John le Carre - Our kind of traitor

*

Perry had gone quiet. It was as if a distant bell had sounded for the end of the lecture period, and he had belatedly become aware of it. For a moment he appeared to surprise himself by his presence at the table. Then with a jerk of his long, angular body he re-entered time present.

'So that's basically about it then,' he said, in a tone to wrap things up. 'Dima sank into himself for a while, woke up, seemed puzzled I was there, resented my presence, then decided I was all right, then forgot me again and put his hands over his face and muttered to himself in Russian. Then he stood up, and fished around in his satin shirt, and yanked out the little package I included in my document,' he went on. 'Handed it to me, embraced me. It was an emotional moment.'

'For both of you.'

'In our separate ways, yes, it was. I think it was.'

He seemed suddenly in a hurry to go back to Gail.

'Any instructions to accompany the package at all?' Hector asked, while little B-list Luke beside him smiled to himself over his neatly folded hands.

'Sure. "Take this to your apparatchiks, Professor. A present from World Number One money-launderer. Tell them I want fair play." Exactly as I wrote in my document.'

'Any idea what was in the package?'

'Only guesses, really. It was wrapped in cotton wool, then cling-film. As you saw. I assumed it was an audio cassette – from a baby recorder of some kind. Or that's what it felt like anyway.'

Hector remained unpersuaded. 'And you didn't attempt to open it.'

'God no. It was addressed to you. I just made sure it was firmly pasted inside the cover of the dossier.'

Slowly turning the pages of Perry's document, Hector gave a distracted nod.

'He was carrying it against his body,' Perry continued, evidently feeling a need to fend off the gathering silence: 'It made me think of Kolyma. The tricks they must have got up to. Secreting messages and so on. The thing was dripping wet. I had to wipe it dry on a towel when I got back to our cabin.'

'And you didn't open it?'

'I said I didn't. Why should I? I'm not in the habit of reading other people's letters. Or listening to them.'

'Not even before you passed through Customs at Gatwick?'

'Certainly not.'

'But you felt it.'

'Of course I did. I just told you I did. What's this about? Through the plastic film. And the cotton wool. When he gave it to me.'

'And when he'd given it to you, what did you do with it?'

'Put it in a safe place.'

'Where was that?'

'I'm sorry?'

'The safe place. Where was it?'

'In my shaving bag. The moment I got back to our cabin, I went straight into the bathroom and put it there.'

'Next to your toothbrush, as it were.'

'As it were.'

Another long silence. Was it as long for them as it was for Perry? He feared not.

'Why?' Hector demanded finally.

'Why what?'

'The shaving bag,' Hector replied patiently.

'I thought it would be safer.'

'When you passed through Customs at Gatwick?'

'Yes.'

'You thought that's where everybody keeps their cassettes?'

'I just thought it would be' – he shrugged.

'Less conspicuous in a shaving bag?'

'Something like that.'

'Did Gail know?'

'What? Of course not. No.'

'I should think not. Is the recording in Russian or English?'

'How on earth do I know? I didn't listen to it.'

'Dima didn't tell you which language it was in?'

'He offered no description of it whatever, other than the one I've given you. Cheers.'

He took a last swig of his very thin Scotch, then set his glass heavily on the table, signifying finality. But Hector did not at all share his haste. Quite the contrary. He turned back a page of Perry's document. Then forward a couple.

'So why again?' Hector pursued.

'Why what?'

'Why do it at all? Why smuggle a dicey package through British Customs for a Russian crook? Why not chuck it in the Caribbean and forget about it?'

'I'd have thought it was pretty obvious.'

'It is to me. I wouldn't have thought it was for you. What's so pretty obvious about it?'

Perry searched, but seemed to have no answer to the question.

'Well how about because it's there?' Hector suggested. 'Isn't that why climbers are supposed to climb?'

'So they say.'

'Load of bollocks, actually. It's because the climbers are there. Don't blame the bloody mountain. Blame the climbers. Agree?'

'Probably.'

'They're the chaps who see the distant peak. The mountain doesn't give a bugger.'

'Probably not, no' – an unconvincing grin.

'Did Dima discuss your own personal involvement in these negotiations at all, should they transpire?' Hector inquired, after what seemed to Perry an endless delay.

'A bit.'

'In what terms – a bit?'

'He wanted me to be present for them.'

'Present why?'

'To see fair play, apparently.'

'Whose fair play, for fuck's sake?'

'Well, yours I'm afraid,' said Perry, reluctantly. 'He wanted me to hold you people to your word. He has an aversion to apparatchiks, as you may have noticed. He wants to admire you because you're English gentlemen, but he doesn't trust you because you're apparatchiks.'

'Is that how you feel?' – peering at Perry with his oversized grey eyes. 'That we're apparatchiks?'

'Probably,' Perry conceded, yet again.

Hector turned to Luke, still seated strictly at his side. 'Luke, old boy, I rather think you have an appointment. We shouldn't keep you.'

'Of course,' said Luke and, with a brisk smile of farewell for Perry, obediently left the room.

*

The malt whisky was from the Isle of Skye. Hector poured two stiff shots and invited Perry to help himself to water.

'So,' he announced. 'Tough question time. Feel up to it?'

How could he not?

'We have a discrepancy. A king-sized one.'

'I'm not aware of any.'

'I am. It concerns what you have not written to us in your alpha-plus essay, and what you have so far omitted from your otherwise flawless viva voce. Shall I spell it out, or will you?'

Noticeably ill at ease, Perry shrugged again. 'You do it.'

'Gladly. In both performances you have failed to report a key clause in Dima's terms and conditions as relayed to us in the package you ingeniously smuggled through Gatwick Airport in your shaving bag or, as we oldies prefer to call it, sponge bag. Dima insists – not a bit, as you suggest, but as a breakpoint – and Tamara insists, which I suspect is even more important, despite appearances – that you, Perry, be present at all negotiations, and that the said negotiations be conducted in the English language for your benefit. Did he happen to mention that condition to you in the course of his meanderings?'

'Yes.'

'But you saw fit not to mention it to us.'

'Yes.'

'Was that by any chance because Dima and Tamara also stipulate the participation not merely of Professor Makepiece but of a lady they are pleased to describe as Madam Gail Perkins?'

'No,' Perry said, his voice and jaw rigid.

'No? No what? No, you didn't unilaterally edit that condition out of your written and oral accounts?'

Perry's response was so vehement and precise that it was apparent he had been preparing it for some time. But first he closed his eyes as if to consult his inner demons. 'I'll do it for Dima. I'll even do it for you people. But I'll do it alone or not at all.'

'While in the same rambling diatribe addressed to us,' Hector pursued, in a tone that took no account of the dramatic statement of which Perry had just delivered himself, 'Dima also refers to a scheduled meeting in Paris this coming June. The 7th, to be precise. A meeting not with us despised apparatchiks at all, but with yourself and Gail, which struck us as a bit peculiar. Can you account for that by any chance?'