For the Good of the State

Instinct pushed him further ‘—after them, but before Panin, David?

You tell me—right?’

Audley smiled, and Tom hated the thought that he might be remembering Danny Dzieliwski as he cocked his head. ‘Fair enough!’ Shrug. ‘And we’re short of time, anyway.’ Another shrug. ‘So, for size, let’s say… Piotrowski, Tom?’

Wrong—but close enough! ‘Or Pietruszka—’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Audley gestured dismissively. ‘Same thing. Does it matter?’

‘To me it does.’ A knot of anger twisted in Tom’s guts. But then the dominant Arkenshaw half of him, descended from a long line of cold-blooded Englishmen, warned him that that particular length of gut was unreliably Polish. ‘What same thing, David?’

The old man watched him thoughtfully. “They’re both doing time in some Polish jail, aren’t they? Officially, anyway, if not actually.

And… twenty-five years each, wasn’t it?‘ Sniff. ’Isn’t there a typical Polish joke about that—about Piotrowski and Pietruszka getting twenty-five-year sentences for murdering Father Jerzy Popieluszko? One year for the murder—and twenty-four for getting caught?‘

The knot twisted again, even though it was a typical Polish joke. ‘I didn’t know you were an expert on Polish affairs, David.’

‘I’m not. Although I did learn quite a lot of Polish history when I was pursuing your dear mother so unavailingly long ago, when I cherished the foolish belief that the way to her heart might be through a profound knowledge of the Jagiello dynasty, and Sobieski’s ride to the relief of Vienna, and Pilsudski’s tactics against Trotsky.’ Audley smiled disarmingly again for a second.

Then his face blanked over again. ‘But the murder of Father Popieluszko did rather interest me for historical reasons as well as professional ones, you see, Tom. Historical analogies always interest me, particularly as they bear on the conflict between the

“Accident” and “Conspiracy” theories.’

Tom’s Arkenshaw 51 per cent restrained his Dzieliwski 49 per cent. ‘What historical analogy?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘My dear boy!’ Audley seemed genuinely surprised. ‘ You, with your special hobby, shouldn’t ask that! Don’t you remember when Henry Plantagenet cried “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”, or words to that effect?

So Fitz-Urse and the other three knights instantly caught the next cross-Channel ferry and murdered Thomas Becket in his own cathedral just as messily and incompetently as the Poles and the KGB murdered your Father Jerzy. And Henry threw up his hands in horror, and promptly disowned them?‘ Audley’s lip curled cynically. ’And he did penance for it. And his Thomas—your patron saint maybe, Tom?— he got his sainthood wings… But then Henry Plantagenet of England didn’t have to worry about his turbulent priest any more, did he? And your General Jaruzelski—‘

‘Not my General Jaruzelski, damn you!’ snapped Tom.

‘I do beg your pardon, Tom!’ The old man raised his palm. ‘I mean, of course, their General Jaruzelski— agent for Messrs Comrades Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, Gorbachev and Company Limited, registered in Moscow and Warsaw and other places too numerous to mention— their good General… he didn’t have to worry about his turbulent priest again, either. And neither did they, eh?’

‘You’re wrong.’ In spite of his Arkenshaw self, Tom couldn’t leave it at that. ‘People come from all over Poland to pray at his grave, David. And there’s always a mound of flowers on it. And men from his Warsaw steel plant stand guard there, night and day.’

‘Oh yes!’ Audley cut through his words. ‘And, in God’s good time, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State as interpreted by the Vatican, he’ll be Saint George Popieluszko, just like our Saint Thomas Becket—you can bet on it! And they’ll go on coming to—where is it, Tom—?’

‘St Stanislaw Kostka, in Zoliborz.’ The words came out stiffly.

‘St Stanislaw Kostka, in Zoliborz.’ Audley just about managed to parrot the pronunciation. ‘Just like Thomas Becket’s shrine in Canterbury, only without so much gold and precious stones—

‘ “Thenne longen folk to go on pilgrimages—”

‘—just like we all have to learn for School Cert, out of Chaucer…

or it would have been “O-Levels” for you, presumably—

‘“And specially, from every shires ende Of Engelond, to Canterbury they wende, The holy blisful martir for to seeke, That them hath holpen when that they were weeke.”

‘Remember?’ Again the lip curled. ‘I’ve always thought that that was the one big mistake Marx made—not incorporating the Opium of the Masses into his formula somehow… Or Lenin might have managed an interpretative footnote or two, just to keep the non-party peasants quiet, like the feudal Church and State did, with a Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

“treasure-in-heaven” clause… Just for the time being, anyway, before they were likely to get anything much on earth, while they were very obviously getting the rough end of the Revolution.’

That was enough. In fact, with Panin at their backs (maybe even now getting his feet muddy in Mr Rodger’s farmyard), it was too much, even disregarding its casual blasphemy.

‘How does Zarubin fit in with Father Popieluszko’s murderers, David?’

Audley beckoned him. ‘In the most obvious way. Can’t you guess

—if you really don’t know?’

Tom felt the soft hillside under his feet holding him back, in spite of the image of Panin at his back. ‘It was a KGB assassination?’

Audley looked surprised again, momentarily. ‘You really don’t know?’ Surprise warred with suspicion. ‘Of course… you are just… Damn! That sounds too damn patronizing for words, when I don’t mean it that way-’

‘Just a minder?’ If Audley was being honest now, then he was good. But then he was good. ‘A high-class minder?’

The old man’s face suggested that he found himself where he didn’t want to be. ‘I suppose… if I said that I wouldn’t like that job, because I don’t think I could do it—?’ Audley shook his head.

‘But the hell with that! Because… the truth is, I don’t know whether it was a KGB hit, or whether they just agreed to it.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘Maybe Basil Cole could have told us more —

I don’t know that, either—whether Jaruzelski was in on it, or not…

Or whether he was in on it, but he was just obeying orders— I don’t Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State bloody-well know, and that’s the truth!’ He cocked his head over his shoulder, towards Mountsorrel. ‘Which is why we’re going in half-blind now, I’m afraid, Tom.’

Tom’s feet shifted under him. ‘But the KGB were in on it?’

Audley half turned as Tom started to move. ‘Of course they bloody were! Zarubin and Marchuk were the contact-men, with Piotrowski and Pietruszka. And, although I never asked old Basil about Marchuk’s road accident— whether it was genuine old-fashioned accident, or genuine old-fashioned Polish-revenge conspiracy—’

Audley cut off as Tom reached him, on the crest of the ridge.

Mountsorrel, Tom saw and thought the same thing, while trying to listen to what Audley was saying at the same time.

‘So now we have to guess,’ said Audley.

At least neither of them had to guess about Mountsorrel, thought Tom, hugging the view to himself: it was a perfect motte-and-bailey fortress for his collection, built up on its spur of land above the river-crossing below with unerring Norman offensive-defensive insight; and then abandoned, either after King Stephen had put down Baldwin de Redvers at Exeter, or after Henry II Plantagenet had taken firm hold of his kingdom a few years later: a bloody-perfect motte-and-bailey, with its wooden palisades fallen and rotted-away eight-hundred years ago and only marked now by the prickly furze which grew on the earth ramparts which still rose from the green spring cow-pastures of its hillside.

God! If only he had his measuring-kit, and Willy here beside him, like yesterday, to hold the other end of the tape-measure, and to Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State crawl among those prickly furze-bushes!

‘So now we have to guess—?’ Even though David Audley was a bad joke when compared with Willy Groot… And even though he would never come here again, via that muddy yard, with his lost Willy, now… Even, in spite of all of that, he would come here again, to measure Mountsorrel! And that made him smile the question at Audley.

‘But that’s why you’re happy, isn’t it?’ Then Audley looked at him strangely. ‘Isn’t there a chance now… now that you’ve got a vague idea why Panin’s here… that you can maybe settle your Polish score, while I settle up with him? Isn’t that it?’ Audley cocked that knowing eyebrow of his. ‘Don’t we both have a score now? Or…

what else did your young Sheldon-wornan have to say—?’

The old man was going for the big fish, and Tom could see no reason now why he shouldn’t pass on the rest of Willy’s pillow-talk, which he had been husbanding. ‘Zarubin was recalled to Moscow in January, David.’ As he spoke Audley turned back to Mountsorrel, and he thought maybe the old man’s not got it wrong, after all: it would be agreeable, next time he kissed Mamusia, to know that he’d done something to settle that score, even though he could never tell her; for she had wept for Father Jerzy, and had worn black for him. ‘Did you know that?’

‘No. Zarubin’s none of my business.’ Audley continued to study Mountsorrel. ‘But… that would be prudent to get him out, if Marchuk’s accident wasn’t accidental. Which, I suppose, we can now assume it wasn’t… So—?’

‘The word is that he’s gone “diplomatic”.’ He wanted to study Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Mountsorrel too. But there would be time for that later. ‘At the time of the murder he was officially a cultural attaché in Warsaw.

Although his main links were actually with the church affairs section of the Ministry of the Interior— Pietruszka’s department.’

‘Uh-huh?’ Audley nodded at Mountsorrel. ‘This is one of your pristine mottes and baileys, I take it, Tom? “Adulterine”, would it be?’

‘Very likely.’ Tom decided to drop Pietruszka and play the game.

Because, if Audley wasn’t worried about Panin, why should he be?

‘Professor Fraser thinks it’s Gilbert de Merville’s “Mountsorrel Castle”, which surrendered after Stephen took Exeter from Baldwin de Redvers in 1136. Gilbert certainly was one of Baldwin’s men, and he held land in these parts.’

‘Mmm…’ Audley nodded again. ‘And Gilbert was a bad bastard, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he the one who hanged his hostages—including the children? Which good old Stephen never had the heart to do?’

Another nod. ‘So what’s Zarubin doing now, then?’

He had been right to play the game. ‘The word is that he may be coming to England very shortly. Like… any day now, David. Or he may even be here already.’

‘Is that so?’ Audley shifted his gaze slightly, to consider their own approach line to Mountsorrel, along the deeply tractor-furrowed track. ‘You know, I rather think this must be the original road to your castle, Tom—’ He pointed ahead ‘—see how the ridge is deeply cut there? That’s not some old Devon farmer’s spade-work: that’s peasant sweated-labour, that is, or I’m a monkey’s uncle!’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Satisfied nod. ‘So why is he coming? Because it’s safer here, between Exmoor and London, than it is between Czestochowa and Warsaw… at least for him, if not for me? Or has he got work to do?’

Tom listened to Willy’s whisper, editing out the added endearments and the warmth and softness of her in the crook of his arm. ‘It all depends on the progress they make, to get Reagan and Gorbachev together in the autumn, Sheldon thinks.’

‘Ah!’ Audley looked up and down the track again. ‘If there isn’t a road on the other side of that ridge ahead, where the castle is…

then this just has to be the one… if that’s the main entrance there

—’ He pointed ‘—in that gap in the gorse, right?’ He lowered his hand. ‘If they don’t meet, he’s certainly not going to be able to detach our revered Iron Lady from her favourite film star, not even after her happy meeting with Tsar Mikhail… Not with our commitment to Cruise and Trident—’ The hand came up again ‘—

do you see that gap? Is that the main bailey entrance, Tom?’

The higher motte was diagonally on the far side, away from them; and it would be interesting to find out how deep the ditch was on that far side, and whether it cut down into the beginning of bed-rock there. ‘I think it probably is, David.’ That would fix the motte high above its river valley too, where he would expect it to be; because, when they had half a chance, the Normans never made a mistake, with their eye for ground.

‘Yes. I think you’re right.’ Audley gave him the undeserved credit for the insight. ‘So you just keep your eye on that—right?’ Pause.

