Our Kind of Traitor

am criminal. I am hero, I am fighter. I kill military apparatchik, maybe also Chekist. Why else they give me fifteen? I have honour. I am not –’

* * *

Reaching this point in his story, Perry faltered, and his voice became diffident:

‘I am not woodpecker. I am not dog, Professor,’ he offered dubiously.

‘He means informant,’ Hector explained. ‘Woodpecker, dog, hen: take your pick. They all mean informant. He’s trying to persuade you that he isn’t one when he is.’

With a nod of respect for Hector’s superior knowledge, Perry resumed.

* * *

‘One day, after three years, this good boy Dima will become man. How he become man? My friend Nikita will make him man. Who is Nikita? Nikita is also honourable, also good fighter, big criminal. He will be father to this good boy Dima. He will be brother to him. He will protect Dima. He will love Dima. It will be pure love. One day, it is very good day for me, proud day, Nikita bring me to vory. You know what is vory, Professor? You know what is vor?’

Yes, Perry even knows what is vory. He knows vor too. He has read his Solzhenitsyn, he has read his Shalamov. He has read that in the Gulag the vory are the prisoners’ arbiters and enforcers of justice, a brotherhood of criminals of honour sworn to abide by a strict code of conduct, to renounce marriage, property and subservience to the State; that the vory venerate priesthood and dabble in its mystique; and that vor is the singular of vory, plural. And that the vory’s pride is to be Criminals within the Law, an aristocracy far removed from street riff- raff who have never known a law in their lives.

‘My Nikita speak to very big vory committee. Many big criminals are present for this meeting, many good fighters. He tell to vory: “My dear brothers, here is Dima. Dima is ready, my brothers. Take him.” So they take Dima, they make him man. They make him criminal of honour. But Nikita must still protect Dima. This is because Dima – is – his –’

As Dima the criminal of honour hunts for the mot juste, Perry the outward-bound Oxford don comes to his assistance:

‘Disciple?’

‘Disciple! Yes, Professor! Like for Jesus! Nikita will protect his disciple Dima. This is normal. This is vory law. He will protect him always. This is promise. Nikita has made me vor. Therefore he protect me. But he die.’

Dima dabs at his bald brow with his handkerchief, then smears his wrist across his eyes, then pinches his nostrils between his finger and thumb like a swimmer emerging from the water. When the hand comes down, Perry sees that he is weeping for Nikita’s death.

* * *

Hector has called a natural break. Luke has made coffee. Perry accepts a cup, and a chocolate digestive while he’s about it. The lecturer in him is in full flood, rallying his facts and observations, presenting them with all the accuracy and precision he can muster. But nothing can quite douse the glint of excitement in his eyes, or the flush of his gaunt cheeks.

And perhaps the self-editor in him is aware of this, and troubled by it: which is why, when he resumes, he selects a staccato, almost offhand style of narrative more in keeping with pedagogic objectivity than the rush of adventure:

‘Nikita had picked up a camp fever. It was midwinter. Minus sixty degrees Celsius, or thereabouts. A lot of prisoners were dying. Guards didn’t give a damn. The hospitals weren’t there to cure, they were places to die in. Nikita was a tough nut and took a long time dying. Dima tended him. Missed his prison work, got the punishment cell. Each time they let him out, he went back to Nikita in the hospital until they dragged him off again. Beating, starving, light deprivation, chained to a wall in sub-zero temperatures. All the stuff you people outsource to less fastidious countries, and pretend you know nothing about,’ he adds, in a spurt of semi-humorous belligerence that falls flat. ‘And while he was comforting Nikita, they agreed that Dima would induct his own protege into the vory Brotherhood. It was a solemn moment, apparently: the dying Nikita appointing his posterity by way of Dima. A passing of the chalice across three generations of criminals. Dima’s protege – disciple, as he was now pleased to call him, thanks to me, I’m afraid – was one Mikhail, alias Misha.’ Perry reproduces the moment:

‘“Misha is man of honour, like me!” I tell to them,’ Dima is proclaiming to the vory’s high committee of made men. ‘“He is criminal, not political. Misha love true Mother Russia not Soviet Union. Misha respect all women. He strong, he pure, he not woodpecker, he not dog, not military, not camp guard, KGB. He not policeman. He kill policemen. He despise all apparatchik. Misha my son. He your brother. Take the son of Dima for your vory brother!”’

* * *

Perry still determinedly in lecture mode. The following facts for your notebooks, please, ladies and gentlemen. The passage I am about to read to you represents the short version of Dima’s personal history, as recounted by him in the lookout of the house called Three Chimneys between slurps of vodka:

‘As soon as he was released from Kolyma he hurried home to Perm and was in time to bury his mother. The early 1980s were boom years for criminals. Life in the fast lane was short and dangerous, but profitable. With his impeccable credentials Dima was received with open arms by the local vory. Discovering that he had a natural eye for numbers, he quickly engaged in illegal currency speculation, insurance fraud and smuggling. A fast-expanding folio of petty crime takes him to Communist East Germany. Car theft, false passports and currency deals a speciality. And along the way he equips himself with spoken German. He takes his women where he finds them, but his continuing partner is Tamara, a black-market dealer in such rare commodities as women’s clothing and essential foods, resident in Perm. With the assistance of Dima and like-minded accomplices she also runs a sideline in extortion, abduction and blackmail. This brings her into conflict with a rival brotherhood who first take her prisoner and torture her, then frame her and hand her over to the police who torture her some more. Dima explains Tamara’s problem:

‘“She don’t never squeal, Professor, hear me? She good criminal, better than man. They put her in press-cell. Know what is press-cell? They hang her upside down, rape her ten, twenty time, beat the shit outta her, but she don’t never squeal. She tell them, go fuck themselves. Tamara, she big fighter, no bitch.”’

Again Perry offered the word with diffidence, and again Hector quietly came to his rescue:

‘Bitch being even worse than dog or woodpecker. A bitch betrays the underworld code. Dima’s getting the serious guilts by now.’

‘Then perhaps that’s why he stumbled over the word,’ Perry suggested, and Hector said perhaps it was.

Perry as Dima again: ‘One day the police get so goddam sick of her they strip her naked, leave her in the fucking snow. She don’t never squeal, hear me? She go a bit crazy, OK? Talk to God. Buy a lotta icons. Bury money in the fucking garden, can’t find it, who givva fuck? This woman got loyalty, hear me? I don’t never let her go. Natasha’s mother, I loved her. But Tamara, I never let her go. Hear me?’

Perry hears him.

As soon as Dima starts to make serious money he packs Tamara off to a Swiss clinic for rest and rehabilitation, then marries her. Within a year their twin sons are born. Hot upon the wedding comes the betrothal of Tamara’s sensationally beautiful, much younger sister, Olga, a high-class hooker greatly prized by the