friend?’

OK. Another friend.

‘Pakistani guy. A syndicate we do business with. October 30, middle of the goddam night, he call me. I’m in Berne, Switzerland, very quiet city, lot of bankers. Tamara she’s asleep beside me. Wakes up. Gives me the goddam phone: for you. It’s this guy. Hear me?’

Perry hears him.

‘“Dima,” he tell to me. “Here is your friend, Khalil.” Bullshit. His name’s Mohamed. Khalil, that’s a special name he got for certain cash business I’m connected with, who givva shit? “I got hot market tip for you, Dima. Very big, very hot tip. Very special. You guys gotta remember it was me who tell you this tip. You remember for me?” OK, I say. Sure. Four o’clock in the goddam morning, some piece shit about the Mumbai stock market. Never mind. I tell him, OK, we remember it’s you, Khalil. We got good memory. Nobody stiff you. What’s your hot tip?

‘“Dima, you gotta get the fuck outta the Indian stock market or you catch big cold.” “What? ” I say, “what, Khalil? You fucking crazy? Why we gonna catch a big cold in Mumbai? We got a shitload respectable business in Mumbai. Regular, squeaky-fucking-clean investments, took me five years I clean – services, tea, timber, hotels so fucking white and big the Pope could hold a mass in them.” My friend don’t listen. “Dima, hear me, get the fuck outta Mumbai. Maybe a month after, you take strong position again, make a few million. But first you get the fuck outta those hotels.”’

A fist again passes across Dima’s face, punching away the sweat. He whispers Jesus God to himself and stares around their tiny box for help. ‘You gonna tell this to your English apparatchiks, Professor?’

Perry will do what he can.

‘Night October 30 two thousand eight, after this Pakistani arsehole wake me up, I don’t sleep good, OK?’

OK.

‘Next morning October 31 I call my goddam Swiss banks. “Get me the fuck outta Mumbai.” Services, timber, tea, I got maybe thirty per cent. Hotels seventy. Couple week later, I’m in Rome. Tamara call me. “Turn on the goddam television.” What do I watch? Those crazy Pakistani fucks shooting the shit outta Mumbai, Indian stock market stop trading. Next day, Indian Hotels are down sixteen per cent to 40 rupees and falling. March this year, they hit 31. Khalil call me. “OK, my friend, now you get the fuck back in. Remember it’s me who told you this.” So I get the fuck back in.’ The sweat is pouring down his bald face. ‘End of year, Indian Hotels are 100 rupees. I make twenty million profit cold. The Jews are dead, the hostages are dead and I’m a fucking genius. You tell this to your English spies, Professor. Jesus God.’

The sweated face a mask of self-disgust. The cracking of the rotten weatherboards in the sea-wind. Dima has talked himself to a point of no return. Perry has been observed and tested and found good.

* * *

Washing his hands in the prettily decked-out upstairs lavatory, Perry peers into the mirror and is impressed by the eagerness of a face he is beginning not to know. He hurries back down the thickly carpeted staircase.

‘Another nip?’ Hector asks, flapping a lazy hand in the direction of the drinks tray. ‘Luke, lad, how’s about making us a pot of coffee?’

7

In the road above the basement, an ambulance tears past, and the howl of its siren is like a scream for the whole world’s pain.

In the wind-beaten, half-hexagon turret overlooking the bay, Dima is unrolling the satin sleeve from his left arm. By the changeful moonlight that has replaced the vanished sun, Perry discerns a bare-breasted Madonna surrounded by voluptuous angels in alluring poses. The tattoo descends from the tip of Dima’s massive shoulder to the gold wristband of his bejewelled Rolex watch.

‘You wanna know who make this tattoo for me, Professor?’ he whispers in a voice husky with emotion. ‘Six goddam month every day one hour?’

Yes, Perry would like to know who has tattooed a topless Madonna and her female choir on to Dima’s enormous arm, and taken six months to do it. He would like to know what relevance the Holy Virgin has to Dima’s quest for a place at Roedean for Natasha, or permanent residence in Britain for all his family in exchange for vital information, but the English tutor in him is also learning that Dima the storyteller has his own narrative arc and that his plots unfold with indirection.

‘My Rufina make this. She was zek, like me. Camp hooker, sick from tuberculosis, one hour each day. When she finish, she die. Jesus Christ, huh? Jesus Christ.’

A respectful quiet while both men contemplate Rufina’s masterpiece.

‘Know what is Kolyma, Professor?’ Dima asks, still with a husk in his voice. ‘You heard?’

Yes, Perry knows what is Kolyma. He has read his Solzhenitsyn. He has read his Shalamov. He knows that Kolyma is a river north of the Arctic Circle that has given its name to the harshest camps in the Gulag archipelago, before or after Stalin. He knows zek too: zek for Russia’s prisoners, the millions and millions of them.

‘With fourteen I was goddam zek in Kolyma. Criminal, not political. Political is shit. Criminal is pure. Fifteen years I serve there.’

‘Fifteen in Kolyma?’

‘Sure, Professor. I done fifteen.’

The anguish has gone out of Dima’s voice, to be replaced by pride.

‘For criminal prisoner Dima, other prisoners got respect. Why I was in Kolyma? I was murderer. Good murderer. Who I murder? Lousy Sovietsky apparatchik in Perm. Our father suicide himself, got tired, drank lotta vodka. My mother, to give us food, soap, she gotta fuck this lousy apparatchik. In Perm, we live in communal apartment. Eight crappy rooms, thirty people, one crappy kitchen, one shithouse, everybody stink and smoke. Kids do not like this lousy apparatchik who fuck our mother. We gotta stand outside in kitchen, very thin wall, when apparatchik come to visit us, bring food, fuck my mother. Everybody stare at us: listen to your mother, she’s a whore. We gotta put our hands over our goddam ears. You wanna know something, Professor?’

Perry does.

‘This guy, this apparatchik, know where he get his food?’

Perry does not.

‘He’s a fucking military administrator! Distributes food in barracks. Carries a gun. Nice pretty gun, leather case, big hero. You wanna try fucking with a gun belt round your arse? You gotta be big acrobat. This military administrator, this apparatchik, he take off shoes. He take off his pretty gun. He put gun in shoes. OK, I think. Maybe you fuck my mother enough. Maybe you don’t fuck her no more. Maybe nobody gonna stare at us no more like we’re whore’s kids. I knock on door. I open it. I am polite. “Excuse me,” I say. “Is Dima. Excuse me, Comrade Lousy Apparatchik. Please I borrow your pretty gun? Kindly look me in my face once. You don’t look me, how do I kill you? Thank you so much, Comrade.” My mother look me. She don’t say nothing. Apparatchik look me. I kill the fuck. One bullet.’

Dima’s forefinger rests on the bridge of his nose, indicating where the bullet went. Perry is reminded of the same forefinger resting on his sons’ noses in the middle of the tennis match.

‘Why I murder this apparatchik?’ Dima inquires rhetorically. ‘Was for my mother who protect her children. Was for love of my crazy father who suicide himself. Was for honour of Russia, I kill this fuck. Was to stop stares they give us in corridor, maybe. Therefore in Kolyma I am welcome prisoner. I am krutoi – good fellow, got no problems, pure. I am not political. I