Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carré Read Free Book Online Page B

don’t know guns, thank God. Don’t want to. You people do, no doubt. This one was family size,’ he says regretfully, and an eloquent silence falls as he shoots a plaintive glance at Gail and receives no answering look for his pains.
    *
    ‘And you didn’t think to comment, Perry?’ deft little Luke suggests, ever the one to paper over gaps. ‘On the gun, I mean.’
    ‘No I did not. I reckoned he hadn’t seen that I’d noticed, so I decided it was tactically sensible of me not to have noticed either. I thanked him for the ice cream and went back down the ladder to where Gail was chatting to the girls.’
    Luke reflects on this in a rather intense way. Something seems to have got under his skin. Could it perhaps be the tricky question of spy’s etiquette that was bothering him? What do you do if you see a chap’s gun sticking out of his waistcoat and you don’t know him very well? Tell him it’s showing, or just ignore it? Like when someone you don’t know very well hasn’t done their zip up.
    The Scottish blue-stocking Yvonne decides to help Luke out of his dilemma:
    ‘In English , Perry?’ she asks severely. ‘You thanked him in English , I take it. Did he reply in English at all?’
    ‘He didn’t reply in any language. However, I did notice that he was wearing a black mourning button pinned to his waistcoat, something I hadn’t seen for a long time. And you didn’t know they existed, did you?’ he demanded accusingly.
    Puzzled by his aggression, Gail shakes her head. It’s true, Perry. Guilty as charged. I didn’t know about mourning buttons and now I do, so you can get on with the story, can’t you?
    ‘And it didn’t occur to you to alert the hotel, for instance, Perry?’ Luke asks doggedly. ‘“There’s a Russian with a family-size gun sitting up in the lifeguard’s lookout”?’
    ‘Many possibilities suggested themselves, Luke, and that was no doubt one of them,’ Perry replies, his bout of aggression not yetrun out. ‘But what on earth was the hotel supposed to do? There was every indication that, if Dima didn’t actually own the place, he had it in his pocket. Anyway, we had the children to consider: whether it was right to make a fuss in front of everyone. We decided it wasn’t.’
    ‘And the island’s police authorities? You didn’t think of them?’ – Luke again.
    ‘We had four more days. We didn’t intend to spend them making dramatic statements to the police about goings-on they were probably up to their necks in anyway.’
    ‘And that was a joint decision?’
    ‘It was an executive decision. Mine. I wasn’t about to march up to Gail and say, “Vanya’s got a gun stuck in his belt, d’you think we should tell the police?” – least of all in front of the girls. Once we were alone and I’d got my bearings, I told her what I’d seen. We talked it through rationally, and that was the decision we came up with: no action.’
    Overtaken by an involuntary rush of loving support, Gail backs him up with her Counsel’s Opinion: ‘Maybe Vanya had a perfectly good local permit to carry the gun. What did Perry know? Maybe Vanya didn’t need a permit. Maybe the police had given him the gun in the first place. We weren’t exactly up in Antiguan gun law, were we, Perry, either of us?’
    She half expects Yvonne to raise a contrary point of law, but Yvonne’s too busy consulting her copy of the offending document in its buff folder:
    ‘Could I trouble the two of you for a description of this Uncle Vanya , please?’ she asks in an aggression-free voice.
    ‘Pockmarked,’ says Gail promptly, again dazzled by how it was all there before her in her memory. Fifty-odd. Pumice-stone cheeks. A drinker’s paunch. She thought she’d seen him drinking surreptitiously from a flask at the tennis, but couldn’t be sure.
    ‘Rings on each finger of his right hand,’ says Perry when it’s his turn. ‘Seen collectively, a knuckleduster. Black, scarecrow hair, jutting out from