‘So his brief could be… if Mr President and the Tsar don’t meet…

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State to give aid and comfort to poor old CND, surreptitiously, contributing generously to the collections, like my darling wife does.’ Sniff. “That’s what I’d do, anyway, if I was calling the shots.‘ He gestured forwards. ’Shall we go then—where glory waits, Tom?‘

Something held Tom back on the crest, beside Audley, all his certainties and half-certainties suddenly hedged by doubt and half-uncertainty as he stared at the gap in the ring of prickly gorse which encircled and overran both the outer rampart and the motte itself. Because there were suddenly too many imponderables—too many conflicting bloody-minded interests, like the brackets and incomprehensible symbols of some mathematical equation which he lacked both the skill and the intelligence to unravel: Jaggard was playing his own game against Audley, as well as Panin; and Audley and Panin were each playing their own games too, probably against someone else as well as each other. And he was in the middle of all their games, hog-tied not only by his vengeful thoughts about Father Jerzy’s murderers, but also by his last-night memories of Willy, which broke every rule in the book because sexual encounters of the closest sort were still the commonest form of betrayal, still outperforming cash and ideology across the world.

But then, mercifully—mercifully, while he was still havering—

Audley reached towards him, to grasp his arm above the elbow.

‘ There, Tom—’ The grip tightened painfully ‘— do you see—?’

He had already been told where he had to look, in that gap in the rampart out of which Gilbert de Merville had ridden for the last time in 1136, when he’d surrendered Mountsorrel to King Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Stephen’s man, who might have ridden past Bodger’s Farm to this very point, to make sure of Baldwin de Redvers’ castellan’s surrender.

There was someone in the gap —

Audley’s fingers squeezed his arm. ‘I told you—I should have known!’ After that final squeeze, the hand released his arm. “To get ahead of Nikolai Andrievich you have to get up very early in the morning—I should have known better!‘

Now there was another figure, beside the first one. ‘That’s Panin, is it?’

‘Huh!’ Audley grunted. ‘At this distance, with my eyes, it might be Jack Butler… or Henry Jaggard… or the Archdeacon of Truro, for all I know, Tom. But I’ll give you ten-to-one—or a hundred-to-one, if you want to put your money down — that that’s Nikolai Andrievich… and that that little one—the one that’s twitching around, like he’s got ants in his pants… that that one is his minder… his own Thomas Arkenshaw, all the way from Dzerzhinsky Square?’

Dzerzhinsky Square cut deep, as it always did: the historical truth that Dzerzhinsky had been a Polish aristocrat, who had founded Lenin’s secret intelligence and simultaneously betrayed his class and his country, was a wound which never healed—which certainly didn’t heal now, above Gilbert of Merville’s motte!

Audley waited, but again mercifully. ‘Okay, Tom?’ The merciful pause extended. ‘So let’s go and zap the bugger, eh? Let’s go and do it—eh?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State 8

Audley had been right about Professor Andrievich Panin, and quite cruelly right: he looked like nothing so much as an elderly sheep, with his queerly bent nose and an inadequate lower jaw at the bottom of his elongated face; or, anyway, he didn’t look like what he was, and so much so that Tom had to look at Audley himself to accept his ‘I-told-you-so’.

But Audley himself was no comfort, for he didn’t look the part either, quite disconcertingly; and then, just as he was type-casting Audley once again, the little Russian minder whom he’d met so briefly before breakfast ducked out from the bushes again, with what was obviously his habitual expression of mild bewilderment, but also buttoning up the old-fashioned fly-buttons on his trousers quite openly.

So here we are! thought Tom: The Elderly Sheep, who must have seen a hecatomb of human lambs go to the slaughter, so that blood couldn’t worry him now, innocent or otherwise; and the one-time Fairground English Pugilist, who looked as though he had let the young hopefuls hit his face while he delivered the killing body-blows (and who looked so beamishly happy now, at the prospect of slugging it out with an old friend); and this little KGB Stan Laurel, from a hundred tragi-comedies, minus only his bowler hat; and, not least incongruous, Sir Thomas Arkenshaw, the dead ringer of Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Count Waldemar Osinski, Mamusias mother’s brother, who had led his lancers to victory against Trotsky’s machine-gunners against all military reason and elementary commonsense: altogether a most incongruous quartet, to meet in the entrance of Gilbert de Merville’s forgotten castle!

‘See that—?’ The Pugilist touched his elbow. ‘You don’t often see those now, Tom.’

‘What?’ This was the main entrance to the Mountsorrel bailey— he could see that now, at a glance. ‘What?’

‘Fly-buttons. There must have been a shortage of zip-fasteners when that suit came off the peg in the good old USS of R, Tom lad

—’ Audley hissed his opinion from the corner of his mouth ‘—

Professor Panin—Nikolai! It’s been a long time… in fact, more years than I care to remember, eh?’ But he advanced through the gap in the ramparts with all the confidence of King Stephen’s favourite baron accepting the surrender of Gilbert de Merville’s castellan in 1136 anno domini. ‘But… good to see you, anyway, Nikolai.’

‘Dr Audley— David!’ The Sheep’s accent was classless and stateless, and all the more curious for its lack of origin. ‘A long time is true.’ The Sheep stopped on his full stop, and took Audley’s hand and gave it one formal shake. Only then did he look at Tom officially, although Tom had been conscious of a long preceding scrutiny as they had approached Mountsorrel’s entrance.

‘May I present Sir Thomas Arkenshaw, late of the Foreign and Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Commonwealth Office, who is here to see that I don’t make a perfect fool of myself?’ Audley rose to the occasion. ‘At least, in so far as I am ever capable of perfection, anyway.’

The Sheep’s hand was small and dry and smooth and warm, but not soft: it was like shaking a skin-tight glove. But the Sheep also registered his own disadvantage, which Tom sensed from experience of those before him who couldn’t make the age and the Polish face fit the English title. ‘Sir… Thomas.’

‘Baronet, Nikolai.’ Audley sounded as though he was about to enjoy himself. ‘Tom hasn’t rendered Our Sovereign Lady—or either of my sovereign ladies—any signal service himself. Or not yet, anyway. Or not signal enough to be tapped on the shoulder with a sword, and told to “Rise, Sir Thomas!” He’s not “Sir Thomas, knight”— he’s a hereditary “Sir Thomas, Baronet” , with no damned merit attached to it, do you see?’

‘Ah!’ The Sheep stopped trying to reassemble Tom from his constituent parts. ‘A lord—’

‘No.’ Tom was tired of being mocked so early, before the pubs opened. ‘But one of ray ancestors made too much money, Professor. It was just a way of making him pay extra taxes, that’s all.’

‘Is that so, Sir Thomas?’ The Sheep’s deeply-lined and pock-marked face remained effortlessly inscrutable. ‘And that was long ago, truly?’

‘Yes.’ The Sheep was playing the Pugilist’s game, Tom decided.

So maybe he’d better play too. ‘About midway between Tsar Ivan Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State the Terrible and Tsar Peter the Great, actually.’

‘Which is to say, about three-hundred-and-fifty years before Tsar Mikhail Gorbachev, Nikolai,’ said Audley pleasantly. ‘Who is your problem at the moment, I take it?’

‘My problem?’ Panin hardly looked at Audley. ‘Sir Thomas—may I present Major Kazimierz Sadowski?’ He spread a hand towards Stan Laurel. ‘Dr Audley—Major Sadowski—Major, you have heard me tell of the unique Dr Audley? Well, this is he, in the substantial flesh,’ The face-lines cracked their customary grooves into a travesty of a smile. ‘The Major was formerly a tank officer, David. I have told him that you were also once the same, in the Great Patriotic War. So he is now probably trying to think of a British tank large enough for you in those far-off days—was it perhaps a “Churchill”?’

‘No.’ Audley didn’t offer his hand to the Major, only his deepest suspicion. For which Tom was truly grateful, since it at least partially covered his own surprise. ‘It was a “Cromwell”, actually.

Which was probably a lot more comfortable than a T-34. But a bloody-sight less safe.’ As he spoke he frowned horribly at the Major, who also hadn’t attempted to take the hand which hadn’t been offered. ‘But that isn’t a good KGB name, is it— Kazimi-erz-Whatever—? It sounds decidedly… Polish, would that be?’ He stared belligerently at the Major for a moment, but then turned back to Panin as it became obvious that he was no more likely to get an answer than a hand. ‘Polish, Nikolai?’

Panin managed to shrug without moving. ‘You once said to me,

“In my father’s house there are many rooms”—?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘ “Mansions”—not “rooms”, Nikolai.’ Audley faced Panin squarely. “The Gospel According to St John, chapter fourteen. And John also said ” Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold“, I do agree! And he also said a few other things, which are perhaps even more apposite to this morning—like, ” Ye are of your father, the devil“, Nikolai, for a start!‘

Panin turned to Tom. ‘I have made an error, Sir Thomas: I have quoted at him from his own Book!’

‘So you have.’ Suddenly Audley’s voice became cold and hard. ‘

“It is expedient to us, that one man should die for the people!” .’ He turned to Tom, just as the Russian had done. ‘Sorry for the blasphemy, Tom. But this bugger owes us a life, and I’m damned if I’m going to pretend that I don’t know that he knows that he does.’

He fixed Tom only for a half-second before returning to Panin.

‘Tell me about Basil Cole, Nikolai. Because, if we’re going to do any business at all, that’s one expediency I need to know about first.’

Panin stared at Audley. ‘Basil Cole.’ Then he frowned. ‘Basil Cole?’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of him.’ Sniff. ‘He cut his teeth on you, I shouldn’t wonder—the late Basil Cole, Professor.’

Panin gave Audley three seconds, then he looked around, up and down Gilbert of Merville’s ditches, left and right. ‘I do not like this place. It was your idea—one of your historical ideas, David?’

‘It was your idea, Professor—outside, in the open?’ Audley nodded at Tom without looking at him. ‘Your idea in general. And Tom’s Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State in particular.’ The old man looked down at Panin’s feet. ‘Too dirty for you, is it?’

Panin stared at Tom interrogatively.

‘I think it’s a good place.’ Audley continued before either of them could speak. ‘An appropriate place, anyway.’

That got Panin back. ‘Appropriate?’

‘Yes.’ This time Audley quartered Gilbert of Merville’s long-forgotten work. ‘The mid-twelfth century in England happens to be Sir Thomas’s hobby, and that was when this pile of dirt was thrown together. But I take it you don’t know about the mid-twelfth century in England, Professor?’ Audley smiled at the Russian. ‘In the great days of Kiev, that would be, I suppose—

when Moscow was a muddy frontier settlement?’ The smile broadened. ‘But, of course, you’re safe in the days long before that! Ancient Scythian archaeology—I remember, from the old days…’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘I’m afraid this isn’t sufficiently archaeological, in your meaning of the word, old friend. But not inappropriate, no.’

‘No?’ Panin studied his surroundings for a moment before continuing; and (thought Tom) he didn’t need to be a genius either to understand its function or to guess that Audley was somehow lying in wait for him back in history. ‘But it would also be your period, my dear David—would it not? Those essays of yours which I so assiduously read before we last met, in those same old days—

on the crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem… That was the twelfth century, wasn’t it?’ Having finished with the bailey rampart, he scrutinized the motte itself. They were… if I may say so without Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State giving offence… not altogether unscholarly.‘ Now he was relating the position of the motte to the bailey. ’In fact, if those crusader castles had not conveniently crossed every frontier from Egypt to Turkey I might almost have thought that you were following Lawrence’s footsteps, and not misusing your scholarship in the service of your country’s needs.‘ He completed his survey, but did so facing Major Stan Laurel Sadowski, not Audley. ’Major… I do not like either of these ridges, as I have already said. But that across the valley is masked by the mound if we take but a few steps. So I would have you upon the ridge above us, while we transact our business?‘ He pointed up the hillside.

Major Sadowski indicated that he understood the English language not with a nod, let alone a word or any variation in his permanent expression of surprise-verging-on-tears, but simply by moving to obey Panin’s request without question or delay.

Panin watched him depart through Gilbert of Merville’s bailey gateway. “The advantage of having a Pole is that he does what he is told,‘ said Panin to the Major’s back. Then he came again to Audley. ’And, of course, my dear David, the poor creature has been overawed by your presence. And by our medieval crusaders of the twelfth century. And I’m sure he doesn’t know your T. E.

