John le Carre - Our kind of traitor

'Your familiarization course will proceed at your convenience, not ours,' Hector had informed them, addressing his newly recruited troops on their first evening in a pompous voice she never heard him use again – so perhaps he too was nervous. 'Perry, if you find yourself stuck in Oxford for an unscheduled meeting or whatever, stay stuck and give us a call. Gail, whatever you do at Chambers, don't push your luck. The message is act natural and look busy. Any alteration in either of your lifestyles will raise eyebrows and be counter-productive. With me?'

Next, he reiterated for Gail's benefit the promise he had made to Perry:

'We shall tell you as little as we can get away with, but whatever we do tell you will be the truth. You're a pair of innocents abroad. That's how Dima wants you, and that's how I want you, and so do Luke and Ollie here. What you don't know you can't fuck up. Every new face has got to be a new face to you. Every first time has got to be a first time. Dima's plan is to launder you the way he launders money. Launder you into his social landscape, make you respectable currency. Effectively, he'll be under house arrest wherever he goes, and will have been since Moscow. That's his problem and he'll have thought hard and long about how to solve it. As ever, the initiative is with the poor bugger in the field. It's Dima's job to show us what he can manage, when and how.' And as a typical Hector afterthought: 'I'm foul-mouthed. Relaxes me, brings me down to earth. Luke and Ollie here are prudes, so it evens out.'

And then the homily:

'This is not, repeat not, a training session. We don't happen to have a couple of years to spare: just a few hours spread over a couple of weeks. So it's familiarization, it's confidence-building, it's establishing trust in all weathers. You in us, us in you. But you are not spies. So for Christ's sake don't try to be. Don't even think about surveillance. You are not surveillance-conscious people. You're a young couple enjoying a spree in Paris. So don't for fuck's sake start dawdling at shop windows, peering over your shoulders or ducking into side alleys. Mobiles are a slightly different matter,' he went on, without a blip. 'Did either of you use your phones in front of Dima or his gang?'

They had used their mobiles from the balcony of their cabin, Gail to call her Chambers concerning Samson v. Samson, Perry to call his landlady in Oxford.

'Did anyone in Dima's lot ever hear either of your phones go off?'

No. Emphatic.

'Do Dima or Tamara know either or both of your mobile numbers?'

'No,' said Perry.

'No,' Gail replied, if slightly less confidently.

Natasha had Gail's number and Gail had Natasha's. But within the four corners of the question, her reply was truthful.

'Then they can have our encrypted jobs, Ollie,' Hector said. 'Blue for Gail, silver for him. And you two people please hand over your SIM cards to Ollie and he'll do the necessary. Your new phones will be encrypted for the calls between the five of us only. You'll find the three of us pre-set under Tom, Dick and Harry. Tom's me. Luke's Dick. Ollie's Harry. Perry, you're Milton after the poet. Gail's Doolittle after Eliza. All pre-set. Everything else on the phones functions as per usual. Yes, Gail?'

Gail the barrister:

'Will you be listening to our calls from now on, if you haven't been already?'

Laughter.

'We shall be listening only on the pre-set encrypted lines.'

'No others? Sure?'

'No others. Truth.'

'Not even when I call my five secret lovers?'

'Not even, alas.'

'How about our personal texts?'

'Absolutely no. It's a waste of time and we're not into that stuff.'

'If our pre-set lines to one another are encrypted, why do we need our funny names?'

'Because people on buses earwig. Any more questions from the prosecution? Ollie, where's the bloody malt?'

'Got it right here, Skipper. Actually, I got a new bottle already' – in that irritatingly unplaceable voice.

*

'So your family, Luke?' Gail had asked him over soup and a bottle of red in the kitchen one evening before they went home.

It amazed her that she hadn't asked him the question before. Perhaps – dark thought – she hadn't wanted to, preferring to keep him on a hook. It evidently amazed Luke too, because his hand rose sharply to his forehead to comfort a small, livid scar that seemed to come and go of its own accord. A fellow spy's pistol butt? Or an angry wife's frying pan?

'One child only, I'm afraid, Gail,' he said, as if he should be apologizing for not having more. 'Boy. Marvellous little chap. Ben, we call him. Taught me everything I know about life. Beats me at chess too, I'm proud to say. Yes.' Twitch of the stray eyelid. 'Trouble is, we never get around to finishing a game. Too much of this.'

This? Did he mean booze? Spying? Or falling in love?

She had briefly suspected him of having a thing with Yvonne, largely from the way Yvonne discreetly mothered him. Then she decided they were just a man and a woman working side by side: until an evening when she caught his eyes staring now at Yvonne, now at herself, as if they were both some sort of higher being, and she thought she'd never seen such a sad face in all her life.

*

It's last night. It's end of term. It's end of school altogether. There will never be another two weeks like these. In the kitchen, Yvonne and Ollie are cooking a sea bass in salt. Ollie is singing from La Traviata, rather well, and Luke is doing appreciation, smiling at everyone and shaking his head in exaggerated marvel. Hector has brought a grand bottle of Meursault – actually, two bottles. But first of all, he needs to talk to Perry and Gail alone in the Headmaster's chintzy drawing room. Do we sit or stand? Hector is standing so Perry, ever the formalist despite himself, stands too. Gail selects an upright chair under a Roberts print of Damascus.

'So,' says Hector.

So, they agree.

'Last words, then. Without witnesses. The Job is dangerous. I've told you before but I'm telling you again now. It's fucking dangerous. You can still jump ship and no hard feelings. If you stay aboard, we'll wet-nurse you all we can, but we've got no logistical support worth a hoot. Or as we say in the trade, we're going in barefoot. You don't have to say your goodbyes. Forget Ollie's fish. Get your coats from the hall, walk out of the front door, none of it happened. Last call.'

The last of many, if he did but know. Perry and Gail have discussed the same question every night of the last fourteen. Perry was determined she should answer for them both, so she does:

'We're all right. We've decided. We'll do it,' she says, sounding more heroic than she means to, and Perry does a big, slow nod and says, 'Yup, definitely,' which doesn't sound like him either – a thing he must know, because he promptly turns Hector's question back on him:

'So how about you people?' he demands. 'Don't you ever have doubts?'

'Oh, we're fucked anyway,' Hector replies carelessly. 'That's the point, isn't it? If you're going to be fucked, be fucked in a good cause.'

Which for Perry, of course, is balm to his puritan ear.

*

And to judge by the expression on Perry's face as they pulled into the Gare du Nord, the same balm was still working, because there was a suppressed I-am-Britain look about him that was completely new to Gail. It wasn't till they reached the Hotel des Quinze Anges – a typical Perry choice: scruffy, narrow, five rickety floors high, tiny rooms, twin beds the size of ironing boards, and a stone's throw from the rue du Bac – that the full impact of what they had signed up to hit them. It was as if their sessions in the Bloomsbury house with its chummy family atmosphere – a cosy hour with Ollie, another with Luke, Yvonne has dropped by, Hector's on his way over for a nightcap – had instilled in them a sense of immunity which, now they were alone, had evaporated.