Bonjour.
The fat, elderly man pulls open his locker door, lets the towel fall to his feet, takes out a hanger. The second shower door opens. A second elderly man emerges.
‘
Perry agrees. The rain – a horror indeed. He bangs vigorously on the right-hand massage door. Three short knocks, but good and hard. Dima is standing behind him.
‘
‘
‘
Ollie opens the door from inside. They brush past him. Ollie closes the door, gives Perry a reassuring pat on the arm. He has removed his earring and combed his hair straight back. He wears a medic’s white coat. It’s as if he’s taken off one Ollie and put on another. Hector wears a white coat, but has left it carelessly unbuttoned. He is masseur-in-chief.
Ollie is inserting wooden wedges in the door frame, two at the bottom, two at the side. As always with Ollie, Perry has the feeling he’s done it all before. Hector and Dima face each other for the first time, Dima leaning backward, Hector forward, the one advancing, the other recoiling. Dima is an old convict awaiting his next dose of punishment, Hector the governor of his gaol. Hector reaches out his hand. Dima shakes it, then keeps it captive with his left hand while he digs in his pocket with his right. Hector passes the memory stick to Ollie, who takes it to a side table, unzips the massage bag, extracts a silver laptop, lifts the lid and inserts the memory stick, all in a single movement. With his white coat, Ollie is larger than ever, yet twice as deft.
Dima and Hector have not exchanged a single word. The prisoner–governor moment has passed. Dima has recovered his backward tilt, Hector his stoop. His steady grey gaze is wide and unflinching, but also inquiring. There is nothing of possession in it, nothing of conquest, nothing of triumph. He could be a surgeon deciding how to operate, or whether to operate at all.
‘Dima?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m Tom. I’m your British apparatchik.’
‘Number One?’
‘Number One sends his greetings. I’m here in his place. That’s Harry’ – indicating Ollie – ‘We speak English and the Professor here sees fair play.’
‘OK.’
‘Then let’s sit down.’
They sit down. Face to face. With Perry the fair-play man at Dima’s side.
‘We have a colleague upstairs,’ Hector continues. ‘He’s sitting alone in the bar behind a silver laptop like Harry’s there. His name is Dick. He’s wearing spectacles and a Party member’s red tie. When you leave the club at the end of the day, Dick will get up and walk slowly across the lobby in front of you carrying his silver laptop and pulling on his dark blue raincoat. Please remember him for the future. Dick speaks with my authority, and with the authority of Number One. Understood?’
‘I understand, Tom.’
‘He also speaks Russian on demand. As I do.’
Hector glances at his watch, then at Ollie. ‘I’m allowing seven minutes before it’s time for you and the Professor to go upstairs. Dick will let us know if you’re needed before that. Are you comfortable with that?’
‘
The ritual began. Never in his dreams had Perry supposed that such a ritual existed. Yet both men seemed to acknowledge its necessity.
Hector first: ‘Are you now, or have you ever been, in touch with any other foreign Intelligence service?’
Dima’s turn: ‘I swear to God, no.’
‘Not even Russian?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know of anyone in your circle who has been in touch with any other Intelligence service?’
‘No.’
‘No one is selling similar information elsewhere? To anybody – police, a corporation, private individual, anywhere in the world?’
‘I don’t know nobody like that. I want my kids to England. Now. I want my goddam fucking deal.’
‘And I want you to have your deal. Dick and Harry want you to have your deal. So does the Professor here. We’re all on the same side. But first you have to persuade us, and I have to persuade my fellow apparatchiks in London.’
‘Prince gonna kill me, fuck’s sake.’
‘Did he tell you that?’
‘Sure. At the fucking funeral: “Don’t be sad, Dima. Soon you gonna be with Misha.” Like joke. Bad joke.’
‘How did this morning’s signing go?’
‘Great. One half my fucking life gone already.’
‘Then we’re here to arrange the rest of it, aren’t we?’
Luke knows for once exactly who he is and why he is here. So do the Club authorities. He is Monsieur Michel Despard, a man of means, and he is waiting for his eccentric elderly aunt to arrive and give him lunch, the famous artist nobody has heard of who lives on the Ile St-Louis. Her secretary has booked a table for them, but being an eccentric aunt she may not appear. Michel Despard knows that of her; so does the Club, for a sympathetic headwaiter has directed him to a quiet corner of the bar where, it being a wet Monday, he is welcome to wait, and discharge a little business while he is about it – and thank you kindly, sir, thank you very much indeed: with a hundred euros, life becomes a little easier.
Is Luke’s aunt really a member of the Club des Rois? Of course she is! Or her late protector the Comte was a member, what’s the difference? Or so Ollie has spun it to them in his persona as Luke’s aunt’s secretary. And Ollie, as Hector has rightly observed, is the best back-door man in the business, and the aunt will confirm whatever is necessary to confirm.
And Luke is content. He is at his calm, unflurried operational best. He may be a mere tolerated guest, tucked into an unsociable corner of the club room. With his horn-rimmed spectacles and Bluetooth earpiece and open laptop, he may resemble any harassed Monday-morning executive catching up on work he should have done over the weekend.
But safely inside himself, he is in his element: as fulfilled and liberated as he will ever be. He is the steady voice amid the unheard thunder of the battle. He is the forward observation post, reporting to HQ. He is the micro-manager, the constructive worrier, the adjutant with an eye for the vital detail that his beleaguered commander has overlooked or doesn’t want to see. To Hector, those two ‘Arab policemen’ were the product of Perry’s overheated concerns for Gail’s safety. If they existed at all, they were ‘a couple of French coppers with nothing better to do on a Sunday night’. But to Luke they were untested operational Intelligence, neither to be confirmed nor dismissed, but stored away till further information is available.
He glances at his watch, then at the screen. Six minutes since Perry and Dima entered the changing-rooms staircase. Four minutes twenty seconds since Ollie reported them entering the massage room.
Raising his eye-line he takes stock of the scene playing itself out before him: first the Clean Envoys, better known as the Armani kids, sulkily bolting canapes and swilling champagne, not much bothering to talk to their expensive escorts. Their day’s work is already over. They have signed. They are halfway to Berne, their next stop. They are bored, hungover and restless. Their women last night were a let-down: or so Luke imagines them to have been. And what is it Gail calls those two Swiss bankers sitting all alone in a corner, drinking sparkling water? Peter and the Wolf.
Perfect, Gail. Everything about her perfect. Look at her now, working the room like a trooper. The fluid body, sweet hips, the endless legs, and the oddly motherly charm. Gail with Bunny Popham. Gail with Giles de Salis. Gail with both of them. Emilio dell Oro, drawn like a moth, attaches himself to their group. So does a stray Russian who can’t take his eyes off her. He’s the podgy one. He’s given up on the champagne and started hitting the vodka.
