John le Carre - Our kind of traitor

Some hear him. One or two even smile, and a couple clap. From the Top Table at first nothing, then a single low comment in Russian, followed by unfriendly laughter.

Gail and Perry look at each other, smile, shrug. In the face of such an irresistible force, and at such an embarrassing moment, how can they say no? Anticipating their surrender, dell Oro seeks to forestall it:

'Dima. I think you are being a little hard on your friends. Maybe fix a game for later in the year, OK?'

But he's too late, and Gail and Perry are too merciful.

'Honestly, Emilio,' says Gail. 'If Dima's dying to play and Perry's willing, why don't we let the boys have their fun? I'm game, if you are. Darling?'

The darlings are new, more for Milton and Doolittle than themselves.

'OK then. But on one condition' – dell Oro again, fighting for the upper hand now – 'tonight, you come to my party. I have a superb house in Neuilly, you will love it. Dima loves it, he is our house guest. We have our honoured colleagues from Moscow with us. My wife at this very moment, poor woman, is supervising the preparations. How about I send a car to your hotel at eight o'clock? Please dress exactly how you like. We are very informal people.'

But dell Oro's invitation has already fallen on dead ground. Perry is laughing – saying it really is completely impossible, Emilio. Gail is protesting that her Paris friends would never forgive her, and no, she can't possibly bring them too, they're having their own party and Gail and Perry are the guests of honour.

They settle instead for Emilio's car to pick them up at their hotel at eleven o'clock tomorrow for tennis in the rain, and if looks could kill, dell Oro's would be killing Dima, but according to Hector he won't be able to do that till after Berne.

*

'You two make absolutely stunning casting,' Hector cried. 'Don't they, Luke? Gail, with your lovely intuition. You, Perry, with your fucking marvellous Brain-of-Britain. Not that Gail's exactly thick either. Thanks hugely for coming this far. For being so plucky in the lion's den. Do I sound like a scoutmaster?'

'I'll say you do,' said Perry, stretched out luxuriously on a chaise longue beneath the great arched window overlooking the Seine.

'Good,' said Hector complacently to jolly laughter.

Only Gail, seated on a stool at Perry's head, and running her hand meditatively through his hair, seemed a little distant from the celebration.

It was after supper on the Ile St-Louis. The splendid apartment on the top floor of the ancient fortress belonged to Luke's artistic aunt. Her work, which she had never stooped to selling, was stacked against the walls. She was a beautiful, amused woman in her seventies. Having fought the Germans as a young girl in the Resistance, she was at ease with her appointed role in Luke's little intrigue:

'I understand we are old friends from long ago,' she had told Perry a couple of hours ago, delicately touching his hand in greeting, then letting it go. 'We met at the salon of a dear friend of mine when you were a student with an insatiable desire to paint. Her name, if you wish for one, was Michelle de la Tour, now dead, alas. I allowed you to sit in my shadow. You were too young to be my lover. Will that do for you, or do you require more?'

'It will do very well, thank you!' said Perry, laughing.

'For me it does not do well. Nobody is too young to be my lover. Luke will provide you with confit of duck and a Camembert. I wish you a pleasant evening. And you, my dear, are exquisite' – to Gail – 'and far too good for this failed artist of yours. I'm joking. Luke, don't forget Sheeba.'

Sheeba, her Siamese cat, now sitting in Gail's lap.

At the dinner table, Perry – still over-bright – had been the soul of the party, whether breathlessly extolling Federer or reliving the contrived encounter with Dima, or Dima's tour de force in the hospitality room. For Gail, it was like listening to him winding down after a perilous rock climb or a neck-and-neck cross-country run. And Luke and Hector were the perfect audience: Hector, rapt and uncharacteristically silent, interrupting only to squeeze another morsel of description out of them – the possible Aubrey, what sort of height would they say? Bunny, was he tight? – Luke darting back and forth to the enormous kitchen or topping up their glasses with special attention to Gail's, or taking a couple of calls from Ollie, but still very much a member of the team.

It was only now, when the dinner and the wine had worked their therapy, and Perry's mood of high adventure had given way to a sober quiet, that Hector returned to the precise wording of Dima's invitation to tennis at the Club des Rois.

'So we're assuming that the message is in the massage,' he said. 'Anyone want to add to that?'

'The massage was practically part of the challenge,' Perry agreed.

'Luke?'

'Sticks out a mile to me. How many times?'

'Three,' said Perry.

'Gail?' Hector asked.

Waking from her distractions, Gail was less confident than the men:

'I just wonder whether it might have stuck out a mile for Emilio and the Armani kids too,' she said, avoiding Luke's eye.

Hector had wondered it too:

'Yes, well, I guess the truth is, that if dell Oro is smelling a rat, he'll cancel the tennis forthwith, and we're fucked. Game over. However, according to Ollie's latest reports, the signs point the other way, right, Luke?'

'Ollie's been attending an informal meeting of chauffeurs outside the dell Oro chateau,' Luke explained, with his burnished smile. 'Tomorrow's tennis match is being billed by Emilio as a knees-up after the signing. His gentlemen from Moscow have seen the Eiffel Tower and aren't interested in the Louvre, so they're weighing a bit heavy on Emilio's hands.'

'And the message about the massage?' Hector prompted.

'Is that Dima has booked two parallel sessions for Perry and himself for immediately after the match. Ollie has also established that, although the Club des Rois provides tennis for some of the world's most desirable targets, it prides itself on being a safe haven. Bodyguards are not encouraged to traipse after their wards into changing rooms, saunas or massage rooms. They're invited to sit out in the club foyer or in their bulletproof limos.'

'And the club's resident masseurs?' Gail asked. 'What do they do while you boys have your powwow?'

Luke had the answer, and his special smile. 'Mondays are their day off, Gail. They only come in by appointment. Not even Emilio's going to know they're not coming in tomorrow.'

*

In the Hotel des Quinze Anges, it was one o'clock in the morning and Perry was finally asleep. Tiptoeing down the corridor to the lavatory, Gail locked the door, and by the sickly glow of the lowest-wattage light bulb in the world reread the text message she had received at seven that evening, just before they left for dinner on the Ile. My father says you are in Paris. A Swiss doctor informs I am nine weeks pregnant. Max is climbing in the mountains and does not respond. Gail

Gail? Natasha signed it with my name? She's so demented she's forgotten her own? Or does she mean 'Gail, please, I implore you'? – that kind of Gail?

Half asleep in one part of her head, she brought up the number and, before she knew what she had done, pressed green and got a Swiss answering service. In a panic, she rang off and, wide awake now, texted instead: Do absolutely nothing until we have spoken. We need to meet and talk. Much love, Gail

She returned to the bedroom and climbed back under the horsehair duvet. Perry was sleeping like the dead. To tell him or not to tell him? Too much on his plate already? His big day tomorrow? Or my oath of secrecy to Natasha?

Climbing into Emilio dell Oro's chauffeur-driven Mercedes which to Madame Mere's fury had been blocking the road outside her hotel for the last ten minutes – and that halfwit of a driver refusing so much as to lower his window to receive her insults! – Perry Makepiece was prey to anxieties far greater than he was willing to acknowledge to Gail, who for the occasion had dolled herself up to the nines in the Vivienne Westwood outfit with harem pants that she'd bought on the day she won her first case: 'If those high-class hookers are going to be on board, I'll need all the help I can get,' she had informed Perry, as she balanced precariously on her bed to see herself in the mirror over the handbasin.