Our Kind Of Traitor Part 29

'Sure. Or Queen's. I'm still a member there.'

'No p.u.s.s.ying, OK?'

'No p.u.s.s.ying.'

'Wanna bet? Make it interesting?'

'Can't afford it. Might lose.'

'You chicken, huh?'

'Afraid so.'

Then the embrace he dreaded, the prolonged imprisonment in the huge, damp trembling torso, on and on. But when they separated, Perry saw that the life had drained from Dima's face, and the light from his brown eyes. Then, as if to order, he turned on his heel, and headed for the living room where Tamara and the a.s.sembled family were waiting.

There never had been any possibility that Perry would fly to England with Dima, on that evening or any other. Luke had known it all along, and had hardly needed to float the question with Hector to get the flat answer 'no'. If the answer had for some unforeseeable reason been yes, Luke would have contested it: untrained, enthusiastic amateurs flying escort with high-value defectors simply didn't fit into his professional scheme of things.

So it was less out of sympathy for Perry and more out of sound operational sense that Luke conceded that Perry should accompany them on the journey to Berne-Belp. When you are whisking a major source from the bosom of his family and consigning him with no hard guarantees to the care of your parent Service, he reasoned grudgingly, well yes, then it is prudent to provide him with the solace of his chosen mentor.

But if Luke had been antic.i.p.ating heart-wrenching scenes of departure, he was spared them. Darkness came. The house was hushed. Dima summoned Natasha and his two sons to the conservatory and addressed them while Perry and Luke waited out of earshot in the front hall and Gail purposefully continued to watch Mary Poppins Mary Poppins with the girls. For his reception by the gentlemen spies of London, Dima had donned his blue pinstripe suit. Natasha had pressed his best s.h.i.+rt, Viktor had polished his Italian shoes, and Dima was worried about them: what if they should get dirty on the walk to the place where Ollie had parked the jeep? But he was reckoning without Ollie who, as well as blankets, gloves and thick woollen hats for the ride over the mountain, had a pair of rubber overshoes of Dima's size waiting for him in the hall. And Dima must have told his family not to follow him, because he appeared alone, looking as sprightly and unrepentant as he had when he made his appearance through the swing-doors of the Bellevue Palace Hotel with Aubrey Longrigg at his side. with the girls. For his reception by the gentlemen spies of London, Dima had donned his blue pinstripe suit. Natasha had pressed his best s.h.i.+rt, Viktor had polished his Italian shoes, and Dima was worried about them: what if they should get dirty on the walk to the place where Ollie had parked the jeep? But he was reckoning without Ollie who, as well as blankets, gloves and thick woollen hats for the ride over the mountain, had a pair of rubber overshoes of Dima's size waiting for him in the hall. And Dima must have told his family not to follow him, because he appeared alone, looking as sprightly and unrepentant as he had when he made his appearance through the swing-doors of the Bellevue Palace Hotel with Aubrey Longrigg at his side.

At the sight of him, Luke's heart rose higher than it had risen since Bogota. Here is our crown witness and Luke himself will be another. Luke will be witness A behind a screen, or plain Luke Weaver in front of it. He will be a pariah, as Hector will. And he will help nail Aubrey Longrigg and all his merry men to the mast, and to h.e.l.l with a five-year contract at training school, and a quality house close to it, with sea air and good schools for Ben near by and an enhanced pension at the end of the line, and renting not selling his house in London. He would cease to mistake s.e.xual promiscuity for freedom. He would try and try with Eloise until she believed in him again. He would finish all his games of chess with Ben, and find a job that would bring him home at a sensible hour, and real weekends to bond in, and for Christ's sake he was only forty-three and Eloise wasn't even forty yet.

So it was with both a sense of ending and beginning that Luke fell in next to Dima, and the three of them fell in behind Ollie, for the walk down to the farmstead and the jeep.

Of the drive, Perry the devoted mountaineer had at first only a distracted awareness: the furtive ascent by moonlight through forest to the Kleine Scheidegg with Ollie at the wheel and Luke beside him in the front seat, and Dima's great body lurching soggily against Perry's shoulders each time Ollie negotiated the hairpin bends on sidelights, and Dima didn't bother to brace himself unless he really had to, preferring to ride with the blows. And yes, of course, the spectral black shadow of the Eiger North Face drawing ever closer was an iconic sight for Perry: pa.s.sing the little way station of Alpiglen, he gazed up in awe at the moonlit White Spider, calculating a route through it, and promising himself that, as a last throw of independence before he married Gail, he would attempt it.

About to crest the Scheidegg, Ollie dowsed the jeep's lights altogether, and they slunk like thieves past the twin hulks of the great hotel. The glow of Grindelwald appeared below them. They began the descent, entered forest and saw the lights of Brandegg winking at them through the trees.

'From now on, it's hard track,' Luke called over his shoulder, in case Dima was feeling the effects of the b.u.mpy ride.

But Dima either didn't hear or didn't care. He had thrown his head back and thrust one hand into his breast, while the other arm was stretched along the back seat behind Perry's shoulders.

Two men at the centre of the road are waving a hand torch.

The man without the torch is holding up his gloved hand in command. He is dressed for the city in a long overcoat, scarf and no hat although he is half bald. The man with the torch is wearing police uniform and a cape. Ollie is already yelling cheerfully at them as he draws up.

'Hey, you boys, what's going on on here?' he demands, in a sing-song Swiss-French here?' he demands, in a sing-song Swiss-French argot argot that Perry hasn't heard him speak before. 'Somebody fallen off the Eiger? We haven't even seen a rabbit.' that Perry hasn't heard him speak before. 'Somebody fallen off the Eiger? We haven't even seen a rabbit.'

Dima's a rich Turk, Luke had said at the briefing. He's been staying at the Park Hotel and his wife's been taken seriously ill in Istanbul. He left his car in Grindelwald, and we're a couple of English fellow guests playing good Samaritan. It won't stand checking but it may just work for one-time use.

'Why didn't the rich Turk take the train from Wengen to Lauterbrunnen and go round to Grindelwald by cab?' Perry had asked.

'He won't be reasoned with,' Luke had replied. 'This way he reckons, by taking a jeep over the mountain, he saves himself an hour. There's a midnight flight to Ankara from Kloten.'

'Is there?'

The policeman is s.h.i.+ning his torch at a purple triangle stuck to the jeep's windscreen. The letter G is printed on it. The man in city clothes is hovering behind him, blacked out by the glare of the torch. But Perry has a shrewd feeling he is taking a very close look at the jovial driver and his three pa.s.sengers.

'Whose jeep is this?' the policeman asks, resuming his inspection of the purple triangle.

'Arni Steuri's. Plumber. Friend of mine. Don't tell me you don't know Arni Steuri from Grindelwald. He's on the main street, next to the electrician.'

'You drove down from Scheidegg tonight?' the policeman asks.

'From Wengen.'

'You drove up up from from Wengen to Scheidegg Wengen to Scheidegg?'

'What do you think we did? Fly?'

'If you drove up up from Wengen to Scheidegg, you must have a second vignette, issued from Lauterbrunnen. The vignette on your windscreen is for ScheideggGrindelwald from Wengen to Scheidegg, you must have a second vignette, issued from Lauterbrunnen. The vignette on your windscreen is for ScheideggGrindelwald exclusively exclusively.'

'So whose side are you you on?' Ollie says, still with dogged good humour. on?' Ollie says, still with dogged good humour.

'Actually, I come from Murren,' the policeman replies stoically.

A silence follows. Ollie begins humming a tune, which is another thing Perry hasn't heard him do before. He is humming, and with the help of the beam of the policeman's torch he is hunting among the papers jammed into the pocket of the driver's door. Sweat is running down Perry's back, although he's sitting quite motionless at Dima's side. No difficult peak or Serious Climb has ever made him sweat while he's sitting down. Ollie is still humming while he searches, but his hum has lost its cheeky edge. I'm a guest at the Park Hotel, Perry is telling himself. Luke's another. We're playing good Samaritan to a deranged Turk who can't speak English and his wife is dying. It may work for one-time use.

The plainclothes man has taken a step forward and is leaning over the side of the jeep. Ollie's humming is becoming less and less convincing. Finally he sits back as if defeated, a rumpled piece of paper in his hand.

'Well maybe this will do you,' he suggests, and shoves a second vignette at the policeman, this one with a yellow triangle instead of a purple one, and no letter G superimposed on it.

'Next time, make sure both vignettes are fixed to the windscreen,' the policeman says.

The torch goes out. They are driving again.

The parked BMW seemed to Perry's inexpert eye to repose peacefully where Luke had left it no wheel clamps, no rude notices wedged under the wipers, just a parked saloon car and whatever Luke was looking for as he and Ollie walked gingerly round it and Perry and Dima remained as instructed in the back seat of the jeep, they didn't find it, because now Ollie was already opening the driver's door and Luke was beckoning to them to hurry over, and inside the BMW it was the same formation again: Ollie at the wheel, Luke up front beside him, Perry and Dima in the back. All through the stop and search, Perry realized, Dima hadn't moved or made a sign. He's in prisoner mode, Perry thought. We're transferring him from one gaol to another, and the details are not his responsibility.

He glanced at the wing mirrors for suspicious following lights, but saw none. Sometimes a car would seem to be trailing them, but as soon as Ollie gave over, it drove past. He glanced at Dima beside him. Dozing. He was still wearing the black woollen cap to hide his baldness. Luke had insisted on it, pinstripe suit or no. Now and then, as Dima lolled against him, the oily wool tickled Perry's nose.

They had reached the autobahn. Under the sodium lights, Dima's face became a flickering death mask. Perry looked at his watch, not knowing why, but needing the comfort of the time. A blue sign indicated Belp Airport. Three lines two lines turn right now now into the slip road. into the slip road.

The airport was darker than any airport had a right to be. That was the first thing about it that surprised Perry. All right, it was after midnight, but you'd have expected a lot more light, even from a small on-off airport like Belp that has never quite had its full international status confirmed.

And there were no formalities: unless you counted as a formality the private word Luke was having with a weary, grey-faced man in blue overalls who seemed to be the only official presence around. Now Luke was showing the man a doc.u.ment of some kind too small for a pa.s.sport, for sure, so was it a card, a driving licence, or perhaps a small stuffed envelope?

Whatever it was, the grey-faced man in blue overalls needed to look at it in a better light, because he turned and hunched himself into the beam of the downlight behind him, and when he turned back to Luke, whatever it was that he'd had in his hand wasn't in his hand any more, so either he'd hung on to it, or slipped it back to Luke, and Perry hadn't seen him do it.

And after the grey man who had disappeared without a word in any language there came a chicane of grey screens, but n.o.body to watch them negotiate it. And after the chicane, an immobile luggage carousel, and a pair of heavy electric swing-doors that were opening before they reached them are we airside airside already? Impossible! then an empty departure lounge with four gla.s.s doors leading straight on to the tarmac: and still not a soul to scan their luggage or themselves, make them take their shoes and jackets off, scowl at them through an armoured-gla.s.s window, snap fingers at them for their pa.s.sports, or ask them deliberately unnerving questions about how long they had been in the country and why. already? Impossible! then an empty departure lounge with four gla.s.s doors leading straight on to the tarmac: and still not a soul to scan their luggage or themselves, make them take their shoes and jackets off, scowl at them through an armoured-gla.s.s window, snap fingers at them for their pa.s.sports, or ask them deliberately unnerving questions about how long they had been in the country and why.

So if all this privileged non-attention they were getting was the result of private enterprise on Hector's part which Luke had implied to Perry, and Hector himself had effectively confirmed then all Perry had to say was: hats off to Hector.

The four gla.s.s doors to the open tarmac looked closed and bolted to Perry's eye, but Luke the good man on a rope knew better. He made a beeline for the right-hand door, and gave it a little tug and behold! it slid obediently into its housing, allowing a sprightly draught of cooling air to dance into the room and run its hand over Perry's face, which he was duly grateful for, because he felt unaccountably hot and sweaty.

With the door wide open and the night beckoning, Luke placed a hand gently, not proprietorially on Dima's arm and, guiding him away from Perry's side, led him unprotesting through the doorway and on to the tarmac where, as if forewarned, Luke made a sharp left turn, taking Dima with him and leaving Perry to stalk awkwardly behind them, like somebody who's not quite sure he's invited. Something about Dima had changed. Perry realized what it was. Stepping through the doorway, Dima had removed his woollen hat and dropped it into a handy rubbish bin.

And as Perry turned after them, he saw what Luke and Dima must already have seen: a twin-engined plane, with no lights and its propellers softly rotating, parked fifty yards away, with two ghostly pilots barely visible in the nose-cone.

There were no goodbyes.

Whether that was something to be pleased or sad about, Perry didn't know, either at the time or later. There had been so many embraces, so many greetings, real or contrived, there had been such a feast of goodbyes and h.e.l.los and declarations of love, that in the aggregate their meetings and partings were complete, and perhaps there was no room for another.