Lawrence from D. H. Lawrence—do you think Lady Chatterley’s Lover has ever been translated into Polish? I would think not, eh?‘

He continued to stare at Audley, but so fixedly that Tom felt he himself was very deliberately not being looked at, even though his reciprocal dismissal was now presumably what the Russian required.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Oh… do you think so?’ Audley cocked his head, frowning slightly, as if the question was of importance. ‘ Lady Chatterley must have been… mid-1920s? And it must have been one of Lawrence’s last books, because he died in 1930. So Poland was still a free country then.’ Then he nodded, still frowning. ‘But the Catholics might have banned it, I agree.’ He drew a sudden breath and then sneezed explosively, and began to search for his handkerchief. ‘So you may well be right, at that.’ He buried his face in the handkerchief. ‘I do beg your pardon, Nikolai.’

‘You have a cold?’ inquired Panin sympathetically.

‘I have a cold.’ Audley nodded. ‘And Sir Thomas stays, Nikolai.’

Now Panin glanced at Tom, but then quickly returned to Audley.

They do not trust you even now, David? Even less than they trust me?‘

Sniff. ‘Nobody trusts me.’ The thought seemed to brighten Audley.

‘Not even my dear wife.’

The two old men considered each other in silence, and Tom decided it was time to hear his own voice again. ‘I think what Dr Audley means is that I’m not so good at doing what I’m told, Professor—unlike Major Sadowski—’ He realized too late, as he pronounced the name, that he had made the mistake of inflecting it correctly ‘—even though I am equally overawed by meeting the celebrated Professor Panin, naturally.’

‘Hah! And so you’d better be, Tom,’ agreed Audley. ‘Not every day do you get to meet an old Central Committee man who was dandled on the knee of Vladimir Il’ich Lenin as a baby, and given Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State a revolutionary blessing! Or is that just a story, Nikolai?’

‘It is just a story.’ Panin was giving his whole speculative attention to Tom now. ‘Vladimir Il’ich did not dandle babies on his knee.’

‘No—of course!’ Audley nodded agreement. ‘Only poor devils who have to win the proletariat vote have to dandle babies—of course! And your old dad fought with the White Army in any case, didn’t he? In the Semenovski Guards, was it?’

Panin continued to stare at Tom. ‘And I am no longer on the Central Committee.’ He ignored Audley’s flippancies. This place was a fortress, Sir Thomas. Correct?‘

Tom had just registered the Semenovski Guards: they had been among the Imperial guards regiments of the Tsar himself. So Audley was playing dirty, as was his custom. ‘Yes, Professor.’ He was tempted to leave it at that, but found that he couldn’t. ‘It was probably built by a man named Gilbert de Merville in the mid-1130s, who was a supporter of a great baron named Baldwin de Redvers. If it is, then it’s Mountsorrel Castle.’

Panin turned away for a moment, to the gorse-and-bracken-covered line of bailey ditch-and-rampart again, and then to the higher motte across the few yards of cow-hoofprinted and cowpatted expanse of coarse pasture which separated the bailey gate from the ditched motte overlooking the river crossing below. But when he came back to Tom there was something in his face, or behind his eyes, which betrayed an insight into what it had once been, before it had been trodden down and demilitarized by eight-and-a-half centuries of time and cows.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘So how is Mountsorrel Castle appropriate to us now, Sir Thomas?’

‘ Ah!’ Audley burst back into the conversation like a Cromwell finding its gap in the bocage at last. ‘Now… now what I meant, Nikolai… was not so much related to place, you see… Although this particular place is also not inappropriate—’ He gave Tom a quick sidelong glance ‘—it is an adulterine construction, is it, Tom?’

The question caught Tom off-balance. ‘I’m not sure, David—’

‘ “Adulterine”?’ The word unbalanced Panin too—quite understandably, thought Tom.

‘ “Illegal”, Nikolai.’ Audley didn’t want to be interrupted. ‘In the days of our strong kings, you couldn’t just put up a castle when you felt like it—you had to have a licence to build and crenellate…

Although “crenellate” is a bit later, I suppose—like, to put up battlements and loopholes; so this was probably no more than a stout palisade, like an old US cavalry stockade, to keep the native English-Indians out, eh?’ Because he didn’t want to be interrupted he didn’t wait to be understood. ‘What I meant was the timing of it, not really the placing… do you see?’

Tom didn’t see. But, nevertheless and loyally, he looked towards the Russian as though he did.

‘The timing?’ Under their combined scrutiny Panin had to ask the question, even though he must know he was walking into some prepared ambush. But then, instead, he gestured towards the motte.

‘Shall we walk a little way? I feel… a little overlooked here, is the truth—?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Quite suddenly Tom remembered Audley’s terrace, and the flesh up his backbone crawled at the memory, so that his feet moved before his brain stamped their movement order, taking him towards the protection of Gilbert’s earth mound.

Panin moved with him. And Tom felt a breath of wind on his cheeks, and the topmost growth of gorse and bracken and old winter bramble shivered on the mound ahead of him, in the same breath of moving air, which had a decided hint of rain-to-come in it, sweeping up the Bristol Channel between Lundy Island and the Gower Peninsula from the distant Atlantic Ocean.

‘Timing—?’ Panin reached relative safety, but turned to find Audley still rooted to his spot behind them in the entrance, snuffling into his handkerchief again. ‘David—?’

‘Coming…’ Audley took his time, even adding to it with a scrutiny of the nearer hillside, on which Major Sadowski was now presumably doing his invisible guard-duty. ‘Coming’

Willy! thought Tom, staring into the junction of the bailey ditch with that of the motte. At this point on the Mountsorrel spur the topsoil had been thin, but Gilbert’s forced-labourers hadn’t been allowed to skimp their ditching: the outer edge was still an eight-foot vertical rock-wall, overhung with trailing brambles growing over it from the top, and he would have liked Willy to have seen that ruthless Norman attention to essential detail —

‘I’m sorry!’ Audley strode up, with that long, purposeful stride of his. ‘I was busy sneezing again. And then I was thinking.’ He looked around, up at the mound, then again at the Major’s ridge, and finally back to Panin. ‘Is this safe enough for you, then?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Panin sighed, but seemed to accept that Audley had taken the lead again. ‘What were you thinking?’

‘I was thinking of my dear wife again, actually.’ Audley peered at the rock cut ditch. ‘That’s a good piece of work there, Tom—do you see—?’

‘Yes.’ A bit of Tom was irritated at being taught to suck eggs. But he also admired the old man’s powers of observation and his determination at least to pretend that the shared memory of the terrace didn’t frighten him.

‘Yes.’ Panin watched Audley peering into Gilbert’s good work. ‘I trust that Mrs Audley is well?’

‘Uh-huh. She’s very well… Are you sure this is “adulterine”, Tom? This ditch must have taken a hell of a lot of digging.’

Suddenly he turned back to Panin. ‘She’s well. But she’s not happy, Nikolai. And neither am I.’

‘Yes.’ Panin nodded. ‘That I can understand.’

‘You can?’ Audley waited for more.

Another nod. ‘I too am not happy, David.’

This time Audley nodded. ‘Yes. That I can understand, also.’

The lines in the Russian’s face were like dry wadis in a stony desert, in an enlarged satellite photo. ‘Someone made an attempt on your life yesterday, I have been informed.’

‘You have been informed?’ Audley repeated the words mildly. ‘It wasn’t you, then?’ he raised his hand quickly. ‘No—of course I didn’t mean that, old comrade. I never thought for a moment that it Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State was you. And Tom will bear me out there—eh, Tom?’

‘I am most relieved to hear that, David.’ The Russian gave Tom no time to bear true witness. ‘But—’

‘Because if it had been you—’ Audley cut him off ‘—then I wouldn’t be here now, would I?’ He gave Panin his Beast-smile.

‘And you, old comrade… you would have been looking for a very deep hole, somewhere east of Nizhni Novgorod. Although you would know, because Jack Butler is a stickler for etiquette—and the son of a good trade unionist too, who knows his Rule Book backwards, and his “Custom and Practice”, which covers what isn’t actually written into the book… and what maybe can’t be written into it—’ He switched to Tom, with a glint of mischief in his eye ‘—old Jack’s dad was a printer, so Jack was brought up on

“old Spanish customs”—’ The mocking eye returned to Panin ‘ —

so you would know, Nikolai, that there wouldn’t be a hole deep enough, not even in Holy Mother Russia—not even in the little monks’ cells in Zagorsk Monastery—where Jack wouldn’t find you in the end, if he thought it was your finger on the trigger, eh?’

The slow Beast-smile became almost loving. ‘Right?’

Panin’s immobility impressed Tom. ‘About Colonel Butler… I bow to your superior knowledge, David.’ Then the dry wadis twisted. ‘But about me… of course, you are also quite right: if I judged you better dead, then you would be dead. But the rest…

that is irrelevant, because we both know that we are concerned with the perceived welfare of our respective mother-countries. And we are both on “borrowed time” now, I think.’

‘For God’s sake!’ Audley interjected the blasphemy hotly. ‘Are Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State you trying to frighten me?’

‘I am stating a truth, David—’ Panin cut back at Audley. But then he inclined his head stiffly, as though uncharacteristically. ‘It’s forty years now—fortyone, for you… more than forty for me—

since we both saw too many better men killed in a good cause—

dead, and rotten, and forgotten… But we are both still here: that is all I mean.’

‘Okay!’ Audley raised his hand again. ‘Okay, okay, okay! ’ The hand came down. ‘So it wasn’t you, Nikolai! But it was someone

—’ The last vestige of the Beast-smile was long-gone ‘—and it was also someone with Basil Cole yesterday. So let’s start with him. Or not at all.’

‘As you wish.’ Panin studied Major Sadowski’s ridge again.

‘About your… experience, of yesterday… I have been told, of course, David.’

‘I should hope so!’ Audley followed the Russian’s gaze. ‘And that’s why the loquacious Major is on guard-duty, is it? Or did you just want to get his little pocket tape-recorder out of range?’

‘About Basil Cole I do not know.’ Panin came back to them. ‘That is to say… of him I know. But that was in former times. And he never worked for you—for either Colonel Butler, or for Sir Frederick before him, to my knowledge.’ The mournful sheep-face expression betrayed nothing. Only the pale brown eyes hinted at life behind the mask. ‘Also he is retired. Or would “dismissed” be the correct word?’

‘No. “Murdered” is the correct word.’ The cold matter-of-fact tone Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State of Audley’s correction somehow emphasized the anger it concealed.

‘Of that I know nothing, my friend.’

Audley winced visibly at what he clearly took to be another incorrect word—so visibly and so clearly that not even Panin could ignore the reaction.

‘You do not believe me?’ The Russian countered that banked-up rage with an asbestos-covered curiosity.

Audley sniffed. ‘I tell you what, old comrade—’ he sniffed again, and began to search for his handkerchief ‘—old comrade—’ he found the handkerchief, but waved it at Gilbert de Merville’s overgrown strongpoint above them before applying it to his nose

‘—I said this place was appropriate… you remember?’ He buried his face in the handkerchief.

Panin studied the motte for a moment, then waited until Audley had completed his noisy ‘having-a-cold’ ritual. ‘Yes. And you also said “timing”, equally mysteriously —I do remember, David.’

‘Good!’ Audley spread a hand round the bailey, proprietorially.

‘ Place: Gilbert de Merville’s cosy hideaway, Mountsorrel Castle.

And I suppose you could say Gilbert had the instincts of a Lebanese war-lord plus the military know-how of an Israeli tank-commander… Timing: mid-twelfth-century England, give or take a few years—mid-Civil War, anyway. King Stephen: played 20, won 5, lost 5, drew 10; the Empress Matilda: played 20, won 5, lost 5, drew 10.’ He shook his head. ‘Not so easy to assess Gilbert’s score, because he probably changed sides half-a-dozen times. The Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State only side he was on was Gilbert de Merville’s side—’

‘David—’

‘Uh-huh! Haven’t finished yet.’ Audley wagged a finger. ‘You may have diplomatic privilege, old comrade. But you’re on my patch now, so I get to do the talking when it suits me—right?’

Panin closed his mouth and battened down his face, reducing his vision to reptilian eye-slits. Or… feline, if not reptilian, Tom amended the image, recalling the look in the eyes of Mamusia’s vile old neutered tom (‘My other darling Tom!’), which always gazed at him with a thwarted malevolence hinting at a very different relationship if their sizes had been reversed. But then he sensed the eyes catch his own scrutiny, and the hungry glint behind them was extinguished, and the terrifying old man was giving Audley a slow, almost stately, nod.

