Our Kind of Traitor

‘That would be generous, Billy.’

‘It would indeed, Luke,’ Matlock agreed. ‘It would indeed. And somewhat conditional on your current behaviour too.’

* * *

Who was Yvonne? For the first of those three months, she had driven Luke – he could say it now, he could admit it – just a little bit wild. He loved her demureness and her privacy, which he longed to share. Her discreetly scented body, if she ever allowed it to be revealed, would border on the classic, he could imagine it exactly. Yet they could sit for hours on end, cheek by jowl in front of her computer screen, or poring over her Tate Modern mural, feeling each other’s body-warmth, grazing hands by accident. They could share every twist and turn of the chase, every false trail, dead end and temporary triumph: all at a distance of a few inches from each other, in the upstairs bedroom of a secret house that for most of the day they shared alone.

And still nothing: until an evening when the two of them were sitting exhausted and alone at the kitchen table enjoying a cup of Ollie’s soup and, at Luke’s suggestion, a shot of Hector’s Islay malt. Taking himself by surprise, he asked Yvonne point-blank what sort of a life she led apart from this, and whether she had anyone to share it with who could support her in her stressful labours – adding, with the old sad smile of which he was instantly ashamed, that after all it was only our answers that were dangerous, wasn’t it, not the questions, if she saw what he meant?

For a long time her dangerous answer didn’t materialize:

‘I’m a government employee,’ she said, in the robotic tone of somebody speaking into camera for a quiz competition. ‘My name is not Yvonne. Where I am employed is none of your business. However, I don’t think you’re asking me that. I’m Hector’s discovery, as I assume we both are. But I don’t think you’re asking me that either. You’re asking me about my orientation. And whether, by extension, I wish to go to bed with you.’

‘Yvonne, I was asking you nothing of the kind!’ Luke protested, truthlessly.

‘And for your information, I’m married to a man I’m in love with, we have a three-year-old daughter, and I don’t fuck around even with people as nice as you. So let’s get on with our soup, shall we?’ she suggested – at which, amazingly, they both broke out in cathartic laughter and, with the tension broken, returned peacefully to their separate corners.

* * *

And Hector, who was he, after three months of him, albeit in sporadic bursts? – Hector of the feverish stare and the scatological tirades against the City crooks who were the source of all our evils? On the Service grapevine it was hinted that in successfully saving the life of his family firm, Hector had resorted to methods honed by half a lifetime in the black arts, and deemed, even by the City’s abysmal standards, foul. So was the vendetta against the City’s evildoers driven by revenge – or guilt? Ollie, not normally given to gossip, had no doubt: Hector’s experience of the City’s bad manners – and his own employment of them, said Ollie – had turned him overnight into an avenging angel. ‘It’s a little vow he’s taken,’ he confided to them in the kitchen, while they waited for Hector to put in one of his late appearances. ‘He’s going to save the world before he leaves it if it kills him.’

* * *

But then Luke had always been a worrier. From infancy he had worried indiscriminately, rather in the way he fell in love.

He could worry as much about whether his watch was ten seconds fast or slow, as about the direction of a marriage that was null and void in every room except the kitchen.

He worried whether there was more to his son Ben’s tantrums than just growing pains, and whether Ben was under his mother’s orders not to love his father.

He worried about the fact that he was at peace when he was working, and that when he wasn’t, even now walking along, he was a mass of unjoined ends.

He worried whether he should have swallowed his pride and accepted the Human Queen’s offer of a shrink.

He worried about Gail, and his desire for her, or for some girl like her: a girl with real light in her face instead of the glum cloud that followed Eloise around even when the sun was on her.

He worried about Perry and tried not to be envious of him. He worried about which half of Perry would come out on top in an operational emergency: would it be the intrepid mountaineer or the unworldly university moralist – and anyway, was there a difference?

He worried about the impending duel between Hector and Billy Boy Matlock, and which of them was going to lose his temper first – or pretend to.

* * *

Leaving the sanctuary of Regent’s Park, he entered the throng of Sunday shoppers looking for a bargain. Ease down, he told himself. It’ll be all right. Hector’s in charge, not you.

He was counting off landmarks. Ever since Bogota, landmarks had been important to him. If they kidnap me, these are the last things I saw before they put the blindfold on me.

The Chinese restaurant.

The Big Archway nightclub.

The Gentle Readers’ Bookshop.

This is the ground coffee I smelled while I was wrestling with my attackers.

Those are the snowy pine trees I saw in the window of the art shop before they sandbagged me.

This is number 9, the house where I was reborn, three steps to the front door and act like any normal householder.

9

There were no formalities between Hector and Matlock, friendly or otherwise, and perhaps there never had been: just a nod and a silent handshake of two veteran belligerents shaping up for another bout. Matlock arrived on foot, having been dropped round the corner by his driver.

‘Very nice Wilton carpeting, Hector,’ he said, while he took a slow look round that seemed to confirm his worst suspicions. ‘You can’t beat Wilton, not when it comes to cost versus quality. Good day to you, Luke. It’s just the two of you, is it?’ – passing Hector his coat.

‘Staff are away at the races,’ Hector said, hanging it up.

Matlock was a broad-shouldered bull of a man, as his nickname implied, broad-headed, and at first glance avuncular, with a crouch that reminded Luke of an ageing rugby forward. His Midlands accent, according to the ground-floor gossips, had become more noticeable under New Labour, but was receding with the prospect of electoral defeat.

‘We’re in the basement, if you’re comfortable with that, Billy,’ said Hector.

‘I’ve no alternative but to be comfortable with it, thank you, Hector,’ said Matlock, neither pleasantly nor rudely, leading the way down the stone steps. ‘What are we paying for this place, by the by?’

‘You’re not. This far it’s on me.’

‘You’re on our payroll, Hector. The Service is not on yours.’

‘As soon as you greenlight the operation, I’ll be putting in my bill.’

‘And I’ll be querying it,’ said Matlock. ‘Taken to drink, have you?’

‘It used to be the wine cellar.’

They took their places. Matlock assumed the head of the table. Hector, normally the stubborn technophobe, sat himself on Matlock’s left in order to be in front of a tape recorder and a computer console. And to Hector’s left sat Luke, thereby providing the three of them with a clear view of the plasma screen that the absent Ollie had erected overnight.

‘Did you have time to wade through all the material we bunged at you, Billy?’ Hector inquired sympathetically. ‘Sorry to interfere with your golf.’

‘If all is what you sent me, yes, Hector, I did, thank you,’ Matlock replied. ‘Though in your case, as I have come to learn, the word all is somewhat of a relative term. I don’t