merrily on the hind tit of American power. Getting our rocks off. Where are we now? Back of the queue behind the Huns and the Frogs. With a bloody sight less to offer. Total disaster.’
Benign chuckle, and barely a hiatus as he advances to his next amusing topic:
‘I was rather taken by what your pal Shannon had to say about the Donald, incidentally: the notion that he’d had all the democratic chances and blown them. Not absolutely sure that’s true. Point about Trump is, he’s a gang boss, born and bred. Brought up to screw civil society all ways up, not be part of it. Your Shannon chap got that one wrong. Or am I being unfair?’
Unfair to Trump or unfair to Ed?
‘And poor little Vladi Putin never had any democratic potty training at all,’ he goes on indulgently. ‘I’d agree with him on that one. Born a spy, still a spy, with Stalin’s paranoia to boot. Wakes up every morning amazed the West hasn’t blown him out of the water with a pre-emptive strike.’ Munches cashews. Washes them down with a thoughtful pull of Scotch. ‘He’s a dreamer, isn’t he?’
‘Who?’
‘Shannon.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘What sort?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Really not?’
‘Really not.’
‘Guy Brammel has come up with a grudgefuck theory,’ he runs on, delighting in the term like a naughty boy. ‘Ever heard that one before? Grudgefuck?’
‘I’m afraid not. Cluster only recently, and never grudge. I’ve been abroad too long.’
‘Me neither. Thought I’d heard everything. But Guy’s got his teeth into it. A man on a grudgefuck mission is saying to the person he’s hopped into bed with – in this case Mother Russia – the only reason I’m here screwing you is because I hate my wife even more than I hate you. So it’s a grudgefuck. Might that play for your boy? What’s your personal take on it?’
‘Bryn, my personal take is: I took a hell of a beating last night, first from Shannon, then from my beloved friends and colleagues, so I’m rather wondering why I’m here.’
‘Yes, well, they did over-egg it a bit, it’s true,’ he agrees, open as ever to all points of view. ‘But then, nobody knows who they are just now, do they? Whole fucking country in disarray. Maybe that’s the clue to him. Britain in pieces on the floor, secret monk in search of an absolute, even if it involves absolute betrayal. But instead of trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament, he sneaks off to the Russians. Possible?’
I say anything is possible. A prolonged squeezing of the eyes and a beguiling smile warn me that he is about to venture into more perilous territory.
‘So tell me, Nat. For my ear alone. How did you personally respond, you as Shannon’s mentor, confessor, proxy daddy, what you will, when you spotted your young protégé, without a word of warning, cosying up to the overweening Gamma?’ – topping up my Scotch. ‘What went through your private and professional heads as you sat there on your tod, watching and listening in frank amazement? Don’t think too hard. Spout.’
In other times, sitting captive and alone with Bryn, I might indeed have unbared my innermost feelings to him. I might even have told him that, as I sat listening transfixed to Valentina’s voice, I imagined that I detected between her Georgian and Russian cadences the presence of an intruder that was neither: a copy, yes, but not the original. And that, at some point during a day of waiting, an answer of sorts had come to me. Not as a blinding revelation, but on tiptoe, like a latecomer to the theatre, edging his way down the row in the half-dark. Somewhere in the most distant rooms of my memory, I was hearing my mother’s voice raised to me in anger as she reproached me for some perceived dereliction in a language unknown to her current lover, before as quickly disowning it. But Valentina–Gamma had not disowned the German in her voice. Not to my ear. She was affecting it. She was imposing German cadences on her spoken English in order to cleanse it of its Russian–Georgian stain.
But even as this wild thought comes to me, more fancy than fact, something inside me tells me that it cannot on any account be shared with Bryn. Is this then the germinating moment of a scheme that is forming in my head, but I am not yet cleared for? I have often thought so.
‘What I suppose I felt, Bryn,’ I reply, taking up his