to me, Arkady, because you once told me she was the only woman you ever loved.’
Nothing has changed in his silhouetted features. Nothing ever did. Only the alertness of his body tells me he is hearing me.
‘You were going to divorce Ludmilla and sign up with Valentina. But from what you just told me, she’s not the woman you’re now married to. Valentina was only a few years younger than you. That doesn’t quite spell trophy wife to me.’
Still nothing stirs.
‘We could have turned her, if you remember. We had the means. You yourself provided them. She had been sent to Trieste on an important mission for Centre. A senior Austrian diplomat wanted to sell his country’s secrets but refused to deal with any Russian official. Nobody from a consular or diplomatic community. Moscow sent you Valentina. Centre didn’t have many women officers in those days, but Valentina was exceptional: brilliant, beautiful and your life’s dream, you told me. As soon as she had got her man, the two of you conspired not to tell Centre for a week and treated yourselves to a romantic holiday on the Adriatic. I seem to remember we assisted you with finding suitably discreet accommodation. We could have blackmailed her but we didn’t see how we could do that without compromising you.’
‘I told you to leave her alone or I would kill you.’
‘Indeed you did, and we were duly impressed. She was a fellow Georgian, old Chekist family as I remember. Ticked all the boxes and you were crazy about her. A perfectionist, you told me. Perfect in work, perfect in love.’
How long do we sit staring into the night?
‘Too perfect, maybe,’ he mutters scathingly at last.
‘What went wrong? Was she married? Did she have another man? That wouldn’t have stopped you, surely?’
Another prolonged silence, with Arkady a sure sign that he is mustering seditious thoughts.
‘Maybe she was too much married to little Vladi Putin,’ he says savagely. ‘Maybe not in her body but in her soul. Putin is Russia, she tells me. Putin is Peter the Great. Putin is purity, he is clever. He outsmarts the decadent West. He gives us back our Russian pride. Whoever steals from the state is a wicked thief because he steals from Putin personally.’
‘And you were one of those wicked thieves?’
‘Chekists do not steal, she tells me. Georgians do not steal. If she knew I had worked for you she would strangle me with piano wire. So maybe it would not have been such an entirely compatible marriage after all’ – followed by a bitter laugh.
‘How did it end, if it ever did?’
‘A little was too much, more was too little. I offered her all this’ – a jerk of the head at the forest, the villa, the floodlit lawns, the high wire and the solitary black-suited sentries on their rounds. ‘She tells me: Arkady, you are Satan, do not offer me your stolen kingdom. I say to her: Valentina, kindly tell me something, please. Who in this whole fucked-up universe is rich today and not a thief? I tell her that success is not a shame, it is an absolution, it is the proof of God’s love. But she has no God. Neither have I.’
‘Do you still see her?’
He shrugs. ‘Am I addicted to heroin? I am addicted to Valentina.’
‘And she to you?’
This is how we used to be, tiptoeing together along the brink of his divided loyalties, he as my unpredictable, high-value agent, I as the only person in the world he could safely confide in.
‘But you see her now and then?’
Does he stiffen, or is it only my imagination?
‘Sometimes in Petersburg when she is willing,’ he replies tersely.
‘What’s her job these days?’
‘What was always her job. She was never consular, never diplomatic, never cultural, never press. She is Valentina, the great veteran cleanskin.’
‘Doing what?’
‘The same as ever. Running illegals out of Moscow Centre. Western Europe only. My old department.’
‘Would her work include sleeper agents?’
‘Sleeper agents like dig yourself into the shit for ten years, then dig yourself out for twenty? Sure. Valentina runs sleeper agents. Sleep with her, you never wake up.’
‘Would she risk her sleeper agents to service a major source outside the network?’
‘If the stakes are high enough, sure. If Centre thinks the local rezidentura is a nest of arseholes, which it usually is, then the use of her illegals would be authorized.’
‘Even her sleeper agents?’
‘If they haven’t gone to sleep on her, why not?’
‘And even today, after all those years, she’s