‘Right!’ If Audley had received the same frightening signal he showed no sign of it: he seemed to be enjoying himself again.

‘Very interesting century, the twelfth, Nikolai. The Gothic cathedrals were on their launch-pads—from Chartres and St Denis, and Sens, all the way across Europe, even to the Middle East—the ideas, and the style, and the geometry… Well, as far as Poland, anyway, if not Russia… And nothing like that has lifted off into the heavens until you and the Americans lifted off, but much more disagreeably, back in the fifties.’ Sniff. ‘More technology, but less spirit—?’

Panin held his peace, without difficulty, even though Audley paused very deliberately, as though to allow him the Right of Reply, knowing quite well that he would not exercise it. And Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Tom’s mixture of fascinated fear and curiosity moved further up the gauge, even though it was already well into the red in the knowledge that these two veterans of an on-going war, which had started long before he was born, were consumed with old men’s hatred for each other, in spite of their elaborate politeness.

‘Marvellously good things.’ Audley agreed with Panin’s silence.

‘And marvellously bad ones too. And Gilbert de Merville was almost certainly one of those… like, there was this Peterborough monk, who wrote up the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for those times, which I learnt by heart as a young lad come up to Cambridge fresh from laying waste Normandy, and sacking Germany, and buying the Fräuleins for a few packets of Lucky Strikes: “Every strong man made his castles… And when the castles were made they filled them with devils and evil men… And then they seized those who they supposed had any riches—”—and I don’t need to tell you, of all people, the sort of riches we were after in ’45, because you were after the same bloody things, pretty much—“— and they tortured them with unspeakable tortures, so that I neither can nor may tell all the horrors and all the tortures that they did to the wretched men of this land, but it was said that ‘Christ and His angels were asleep’.” ‘ Audley gave the Russian his purest and sweetest Beast-smile. ’And you may not be able to recall the Monk of Peterborough on the “Anarchy” of Stephen and Matilda, but you were in Khalturin’s Guards Division, so you surely remember what you did in Germany. And afterwards, eh?‘

‘Yes.’ Panin couldn’t duck so direct a challenge. ‘And I remember the Ukraine also, before I was transferred to the Berlin front at the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State last—’

‘And Poland?’ Audley didn’t look at Tom. ‘You remember the Warsaw Rising? Did you hear the sound of our planes trying to drop supplies to them, when you were just across the river there—?

When you bastards wouldn’t give us landing rights, so we had to make the round trip—do you remember that sound, too?’

Every Pole knew that story, thought Tom. And not a few Poles still remembered the names of the Polish Lancaster bomber crews who had died on those abortive mercy trips, delivering half their loads to the Germans. But if that was designed for his benefit it was a crude and unnecessary reminder of unsettled scores, of which he needed no reminding… But then, at times, Audley was crude—

‘What are you saying, David?’ Audley’s sudden obsession with Polish history seemed to confuse the Russian. ‘I was a staff officer with the Guards—’

‘Huh!’ Audley tossed his head like a two-year-old.

‘A staff officer—’ Unbelievably Audley had drawn blood from Panin, the momentary emphasis suggested ‘—and I thought we were in the twelfth century—? Or… the mid-twelfth century?’

‘So we were!’ All Audley wanted was that tell-tale stain through those very old bandages, apparently. ‘And… what I mean is that they built their marvellous cathedrals, which took them closer to heaven than anyone’s ever been since… but then, the other half of their time the Normans were beasts— just like the little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead: Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State When she was good

She was very, very good,

But when she was bad she was horrid—

and, in fact, if you want a really good example of that, then who better than King Henry II Plantagenet himself, who came after Matilda-and-Stephen, eh?‘ Audley shook his head sadly at the Russian. ’A great king, Henry—knew his Latin and his Law. Ruled half of Western Europe. Made short work of bastards like Gilbert de Merville, and his like… Loved the Fair Rosamund—married the fair Eleanor, and all that…“ He shook his head again, and trailed off with a sigh.

Panin waited, not patiently but nonetheless well-contained within himself again now and not to be drawn. And in that moment of silence Tom knew exactly what Audley was about, and what was coming now.

‘So there he was, keeping Christmas like a good Christian in his own private two-thirds of France—’ Audley flicked a glance at Tom ‘—in Chinon, would it have been, Tom—in 1170—?

Somewhere like that, anyway—’ He transferred the glance back to Panin ‘—when this news arrived from England, about this damned inconvenient priest, who’d been shooting his mouth off again, because he reckoned the Church was above the State. Which drove Henry right up the wall, naturally. So he shouted—shouted supposedly to no one in particular, but to everyone in general—“Is there no one here among all you skunks, who owe me everything—

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State your horses, your lands and your castles and your droits de seigneur

—”—or, as it might be in your set-up today, Nikolai, “your Mercedes cars, and your dachas and Black Sea holidays, and your pretty ballet-dancers, and special shopping privileges”—“Is there no one who’ll get rid of this priest for me, with no questions asked?” ’ He drew a quick breath which was only half a sniff. ‘So Fitz-Urse and a few of the lads jumped in their Mercedes—on their horses—and took the next cross-Channel ferry and chopped up the priest right in front of his own altar.’ This time he grimaced quickly at Panin. ‘A proper bungled job, it was—they didn’t even bother to silence the witnesses. So Henry had to throw them to the wolves officially, the murderers—’ He cocked a frown at Tom ‘—

but what did happen to Fitz-Urse and the other three, Tom? I really ought to know, but for the life of me, I can’t recall at the moment

—?’

‘I don’t know.’ Tom, for the life of Tom, couldn’t look at the Russian at that moment. ‘I expect they were excommunicated and banished.’

‘Ah… yes, I’m sure they were!’ Audley agreed readily. ‘But, of course, you probably know the story, Nikolai, old comrade—the martyrdom of Archbishop Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury? It’s all in Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples, which you’ve read—it’s just the sort of good story he revelled in.’ He grinned. ‘But, although he made the right noises about King Henry getting his comeuppance in the end, when those appalling sons of his made war on him—“Such is the bitter taste of worldly power.

Such are the correctives of glory”— I’ve always thought he had a Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State sneaking sympathy for Henry. I know I have—I think Thomas Becket was wrong, and got what he asked for… And, of course, after the 1945 Election, which corrected old Winston’s glory, no one knew the bitter taste of worldly power better than he did.’

Another grin. ‘And I was one of those who voted against him in

’45, too—I voted for Clem Attlee and Labour. Even though Attlee was an Oxford man.‘

By this time, although still for the life of him, Tom couldn’t not look at Nikolai Andrievich Panin, to see how he was handling Archbishop Saint Thomas Becket, and Henry II Plantagenet and Winston S. Churchill, not to mention Father Jerzy Popieluszko.

‘An Oxford man?’ Panin was handling them all well. ‘And you, of course, are a Cambridge man?’ The sheep-face was like a visor, worn and pitted with time on the outside, but betraying nothing of the man within. ‘A Cambridge man who remembers his quotations well!’

Audley shrugged modestly. ‘Oh… that’s just what my old Latin master beat into me, to help me pass my exams. Examiners love quotations. The trick is to throw the Latin ones into the History answers, and the History ones into the English ones, and the English ones into the bloody Latin, he said. Because that way they all think you know more than you’re telling. Or… even if they aren’t so stupid, at least they know that you’ve been well-taught, at any rate.’

Panin nodded. ‘I see.’ He stopped the nod with his sheep-face at an angle. ‘So you have been well-taught. But do you know less than you are telling now… or more?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Hmmm…’ Audley considered the proposition, or pretended to do so. ‘Well now… be that as it may… and you don’t know, and I’m not about to tell you… there are two things that you do know—and one more that I am willing to tell you. That is, if you haven’t listened properly so far, anyway.’

‘Two things?’ Panin accepted the test. ‘You have been shot at—’

‘And missed. So I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt there, for reasons of Mutual Assured Destruction.’ Audley accepted Panin’s first answer. ‘And I’ve also come across a friend of mine who has been put down like an inconvenient dog… for which I have agreed temporarily to give you the benefit of the doubt.’

‘ “Temporarily” will do.’ Panin nodded. ‘In the circumstances I can ask no more than that, I agree. But… this third thing, which I have missed—’

Audley raised his chin and sighted Panin down his big broken nose. ‘This is my patch, Nikolai. Shooting me in my own house isn’t cricket, to say the least. But Basil Cole…’ Nose, chin and face became Complete Beast ‘—I draw my wages to make sure that sort of thing doesn’t happen here. You can do what you bloody-well please in your own backyard—you can murder the important ones, or exile them, or put them in psychiatric hospitals, if that’s what turns you on… And you can make the little ones disappear, and Amnesty International won’t even know their names when you put the muzzle of the gun to the back of their necks. Because that’s your “Anarchy”, and Christ and his saints haven’t gone to sleep in your benighted Socialist heaven—because they’ve never even woken up there, by God! But that’s your patch, and there’s nothing Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State I can do about it—not even if it was my job. Which it isn’t.’ Sniff.

‘But this is my patch. So when you try to extend your Anarchy here it has to cross my dead body in the ditch first—’ The old man pointed to Gilbert de Merville’s ‘good work’—‘do I make myself clear?’

Panin had been listening intently from behind his mask. But now he was looking directly at Tom. And what chilled Tom to the bone was that he seemed to have accepted everything Audley had said—

every last ounce of capitalist insult, and scorn, and slight regard—

without offence.

Audley picked up the look. ‘You’re worried about him, are you?’

Panin took the direct look back to Audley.

‘Can you trust him?’

Sniff. ‘Can I trust him?’ Another sniff, followed by a sickening swallow. ‘With the family silver, I can. And with my wife I can…

because younger men don’t turn her on.’ Another swallow. ‘And with rny own daughter, for the time being, I suppose.’ Audley joined the Russian’s scrutiny with his own at last. ‘And my ox, and my ass, and my life, and such minor impedimenta… yes, undoubtedly I can trust him.’ He nodded, and then turned the nod into a half-amused shake. ‘Don’t look so outraged, Tom—the Comrade Professor hasn’t lived to see old age here by trusting his own people, never mind us! He had no Jack Butler at his back—

no, nor a Fred Clinton either, in the old days—to take the rap when things don’t go quite according to plan.’ He transferred the shake to Panin. ‘And things aren’t so easy on the other side just at the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State moment, are they, old comrade—under the New Management? A lot of redundancy and retirement, would there be?’ He waited for a moment. ‘Perhaps that’s what Basil Cole would have told me.

Among other things.’

This time Panin almost spoke, but again controlled himself behind his defensive silence, as though waiting for Audley to exhaust his armoured cavalryman’s instinct for probing tactics.

‘Well, anyway—’ Audley gestured dismissively towards Tom ‘—

Sir Thomas Arkenshaw just happens to be the son of my very oldest girlfriend. Or second oldest, actually; although the other wench is dead, and in a foreign country… My second oldest girlfriend: once a great girl, now a great lady.’ The brutal face lifted, and Audley used all his inches to look down on his ‘old comrade’. ‘Indeed, one might say that, but for certain juvenile miscalculations on my part, mediated by a mischance on the rugger field perhaps, this Thomas Arkenshaw junior might have been David Audley junior— will that do for you?’

As though to avoid being looked-down on, Panin himself had found something quite absorbing among the muddy hoofprints at the bottom of Gilbert de Merville’s ditch. But now he came out of his absorption. ‘Things are not so good for you, either.’

‘What?’ The statement took Audley aback.

‘You are not in good smell—no, that should be “odour”, for some reason, I think… good odour—? ’ Panin paused, but only for half-a-second now that he was clear of his trenches at last. ‘You have offended too many of your politicians, and now one too many, I think—with your games. So that not even the so-very-good Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Colonel Butler can protect you. Because there is a point where even the so-very-good-and-noble Colonel must protect himself, I think—yes?’

‘Yes?’ Audley frowned. ‘No! Stuff and nonsense!’

