Our Kind of Traitor (16 page)

Perry as Dima again: ‘One day the police get so goddam sick of her they strip her naked, leave her in the fucking snow. She don’t never squeal, hear me? She go a bit crazy, OK? Talk to God. Buy a lotta icons. Bury money in the fucking garden, can’t find it, who givva fuck? This woman got loyalty, hear me? I don’t never let her go. Natasha’s mother, I loved her. But Tamara, I never let her go. Hear me?’

Perry hears him.

As soon as Dima starts to make serious money he packs Tamara off to a Swiss clinic for rest and rehabilitation, then marries her. Within a year their twin sons are born. Hot upon the wedding comes the betrothal of Tamara’s sensationally beautiful, much younger sister, Olga, a high-class hooker greatly prized by the
vory
. And the bridegroom is none other than Dima’s beloved disciple Misha, by now also released from Kolyma.

‘With the union of Olga and Misha, Dima’s cup was full,’ Perry
declared. ‘Dima and Misha were henceforth true brothers. Under
vory
law, Misha was already Dima’s son, but the marriage made the family relationship absolute. Dima’s children would be Misha’s children, Misha’s children would be his,’ Perry said, and sat back decisively, as if waiting for questions from the back of the hall.

But Hector, who had been observing with some amusement Perry’s retreat into his academic skin, preferred to offer his own brand of wry comment:

‘Which is a bloody odd thing about these
vory
chaps, wouldn’t you say? One minute forswearing marriage, politics and the State and all its works, the next prancing up the aisle in full rig with the church bells ringing. Have another shot of this. Only a teaspoon. Water?’

Business with the bottle and water jug.

‘It’s who they all were, isn’t it?’ Perry reflected extraneously, sipping at his very weak whisky. ‘All those weird cousins and uncles in Antigua. They were Criminals within the Law who had come to commiserate about Misha and Olga.’

*

Perry’s resolute lecture mode again. Perry as capsule historian, and nothing else:

Perm is no longer large enough for Dima or the Brotherhood. Business is expanding. Crime syndicates are forming alliances. Deals are being cut with foreign mafias. Best of all, Dima the
bête intellectuelle
of Kolyma with no education worth a damn has discovered a natural talent for laundering criminal proceeds. When Dima’s Brotherhood decides to open up for business in America, it’s Dima they send to New York to set up a money-laundering chain based in Brighton Beach. Dima takes Misha as his enforcer. When the Brotherhood decides to open a European arm of his money-laundering business, it’s Dima they appoint to the post. As a condition of acceptance, Dima again requests the appointment of Misha, this time as his number two in Rome. Request granted. Now the Dimas and the Mishas are indeed one family, trading together, playing together, exchanging houses and visits, admiring one another’s children.

Perry takes another sip of whisky.

‘That was in the days of the
old Prince
,’ Perry says, almost nostalgically. ‘For Dima, the golden age. The old Prince was a true
vor
. He could do no wrong.’

‘And the
new
Prince?’ Hector inquires provocatively. ‘The young fellow? Any take on
him
at all?’

Perry is not amused. ‘You know bloody well there was,’ he growls. And adds: ‘The new young Prince is the bitch of all time. The traitor of traitors. He’s the Prince who delivers the
vory
to the State, which is the worst thing any
vor
can do. Betraying a man like that is a duty in Dima’s eyes, not a crime.’

*

‘You like those little kids, Professor?’ Dima asks in a tone of false detachment, throwing back his head and affecting to study the flaking panels of the ceiling: ‘Katya? Irina? You
like
?’

‘Of course I do. They’re wonderful.’

‘Gail, she like too?’

‘You know she does. She’s terribly sorry for them.’

‘What they tell her, the little girls, how their father die?’

‘In a car smash. Ten days ago. Outside Moscow. A tragedy. The father and mother both.’

‘Sure. Was tragedy. Was car smash. Very
simple
car smash. Very
normal
car smash. In Russia we get many such car smash. Four men, four Kalashnikov, maybe sixty bullet, who givva shit? That’s a goddam car smash, Professor. One body, twenty maybe thirty bullet. My Misha, my disciple, a kid, forty year old. Dima take him to the
vory
, make him a
man
.’

A sudden outbreak of fury:

‘So why do I not protect my Misha? Why I let him go to Moscow? Let bitch Prince’s bastards kill him twenty, thirty bullet? Kill Olga, beautiful sister of my wife Tamara, mother of Misha’s little girls. Why I not protect him? You are Professor! You tell me, please, why do I not protect my Misha?’

If it was fury, not volume, that gave his voice such unearthly
strength, it is the chameleon nature of the man that enables him to put aside his fury in favour of despondent Slav reflection:

‘OK. Maybe Tamara’s sister Olga, she not so goddam religious,’ he says, conceding a point that Perry hasn’t made. ‘I tell to Misha: “Maybe your Olga still look at other guys too much, got beautiful arse. Maybe you don’t screw around no more, Misha, stay home once, like me now, take a bit care of her.”’ His voice falls to a whisper again: ‘Thirty goddam bullet, Professor. That bitch Prince gotta pay something for thirty bullet in my Misha.’

*

Perry had gone quiet. It was as if a distant bell had sounded for the end of the lecture period, and he had belatedly become aware of it. For a moment he appeared to surprise himself by his presence at the table. Then with a jerk of his long, angular body he re-entered time present.

‘So that’s basically about
it
then,’ he said, in a tone to wrap things up. ‘Dima sank into himself for a while, woke up, seemed puzzled I was there, resented my presence, then decided I was all right, then forgot me again and put his hands over his face and muttered to himself in Russian. Then he stood up, and fished around in his satin shirt, and yanked out the little package I included in my document,’ he went on. ‘Handed it to me, embraced me. It was an emotional moment.’

‘For both of you.’

‘In our separate ways, yes, it was. I think it was.’

He seemed suddenly in a hurry to go back to Gail.

‘Any instructions to accompany the package at all?’ Hector asked, while little B-list Luke beside him smiled to himself over his neatly folded hands.

‘Sure. “Take this to your apparatchiks, Professor. A present from World Number One money-launderer. Tell them I want fair play.” Exactly as I wrote in my document.’

‘Any idea what was
in
the package?’

‘Only guesses, really. It was wrapped in cotton wool, then cling-film. As you saw. I assumed it was an audio cassette – from a baby recorder of some kind. Or that’s what it felt like anyway.’

Hector remained unpersuaded. ‘And you didn’t attempt to open it.’

‘God no. It was addressed to you. I just made sure it was firmly pasted inside the cover of the dossier.’

Slowly turning the pages of Perry’s document, Hector gave a distracted nod.

‘He was carrying it against his body,’ Perry continued, evidently feeling a need to fend off the gathering silence: ‘It made me think of Kolyma. The tricks they must have got up to. Secreting messages and so on. The thing was dripping wet. I had to wipe it dry on a towel when I got back to our cabin.’

‘And you didn’t open it?’

‘I said I didn’t. Why should I? I’m not in the habit of reading other people’s letters. Or listening to them.’

‘Not even before you passed through Customs at Gatwick?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘But you
felt
it.’

‘Of course I did. I just told you I did. What’s this about? Through the plastic film. And the cotton wool. When he gave it to me.’

‘And when he’d given it to you, what did you do with it?’

‘Put it in a safe place.’

‘Where was that?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The safe place. Where was it?’

‘In my shaving bag. The moment I got back to our cabin, I went straight into the bathroom and put it there.’

‘Next to your toothbrush, as it were.’

‘As it were.’

Another long silence. Was it as long for them as it was for Perry? He feared not.

‘Why?’ Hector demanded finally.

‘Why what?’

‘The shaving bag,’ Hector replied patiently.

‘I thought it would be safer.’

‘When you passed through Customs at Gatwick?’

‘Yes.’

‘You thought that’s where everybody keeps their cassettes?’

‘I just thought it would be’ – he shrugged.

‘Less conspicuous in a shaving bag?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Did Gail know?’

‘What? Of course not. No.’

‘I should think not. Is the recording in Russian or English?’

‘How on earth do I know? I didn’t
listen
to it.’

‘Dima didn’t tell you which language it was in?’

‘He offered no description of it whatever, other than the one I’ve given you. Cheers.’

