John le Carre - Our kind of traitor

'Forward to what?'

'Well, to us, as it turns out.'

Not knowing the purpose of the question, Perry hesitated. 'There wasn't any actual understanding,' he replied cautiously. 'Not an explicit one. Gail had done her part. Now I would do mine.'

'In your separate stations?'

'Yes.'

'Without communicating?'

'We communicated. Just not about the Dimas.'

'And the reason for that was…?'

'She hadn't heard what I'd heard at Three Chimneys.'

'And was therefore still in Arcadia?'

'Effectively. Yes.'

'Where, so far as you're aware, she remains. For as long as you can keep her there.'

'Yes.'

'Do you regret that we asked that she attend this evening's meeting?'

'You said you needed both of us. I told her you needed both of us. She agreed to come along,' Perry replied, as his face began to darken in irritation.

'But she wanted to come along, presumably. Otherwise she would have refused. She's a woman of spirit. Not someone who obeys blindly.'

'No. She's not,' Perry agreed, and was relieved to be met by Hector's beatific smile.

*

Perry is describing the tiny space where Dima had taken him to talk: a crow's-nest, he calls it, six by eight, stuck on the top of a ship's staircase leading up from a corner of the dining room; a gimcrack turret of wood and glass built on the half-hexagon overlooking the bay, with the sea wind rattling the clapboards and the windows shrieking.

'It must have been the noisiest place in the house. That's why he chose it, I suppose. I can't believe there's a microphone in the world that could have heard us over that din.' And in a voice that is acquiring the mystified tone of a man describing a dream: 'It was a really talkative house. Three chimneys and three winds. And this box we were sitting in, head to head.'

Dima's face no more than a hand's width from mine, he repeats, and leans across the table to Hector as if to demonstrate just how close.

'For an age we just sat and stared at each other. I think he was doubting himself. And doubting me. Doubting whether he could go through with it all. Whether he'd chosen the right man. And me wanting him to believe he had, does that make sense?'

To Hector, all the sense in the world apparently.

'He was trying to overcome an immense obstacle in his mind, which I suppose is what confession's all about. Then finally he rapped out a question, although it sounded more like a demand: "You are spy, Professor? English spy?" I thought at first it was an accusation. Then I realized he was assuming, even hoping, I'd say yes. So I said no, sorry, I'm not a spy, never have been, never will be. I'm just a teacher, that's all I am. But that wasn't good enough for him:

'"Many English are spy. Lords. Gentlemen. Intellectual. I know this! You are fair-play people. You are country of law. You got good spies."

'I had to tell him again: no, Dima, I'm not, repeat not, a spy. I'm your tennis partner and a university lecturer, on the point of changing my life. I should have been indignant. But what was should have? I was in a new world.'

'And absolutely hooked, I'll bet you were!' Hector interjects. 'I'd have given anything to be in your shoes! I'd even take up bloody tennis!'

Yes. Hooked is the word, Perry agrees. Dima was compulsive viewing in the half-darkness. And compulsive listening above the wind.

*

Hard, soft or medium, Hector's question was delivered so lightly and kindly that it was like a voice of comfort:

'And I suppose that, despite your well-founded reservations about us, you rather wished for a moment that you were a spy, didn't you?' he suggested.

Perry frowned, scratched awkwardly at his curly head of hair, and found no immediate answer.

*

'You know Guantanamo, Professor?'

Yes, Perry knows Guantanamo. He reckons he has campaigned against Guantanamo every which way he knows. But what's Dima trying to tell him? Why is Guantanamo suddenly so very important, very urgent, very critical for Great Britain – to quote Tamara's written message?

'You know secret planes, Professor? Goddam planes those CIA guys hire, ship terrorist guys Kabul to Guantanamo?'

Yes, Perry is familiar with these secret planes. He has sent good money to a legal charity that intends to sue their parent airlines for breaches of human rights.

'Cuba to Kabul, these planes got no freight, OK? Know why? Because no fucking terrorist ever fly Guantanamo-Afghanistan. But I got friends.'

The word friends seems to trouble him. He repeats it, breaks off, mutters something in Russian to himself, and takes a pull of vodka before resuming.

'My friends, they talk these pilots, do deal, very private deal, no comebacks, OK?'

OK. No comebacks.

'Know what they fly in these empty planes, Professor? No customs, freight on board, direct to buyer, Guantanamo-Kabul, cash up front?'

No, Perry has no suggestions for a likely cargo out of Guantanamo bound for Kabul, cash up front.

'Lobster, Professor!' – slapping his hand on his great thigh in a fit of savage laughter. 'Couple thousand goddam lobster from Bay of Mexico! Who buy goddam lobster? Crazy warlords! From warlords, CIA buy prisoners. To warlords, CIA sell goddam lobsters. Cash. Maybe also a few K heroin for prison guards at Guantanamo. Best grade. 999. No shit. Believe me, Professor!'

Is Perry supposed to be shocked? He tries to be. Is this really sufficient reason to drag him to a rickety lookout bombarded by the wind? He doesn't believe so. Neither, he suspects, does Dima. The story sounds more like some kind of sighting shot for whatever lies ahead.

'Know what my friends do with this cash, Professor?'

No, Perry does not know what Dima's friends do with the profits from smuggling lobsters from the Bay of Mexico to Afghan warlords.

'They bring this cash to Dima. Why they do that? Because they are trusting Dima. Many, many Russian syndicate trust Dima! Not only Russian! Big, small, I don't give a shit! We take all! You tell your English spies: you got dirty money? Dima wash it for you, no problem! You wanna save and conserve? Come to Dima! Out of many little roads, Dima make one big road. Tell this to your goddam spies, Professor.'

*

'So how are you reading the bugger at this stage?' Hector asks. 'He's sweating, bragging, drinking, joking. He's telling you he's a crook and a money-launderer and he's boasting about his bent chums – what are you really seeing and hearing? What's going on inside him?'

Perry considers the premise as if it has been set for him by a higher examiner, which is how he is beginning to see Hector. 'Anger?' he proposes. 'Directed at a person or persons yet to be defined?'

'Keep going,' Hector orders.

'Desperation. Also to be defined.'

'How about honest-to-God hatred, always good?' Hector insists.

'To come, one suspects.'

'Vengeance?'

'Is somewhere in there, definitely,' Perry agrees.

'Calculation? Ambivalence? Animal cunning? Think harder!' – spoken in jest, but received in earnest.

'All of the above. No question.'

'And shame? Self-disgust? None of that about?'

Taken aback, Perry ponders, frowns, peers about him. 'Yes,' he concedes in a long-drawn-out voice. 'Yes. Shame. The apostate's shame. Ashamed to be dealing with me at all. Ashamed of his treachery. That's why he had to boast so much.'

'I'm a goddam clairvoyant,' says Hector with satisfaction. 'Ask anyone.'

Perry doesn't need to.

*

Perry is describing the long minutes of silence, the conflicting grimaces of Dima's sweated face in the half-darkness, how he pours himself another vodka, chucks it back, mops his face, grins, glowers indignantly at Perry as if questioning his presence, reaches out and grabs him by the knee in order to hold his attention while he makes a point, relinquishes it, and forgets him again. And how finally, in a voice of deepest suspicion, he growls out a question that must be squarely answered before any other business can be conducted between them: