John le Carre - Our kind of traitor

The voice had come at them without warning: the disembodied voice of Antigua bellowing above the three winds.

Yes, I do remember you, but I'm not the Professor.

Perry is.

So I'll keep looking at the latest thing in Adidas tennis shoes, and let Perry go first before I turn my head in an appropriately delighted and highly astonished manner, as Ollie would say.

Perry is going first. She feels him leave her side and turn. She measures the length of time it takes for him to believe the evidence of his eyes.

'Christ, Dima! Dima from Antigua! – incredible!'

Not too much, Perry, keep it down -

'What in Heaven's name are you doing here! Gail, look!'

But I won't look. Not at once. I'm eyeing shoes, remember? And eyeing shoes, I'm always distracted, I'm on a different planet actually, even tennis shoes. Absurdly, as it had seemed to them at the time, they had practised this moment outside a sports shop in Camden Town that specialized in athletics shoes, and again in Golders Green, first with Ollie overplaying the back-slapping Dima and Luke playing innocent bystander, then with their roles reversed. But now she was glad of it: she knew her lines.

So pause, hear him, wake, turn. Then be delighted and highly astonished.

'Dima! Oh my God. It's you! You marvel! This is just totally – this is amazing!' – followed by her ecstatic mouse-squeak, the one she uses for opening Christmas parcels, as she watches Perry dissolve into the huge torso of a Dima whose delight and astonishment are no less spontaneous than her own:

'What you do here, Professor, you lousy goddam tennis player!'

'But Dima, what are you doing?' Perry and Gail together now, a chorus of yaps in different keys, as Dima roars on.

Has he changed? He's paler. The Caribbean sun's worn off. Yellow half-moons under the sexy brown eyes. Sharper downward lines at the corners of the mouth. But the same stance, the same backward lean saying 'come at me if you dare'. The same Henry the Eighth placing of the little feet.

And the man's an absolute natural for the stage, just listen to this:

'You think Federer gonna pussy this Soderling guy the way you pussy me? – you think he gonna tank the goddam match because he love fair play? Gail, I swear to God, come here! – I gotta hug this girl, Professor! You married her yet? You goddam crazy!' – as he draws her into his enormous chest, driving his whole body against her, starting with a clammy, tear-stained cheek, then his chest, then the bulge of his crotch until even their knees are touching; then shoves her away from him in order to bestow the obligatory three kisses of the Trinity on her cheeks, left side, right side, left side again while Perry does 'well, I must say this really is the most ridiculous, totally improbable coincidence', with rather more academic detachment than Gail thinks appropriate: a little short on spontaneity in her opinion, and she's making up for it with a thrilled gabble of too many questions all at once:

'Dima, darling, how are Katya and Irina, for Heaven's sake? I just can't stop thinking about them!' – true – 'Are the twins playing cricket? How's Natasha? Where have you all been? Ambrose said you'd all gone to Moscow. Is that where you all went? For the funeral? You look so well. How's Tamara? How are all those weird, lovely friends and relations you had around you?'

Did she really say that last bit? Yes she did. And while she's saying it, and intermittently receiving bits of answer in reply, she is becoming aware, if only in soft focus, of smartly dressed men and women who have paused to watch the show: another Dima-supporters' club, apparently, but of a younger, slicker generation, far removed from the mossy bunch assembled in Antigua. Is that Baby-Face Niki lurking among them? If so, he's bought himself an Armani summer suit in beige with fancy cuffs. Are the link bracelet and the deep-sea-diver's watch nestling inside them?

Dima is still talking and she is hearing what she doesn't want to hear: Tamara and the children flew straight from Moscow to Zurich – yes, Natasha too, she don't like goddam tennis, she wanna get home to Berne, read and ride a bit. Chill out. Does she also gather that Natasha hadn't been all that well, or was it her imagination? Everyone is conducting three conversations at once:

'Don't you teach goddam kids no more, Professor?' – mock outrage – 'you gonna teach French kids be English gentlemen once? Listen, where you sitting? Some goddam bird house, top floor, right?'

Followed by, presumably, a rendering of the same witty suggestion over his shoulder in Russian. But it must have got lost in translation, because few of the group of smartly dressed onlookers smile, except for a spruce little dancer of a man at their centre. At first glance, Gail takes him to be a tour guide of some sort, for he is wearing a very visible cream-coloured nautical blazer with an anchor of gold thread on the pocket, and carrying a crimson umbrella which, together with the head of swept-back silvery hair, would have made him instantly findable by anyone lost in a crowd. She catches his smile, then she catches his eye. And when she returns her gaze to Dima, she knows his eye is still on her.

Dima has demanded to see their tickets. Perry makes a habit of losing tickets, so Gail's got them. She knows the numbers by heart, so does Perry. But that doesn't prevent her from not knowing them now, or from looking sweetly vague as she hands them to Dima who lets out a derisive snort:

'You got telescopes, Professor? You so fucking high up, you need oxygen!'

Again he repeats the joke in Russian, but again the standing group behind him seems to be waiting rather than listening. Is his breathlessness new since Antigua? Or new for today? Is it a heart thing? Or a vodka thing?

'We gotta goddam hospitality box, hear me? Corporation shit. Young guys I work with from Moscow. Armani kids. Got pretty girls. Look at them!'

A pair of the girls do indeed catch Gail's eye: leather jackets, pencil skirts and ankle boots. Pretty wives? Or pretty hookers. If so, top of the range. And the Armani kids a hostile blur of blue-black suits and sodden stares.

'Thirty number-one seats, food you die for,' Dima is bellowing. 'You wanna do that, Gail? Come join us? Watch the game like a lady? Drink champagne? We got spare. Hey, come on, Professor. Why the fuck not?'

Because Hector told him to be hard to get, is why the fuck not. Because the harder he is to get, the harder you'll have to work to get him, and me with him, and the greater will be our credibility with your guests from Moscow. Pushed into a corner, Perry is making a good job of being Perry: frowning, doing his diffident and awkward bit. For a rank beginner in the arts of dissembling, he's putting on a pretty good turn. Time to help him out all the same:

'The tickets were a present, you see, Dima,' she confides sweetly, touching his arm. 'A good friend gave them to us, a dear old gentleman. For love. I don't think he'd like us to leave our seats empty, would he? If he found out, he'd be heartbroken' – which was the answer they'd cooked up with Luke and Ollie over a late nightcap of malt.

Dima stares from one to other of them in disappointment while he regroups his thoughts.

Restlessness in the ranks behind him: can't we get this over?

The initiative is with the poor bugger in the field…

Solution!

'Then hear me, Professor, OK? Hear me once' – his finger jabbing into Perry's chest – 'OK,' he repeats, nodding menacingly. 'After the game. Hear me? Soon as the goddam game is over, you gonna come visit us in hospitality.' He swings round to Gail, challenging her to upset his great plan. 'Hear me, Gail? You gonna bring this Professor to our hospitality. And you gonna drink champagne with us. The game don't end when it ends. They gotta do goddam presentations out there, speeches, lotta shit. Federer gonna win easy. You wanna bet me five grand US he don't win, Professor? I give you three to one. Four to one.'