John le Carre - Our kind of traitor

'"Misha is man of honour, like me!" I tell to them,' Dima is proclaiming to the vory's high committee of made men. '"He is criminal, not political. Misha love true Mother Russia not Soviet Union. Misha respect all women. He strong, he pure, he not woodpecker, he not dog, not military, not camp guard, KGB. He not policeman. He kill policemen. He despise all apparatchik. Misha my son. He your brother. Take the son of Dima for your vory brother!"'

*

Perry still determinedly in lecture mode. The following facts for your notebooks, please, ladies and gentlemen. The passage I am about to read to you represents the short version of Dima's personal history, as recounted by him in the lookout of the house called Three Chimneys between slurps of vodka:

'As soon as he was released from Kolyma he hurried home to Perm and was in time to bury his mother. The early 1980s were boom years for criminals. Life in the fast lane was short and dangerous, but profitable. With his impeccable credentials Dima was received with open arms by the local vory. Discovering that he had a natural eye for numbers, he quickly engaged in illegal currency speculation, insurance fraud and smuggling. A fast-expanding folio of petty crime takes him to Communist East Germany. Car theft, false passports and currency deals a speciality. And along the way he equips himself with spoken German. He takes his women where he finds them, but his continuing partner is Tamara, a black-market dealer in such rare commodities as women's clothing and essential foods, resident in Perm. With the assistance of Dima and like-minded accomplices she also runs a sideline in extortion, abduction and blackmail. This brings her into conflict with a rival brotherhood who first take her prisoner and torture her, then frame her and hand her over to the police who torture her some more. Dima explains Tamara's problem:

'"She don't never squeal, Professor, hear me? She good criminal, better than man. They put her in press-cell. Know what is press-cell? They hang her upside down, rape her ten, twenty time, beat the shit outta her, but she don't never squeal. She tell them, go fuck themselves. Tamara, she big fighter, no bitch."'

Again Perry offered the word with diffidence, and again Hector quietly came to his rescue:

'Bitch being even worse than dog or woodpecker. A bitch betrays the underworld code. Dima's getting the serious guilts by now.'

'Then perhaps that's why he stumbled over the word,' Perry suggested, and Hector said perhaps it was.

Perry as Dima again: 'One day the police get so goddam sick of her they strip her naked, leave her in the fucking snow. She don't never squeal, hear me? She go a bit crazy, OK? Talk to God. Buy a lotta icons. Bury money in the fucking garden, can't find it, who givva fuck? This woman got loyalty, hear me? I don't never let her go. Natasha's mother, I loved her. But Tamara, I never let her go. Hear me?'

Perry hears him.

As soon as Dima starts to make serious money he packs Tamara off to a Swiss clinic for rest and rehabilitation, then marries her. Within a year their twin sons are born. Hot upon the wedding comes the betrothal of Tamara's sensationally beautiful, much younger sister, Olga, a high-class hooker greatly prized by the vory. And the bridegroom is none other than Dima's beloved disciple Misha, by now also released from Kolyma.

'With the union of Olga and Misha, Dima's cup was full,' Perry declared. 'Dima and Misha were henceforth true brothers. Under vory law, Misha was already Dima's son, but the marriage made the family relationship absolute. Dima's children would be Misha's children, Misha's children would be his,' Perry said, and sat back decisively, as if waiting for questions from the back of the hall.

But Hector, who had been observing with some amusement Perry's retreat into his academic skin, preferred to offer his own brand of wry comment:

'Which is a bloody odd thing about these vory chaps, wouldn't you say? One minute forswearing marriage, politics and the State and all its works, the next prancing up the aisle in full rig with the church bells ringing. Have another shot of this. Only a teaspoon. Water?'

Business with the bottle and water jug.

'It's who they all were, isn't it?' Perry reflected extraneously, sipping at his very weak whisky. 'All those weird cousins and uncles in Antigua. They were Criminals within the Law who had come to commiserate about Misha and Olga.'

*

Perry's resolute lecture mode again. Perry as capsule historian, and nothing else:

Perm is no longer large enough for Dima or the Brotherhood. Business is expanding. Crime syndicates are forming alliances. Deals are being cut with foreign mafias. Best of all, Dima the bete intellectuelle of Kolyma with no education worth a damn has discovered a natural talent for laundering criminal proceeds. When Dima's Brotherhood decides to open up for business in America, it's Dima they send to New York to set up a money-laundering chain based in Brighton Beach. Dima takes Misha as his enforcer. When the Brotherhood decides to open a European arm of his money-laundering business, it's Dima they appoint to the post. As a condition of acceptance, Dima again requests the appointment of Misha, this time as his number two in Rome. Request granted. Now the Dimas and the Mishas are indeed one family, trading together, playing together, exchanging houses and visits, admiring one another's children.

Perry takes another sip of whisky.

'That was in the days of the old Prince,' Perry says, almost nostalgically. 'For Dima, the golden age. The old Prince was a true vor. He could do no wrong.'

'And the new Prince?' Hector inquires provocatively. 'The young fellow? Any take on him at all?'

Perry is not amused. 'You know bloody well there was,' he growls. And adds: 'The new young Prince is the bitch of all time. The traitor of traitors. He's the Prince who delivers the vory to the State, which is the worst thing any vor can do. Betraying a man like that is a duty in Dima's eyes, not a crime.'

*

'You like those little kids, Professor?' Dima asks in a tone of false detachment, throwing back his head and affecting to study the flaking panels of the ceiling: 'Katya? Irina? You like?'

'Of course I do. They're wonderful.'

'Gail, she like too?'

'You know she does. She's terribly sorry for them.'

'What they tell her, the little girls, how their father die?'

'In a car smash. Ten days ago. Outside Moscow. A tragedy. The father and mother both.'

'Sure. Was tragedy. Was car smash. Very simple car smash. Very normal car smash. In Russia we get many such car smash. Four men, four Kalashnikov, maybe sixty bullet, who givva shit? That's a goddam car smash, Professor. One body, twenty maybe thirty bullet. My Misha, my disciple, a kid, forty year old. Dima take him to the vory, make him a man.'

A sudden outbreak of fury:

'So why do I not protect my Misha? Why I let him go to Moscow? Let bitch Prince's bastards kill him twenty, thirty bullet? Kill Olga, beautiful sister of my wife Tamara, mother of Misha's little girls. Why I not protect him? You are Professor! You tell me, please, why do I not protect my Misha?'

If it was fury, not volume, that gave his voice such unearthly strength, it is the chameleon nature of the man that enables him to put aside his fury in favour of despondent Slav reflection:

'OK. Maybe Tamara's sister Olga, she not so goddam religious,' he says, conceding a point that Perry hasn't made. 'I tell to Misha: "Maybe your Olga still look at other guys too much, got beautiful arse. Maybe you don't screw around no more, Misha, stay home once, like me now, take a bit care of her."' His voice falls to a whisper again: 'Thirty goddam bullet, Professor. That bitch Prince gotta pay something for thirty bullet in my Misha.'