John le Carre - Our kind of traitor

Then repeating it all for Hector's benefit an hour later.

'Is Billy Boy for us or against us by now?' Luke had asked Hector over the same farewell drink at Charles de Gaulle Airport, when they had moved gratefully to less personal topics.

'Billy Boy will go wherever he thinks his knighthood is. If he's got to choose between the gamekeepers and the poachers, he'll choose Matlock. However, a man who hates Aubrey Longrigg as much as he does can't be all bad,' Hector added as an afterthought.

In other circumstances Luke might have questioned this happy assertion but not now, not on the eve of Hector's decisive battle with the forces of darkness.

*

Somehow Wednesday morning had arrived. Somehow Gail and Perry had slept a little, and risen bright and ready for breakfast with Ollie, who had then gone off in search of their royal coach, as he called it, while they made a list and went shopping for the children in the local supermarket. Unsurprisingly, they were reminded of a similar expedition they had made to St John's on the afternoon Ambrose set them on the overgrown wood path to Three Chimneys, but their selections this time were more prosaic: water, still and fizzy, soft drinks – and oh, all right, let them have Coca-Cola (Perry) – picnic foods – kids in general prefer savoury to sweet even if they don't know it (Gail) – small backpacks for everybody, never mind they're not Fair Trade; a couple of rubber balls and a baseball bat which was the nearest they could hope to get to cricket but, if needs must, we'll teach them rounders – or more likely, since the boys are baseball players, they'll teach us.

Ollie's royal coach was an old twenty-foot green horsebox with wooden sides, a canvas roof and spaces for two horses in the back with a partition between them, and cushions and blankets on the floor for human beings. Gail sat herself down cautiously on the cushions. Perry, pleased at the prospect of riding rough, sprang in after her. Ollie put up the ramp and bolted it into place. The purpose of his wide-brimmed black hat became clear: he was Ollie the merry Roma, off to the horse show.

They drove for fifteen minutes by Perry's watch, and stopped with a jolt on soft ground. No hanky-panky and no peeking, Ollie had warned them. A hot wind was blowing and the canvas roof above them billowed like a spinnaker. By Ollie's calculation they were ten minutes from target.

*

Luke Alone, his teachers had called him at his preparatory school, after the derring-do hero of some long-forgotten adventure novel. It struck him as a bit unfair that, at the age of eight, he should have manifested the same sense of solitude that haunted him at forty-three.

But Luke Alone he had remained, and Luke Alone he was now, wearing horn-rimmed spectacles and a red-hot Russian tie, tapping away at a silver laptop as he sat under the splendidly illuminated glass canopy of the great lobby of the Bellevue Palace Hotel, with a blue raincoat slung conspicuously over the arm of a leather chair pitched midway between the glass entrance doors and the pillared Salon d'Honneur, the scene of a midday apero presently being hosted by the Arena Multi Global Trading Conglomerate, see the handsome bronze signpost pointing guests the way. It was Luke Alone, keeping an eye on arrivals by way of the many elegant door mirrors, and waiting to exfiltrate single-handed a red-hot Russian defector.

For the last ten minutes, he had looked on in a kind of passive awe as first Emilio dell Oro and the two Swiss bankers, immortalized by Gail as Peter and the Wolf, made their deliberately inconspicuous entrances, followed by a clutch of grey suits, then two young Saudis, by the look of them, then a Chinese woman and a swarthy man with broad shoulders whom Luke had arbitrarily appointed Greek.

Then in a single bored flock the Armani kids, the Seven Clean Envoys, unprotected save by Bunny Popham with a carnation in his buttonhole, and the languidly charming Giles de Salis with a silver-handled walking stick to go with his offensively perfect suit.

Aubrey Longrigg, where are you now they need you? Luke wanted to ask him. Keeping your head down? Wise fellow. A safe seat in Parliament and a free ticket to the French Open is one thing, so is a multi-million offshore kickback and a few more diamonds for your witless wife, not to speak of a non-executive directorship in a fine new City bank with billions of freshly laundered money to play with. But a full-dress, front-line signing in a Swiss bank with the spotlights on you is a bit too rich for your blood: or so Luke was thinking as the lank, bald-headed, ill-tempered figure of Aubrey Longrigg, Member of Parliament, came stalking up the steps – the man himself, no longer a picture – with Dima, the world's number-one money-launderer at his side.

As Luke buried himself a little deeper in his leather chair, and raised the lid of his silver laptop a little higher, he knew that if there had ever been such a thing as a Eureka moment in his life, it was here and now, and there would never be another like it, while once more thanking the gods he didn't believe in that in all his years in the Service he had never once set eyes on Aubrey Longrigg, and nor had Longrigg, so far as he knew, on him.

Even so, it was not until the two men were safely past him on their way to the Salon d'Honneur – Dima had almost brushed against him – that Luke dared raise his head and take a quick reading of the mirrors and establish the following nuggets of operational Intelligence:

Nugget One: that Dima and Longrigg weren't talking to each other. And probably they hadn't even been talking as they arrived. They had simply happened to be close to each other as they came up the steps. Two other men were following – sound, middle-aged Swiss-accountant types – and it was more likely, in Luke's view, that Longrigg had been talking to one or both of them, rather than to Dima. And although the point was tenuous – they could have been talking to one another earlier – Luke was cautiously consoled, because it's never comfortable to discover, just as your operation is reaching fruition, that your joe has a personal relationship with a main player that you didn't know about. Otherwise, on the subject of Longrigg, he had no further thoughts above the exultant, blindingly obvious: he's here! I saw him! I am the witness!

Nugget Two: that Dima has decided to go out with a bang. For his great occasion he sports a custom-built blue pinstripe double-breasted suit; and for his delicate feet a pair of black calf Italian slip-ons with tassels – not ideal, in Luke's teeming mind, for making a dash for it, but this isn't going to be a dash, it's going to be an orderly withdrawal. Dima's manner, for a fellow who reckons he's just signed his own death warrant, struck Luke as improbably carefree. Perhaps it was the foretaste of vengeance he was enjoying: of an old vor's pride soon to be restored, and a murdered disciple atoned for. Perhaps, amid all his anxieties, he was glad to be done with the lying, ducking and pretending, and was already thinking of the green-and-pleasant England that awaited him and his family. Luke knew that feeling well.

The apero is getting under way. A low baritone burble issues from the Salon d'Honneur, starts to grow, and drops again. Some honourable Salon guest is making a speech, first in Russian blur, now in English blur. Peter? The Wolf? De Salis? No. It's the honourable Emilio dell Oro; Luke recognizes his voice from the tennis club. Handclapping. Church silence while an honourable toast is drunk. To Dima? No, to honourable Bunny Popham, who is responding; Luke knows that voice too, and the laughter confirms it. He looks at his watch, takes out his mobile, presses the button for Ollie:

'Twenty minutes if he's on time,' he says, and once more settles to his silver laptop.