Part 22 (1/2)

'Stop talking, everybody, at once, please. Thank you!' Bunny Popham, queen of the roost, is addressing the unwashed. 'Our brave gladiators have finally agreed to grace us with their presence. Let us all immediately adjourn to the Arena Arena!' A patter of knowing laughter for Arena Arena. 'There are no lions lions today, apart from Dima. No Christians either, unless the Professor is one, which I can't vouch for.' More laughter. 'Gail, my dear, kindly show us the way. I have seen many gorgeous outfits in my day but none, if I may say, so nicely filled.' today, apart from Dima. No Christians either, unless the Professor is one, which I can't vouch for.' More laughter. 'Gail, my dear, kindly show us the way. I have seen many gorgeous outfits in my day but none, if I may say, so nicely filled.'

Perry and Dima lead. Gail, Bunny Popham and Emilio dell Oro follow. After them, a couple of clean envoys and their girls. How clean can you get? Then the podgy boy all alone except for his vodka gla.s.s. Luke watches them into a coppice of trees and out of sight. A shaft of sun lights up the flowered pathway and goes out.

It was the Roland Garros all over again: if only in the sense that neither then nor afterwards did Gail have any consecutive awareness of the great tennis-match-in-the-rain that she was so diligently following. Sometimes she wondered whether the players had any either.

She knew Dima won the toss because he always did. She knew that he chose to stand with his back to the advancing clouds rather than serve.

She remembered thinking that the players put up a pretty good show of compet.i.tiveness to begin with and then, like actors when their concentration flags, forgot that they were supposed to be engaged in a life-or-death duel for Dima's honour.

She remembered worrying about Perry sliding on the slippery wet tape that marked out the court. Was he going to do something as b.l.o.o.d.y silly as sprain his ankle? Then about Dima doing the same thing.

And although, like yesterday's sporting French spectators, she was meticulous in applauding Dima's shots as well as Perry's, it was Perry that she kept her eyes glued on: partly for his protection, partly because she had a notion that she might be able to tell by his body language what sort of luck they'd been having down there in the changing room with Hector.

She remembered also the faint squelch of the slowing ball as it slurped into the wet clay, and how now and then she let herself be transported to the last phase of yesterday's Final, and had to relocate in time present.

And how the b.a.l.l.s themselves got increasingly ponderous as the game dragged on. And how Perry in his distraction kept playing the slow ball too early, either hitting it out or a couple of times to his shame missing it altogether.

And how Bunny Popham at some point had leaned over her shoulder to ask her whether she would prefer to make a run for it now before the next cloudburst, or stay with her man and go down with the s.h.i.+p?

And how she had taken his invitation as an excuse for vanis.h.i.+ng to the loo and checking her mobile on the off-chance that Natasha might have expanded on her most recent communication. But Natasha hadn't. Which meant that matters stood where they had stood at nine this morning, in the ominous words that she knew by heart, even while she reread them: This house is not bearable Tamara is only with G.o.d Katya and Irina are tragic my brothers do only football we know a bad fate awaits us all I shall never look at my father in his face again Natasha Press green to reply, listen to a vacuum, ring off.

She was also conscious that, after the second rain break or was it the third? gouges began to appear in the sopping clay, which had evidently reached a point where it simply couldn't take any more water. And that in consequence an official gentleman of the Club appeared and remonstrated with Emilio dell Oro, pointing to the state of the court and telling him with sideways brus.h.i.+ng movements of the hands 'no more'.

But Emilio dell Oro must have had special powers of persuasion, because he took the official gentleman confidingly by the arm and led him under a beech tree, and by the end of the conversation the official was scurrying back to the clubhouse like a chastened schoolboy.

And amid these scattered observations and rememberings there was the ever-present lawyer in her, at it again, fretting about the membrane of plausibility membrane of plausibility that seemed from the outset to be on the point of breaking, which didn't necessarily signify the end of the free world as we know it, just as long as she was able to get to Natasha and the girls. that seemed from the outset to be on the point of breaking, which didn't necessarily signify the end of the free world as we know it, just as long as she was able to get to Natasha and the girls.

And then, while she's having these random thoughts, lo and behold, Dima and Perry are shaking hands across the net and calling it a day: a handshake not of reconciled opponents, to her eye, but of accomplices in a deception so blatant that the last few loyal survivors huddled on the stands should be booing rather than applauding.

