a cleanskin,’ I suggest.
‘Sure. The best.’
‘Clean enough to go into the field under natural cover?’
‘Whatever she wants. Anywhere. No problem. She’s a genius. Ask her.’
‘So might she, just for instance, go to a Western country in order to service or recruit an important source, say?’
‘If it’s a big enough fish, sure.’
‘What sort of fish?’
‘Big. I told you. Got to be big.’
‘As big as you?’
‘Maybe bigger. Who gives a shit?’
Today, what follows looks like prescience. It was nothing of the kind. It was about being the man I used to be. It was about knowing my agent better than I knew myself; about sensing the weather signs as they gather in him before he recognized them himself. It was the fruit of stolen nights sitting in a rented car in a back street of some godforsaken Communist city listening to him pour out the story of a life too full of history for one man to bear alone. But the saddest story of them all is the one I’m telling myself now: the recurrent tragedy of his lonely love life, as this man of supposedly unassailable virility becomes at the decisive moment the lost child he once had been, impotent, rejected and humiliated, as desire turns to shame and the anger banks up in him. Of his many ill-chosen partners, Valentina was the archetype, carelessly affecting to return his passion, preening herself against him; and once she had dominated him, tossing him back into the street he came from.
And she is with us now, I can feel it: in the over-careless voice he uses to dismiss her, in the exaggerated body language that is not natural to him.
‘Male fish or female fish?’ I enquire.
‘How the fuck should I know?’
‘You know because Valentina told you. How’s that?’ I suggest. ‘Not everything. Just little hints, whispered in your ear, the way she used to. To tantalize you. To impress you. To goad you. This great big fish that’s swum into her net. Did she say British fish, by any chance? Is that what you’re not telling me?’
The sweat is running down his hollowed, tragic face in the moonlight. He is talking as he used to talk, rapidly from his inner self, betraying as he used to betray, hating himself, hating the object of his betrayal, relishing his love for her, despising himself, punishing her for his inadequacies. Yes, a big fish. Yes, British. Yes, a man. A walk-in. Ideological like Communist times. Middle class. Valentina will develop him personally. He will be her possession, her disciple. Maybe her lover, she will see.
‘Have you got enough?’ he shouts suddenly, spinning his little body round to challenge me. ‘Is this why you came here, you piece of imperialist English shit? So that I could betray my Valentina to you a second time?’
He leaps to his feet.
‘You slept with her, you pussy hound!’ he shouts wildly. ‘You think I don’t know you fucked every woman in Trieste? Tell me you slept with her!’
‘I’m afraid I never had the pleasure, Arkady,’ I reply.
He is marching ahead of me, elbows out, little legs at full stretch. I follow him across the bare attic floor, down the two flights of stairs. As we reach the badminton court he grabs my arm.
‘Remember what you said to me that first time?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Say it now.’
‘Excuse me, Consul Arkady. I hear you play good badminton. How about a friendly match between two great wartime allies?’
‘Embrace me.’
I embrace him. He clutches me hungrily in return, then shoves me away.
‘Price one million US payable in gold bars to my numbered Swiss account,’ he announces. ‘Sterling is shit, hear me? If you don’t pay me, I tell Putin!’
‘Sorry, Arkady. I’m afraid we’re dead broke,’ I say, and somehow we are both smiling.
‘Don’t come back, Nick. Nobody dreams any more, hear me? I love you. Next time you come I kill you. That’s a promise.’
Again he shoves me away. The door closes behind me. I am back in the moonlit farmyard. There is a breeze. I feel his tears on my cheeks. Dimitri in the Mercedes four-track is flashing his lights.
‘Did you beat my dad?’ he asks nervously as we drive away.
‘We were about equal,’ I tell him.
He hands me back my wristwatch, wallet, passport and ballpoint pen.
*
The two special forces men who searched me are sitting in the lobby with their legs stretched out. Their eyes don’t lift as I walk by, but when I reach the top stair and glance back, they are