Our Kind of Traitor полностью

Seeing the three of them approach, the fair-haired man with the baby face took a half-pace forward and with a mirthless smile opened out his hands in the classic gesture of one man about to frisk another. Puzzled, Perry came to a halt at his full height, not yet within frisking distance but a good six feet short, with Gail beside him. As the man took another step forward, Perry took one back, taking Gail with him and exclaiming, ‘What the hell’s all this?’ – effectively to Mark, since neither the baby face nor his darker-haired colleague showed any sign of having heard, let alone understood, his question.

‘Security, Perry,’ Mark explained, pressing past Gail to murmur reassuringly into Perry’s ear. ‘Routine.’

Perry remained where he stood, craning his neck forward and sideways while he digested this advice.

‘Whose security exactly? I don’t get it. Do you?’ – to Gail.

‘Me neither,’ she agreed.

‘Dima’s security, Perry. Whose do you think? He’s a high-roller. Big-time international. These boys are just obeying orders.’

‘Your orders, Mark?’ – turning and peering down on him accusingly through his spectacles.

‘Dima’s orders, not mine, Perry, don’t be stupid. They’re Dima’s boys. Go with him everywhere.’

Perry returned his attention to the blond bodyguard. ‘Do you gents speak English, by any chance?’ he asked. And when the baby face refused to alter in any way, except to harden: ‘He appears to speak no English. Or hear it, apparently.’

‘For Christ’s sakes, Perry,’ Mark pleaded, his beery complexion turning a darker shade of crimson. ‘One little look in your bag, it’s over. It’s nothing personal. Routine, like I said. Same as any airport.’

Perry again applied to Gail: ‘Do you have a view on this?’

‘I certainly do.’

Perry tilted his head the other way. ‘I need to get this absolutely right, you see, Mark,’ he explained, asserting his pedagogic authority. ‘My proposed tennis partner Dima wishes to make sure I’m not going to throw a bomb at him. Is that what these men are telling me?’

‘It’s a dangerous world out there, Perry. Perhaps you haven’t heard about that, but the rest of us have, and we endeavour to live with it. With all due respect, I would strongly advise you to go with the flow.’

‘Alternatively, I might be about to gun him down with my Kalashnikov,’ Perry went on, raising his tennis bag an inch to indicate where he kept the weapon; at which the second man stepped out of the shadow of the bushes and positioned himself beside the first, but there was still not a legible facial expression between the two of them.

‘You’re making a mountain out of a molehill, if you don’t mind my saying so, Mr Makepiece,’ Mark protested, his hard-learned courtesy beginning to give way under the strain. ‘There’s a great game of tennis waiting in there. These boys are doing their duty, and they’re doing it very politely and professionally in my judgement. Frankly I do not understand your problem, sir.’

‘Ah. Problem,’ Perry mused, picking on the word as a useful starting point for a group discussion with his students. ‘Then allow me to explain my problem. Actually, come to think of it I have several problems. My first problem is, nobody looks inside my tennis bag without my permission, and in this case I do not grant my permission. And nobody looks inside this lady’s either. Similar rules apply’ – indicating Gail.

‘Rigorously,’ Gail confirmed.

‘Second problem. If your friend Dima thinks I’m going to assassinate him, why does he ask me to play tennis with him?’ Having allowed ample time for an answer and received none, beyond a voluble sucking of the teeth, he proceeded. ‘And my third problem is, the proposal as it stands is one-sided. Have I asked to look inside Dima’s bag? I have not. Neither do I wish to. Perhaps you’d explain that to him when you give him my apologies. Gail. What do you say we dig into that great big breakfast buffet we’ve paid for?’

‘Good idea,’ Gail agreed heartily. ‘I didn’t know I was so peckish.’

They turned and, ignoring the pro’s entreaties, were heading back down the steps when the gate to the court flew open and Dima’s bass voice drew them to a halt.

‘Don’t run away, Mr Perry Makepiece. You wanna blow my brains out, use a goddam tennis racquet.’

‘So how about his age, Gail, would you say?’ Yvonne the blue-stocking asked, making a prim note on the pad before her.

‘Baby Face? Twenty-five max,’ she replied, once again wishing she could find a mid-point in herself between flippancy and funk.

‘Perry? How old?’

‘Thirty.’

‘Height?’

‘Below average.’

If you’re six foot two, Perry, darling, we’re all below average, thought Gail.

‘Five ten,’ she said.

And his blond hair cut very short, they both agreed.

‘And he wore a gold link bracelet,’ she remembered, startling herself. ‘I once had a client who wore one just like it. If he got in a tight corner, he was going to break up the links and buy his way out with them, one by one.’