He took a last swig of his very thin Scotch, then set his glass heavily on the table, signifying finality. But Hector did not at all share his haste. Quite the contrary. He turned back a page of Perry’s document. Then forward a couple.

‘So
why
again?’ Hector pursued.

‘Why what?’

‘Why do it at all? Why smuggle a dicey package through British Customs for a Russian crook? Why not chuck it in the Caribbean and forget about it?’

‘I’d have thought it was pretty obvious.’

‘It is to me. I wouldn’t have thought it was for you. What’s so pretty obvious about it?’

Perry searched, but seemed to have no answer to the question.

‘Well how about
because it’s there
?’ Hector suggested. ‘Isn’t that why climbers are supposed to climb?’

‘So they say.’

‘Load of bollocks, actually. It’s because the climbers are there. Don’t blame the bloody mountain. Blame the climbers. Agree?’

‘Probably.’

‘They’re the chaps who see the distant peak. The mountain doesn’t give a bugger.’

‘Probably not, no’ – an unconvincing grin.

‘Did Dima discuss your own personal involvement in these
negotiations at all, should they transpire?’ Hector inquired, after what seemed to Perry an endless delay.

‘A bit.’

‘In what terms –
a bit
?’

‘He wanted me to be present for them.’

‘Present
why
?’

‘To see fair play, apparently.’

‘Whose fair play, for fuck’s sake?’

‘Well, yours I’m afraid,’ said Perry, reluctantly. ‘He wanted me to hold you people to your word. He has an aversion to apparatchiks, as you may have noticed. He wants to admire you because you’re English gentlemen, but he doesn’t trust you because you’re apparatchiks.’

‘Is that how
you
feel?’ – peering at Perry with his oversized grey eyes. ‘That we’re apparatchiks?’

‘Probably,’ Perry conceded, yet again.

Hector turned to Luke, still seated strictly at his side. ‘Luke, old boy, I rather think you have an appointment. We shouldn’t keep you.’

‘Of course,’ said Luke and, with a brisk smile of farewell for Perry, obediently left the room.

*

The malt whisky was from the Isle of Skye. Hector poured two stiff shots and invited Perry to help himself to water.

‘So,’ he announced. ‘Tough question time. Feel up to it?’

How could he not?

‘We have a discrepancy. A king-sized one.’

‘I’m not aware of any.’

‘I am. It concerns what you have
not
written to us in your alpha-plus essay, and what you have so far omitted from your otherwise flawless
viva voce
. Shall I spell it out, or will you?’

Noticeably ill at ease, Perry shrugged again. ‘You do it.’

‘Gladly. In both performances you have failed to report a key clause in Dima’s terms and conditions as relayed to us in the package you ingeniously smuggled through Gatwick Airport in your shaving bag
or, as we oldies prefer to call it, sponge bag. Dima
insists
– not a
bit
, as you suggest, but as a breakpoint – and Tamara
insists
, which I suspect is even more important, despite appearances – that you, Perry, be present at all negotiations, and that the said negotiations be conducted in the English language for your benefit. Did he happen to mention that condition to you in the course of his meanderings?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you saw fit not to mention it to us.’

‘Yes.’

‘Was that by any chance because Dima and Tamara also stipulate the participation not merely of
Professor Makepiece
but of a lady they are pleased to describe as
Madam Gail Perkins
?’

‘
No
,’ Perry said, his voice and jaw rigid.

‘
No?
No what? No, you didn’t unilaterally edit that condition out of your written and oral accounts?’

Perry’s response was so vehement and precise that it was apparent he had been preparing it for some time. But first he closed his eyes as if to consult his inner demons. ‘I’ll do it for Dima. I’ll even do it for you people. But I’ll do it alone or not at all.’

‘While in the same rambling diatribe addressed to us,’ Hector pursued, in a tone that took no account of the dramatic statement of which Perry had just delivered himself, ‘Dima
also
refers to a scheduled meeting in Paris this
coming
June. The 7th, to be precise. A meeting not with us despised apparatchiks at all, but with
yourself
and
Gail
, which struck us as a bit peculiar. Can you account for that by any chance?’

Perry either couldn’t or wouldn’t. He was scowling into the half-darkness, one long hand cupped across his mouth as if to muzzle it.