Our Kind of Traitor Read Online Free PDF Page B

to the other son with the same hand, reminding Gail of walking with her socially ambitious elder brother when he’s out pheasant shooting with his rich friends, an activity she abhors, and the brother scores what he calls a left and a right, meaning one dead pheasant to each gun barrel.
    ‘What got me was that they didn’t even turn their heads away. They just sat there and took it,’ said Perry, the schoolteachers’ son.
    But the strangest thing, Gail insisted, was how amicably the conversation was resumed:
    ‘You wanna tennis lesson with Mark after? Or you wanna go home get religion from your mother?’
    ‘Lesson, please, Papa,’ says one of the two boys.
    ‘Then don’t you make any more ra-ra, or you don’t get no Kobe beef tonight. You wanna eat Kobe beef tonight?’
    ‘Sure, Papa.’
    ‘You, Viktor?’
    ‘Sure, Papa.’
    ‘You wanna clap, you clap the Professor there, not your no-good bum father. Come here.’
    A fervent bear-hug for each boy, and the match proceeds without further episode to its inevitable end.
    *
    In defeat, Dima’s bearing is embarrassingly fulsome. He’s not merely gracious, he’s moved to tears of admiration and gratitude. First he must press Perry into his great chest, which Perry swears is made of horn, for the three-times Russian embrace. The tears meanwhile are rolling down his cheeks, and consequently Perry’s neck.
    ‘You’re a goddam fair-play English, hear me, Professor? You’re a goddam English gentleman like in books. I love you, hear me? Gail, come over here.’ For Gail the embrace is even more reverent – and cautious, for which she is grateful. ‘You take care this stupid fuck, hear me? He can’t play tennis no good, but I swear to God he’s some kinda goddam gentleman. He’s the Professor of fair play , hear me?’ – repeating the mantra as if he has just invented it.
    He swings away to bark irritably into a mobile that the baby-faced bodyguard is holding out to him.
    *
    The spectators file slowly out of the court. The little girls need hugs from Gail. Gail is happy to oblige. One of Dima’s sons drawls ‘cool play, man’ in American English as he stalks past Perry on his way to his lesson, his cheek still scarlet from the slap. The beautiful Natasha attaches herself to the procession, leatherbound tome in hand. Her thumb marks the place where her reading was disturbed. Bringing up the rear comes Tamara on Dima’s arm, her bishop-grade Orthodox cross glinting in the risen sunshine. In the aftermath of the game, Dima’s limp is more pronounced. As he walks, he leans back, chin thrust forward, shoulders squared to the enemy. The bodyguards shepherd the group down the winding stone path. Threeblack-windowed people carriers wait behind the hotel to take them home. Mark the pro is last to leave.
    ‘Great play, sir!’ – clapping Perry on the shoulder. ‘Fine court craft. A little ragged on the backhands there, if I may make so bold. Maybe we should do a little work on them?’
    Side by side, Gail and Perry watch speechless as the cortège bumps its way along the potholed spine road and vanishes into the cedar trees that shelter the house called Three Chimneys from prying eyes.
    *
    Luke looks up from the notes he has been taking. As if to order, Yvonne does the same. Both are smiling. Gail is trying to avoid Luke’s eye, but Luke is staring straight at her so she can’t.
    ‘So, Gail,’ he says briskly. ‘Your turn again, if we may. Mark was a pest. All the same, he does seem to have been quite a mine of information. What extra nuggets can you offer us about the Dima household?’ – then gives a flick of both little hands at once, as if urging his horse on to greater things.
    Gail glances at Perry, she is not sure what for. Perry does not return her glance.
    ‘He was just so snaky ,’ she complains, using Mark, rather than Luke, as the object of her disfavour, and wrinkles up her face to show how the bad taste lingers.
    *
    Mark had barely sat