‘No— not nonsense.’ Panin shook his head slowly. ‘You are right to say that our circumstances are different. But this time do not interrupt, if you please!’ But, to Tom’s surprise, the Russian did not instantly continue himself, but waited for Audley to bite him.

But Audley didn’t bite.

‘Very good!’ Panin savoured Audley’s silence, sniffing at it approvingly. ‘When I first encountered you I thought you were much more… much more in rank—a colonel, but almost a general

—than you really were. I did not understand what you were. And that confused me.’

‘Is that a fact?’ Audley brightened. ‘Well, actually, you confused me a bit too. So that was when we both started doing our homework, eh?’

Panin ignored Audley’s pleasure. ‘You are clever, David. But you are an amateur.’

‘No.’ Audley had forgotten the ‘Don’t interrupt’ admonition while it still echoed in the still air between them. ‘You’ve still got it bloody-wrong, Nikolai—the word is “Gentleman” not “Amateur”!

And, what you mean, is that… I don’t have to give a damn, if I screw up—but you, poor old comrade… you have been scared half out of your wits every time you’ve farted without permission these last thirty-forty years, if you haven’t got written authorization…

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Unless, of course, you’ve turned up on the hundred per cent winning side—like after Mironov had that unfortunate accident in Yugoslavia, after Khrushchev was outvoted? And you were deep in a trench in the Altai mountains—?’ He turned as though for support to Tom. ‘It was an archaeological trench, I hasten to add!

Because when in doubt the Comrade Professor always goes to ground in Ancient Scythia, never in Dzerzhinsky Square. It’s a sort of return-to-the-womb thing he has. Even this latest cover he’s got

—the Scythian Exhibition at the BM next year… that’s a subconscious going-to-ground instinct, I shouldn’t wonder—’

‘But we are not talking about me, David.’ Panin wasn’t interested in Tom now: he had accepted Sir Thomas Arkenshaw as a hypothetical Audley offspring apparently, and that was enough.

‘Over the last twenty-five years you have been going too far—not all the time, but too often… Over the last fifteen years, to my certain knowledge—how many times? How many times?’

Audley shrugged. ‘I’m still here. That makes no times, to my reckoning.’

‘But Colonel Butler has not Sir Frederick Clinton’s influence.’

‘Maybe not. But Jack is very well-regarded in high places, Nikolai.

In fact, in the extremely unlikely event of any change of government, centre-right or centre-left, Jack’s the lad who’ll get the majority vote.’ Audley’s voice was smug. ‘You’re on a loser if you think otherwise.’

‘Indeed?’ The eye-slits opened again fractionally; which was probably as close to a registration of surprise as Panin allowed himself, Tom decided. ‘A man for all parties? You make him Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State sound truly remarkable.’

‘He is remarkable.’ Audley warmed to his subject. ‘There’s no one like our Jack—not in this black age, anyway.’ He glanced at Gilbert de Merville’s mound thoughtfully for a moment. ‘You can’t lay a finger on him.’

‘I’m impressed.’ The eyes slitted again. ‘Perhaps I should have studied him more carefully, and not you.’

‘Wouldn’t have done you any good. You wouldn’t begin to understand him.’ Audley shook his head. ‘He’ll always catch you by the heel. You’ll never fathom him out.’

‘You think not?’ Even Panin couldn’t resist that challenge.

‘Not a chance. I’ve been trying for years.’ This time the sniff, unlike all its predecessors, was cheerful. ‘Got nowhere—like the Raj trying to fathom Gandhi… Except that Jack’s not what you’d call non-violent.’ Shrug—happy shrug, like the sniff. That’s the trouble with men who are instinctively and logically good: the rest of us, who are ordinarily, and instinctively, and logically bad—and in your case, old comrade, worse— can never get inside their minds. At least, not the way we can sometimes get inside each other’s—do you see? Like now, for instance, eh?‘

Panin considered Audley’s insults without any sign of offence.

‘You surprise me more and more, David—’

‘Not half as much as Jack would, if you’d invited him here instead of me.’ Audley frowned suddenly. ‘And, come to think of it… why the blue blazes did you invite me here—?’ Somehow he caught Tom’s eye in the middle of the question. ‘By which I mean not Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State here, much as I approve of Sir Thomas’s quaint choice of rendezvous—I mean down here—up here, out here? The West Country, Nikolai?’ He shook his head. ‘Not your country, Nikolai.

Definitely not your country. Not since John Ridd put down the Doones hereabout, anyway.’

‘No, not my country.’ The latest insult went the way of all its predecessors. ‘There is something you don’t know, then?’

‘Ah!’ Audley refused to be mocked. ‘You got the Thomas Becket analogy! I was beginning to fear it had all gone to waste. Jolly good!’ He gave Tom a ‘So there!’ nod. ‘But… yes, in answer to your question. Only I’m a quick learner, and I can hardly wait to be taught.’ Sniff. ‘Teach me, Nikolai, teach me.’

Tom was drawn back to Audley suddenly, as all the banter and facetiousness went out of the old man’s voice in that instant. And he saw that the face matched the voice, with no hint of Beast-bonhomie any more; and that that was the tme face and the true voice of the man who had been blinding and bluffing them both with the twelfth century only to get himself where he wanted to be in the twentieth.

‘Gennadiy Zarubin, David,’ said Panin, pronouncing the name with something of Audley’s unconcealed harshness.

‘Major-General Gennadiy Zarubin.’ For that lack of surprise Audley owed Tom, and Tom owed Willy and Colonel Sheldon.

But, considering how very recently Gennadiy Zarubin had been added to the mixture, Audley handled the name well. ‘It had to be him, of course.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Of course.’ Panin agreed readily enough, but then looked sidelong at Audley. ‘Of course?’

‘Simple arithmetic.’ Audley shrugged. The poor bloody priest himself—whose memory I won’t insult by trying to pronounce his name— he’s safe in heaven. And Marchuk’s doing a long stretch in hell. And your four obedient Poles… who were just about as incompetent as Henry Plantagenet’s obedient knights… they’re doing time in some holiday-camp, is our latest guess. Although hell will get them too, in God’s good time, I shouldn’t wonder.‘

‘So?’ The sidelong look was oddly frozen. ‘I didn’t know you were a religious man, David.’

‘I’m not. I’m just an old-fashioned High Days, and Holidays Anglican, seeing as it’s not respectable to worship Mithras these days.’ Audley smiled one of his smiles. ‘But your Poles were probably brought up as good little Catholics, so it’s hell for them in due course—’ The smile curdled suddenly, as though the old man had smelt something more like the charnel-house. ‘Or are they there already? Just to be on the safe side, eh?’

The sidelong glance became full-face. ‘What?’

‘Oh—come on!’ Audley made a vaguely-insulting gesture. ‘If there’s one thing your lot is good at, it’s killing inconvenient Poles.

Like at Katyn, remember—?’ The hand waved some more. ‘Or even letting the Nazis do your dirty work for you… like Warsaw in

’44?‘

Panin tensed, so it seemed to Tom. ‘That is a lie—’

‘No, it bloody isn’t!’ Audley’s vaguely-waved hand clenched. ‘I Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State had some good mates in the 1st Polish Armoured, ’44 to ‘45. And they had fathers and uncles in ’40, at Katyn and elsewhere. And—

and, Christ! They had younger brothers and sons, some of them, at Warsaw in ‘44, where you let them die. ’

‘ It is a lie! ’ As he spoke, Panin squared up to Audley, and the old man matched him, on the very edge of Gilbert de Merville’s rock-cut ditch, each with one elderly fist visible to Tom—ridiculous old fists, clenching and unclenching now, as though in preparation for a pensioners’ punch-up, regardless of age and diplomatic protocol.

‘It’s the truth—and you know it!’ sneered Audley, fixing his big feet squarely in the muddy grass.

‘ David! For God’s sake!’ exclaimed Tom, simultaneously terrified and aware that Audley was not only the aggressor, but would certainly be the victor, with size and weight on his side, if the two old men came to blows here.

Audley twisted a grimace at him, without taking his eyes off the Russian, but relaxing slightly. ‘Maybe not Katyn. But he knows damn well what happened on the Warsaw front in ’44, when they wouldn’t give the RAF landing rights, to drop supplies to the Poles

—never mind not helping the poor bastards themselves, the buggers. Because he was there, by God! Sitting on his arse on the other side of the river!‘

Panin spluttered slightly. ‘You dishonour me—!’

‘If I could—I would!’ Audley’s hand came up. But at least it was a finger now, not a fist. ‘You-were-there—’ He rounded on Tom without warning ‘—and you should know what happened there, of Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State all people, Tom!’

Panin looked at Tom, and Tom himself was astonished at Audley’s indiscretion—so astonished that for a moment all he could think of was the Russian’s description of Audley as ‘ amateur’. ‘I thought we were discussing Gennadiy Zarubin—? Not… not ancient East European military history, anyway—’ He looked from one to the other.

The Russian composed himself first; although that, thought Tom bitterly, was composure born of suddenly-renewed interest in Sir Thomas Arkenshaw, who could not only get his tongue round a Polish name but was also apparently an expert on the Warsaw Rising of ‘44, it seemed. ’That is true.‘ The momentary change in the man’s aura, which had somehow hinted at the presence of a ravening wolf within that elderly sheep, had already vanished so completely that memory queried its existence. ’You must forgive me, Sir Thomas. But I, also, had good comrades in ‘44. And before that, and after that. And also brothers. And I also remember them.’

He drew a slow breath. ‘But I should not. And you are right to draw us back to pressing matters.’ He considered Tom for another five slow seconds before returning to Audley. ‘Thank you, Sir Thomas.’

Audley shrugged, no longer truculent but quite unapologetic. ‘I was only doing my arithmetic. Two dead, four jailed, equals six.

Six from seven equals one. One equals Zarubin. That’s all.’ It was Audley who was battened down now. ‘But you were about to do the rest of the sum for me.’

This time Audley got the five seconds. ‘How much do you know, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State David?’

‘Uh-uh.’ Audley shook his head. ‘Gennadiy Zarubin, you were saying—?’

‘You know that he’s here, of course.’ Panin waited in vain for Audley to answer. ‘Of course you do!’

Audley looked into the ditch. ‘It isn’t really very hard, the rock here

—is it, Tom?’ He looked up at Tom. ‘Not like the rock ditch on the Roman wall between Carrawburgh and Chesters, by Milecastle 30, where they had to bore holes and split the stuff with boiling water

—or vinegar, was it? And they never did finish the job, at that…

Jack Butler showed me the place, long ago—oh, it must be thirteen years ago, about.’ He nodded. ‘All of that, because I think Faith was pregnant at the time… But this doesn’t look nearly so bad.’

Tom rolled an eye at the Russian, as speechless as Panin himself was.

‘It’s still good work, for a rush job.’ Audley bent over the ditch, hands on knees. ‘But not a great work, is what I mean—not with this crumbly red sandstone… Is that what it is? Or is it—what the devil is it?’ He started to reach down below the lip of the ditch, but then abandoned the attempt.

‘They are going to kill him.’ Panin found his voice at last.

‘Zarubin, David.’

Audley found a suitable tuft of grass on which to kneel. ‘Uh-huh?

Who’s “they”?’ He reached over the edge. ‘In Zarubin’s case there must be a fairly long waiting-list for that honour—’ He wrenched at something out of Tom’s view ‘—but presumably these would be Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Poles, of course… eh?’ He gave the unseen bit of rock another wrench.

‘Terrorists,’ said Panin.

