John le Carre - Our kind of traitor

'Then the phone rang,' said Gail.

*

Perry is sitting upright in his chair as if he has been called to order, hands as before spread flat on the table, back straight but shoulders on the slope as he meditates on the rightness of what he is about to do. His jaw is set in refusal although nobody has asked anything of him that needs to be refused, except for Gail, whose expression as she stares at him is one of dignified entreaty – or so she hopes, but maybe she's just giving him the hairy eyeball, because she's not sure any more what facial signals she's emitting.

Luke's tone is light-hearted, even debonair, which is presumably how he wishes it to be:

'I'm trying to picture the two of you standing there together, you see,' he explains keenly. 'It's a truly extraordinary moment, don't you agree, Yvonne? Standing side by side in the hall? Reading? Perry holding the letter? Gail, you're looking at it over his shoulder. Both literally struck mute. You've had this extraordinary proposition thrown at you to which you're not allowed to respond in any way. It's a nightmare. And as far as Dima and Tamara are concerned, simply by not speaking you're halfway to being co-opted. Neither of you, I take it, is about to storm out of the house. You're pinned down. Physically and emotionally. Am I right? So from their point of view, so far, so good: you've tacitly agreed to agree. That's the impression you can't help giving them. Totally inadvertently. Simply by doing nothing, by being there at all, you're becoming part of their big play.'

'I thought they were both totally barking,' Gail says to deflate him. 'Paranoid, the pair of them, frankly, Luke.'

'Their paranoia taking what form exactly?' – Luke undeterred.

'How should I know? Deciding that somebody's bugged the place, for openers. And little green men are listening.'

But Luke is more doughty than she expects. He comes back sharply:

'Was that really so unlikely, Gail, after what you'd both seen and heard? You must have realized by now that you were standing with at least one foot in Russian crime. And you an experienced lawyer, if I may say so.'

*

A long pause followed. Gail had not expected to be locking horns with Luke, but if he wanted a fight he was welcome to one any time:

'The so-called experience you refer to, Luke,' she began furiously, 'does not unfortunately cover' – but Perry had already headed her off.

'The phone rang,' he gently reminded her.

'Yes. Well, all right, the phone rang,' she conceded. 'It was a yard away from us. Less. Maybe two feet. It had a bell like a fire alarm going off. We jumped out of our skins. They didn't, we did. A mossy, black, 1940s stand-up job with a dial and a concertina flex, sitting on a wobbly rattan table. Dima picked it up and bellowed Russian at it and we watched his face stretch into an arse-kissing smile that he didn't mean. Everything about him was totally against his own free will. Forced smiles, forced laughter, false jollity, and a lot of yes-sir, no-sir, three bags full, and I'd like to strangle you with my bare hands. Eyes fixed all the time on batty Tamara, taking his cues from her. And the finger back in front of his lips, telling us no noises-off, please, all the time he's talking. Right, Perry?' – deliberately avoiding Luke.

Right.

'So these are the people they're afraid of, I'm thinking. And they want us to be afraid of them too. Tamara conducting him. Nodding, shaking her head, rouged cheeks and all, pulling a Medusa face for moments of mega-disapproval. Fair description, Perry?'

'Florid, but accurate,' Perry conceded awkwardly – then, thank the Lord, gave her a real full-beam smile, even if it was his guilty one.

'And that was the first of many calls that evening, I rather believe?' nimble Luke suggested, darting from one to the other of them with his quick, strangely lifeless eyes.

'There must have been half-a-dozen phone calls in the time before the family came back,' Perry agreed. 'You heard them too, right?' – for Gail – 'And they were just for openers. All the time I was closeted with Dima, we'd hear the phone go and either Tamara would come yelling at Dima to answer it, or Dima would be jumping to his feet and hurrying off to take it himself, cursing in Russian. If there were phone extensions in the house I never saw them. He told me later that night that mobiles didn't work up there because of the trees and the cliffs, which was why everyone called him on the landline. I didn't believe him. I thought they were checking on his whereabouts, and calling the house on an old landline was the way to do it.'

'They?'

'The people who didn't trust him. And he didn't trust in return. The people he's beholden to. And hates. The people they're afraid of, so we've got to be.'

The people that Perry, Luke and Yvonne can know about and I mustn't, in other words, thought Gail. The people in our bloody document that isn't ours.

'So this is the point where you and Dima retire to your convenient place where you can talk without risk of being overheard,' Luke prompted.

'Yes.'

'And Gail, you went off to bond with Tamara.'

'Bond my foot.'

'But you went.'

'To a tacky drawing room that stank of bat-piss. With a plasma television playing Russian Orthodox High Mass. She was carrying a tin.'

'A tin?'

'Didn't Perry tell you? In our joint document that I haven't seen? Tamara was carting a black tin handbag around with her. When she put it down it clanked. I don't know where women carry their guns in normal society, but I had a feeling this was her Uncle-Vanya-equivalent.'

If it's my swansong, I'll bloody well make the most of it:

'The plasma TV took up most of one wall. The other walls were decked out in icons. Travelling ones. Ornately framed for extra sanctity. Male saints, no Virgins. Where Tamara goes, there go the saints, or that was my guess. I've got an aunt like that, ex-tart turned Catholic convert. Each of her saints has a different job. If she's lost her keys, it's Anthony. If she's taking the train, Christopher. If she's stuck for a few quid, Mark. If a relative is sick, Francis. If it's too late, Saint Peter.'

Hiatus. She had dried: another lousy actor, washed up and out of a part.

'And the rest of the evening, briefly, Gail?' Luke asked, not quite glancing at his watch, but as good as.

'Simply scrumptious, thank you. Beluga caviar, lobster, smoked sturgeon, oceans of vodka, brilliant thirty-minute toasts in drunken Russian for the adults, great birthday cake, washed down with health-giving clouds of vile Russian-cigarette smoke. Kobe beef and floodlit cricket in the garden, a steel band banging away that nobody was listening to, fireworks that nobody was watching, a drunken swim for the last chaps standing, and home by midnight, for a jolly post-mortem over a nightcap.'

*

A stack of Yvonne's glossy photographs is making its positively last appearance. Kindly identify anybody you believe you may recognize from the festivities, says Yvonne, speaking by rote.

Him and him, says Gail, wearily pointing.

And him too, surely? says Perry.

Yes, Perry, him too. Another bloody him. One day we'll have equal opportunity for female Russian criminals.

Silence while Yvonne completes another of her careful notes and puts down her pencil. Thank you, Gail, you have been most helpful, says Yvonne. It's randy little Luke's cue to be brisk. Brisk is merciful:

'Gail, I fear we should release you. You've been immensely generous, and a superb witness, and we can pick up on everything else from Perry. We're very grateful. Both of us. Thank you.'

She is standing at the door, not sure how she got there. Yvonne is standing beside her.

'Perry?'

Does he answer her? Not that she notices. She climbs the stairs, Yvonne her gaoler close behind her. In the plush, over-prinked hall, big Ollie of the cockney accent and foreign voices folds up his Russian newspaper, clambers to his feet and, pausing in front of a period mirror, carefully adjusts his beret, using both hands.