And somewhere in the middle of the mix since there are no limits to the day's incongruities up pops the podgy Russian man who's been following her around, and tells her he would like to f.u.c.k her. In those very words: 'I would like to f.u.c.k you,' then waits to hear yes or no: an over-earnest thirty-something city boy with bad skin and an empty vodka gla.s.s in his hand and bloodshot eyes. She thought she misheard him first time round. There was hubbub inside her head as well as outside. She actually asked him to repeat himself, G.o.d help her. But by then he'd lost his nerve, and confined himself to trailing after her at five yards' distance, which was why she had been content to place herself under the wing of Bunny Popham, the least bad option available to her.

And that in turn was how she came to confess to him that she too was a lawyer, a moment she always dreaded, since it resulted in awkward mutual comparisons. But for Bunny Popham it was just an excuse to be shocking: 'Oh, my dear dear' lifting his eyes to Heaven 'I am overcome overcome! Well, all I can say is, you can have my my briefs any time.' briefs any time.'

He asked which Chambers, so she told him, which was only natural. What else was she supposed to do?

She had thought a lot about packing. That too, she remembered. Stuff like whether she would use Perry's new tennis bag for their dirty clothes, and equally weighty matters a.s.sociated with getting out of Paris and on the road to Natasha. Perry had kept on their room for tonight so that they could pack last thing this evening before catching the train back to London, which in the world they had entered was how normal people travelled to Berne when they are potentially under surveillance and not supposed to be going there.

The ma.s.sage room supplied bathrobes. Perry and Dima were wearing them. They were sitting three at the table again, where they had been sitting for the last twelve minutes by Perry's watch. Ollie in his white coat was bowed over his laptop in the corner with his ma.s.sage bag at his feet, and occasionally he scribbled a note and pa.s.sed it to Hector, who added it to the pile in front of him. The claustrophobic atmosphere was reminiscent of the Bloomsbury bas.e.m.e.nt without the smell of wine, and there was something similarly rea.s.suring about the noise of real lives near by: the grumble of pipes, voices from the locker room, the flus.h.i.+ng of a lavatory, the putter of a faulty air conditioner.

'How much does Longrigg get?' Hector asks, after glancing at one of Ollie's notes.

'One half one per cent,' Dima replies tonelessly. 'On the day Arena get its banking licence, Longrigg get first money. After one year, second money. Year later, finish.'

'Paid to where?'

'Switzerland.'

'Know the account number?'

'Till Berne I don't know this number. Sometimes I get only name. Sometimes only number.'

'Giles de Salis?'

'Special commission. I hear this only, no confirmation. Emilio say to me: de Salis get this special commission. But maybe Emilio keep it for himself. After Berne I know for sure.'

'A special commission of how much?'

'Five million cold. Maybe not true. Emilio is fox. Steal everything.'

'US dollars?'

'Sure.'

'Payable when?'

'Same as Longrigg but cash down, not conditional, two year not three. One half on official foundation Arena Bank, one half after one year trading. Tom.'

'What?'

'Hear me, OK?' The voice suddenly alive again. 'After Berne I get everything. For signing, I gotta be willing party, hear me? I don't sign nothing I'm not willing party to, I gotta right. You get my family to England, OK? I go Berne, I sign, you get my family out, I give you my heart, my life!' He swung round on Perry. 'You seen my children, Professor! Jesus G.o.d, who the f.u.c.k they think I am any more? They f.u.c.king blind or something? My Natasha she go crazy, don't eat nothing.' He returns to Hector. 'You get my kids to England now now, Tom. Then we make deal. Soon as my family's in England, I know everything. I don't givva s.h.i.+t!'

But if Perry is moved by this appeal, Hector's aquiline features are set in rigid rejection.

'No b.l.o.o.d.y way,' he retorts. And riding roughshod over Dima's protests: 'Your wife and family stay where they are until after the signing on Wednesday. If they disappear from your house before before the Berne signing, they put themselves at risk, the Berne signing, they put themselves at risk, you you at risk, and the deal at risk. Do you have a bodyguard at your house, or has the Prince taken him away?' at risk, and the deal at risk. Do you have a bodyguard at your house, or has the Prince taken him away?'

'Igor. One day we make him vor vor. I love this guy. Tamara love him. Kids too.'

We make him make him vor vor? Perry repeats to himself. When Dima is sitting in his suburban palace in outer Surrey, with Natasha at Roedean and his boys at Eton, we we will make Igor a will make Igor a vor vor?

'Two men are guarding you at present. Niki and a new man.'

'For Prince. They gonna kill me.'

'What time is your signing in Berne on Wednesday?'

'Ten o'clock. Morning. Bundesplatz.'

'Did Niki and his friend attend the signing this morning?'

'No way. Wait outside. These guys are stupid.'

'And in Berne, they won't be attending the signing either?'