‘Terrorists—naturally…’ Another wrench ‘… freedom fighters, partisans, guerrillas . . .franc-tireurs, Robin Hood’s “Merry Men”, UNITA, IRA, ENOSIS, Weathermen, ETA—join the bloody club:

“He crucified noble, he scarified mean, He filled old ladies with kerosene;

While over the water the papers cried,

‘The patriot fights for his countryside!’ ”

- it’s all old hat, Nikolai. We’re used to it, long before from our own late imperial past, even before these more indiscriminate times. And so were your Tsarist predecessors, actually—‘ He twisted towards Tom suddenly ’—it’s tougher than I thought, this rock— Poles is what he means, I suspect.‘

‘Poles, yes.’ Panin surrendered. “They call themselves ”The Sons of the Eagle“.‘

‘Do they now!’ Audley abandoned his efforts, straightening up and brushing the dirt from his hands, though still on his knees. ‘Boh Da Thone, in Burma in the ’80s—the 1880s— he killed under the Peacock Banner. At least, according to Kipling he did. But with the Poles the bird would have to be the good old-fashioned eagle, of Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State course.‘ He stood up, shifting his attention from his grubby hands to the damp patches on each knee of his trousers. ’ “Sons of the Eagle”? Can’t say that I’ve ever heard of them, though. Have you, Tom?‘

‘No.’ It occurred to Tom that Audley hadn’t been indiscreet, he had deliberately set out to establish Sir Thomas as his Polish expert as part of his frontal attack on Panin. Indeed, he no doubt assumed that Tom was an expert, just as Jaggard had probably done. But there was nothing to be done about that now. ‘No, I haven’t.’ He looked at Panin questioningly.

‘They are the violent element in what remains of Solidarity, Sir Thomas.’ The Russian’s voice was flatly matter-of-fact. ‘They are terrorists.’

Tom felt Audley’s eye on him. ‘Solidarity has no violent wing. It never has had. Neither Walesa nor the Church would allow it, David.’ He shook his head. ‘No way.’

‘I see.’ Audley pursed his lips. ‘So Marchik was an accident, then?’

‘I didn’t say that.’ Tom wished he felt more confident. ‘I said that Solidarity is non-violent, that’s all,’

Audley rubbed his chin thoughtfully, leaving a smear of dirt on his jaw-line. ‘Of course. But it’s all academic, really—’

‘Academic?’ Tom had to control his Polish half. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘Yes. Where state violence is institutionalized there can be no distinction between violence and non-violence in anti-state activities: they are either treason or criminal lunacy—you either Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State get the bullet, or regular injections down on the funny-farm.’

Audley returned to Panin. ‘But that’s in your backyard of course, Nikolai. So… academic, as I say. Whereas your present problem is here— and definitely not academic, obviously.’

This time the Russian gave not the slightest hint that Audley’s latest insult had touched the wolf inside the sheep’s armour; if anything, he seemed more relaxed. ‘Your problem too, David.’

‘My problem?’ Audley feigned theatrical surprise. ‘My dear fellow, now that you have most economically explained to me what is about to happen, I can descry no very great problem. Your masters, in their wisdom, have posted the unspeakable Zarabin here

—presumably because they regard London as a relatively safe billet. Or maybe it’s a genuine promotion—? As a reward for presiding over the elimination of that poor unpronounceable priest

—“Father George”, shall I call him? Though, on second thoughts, it can hardly be that, for the work was not well-done—’ He pointed a dirty finger at the ditch ‘—not like that— that is a damn good ditch!’

‘No—’

‘ No— I agree! But, nevertheless, we shall bend every thew and sinew to save Zarubin’s unworthy hide, now that you’ve warned us. And, in my case, all the more so because of yesterday’s traumas

—or should it be “trau-mae”—?’ Audley switched to Tom without warning, and caught him in the midst of another bout of incredulity.

‘ “Traumata”,’ he answered automatically. What this last mock-flippancy reminded him was that Audley hadn’t forgotten Basil Cole, as for a moment he appeared to have done. But the old man Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State was still set on goading Panin, of course. ‘ “Traumata”, David.’

‘Ah! From the Greek, of course!’ Audley fielded the word happily.

‘To my shame I only did Latin, so I’m really only half-educated.

Or altogether uneducated, as my old classics master always maintained.’ Back to Panin. ‘But yes… we shall of course do our best. So when your “Sons of the Eagle” liquidate Zarubin, we shall catch them, and put them away for life.’ He shrugged. ‘Of course, you will get some damn bad publicity, during the trial, when all the dirty laundry about Father George comes out… The newspapers will have a ball with that, tut-tutting hypocritically about wickedness begetting wickedness. But it’ll only be a nine-days’

wonder, and everyone will soon forget again.’ He cocked a shrewd eye at Panin. ‘And, anyway, a mad dog like Zarubin is probably best put down—won’t your masters be secretly quite relieved to be disembarrassed of him? Won’t it actually make things easier in Poland, in the end—?’

Audley’s mouth twisted, in support of his eye. ‘Not your cup-of-tea, Nikolai? Better heroically-dead in foreign parts, with two columns of lies in Pravda? ’

Panin’s face was a picture of nothing. ‘I am here to prevent that thing, David.’

‘Right.’ Audley’s hand came up. ‘So we’ll both do our best. And you can always blame me afterwards. But I can live with that.’

‘No.’ Far beneath Panin’s picture of nothing there was another picture, but Tom couldn’t read it. ‘It will not be enough for me to do that—I cannot afford to do that. And neither can you, David, I Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State think.’ The Russian shook his head slowly. ‘Because I am already living on what you call “borrowed time”, David—that I know.’

The head stopped shaking. ‘And… with all due respect… I believe you are in the same position. Which is why I asked for you, David.’ This time it was the Russian’s hand which came up, and Tom noticed for the first time that there was a thick gold ring on one of the fingers. ‘No, do not interrupt me—’

‘I wasn’t going to—’ There was a ring on Audley’s finger, too.

‘General Zarubin is not here for his own safety. He is here to arrange an important visit, David. Because, if the Geneva talks fail, we shall be appealing directly to Europe, David.’ Panin lowered his hand. ‘And that is what Basil Cole would have told you, I think. So perhaps that is why he died, David.’ Another slow shake.

‘Not merely to discredit me.’

That sent Audley back on his heels, Tom sensed. Or at least it stopped his mouth for once, anyway.

‘We have to stop this thing. It will not be good enough—not safe enough, for either of us—to catch the assassins afterwards.

Because if all that happens, and then there is no meeting because of it… then my head will roll. And yours too… and even perhaps Colonel Butler’s, David. Although your heads are of no concern to me—I will admit that, if nothing else.’ Something almost changed in the Russian’s face. ‘I might even enjoy that thought… if we were not in the same cart—cart?’ Something did change: the depth of the deep creases on each side of the mouth deepened slightly.

‘Or should it be “tumbril”, since we are talking of heads dropping into the basket?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Tom had to watch Audley’s reaction now. And, as he watched, it came to him perversely again that everything Audley had done so far—all the insults, and the pretence to greater knowledge than he actually possessed—had been geared not only, or not so much, to avenging Basil Cole as to deriving this profit (indeed, his own words, ‘ doing business’, had suggested that, exactly, from recent memory). But now the Russian had turned the tables, and almost contemptuously so, by combining mutual survival with cooperation—even, he had twisted the knife, by putting Colonel Butler in the same cart with them both.

And he could see, at a glance, that Audley didn’t like what had been done to him, because the big old man’s ugly face wasn’t sheep-inscrutable: it might be beast-like, but it was rarely expressionless, and it was prey to an alphabet of emotions now.

‘You are a perfect shit, Nikolai—aren’t you!’ Audley sniffed, and then wiped his big nose on the back of his dirty hand. ‘You never were going to make a deal, were you!’

‘Not with you, David—no.’ Panin nodded. ‘We happen to have drawn the same card from the pack, this time.’ The creases deepened. ‘Not like last time.’

‘Uh-huh?’ Audley was already adjusting to defeat, and putting it down to experience. ‘You’ve got a long memory.’

‘I think we both have.’ Panin shrugged off the past, wisely adjusting to victory. ‘But the important thing is that I have a deal for the enemy this time, David. But I need you for that. And that is why I am here.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Here suddenly registered with Tom. Because they had all used the word, or accepted it in its widest sense; but it had always had another and a more exact and geographical meaning—they had even left a precise question about that here behind them, unanswered and mysterious: ‘ Down here, up here, out here—the West Country, Nikolai’—

‘Here?’ The same word had registered with Audley, simultaneously.

‘Yes.’ Panin looked from one to the other of them. ‘“This is not your country”, you said?’

‘Yes.’ Audley was instantly as battened down on Exmoor as he had ever been in his Normandy bocage. ‘And you agreed that it wasn’t—?’

The Russian cased Gilbert de Merville’s long-overgrown fortress for an answer—the whole open space of the bailey, from left to right, and then finally the mound of the motte, alongside which they stood, on the edge of the ditch, before coming back to Audley.

‘How far are we from the sea here?’

‘Not far.’ Audley admitted the truth cautiously. ‘No place on Exmoor is far from the sea. No place in Devon is far…’ Even that wasn’t cautious enough, but geography was against him ‘… from the sea. So what?’ He tossed his head arrogantly. ‘But you wouldn’t understand that, of course, would you! All you’ve got is a sea of grass, or snow and frozen pack-ice, eh?’ Only then he seemed to understand that he could no longer sting an answer, and didn’t even need to do so. ‘He’s coming here, is he? Zarubin—

General Zarubin?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Yes. He’s coming here.’ Nod. ‘Here.’

‘Why?’

‘Because this is his country, David. His father was an “AB”—is that right? An “Able Seaman”?’

‘A what?’ Audley’s jaw dropped.

‘Yes. With “Dunsterforce”, David. Before either of us were born, but I think you’ll remember “Dunsterforce” , nevertheless?’ Panin nodded. ‘He “jumped ship”—“ran”, is perhaps the correct term? Or maybe he fell… fell, or jumped or ran, anyway… to us. So this is his son’s country, and he wants to see it before he dies.’

Audley had tightened his jaw, but it had fallen again.

‘“Dunsterforce”—? You’re joking!’

‘Before he dies.’ Panin nodded. ‘But our job is to see that he doesn’t die, David.’

9

Audley didn’t say a word as they trudged back the way they had come, until they reached the top of the descending fold from which they’d first spotted Russian-occupied Mountsorrel Castle. Then he turned and waved across at Panin, who was already halfway up the main ridge, and murmured darkly to himself.

Tom watched the Russian acknowledge the wave. ‘What was that, David?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Audley lowered his arm. ‘I said “You crafty son-of-a-bitch”.’ He turned away and started walking again without another word.

Tom accelerated after him. ‘Can it be true?’ he shouted at the big man’s back.

‘Can what be true?’ Audley returned the question over his shoulder while lengthening his downhill stride.

‘About Zarubin—’ Tom broke into a trot ‘—Zarubin’s father—?’

‘Oh yes… huh. ’ Audley was already on the edge of the boggy ground again, and as regardless of it as before. ‘ Anything can be true of that swine Zarubin. He’s ex-Special Division, Second Directorate, from way back—’ He sneezed suddenly, but didn’t miss a splashing step ‘— from way back—’ Another sneeze ‘—

COMECON-Warsaw Pact expert… I first caught a whiff of Zarubin in ’68, in Czechoslovakia, but he dates back to Budapest in ‘56, when he commanded a snatch-and-exterminate squad as a young captain… So he must be a man who loves his work… Could be anything from forty-five to fifty-five, I suppose… But a natural for post-Solidarity Poland, anyway—got exactly the pedigree for that sort of dirty work. No bloody surprise there, by God!’

There was water in Tom’s shoes, he could feel it squelch between his toes as he tried to catch up with Audley beyond the bog. ‘But, David—’

‘Surprising over here, though—at least, to me.’ Audley stopped with so little warning that Tom overshot him, and had to turn to face him. ‘What about these “Sons of the Eagle”, so-called? Who the hell are they, Tom?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘I don’t know.’ It was useless to pretend. ‘I’ve never heard of them.’

Audley frowned. ‘But you’re the bloody expert—’ The frown deepened ‘—aren’t you?’

‘I’m not an expert on Polish affairs, David.’

For an instant Audley stared him out of countenance. “Then why the hell did they give you to me?‘

Only the obvious answer presented itself. ‘To guard your back.’

“That won’t do. Any plug-ugly could do that.‘ Audley shook his head. ’You’re still too much of a coincidence, Tom—that’s what you are!‘

The obvious and official answer lay between them like a dead fish on the deck, past its last gasp. ‘Then I honestly don’t know, David.

You can believe me or not—’ An alternative answer came to him ‘

— but if you thought I was an expert… just because of my mother… then you’re wrong. So maybe someone else made the same mistaken assumption—?’