Or perhaps always perhaps Dima was too full to speak, or to look back, or to look at him at all. Perhaps tears were pouring down his face as he walked towards the little plane with one surprisingly small foot in front of the other, as neat as walking the plank.

And from Luke, a pace or two behind and apart from Dima now, as if leaving him to enjoy the absent limelight and the cameras, not one word to Perry either: it was the formed man ahead of him that Luke had his eyes on, not Perry standing alone behind him. It was Dima with his dignity on parade: bare-headed, the backward lean, the suppressed but stately limp.

And of course there was tactic in the way Luke had positioned himself in relation to Dima. Luke wouldn't be Luke if there wasn't tactic. He was the clever, darting shepherd in the c.u.mbrian hills where Perry had climbed when he was young, urging his prize ewe up the steps into the black hole of the cabin with every ounce of mental and physical concentration he possessed, and ready any time for him to shy or bolt or simply stop dead and refuse.

But Dima didn't shy, bolt or stop dead. He strode straight up the steps and into the blackness, and as soon as the blackness had him, little Luke was skipping up the steps to join him. And either there was someone inside to close the door on them or Luke did it for himself: an abrupt sigh of hinges, a double clunk of metal as the door was made fast from inside, and the black hole in the plane's fuselage disappeared.

Of the take-off, Perry also had no particular memory: only that he was thinking he should call Gail and tell her that the Eagle had Departed or some such phrase, then find himself a bus or cab, or maybe just walk into town. He was a bit hazy about where he was in relation to Belp centre, if there was one. Then he woke to Ollie standing beside him, and remembered that he had a lift back to Gail and the fatherless family in Wengen.

The plane took off, Perry didn't wave. He watched it rise and tip sharply, because Belp Airport has a lot of hills and small mountains to contend with and pilots have to be nippy. These pilots were. A commercial charter, by the look of it.

And there was no explosion. Or none that reached Perry's ears. Later, he wished there had been. Just the thump of a gloved fist into a punchball and a long white flash that brought the black hills rus.h.i.+ng at him, then absolutely nothing, either to look at or to hear, until the ta-too-ta-toos of police and ambulances and fire brigades as their flas.h.i.+ng lights began to answer the light that had gone out.

Instrument failure is the semi-official verdict at present. Engine failure another. Laxity on the part of unnamed maintenance staff is widely touted. Poor little Belp Airport has long been the experts' whipping boy and its critics aren't sparing the rod. Ground control may also have been to blame. Two committees of experts have failed to agree. The insurers are likely to withhold payment until the cause is known. The charred corpses continue to mystify. On the face of it the two pilots were no problem: charter pilots true, but plenty of flying experience, sober fellows, both married, no trace of illegal substances or alcohol, nothing adverse in their records and their wives on neighbourly terms with one another in Harrow, where the families lived. Two tragedies, therefore, but as far as the media was concerned, only worth a day. Why on earth a former official from the British Emba.s.sy in Bogota should have been sharing the plane of a 'dubious Russian Swiss-based minigarch', even the red-top press was at a loss to explain. Was it s.e.x? Was it drugs? Was it arms? For want of a shred of evidence it was none of them. Terror, the great catch-all these days, has also been considered, but rejected out of hand.

No group has claimed responsibility.

Acknowledgements My heartfelt thanks to Federico Varese, Professor of Criminology at Oxford University and author of seminal works on the Russian mafia, for his creative and ever-patient counsel; to Berengere Rieu, who took me backstage at the Roland Garros Stadium; to Eric Deblicker, who gave me the tour of an exclusive tennis club in the Bois de Boulogne not so dissimilar to my Club des Rois; to Buzz Berger for correcting my tennis shots; to Anne Freyer, my wise and faithful French editor; to Chris Bryans, for his advice on the Mumbai stock market; to Charles Lucas and John Rolley, bankers of probity, who sportingly advised me on the practices of less scrupulous members of their profession; to Ruth Halter-Schmid, who spared me many wrong turnings on my journeying through Switzerland; to Urs von Almen, for guiding me through the wilder byways of the Bernese Oberland; to Urs Buhrer, Direktor of the Bellevue Palace Hotel in Berne, for allowing me to stage an embarra.s.sing episode in his peerless establishment; and to Vicki Phillips, my invaluable secretary, for adding proofreading to her countless skills.

And to my friend Al Alvarez, the most generous and astute of readers, homage.

John le Carre, 2010

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