Our Game полностью

We had had these conversations before, in his joyless eyrie at the Foreign Office, with jaded Whitehall pigeons eyeing us through the filthy window.

"I've been approached by someone who wants to be paid a lot of money for some information," I said.

"I thought you'd retired."

"I have. It's an old case come alive."

"You don't have to bother with those; they'll dry by themselves," Simon said. "What's he trying to sell you?"

"A forthcoming armed uprising in the North Caucasus."

"Who's rising against who? Thanks," he said as I handed him a dirty saucepan. "They're rising all the time. It's what they do."

"The Ingush against the Russians and Ossetians. With a little help from the Chechen."

"Tried it in '92 and were trounced. No arms. Only what they'd pinched or bought at the back door. Whereas, thanks to Moscow, the Ossetians were armed to the teeth. Still are."

"What if the Ingush equipped themselves with a decent armoury?"

"They can't. They're scattered and dispirited, and whatever they get hold of, the Ossies will get more of. Weapons are the Ossies' thing. We had a story in last week that they've been buying up Red Army surplus in Estonia and running it down to the Serbs in Bosnia with the help of Russian intelligence."

"My source insists that this time the Ingush are going for broke."

"Well, he would, wouldn't he?"

"He says there's no stopping them. They've got a new leader. A man called Bashir Haji."

"Bashir's yesterday's hero," said Simon, vehemently scouring a very pitted saucepan. "Brave as a lion, great on a horse. Black-belt Sufist. But when it comes to fighting Russian rocketry and helicopter cavalry, he can't lead a brass hand."

We had had conversations like this before. In Simon Dugdale, the art of debunking secret intelligence had found its master. "If we believe my man, Bashir is promising to provide high-tech state-of-the-art Western weaponry and send the Russians and Ossetians back where they came from."

"Listen!"

Slamming down his saucepan, Simon splayed a wet hand in my face but managed to stop it a couple of inches short.

"In '92 the Ingush popped their garters and made an armed march on the Prigorodnyi raion. They had some tanks, a few APCs, a bit of artillery—Russian stuff, bought or plundered, not a lot. Drawn against them"—he grabbed his thumb with his spare hand—"they had North Ossetian Interior Forces"—he grabbed his index finger—"OMON Russian special forces; Republican guards; local Terek Cossacks"—he had reached his little finger—"and so-called volunteers from South Ossetia flown up by the Russians to cut throats for them and squat the Prigorodnyi raion. The only support the Ingush got was from the Chechen, who lent them so-called volunteers and a bit of weaponry. The Chechen are pals with the Ingush, but the Chechen have got their own agenda, which the Russians are aware of. So the Russians are using the Ingush to drive a wedge into the Chechen. If your man is seriously telling you that Bashir or anyone else is planning a full-scale organised attack on the enemies of Ingushetia, either he's making it up or Bashir's gone potty.",

His outburst over, he plunged his arms back into the suds.

I tried another tack. Perhaps I wanted to draw something out of him that I knew was there. Something I needed to hear again as an affirmation of Larry's emotional logic.

"So what about the justice of it?" I suggested.

"The what?"

I was making him angry. "Of the Ingush cause. Have they got right on their side?"

He slapped a colander facedown on the draining board. "Right?" he repeated indignantly. "You mean in absolute terms, as in right and wrong—how has history treated the Ingush?"

"Yes."

He seized a roasting tray and attacked it with a scourer. Simon Dugdale had never been able to resist the lecturer's temptation.