They were painting a false horizon together. Perry knew it and Dima seemed to know it too, and welcome it, for his back had arched and his chest had filled, and his face had eased into the dolphin smile that Perry remembered from their first encounter on the tennis court in Antigua.
‘You better marry that girl pretty quick, Professor – hear me?’
‘We’ll send you an invitation.’
‘Wortha lotta camels,’ he muttered, and pulled a smile at his own joke – not a smile of defeat in Perry’s eyes, but a smile for time gone
by, as if the two of them had known each other all their lives, which Perry was beginning to think they had.
‘You play me Wimbledon once?’
‘Sure. Or Queen’s. I’m still a member there.’
‘No pussying, OK?’
‘No pussying.’
‘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 assembled 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 anticipating 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
with the girls. For his reception by the gentlemen spies of London, Dima had donned his blue pinstripe suit. Natasha had pressed his best shirt, 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 Bogotá. 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 hell 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 sexual 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: passing 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 bumpy 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
here?’ he demands, in a sing-song Swiss-French
argot
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 shining 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 passengers.
‘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
from
Wengen to Scheidegg
?’
‘What do you think we did? Fly?’
‘If you drove
up
from Wengen to Scheidegg, you must have a second vignette, issued from Lauterbrunnen. The vignette on your windscreen is for Scheidegg–Grindelwald
exclusively
.’
‘So whose side are
you
on?’ Ollie says, still with dogged good humour.
‘Actually, I come from Mürren,’ 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
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 document of some kind – too small for a passport, 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 nobody 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
already? Impossible! – then an empty departure lounge with four glass 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-glass window, snap fingers at them for their passports, 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 glass 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 hellos 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.