Our Kind of Traitor

‘I understand we are old friends from long ago,’ she had told Perry a couple of hours ago, delicately touching his hand in greeting, then letting it go. ‘We met at the salon of a dear friend of mine when you were a student with an insatiable desire to paint. Her name, if you wish for one, was Michelle de la Tour, now dead, alas. I allowed you to sit in my shadow. You were too young to be my lover. Will that do for you, or do you require more?’

‘It will do very well, thank you!’ said Perry, laughing.

‘For me it does not do well. Nobody is too young to be my lover. Luke will provide you with confit of duck and a Camembert. I wish you a pleasant evening. And you, my dear, are exquisite’ – to Gail – ‘and far too good for this failed artist of yours. I’m joking. Luke, don’t forget Sheeba.’

Sheeba, her Siamese cat, now sitting in Gail’s lap.

At the dinner table, Perry – still over-bright – had been the soul of the party, whether breathlessly extolling Federer or reliving the contrived encounter with Dima, or Dima’s tour de force in the hospitality room. For Gail, it was like listening to him winding down after a perilous rock climb or a neck-and-neck cross-country run. And Luke and Hector were the perfect audience: Hector, rapt and uncharacteristically silent, interrupting only to squeeze another morsel of description out of them – the possible Aubrey, what sort of height would they say? Bunny, was he tight? – Luke darting back and forth to the enormous kitchen or topping up their glasses with special attention to Gail’s, or taking a couple of calls from Ollie, but still very much a member of the team.

It was only now, when the dinner and the wine had worked their therapy, and Perry’s mood of high adventure had given way to a sober quiet, that Hector returned to the precise wording of Dima’s invitation to tennis at the Club des Rois.

‘So we’re assuming that the message is in the massage,’ he said. ‘Anyone want to add to that?’

‘The massage was practically part of the challenge,’ Perry agreed.

‘Luke?’

‘Sticks out a mile to me. How many times?’

‘Three,’ said Perry.

‘Gail?’ Hector asked.

Waking from her distractions, Gail was less confident than the men:

‘I just wonder whether it might have stuck out a mile for Emilio and the Armani kids too,’ she said, avoiding Luke’s eye.

Hector had wondered it too:

‘Yes, well, I guess the truth is, that if dell Oro is smelling a rat, he’ll cancel the tennis forthwith, and we’re fucked. Game over. However, according to Ollie’s latest reports, the signs point the other way, right, Luke?’

‘Ollie’s been attending an informal meeting of chauffeurs outside the dell Oro chateau,’ Luke explained, with his burnished smile. ‘Tomorrow’s tennis match is being billed by Emilio as a knees-up after the signing. His gentlemen from Moscow have seen the Eiffel Tower and aren’t interested in the Louvre, so they’re weighing a bit heavy on Emilio’s hands.’

‘And the message about the massage?’ Hector prompted.

‘Is that Dima has booked two parallel sessions for Perry and himself for immediately after the match. Ollie has also established that, although the Club des Rois provides tennis for some of the world’s most desirable targets, it prides itself on being a safe haven. Bodyguards are not encouraged to traipse after their wards into changing rooms, saunas or massage rooms. They’re invited to sit out in the club foyer or in their bulletproof limos.’

‘And the club’s resident masseurs?’ Gail asked. ‘What do they do while you boys have your powwow?’

Luke had the answer, and his special smile. ‘Mondays are their day off, Gail. They only come in by appointment. Not even Emilio’s going to know they’re not coming in tomorrow.’

* * *

In the Hotel des Quinze Anges, it was one o’clock in the morning and Perry was finally asleep. Tiptoeing down the corridor to the lavatory, Gail locked the door, and by the sickly glow of the lowest-wattage light bulb in the world reread the text message she had received at seven that evening, just before they left for dinner on the Ile.My father says you are in Paris. A Swiss doctor informs I am nine weeks pregnant. Max is climbing in the mountains and does not respond. Gail

Gail? Natasha signed it with my name? She’s so demented she’s forgotten her own? Or does she mean ‘Gail, please, I implore you’? – that kind of Gail?

Half asleep in one part of her head, she brought up the number and, before she knew what she had done, pressed green and got a Swiss answering service. In a panic, she rang off and, wide awake now, texted instead:Do absolutely nothing until we have spoken. We need to meet and talk. Much love, Gail

She returned to the bedroom and climbed back under the horsehair duvet. Perry was sleeping like the dead. To tell him or not to tell him? Too much on his plate already? His big day tomorrow? Or my oath of secrecy to Natasha?

13

Climbing into Emilio dell Oro’s chauffeur-driven Mercedes which to Madame Mere’s fury had been blocking the road outside her hotel for the last ten minutes – and that halfwit of a driver refusing so much as to lower his window to receive her insults! – Perry Makepiece was prey to anxieties far greater than he was willing to acknowledge to Gail, who for the occasion had dolled herself up to the nines in the Vivienne Westwood outfit with harem pants that she’d bought on the day she won her first case: ‘If those high-class hookers are going to be on board, I’ll need all the help I can get,’ she had informed Perry, as she balanced precariously on her bed to see herself in the mirror over the handbasin.

* * *

Last night, returning to the Quinze Anges from their supper party, Perry had caught Madame Mere’s boot- button eyes peering at him from her den behind the reception desk.

‘Why don’t you have first run of the facilities and I’ll follow you up?’ he had suggested, and Gail with a grateful yawn complied.

‘Two Arabs,’ Madame Mere whispered.

‘Arabs?’

‘Arab police. They spoke Arabic together, and to me French. Arab French.’

‘What did they want to know?’

‘Everything. Where you were. What you do. Your passport. Your address in Oxford. Madame’s address in London. Everything about you.’

‘What did you tell them?’

‘Nothing. That you are an old guest, you pay, you are polite, you are not drunk, you only have one woman at a time, you have been invited by an artist to the Ile, and you will be late but you have a key, you are trusted.’

‘And our English addresses?’

Madame Mere was a small woman, and her Gallic shrug all the greater for it: ‘Whatever you wrote on your fiche, they took. If you didn’t want them to have your address, you should have written a false one.’

Extracting a promise that she would say nothing of this to Gail – my God, it would never cross her mind, she was a woman too! – Perry contemplated calling Hector at once but, being Perry, and the better for a significant amount of old calvados, he decided on pragmatic grounds that there was nothing anyone could do that wouldn’t be better done in the morning, and went to bed. Waking to the aroma of fresh coffee and croissants, he was surprised to see Gail in her wrap sitting on the end of the bed, examining her mobile.

‘Anything bad?’ he asked.