‘Hmm…’ Audley’s mouth twitched. ‘That, at least, has the ring of incompetence! But it also means that someone on our side is engaged in some convoluted nonsense—’ Another twitch ‘—which also rings a bell, eh?’

Tom felt his brain race even as he put his face into neutral and let his mouth lie. ‘I don’t know about that either, David. But my job is to look after you, as best I can.’ Yet the trouble was, while he could remember exactly what Jaggard had said, there was that part of him which was asking again, and more insistently, whose side Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State are you on, Tom Arkenshaw?

Audley found a grin somewhere. ‘Well, if you do that I guess I can’t grumble. And if Panin’s telling the truth, then you don’t have too much to worry about.’

But that only reminded Tom of his own unanswered question. ‘I mean, is he telling the truth—about Zarubin’s father, David?’

‘Hah!’ Audley wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Well, at least that could be true—yes!’ Audley started to swing away from him again. ‘Let’s go! He’s going to get to the next rendezvous before us as it is, damn it! How far is it—to this place of his, where the Eagles have landed—?’

‘I don’t know—’ Audley was past him already ‘—until I see the map in the car… But, David—“Dunsterforce”— what was that?’

‘Huh! You may well ask, boy!’ Audley half-chuckled, half-growled over his shoulder. ‘That’s a thing of beauty, that is—fact improving on fiction, and heaping irony on the top of it: the only reason no one remembers Dunsterforce today is because no one combines all the talents of Kipling and Buchan and Le Carre…

God! But I’d have loved to be there!’ Sniff. ‘Or probably I wouldn’t, with the way the Cabinet chickened out—chickened out after Wilson chickened out, admittedly, in spite of Cabot Lodge doing his best…’

‘Wilson?’ Tom was half-breathless again. ‘Harold Wilson—?’

‘Jesus Christ, no!’ Audley’s stride lengthened again. ‘ President Wilson, I’m talking about—1919, 1920ish… 1920, it would have been. The idea was to get the Americans into the Black Sea, after Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State the Russian Revolution, rather as we got them into Greece after the last war… Bryce—Lord Bryce—put it to Cabot Lodge, and Cabot Lodge swung the Senate. But Wilson wouldn’t play. So poor old General Dunsterville was left out on a limb down in the back of beyond, on the Caspian Sea. Which, of course, he’d always expected to be—lovely man, Lionel Dunsterville! Spoke even more languages than you do, Tom… But I suppose I can hardly expect you to know anything about his romantic little fiasco—not while your Polish ancestors were beating the daylights out of Trotsky outside Warsaw, anyway.’

Tom’s confusion increased. Panin’s parting aside about

‘Dunsterforce’ had gone over his head, and now Audley’s

‘Dunsterville’ merely followed it.

And he was falling behind again—

‘David—’

‘It’s all true, though—“Dunsterforce”—’ It was as though the old man had five-league boots ‘—however unlikely it sounds. In fact, that’s almost certainly where the Navy story comes from, which sounds apocryphal but is probably just as true—about the fish jam… long before my time, or yours… Long before my father’s time—more like my grandfather’s time!’

Tom had just managed to reach his shoulder, but breathlessness and fish jam left him speechless.

‘The trouble is… yes, the only trouble is—’ A growling note entered Audley’s voice ‘—that that bastard son-of-a-bitch back there knows all too damn well that I, of all people, am most likely Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State to swallow any Dunsterforce story—fish jam and all—’ He pointed ahead. ‘But there’s the car, anyway.’ Once again he stopped without warning and faced Tom. ‘So what do we do, then? No time for your beloved back-up now, not even if I agreed to it. Which I don’t.’ He grinned unhelpfully.

A memory came to Tom, but equally unhelpfully, of Willy’s golden head on the pillow next to his. Willy had ‘had help’, she had said, in getting into his room last night. And the Company would never have sent her so far from home alone, that wasn’t their way—that way, at least, they were careful. So Willy and her Help were maybe ten miles away, and maybe half-an-hour, from Farmer Bodger’s farmyard at this moment; and that was the nearest thing he had to any sort of back-up. But neither Audley nor Jaggard would thank him for calling the 7th Cavalry out on Exmoor.

‘Panin hasn’t left us any time, David. I’m not sure that I like that.’

‘Hmm… But then he wants to keep everything low key and strictly non-violent…’ Audley moved his head in a curious circular motion, which was neither a shake nor a nod. ‘And in his state of professional health that has a certain logic to it. Because he can no more afford a scandal than I can… not to put too fine a point on the situation.’ Audley wiped his nose thoughtfully.

‘Yes.’ Tom hid behind unwilling acceptance of the old man’s own logic while actually noting that for the first time Audley had conceded the truth of what everyone else had been saying: that he himself was no longer invulnerable. But then he also saw the flaw in the logic. ‘But yesterday wasn’t non-violent, was it?’ And…

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State better to be brutally explicit. ‘Your bullet and Basil Cole weren’t low key, David.’

‘Hmm… My bullet certainly wasn’t.’ Audley sniffed. ‘And I wish to God I had Old King Cole at the end of a phone now—we’d know what we were about then—you’re damn right there, Tom!

Topping Basil was just too-damn neat… it smells of Panin, no matter how many times he swears to the contrary.’ Nod. Then a succession of small nods. ‘Yes… in the Great Patriotic War he might have been an NKVD hood, but he was also a working staff-officer. So he’d know how blind the front-line is when they can’t get any intelligence briefings about what’s ahead and on the flanks… So I’ll bet he knows I’m running blind as well as scared now, in spite of all the bull-shit I’ve fed him to the contrary. Huh!

But we still go on, eh?’

Once again, in spite of all the other bull-shit which he’d received, Tom warmed to Mamusia’s ancient Beast. Because, for all his pride and bloody-mindedness and plain awkwardness, the old Beast was scared underneath, as he had every right to be. But, in spite of all that, the old Beast intended to go ahead—that was obvious. And in that the old Beast wasn’t disappointing; even, he could see how Colonel Butler might be tempted to return the trust and loyalty which he had received this day—even if it was Audley’s own peculiar variety of trust and loyalty—in exchange for such cavalryman’s courage.

‘ Huh. ’ The old man had completed his logic-versus-flawed-logic process. ‘But we don’t have any choice in the matter, young Tom: there’s always a risk, but we’re in the risk-taking business—we’re Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State the poor-bloody Hotspur nettle-pluckers—

“Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety”

Are you game for that, boy?‘

Tom didn’t like being called ‘boy’, any more than ‘Darling boy’.

But one half of him (and maybe Mamusia’s half, too) shrugged off the diminutive. ‘Yes.’ Only there was still the other half (which was Father’s cautious English half, but in which Jaggard also still had the controlling interest). ‘But I’d like to make a phone-call first, David.’

‘A phone-call?’ Audley frowned at him, then at the car, then back at him. ‘To whom?’

‘I want to know what they’ve got on your bullet, from yesterday.’

It was reasonable, but there was no harm in making it more so, so he grinned at Audley, and knew to his shame that it was a boyish grin. ‘Besides which… they’ll be expecting me to phone in. But don’t worry: I won’t tell them that we’re about to behave stupidly

—I agree that we don’t have any choice.’ Instinct and inclination suddenly combined. ‘You would have done okay in my grandfather’s regiment, David—in… my mother’s father’s regiment, the Ulyani Lancers: they never could resist charging the machine-guns, when it came to the crunch.’

‘Hah!’ Audley was plainly delighted with the insult. ‘And you would have done well enough in the old Wesdragons, Tom: The West Sussex Dragoons… Because they were thick as two planks, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State too!’ Nod. ‘In fact, my old CO… “Kit” Sykes—or Bill Sykes to his friends, of whom I was never one— he used to say… rather like Marshal Foch, of whom he’d certainly never heard, because he boasted that he’d never opened a book in his life, and he hated all Frenchmen as a matter of principle… he used to say, “Don’t worry about the flanks—God only knows where they are, and they aren’t your business anyway. And don’t worry about the rear, because I shall be breathing down the back of your unwashed neck, and there’s nothing behind us except cooks and bottle-washers, anyway. Just go and find out whether there’s anything up ahead between us and the cocktail bar in the Adlon Hotel in Berlin, there’s a good fellow! And if there isn’t, then order six bottles of their best Champagne on my account—understood?” ’ The old man’s pleasure in his old soldier’s memory was like a hot bottle in a cold bed in mid-winter. ‘Understood, Tom?’

‘Understood, David.’ Only he needed to take his speculator’s profit on a favourable market. ‘But I still need to make my phone-call —I want to know what the cooks and the bottle-washers have been doing—okay?’

Audley shrugged, and started to move again. ‘No harm in that, I suppose… just so you don’t tell ’em anything. No point in worrying ‘em—old Jack particularly. He worries about me a lot when I’m out of his reach, you know—’ The rest was lost, half-mumbled at an increasing distance, leaving Tom momentarily rooted to his spot by an onrush of sympathy for Colonel Butler, who must surely be as long-suffering as he was remarkable in other respects.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Then he remembered Dunsterforce, which he would need very soon to explain to Jaggard. The trouble was… getting any sort of straight answer out of the old man in his present elliptical mood (or probably in any mood, come to that) didn’t lend itself to speed; and the last thing he wanted was a lecture on post-World War One Anglo-American policy in the Near and Middle East—he’d had enough of the 1985 results of that old impossible tangle, for Christ’s sake!

Besides which—

‘Wait for me, David!’ But Audley took not a blind bit of notice.

Besides which what was he going to tell Jaggard? (Audley was already halfway to the car, his raincoat flapping around him like a pair of pale wings; and that reminded him of his original job, and also that he was getting careless: because that almost-white raincoat stood out too much for safety against the faded green of the landscape; and because Henry Jaggard hadn’t told him the half of it—because Henry Jaggard was up to something, and Henry Jaggard couldn’t be trusted!)

He had no time to tell Jaggard about Willy. And could he tell Jaggard what Audley was doing, when Audley himself still didn’t really know what Panin was up to?

Bloody Dunsterforce! First things first. (Audley, large and white, had reached the car—and the sooner he was safe inside it, the better. That ought to have been ahead of first: that was more carelessness!)

He broke into a run, forgetting everything for a moment—

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Audley gave up trying to wrench the car door open and stood waiting for him, getting larger and whiter by the second.

He reached the car himself finally, breathless and careless, and happily ridiculous. ‘Sorry, David. I locked it.’ The gun under his arm felt huge.

‘I know you locked it. But do you really think anyone would steal a heap like this—from a muddy farmyard?’ The-old man regarded him pityingly.

‘Just habit.’ Beirut habit, thought Tom, and it was a disturbing thought. But it was a thought he had unthought too easily until now. ‘Go and stand over there, by the end of the barn.’

‘Just unlock the door, there’s a good fellow.’

Tom sighed. ‘Just go and stand by the barn—round the corner of it.’

‘What the devil—?’ The old man’s shoulders slumped suddenly.

‘For God’s sake… you don’t really think…?’ Then he straightened up again. ‘Or are you trying to frighten me? Because you’re succeeding, you know.’

‘Good.’ Tom pointed towards the barn. ‘Don’t be difficult, David.

I won’t take long.’

‘I should hope not! I have wet feet and a cold. And I’m past my prime.’ Audley held up his hand and started backing away. ‘All right, all right—just don’t do yourself an injury. Your dear Mother would never forgive me…’

Tom waited until the old man was out of sight. ‘Actually, this isn’t going to be very difficult—can you hear me?’

‘Yes—’ Sneeze ‘—no?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘We parked on nice mud… just hoofprints and our footprints, I think—nice distinctive prints, too!’

‘Of course,’ agreed Audley. ‘Like Shakespeare said.’

Tom opened the passenger’s door gingerly. Then he leaned across to the driver’s. ‘What d’you mean—Shakespeare?’ He unlocked the bonnet. ‘Shakespeare?’

‘Henry V, dear boy. The night before Agincourt.’

Nothing anywhere there. Look in the boot. Look under the seats.

‘The night—’ Nothing anywhere: false alarm? ‘— ’before Agincourt?‘

‘Uh-huh. Like young Harry said: “Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is his own.”’ Sneeze. ‘Joke, Tom: sole, not soul… Not very good, but the best I can manage in the circumstances: you said “footprints”, and I said “sole”—okay?’

‘Very good.’ Check everything again, was the rule.

‘Not really. Not in these circumstances, actually, it occurs belatedly to me— bad joke, in fact. Is there a bomb in our car?’

‘You can come out now.’ Tom drew a deep breath. ‘False alarm, David.’

Audley squelched across the yard. ‘But with good intent.’

‘Yes.’ Tom knew he was smiling like an idiot. ‘It was a good joke.’

Audley shook his head, unsmiling. ‘Not if you remember the bit that comes before, where the soldier says that the king has a heavy reckoning to make “when all those legs and arms and heads, chopt off in battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry all, ’We Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State died at such a place‘.” ’ He shook his head again. ‘Bad joke.

Forgive me, Tom. I apologize.’

‘No need to.’ He had never seen the old man so serious, not even after the news of Basil Cole’s death. ‘I have been getting careless.’

‘And I have been worse than careless: I have been playing my little games maybe a little too thoughtlessly of late—Panin’s right. And that gives him the edge on me now.’ He looked at Tom sadly. ‘It’s like my wife has said on occasion: “How can such a clever man as you so often end up being too clever by half?” ’ Sniff. ‘My trouble is… as you get older there are things you can’t do any more, Tom.

So sometimes I get a little bored. And then I make a little excitement for myself. So… now I am justly served, perhaps. But you are not.’

Poor old bugger! Getting older was something Tom had occasionally thought about. But not being older. But now he didn’t know quite how to react. ‘It’s okay, David.’ He patted the Cortina.

‘In Beirut I used to do this all the time, pretty much. It’s all right.’

‘It isn’t all right. Being too clever by half is bad enough. But not being clever enough is worse. People get killed when I’m not clever enough. And I’m not being clever enough at the moment, I suspect.’

That could really only mean one thing. ‘You think Panin’s up to something—apart from protecting Zarubin?’

‘Hmm… I’ll tell you something about Comrade Panin, Tom—one of the things we do know about him. He was the pupil of a man named Berzin, who was a professor of psychology in the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Dzerzhinksy KGB Centre in the old days. We’ve got a whole book of his lectures in our archives, which some thoughtful person presented to us. Lots of theories, old Berzin had—some of ’em simple and old hat, some of ‘em devious as hell. “Get your enemy to do your work for you”, was one… and one that Panin likes, too.

But there was another one I recall, because it’s pricking my thumbs at the moment. Berzin called it his “Benefit Maximization” theory, or some such jargon—he liked jargon. What he meant, though, was that having a main objective in any operation should never preclude subsidiary objectives. In fact, he even referred to “the single objective heresy”: “the successful operative must balance caution and calculation with daring, risk-acceptance and greed for windfall benefits in what may seem unrelated sectors of activity…

” Or something like that—I’m not sure of the translation of

“windfall”, but “greed” is the exact word, straight out of the Bible in Russian, apparently.’ Audley nodded. ‘And our Nikolai is nothing if not greedy. Apart from which… if, as he says and I very much suspect, his present position is as uncertain as mine is… he needs to ride home with a whole lot of severed heads attached to his saddle-bow.’

It was a chilly metaphor, as cold as the metal under his hand, thought Tom. ‘And yours may be one of them, you think?’

The brutal mouth twitched upwards. ‘Well, apart from Zarubin, I’m the only target around.’ Another twitch.

‘But it does occur to me now that if the “Sons of the Eagle” just happened to put a bullet through me… then no one could blame him, could they? That would have the virtue of neatness.’ The Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State twitch became the old familiar Beast-grin. ‘It just occurred to me out of the blue. And it’s probably quite fanciful.’

The metal was almost burning-cold. ‘We don’t have to keep his next rendezvous, David. We could let him go it alone—’

‘Cut-and-run! For him? ’ This time the sniff was worthy of the nose. ‘Not on your nelly, Tom! The day I do that for Panin… then he doesn’t have to worry about me ever again. And right now he still does, I tell you.’

It was useless to argue with him, because his pride certainly equalled Panin’s greed.

‘Besides which… I’d never know what he was up to, would I?’

The Beast-grin softened. ‘And I couldn’t abide that—it would make me bully my wife and beat my daughter.’ Audley shook his head almost cheerfully. ‘And we couldn’t have that, could we! So let’s go, then—where glory waits.’

Maybe the car wouldn’t start, hoped Tom. But he had just looked at the engine under the bonnet, and it had looked the way the garage man said it would—almost as good as the beaten-up Chevy he had used in Beirut.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Audley stopped halfway into the car.

‘What do you want now? Wasn’t it a phone—?’

‘I’d prefer you not to wear that raincoat, for a start.’ Better anger than despair.

Audley raised himself, huge and off-white. ‘Why the hell not?’

‘It stands out like a—like a fucking sore thumb, David.’

‘What?’ The old Audley sparked again. ‘You want me to die of Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State pneumonia, then?’

‘Pneumonia would suit me fine.’ He preferred the old Audley, actually. ‘No one’s going to blame me for that. And it isn’t usually terminal these days, anyway. But… suit yourself.’ He ought to have known that the direct approach never worked with the old man.

But Audley was nevertheless obediently taking the coat off. ‘I shall put it on again if it rains.’ He balled the coat up and threw it into the back of the car. And then looked aggressively at Tom. ‘Which it looks like doing any moment now. Is that all?’

Tom got into the car, And, of course, it started at the first twist of the ignition key, as he knew it would do. But what he needed, short of the protective back-up he had always wanted, was bloody Dunsterforce, before some bloody telephone.

He toyed for a moment with the idea of three-point-turning into the farmyard, and bogging down in it. But the thought was beneath him

—and it was par for this course that the Cortina wouldn’t bog down, anyway. When inanimate things were against one, it was useless to fight them.

‘Yes.’ He reversed savagely down the track towards the road, knowing that he would stop carefully at the junction, even though there wouldn’t be anything to delay him: if God intended David Audley to rendezvous again with his old comrade, then he would clear the road. Tell me about this fish jam of yours, David.‘

‘Ah…’ Audley was making a dog’s-breakfast of safety-belting himself up as always, oblivious of all nuances when it suited him.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Ah! Now what you really need to know, young Tom, is the story of Major-General Lionel Dunsterville, who was indirectly responsible—if not ultimately responsible—for serving up the jam… Which, of course, was good Beluga caviare, as the Comrade Professor well knows—and knows well that I know too, of course.

Which is the problem—’

The car bumped and lurched over the pot-holes. And even if it hadn’t it was going to be a bumpy ride, because the old bugger was already playing his games again, in spite of everything—

But it wasn’t, somehow. Not even though they came to a tatty, old-fashioned (but unvandalized) phone-box on an impossible blind corner on the ujpper edge of a hillside village only five or ten minutes away from Bodger’s Farm; which must therefore have been well within the range of Gilbert de Merville’s forced-labour net, when he’d been raising Mountsorrel.

And, even, it was Audley who broke first, trying to snap the thread of his own inconsequential tale, out of fish jam (which the sailors had hated), and the long-dead, far-flung past, from Devon to the high passes of the North-West Frontier, and back to Devon again, and on to the equally distant Caspian Sea, off Enzeli in Persia, and Baku in Transcaucasia, and Astrakhan on one of the mouths of the Volga.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be phoning?’ The old man found his wristwatch with difficulty, on the inside of his wrist. ‘They’ll be there by now, almost—?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State He had to find the number, and reverse the charges, with his imagination still ablaze.

And do the necessary: “This is an open line—‘ It had sounded like the dreadful Harvey on the other end, sweating out his Saturday as duty-creature to Jaggard ’—the number is—‘

But finally Jaggard came on, irascibly. ‘Arkenshaw! Where the hell have you been?’

Jaggard wasn’t to be trusted, he thought. But then— but neither am I now! ‘I’m in Devon, on Exmoor. I’m at—’ He squinted at the name and number again, where he was.

‘I know where you are, damn it! What the devil’s happening?’

So Audley’s bullet and Basil Cole had fully worked themselves through the system since yesterday, ‘We should abort this operation, sir, I think.’

Pause.

‘Just tell me what’s happening, Tom.’ Jaggard had his cool back now.

‘Do you know who the “Sons of the Eagle” are, sir?’

Another pause. But he could imagine what Jaggard was doing, out of his earshot; and then what Harvey would be doing. ‘No.’

Well—let’s see how good Harvey is! ‘They are a Polish dissident group. Panin says that they’re terrorists, subsidiary to Solidarity.’

‘You’ve talked to Panin?’

Keep to the truth while you can. ‘Audley has. I’ve just listened in.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Panin’s down here with a Polish minder, by name Sadowski. Major Kasimierz Sadowski.’ Wait, and let him feed that also to Harvey.

‘Yes?’ The pause was just long enough to confirm Tom’s suspicion that Harvey wasn’t monitoring the call on an extension line: this was Jaggard’s privately-taped exchange. And, of course, he knew about Sadowski.

‘Panin says he’s here to stop the Sons of the Eagle from killing General Zarubin.’ Tom gave him only half a second. ‘You know about Zarubin?’

‘Go on.’

So Jaggard didn’t need to put that through either. ‘Zarubin masterminded the murder of Father Popieluszko.’ Tom gave; the dead priest’s name every last Polish inflection, to the point of incomprehensibility. And then waited.

‘Go on. Go on.’

‘Do you know where Zarubin is now?’

Fractional pause. ‘Don’t keep asking me questions. Just tell me what’s happening.’

‘Zarubin’s on the way here. At this very moment.’ Tom shivered helplessly at the meaning of his own words. ‘He’ll be here any time, in the next hour or two. Here on Exmoor, sir. And the Sons of the Eagle will be waiting for him.’

This time it wasn’t so much a pause as a silence while Jaggard digested this disquieting intelligence. But finally he came to life again. ‘Panin told you this?’

Audley was watching from the car. ‘Yes, sir.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘How does he know?’

Fair question. ‘He’s not saying. Presumably they’ve got someone inside the Sons of the Eagle.’

‘And how do they know—the Poles—about Zarubin?’

Another fair question. ‘He wouldn’t say that, either. He just stated it as a fact, and stuck to it. But…’

‘But what?’

Tom nodded gratefully to Audley. ‘Dr Audley thinks, if Panin’s got someone on the inside, then maybe he’s set the thing up himself.’

‘What?’ Jaggard sounded irritated. ‘Set up Zarubin as a target?

Why the blazes should he do that?’

‘Zarubin is a target already. The Poles have already killed his deputy—a man named Marchuk. Leonid Marchuk—’

‘Spell it.’ Tom’s pronunciation invariably floored native Englishmen,

‘M-A-R-C-H-U-K. L-E—’

‘I’ve got that. Go on.’

‘That was in Poland.’ It wouldn’t take long for the computer to confirm that. ‘Zarubin was posted back to Moscow after that. But now he’s in England, and Panin probably reckons he can’t be protected properly here. So he’s taking the initiative instead.’

“The initiative—‘ That rocked Jaggard somewhat. ’What initiative?‘

‘He says he doesn’t want any trouble—not with what Zarubin’s Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State doing over here at the moment, especially. He says that’ll be bad for both sides.’

‘He does? Well, he’s going about it in a damn funny way! What does he propose to do, for heaven’s sake?’

‘He wants to make a deal.’

‘A deal—?’ Jaggard stopped suddenly. ‘Hold on.’

Tom waited, focusing on Audley again. He mustn’t forget to ask about Audley’s bullet and Basil Cole’s death to give himself some sort of cover story for all this chat.

‘Arkenshaw?’ Jaggard came on the line again. ‘I have confirmation on Marchuk. A suspicious road accident… Not a nice man, Marchuk. But then neither is Zarubin, by all accounts. But we haven’t got one damn thing on your “Sons of the Eagle”.’ Pause.

‘But you knew about them, did you? But… never mind. What deal? With us?’

‘No, sir. With the Sons of the Eagle.’ Put that in your pipe! But he could improve on that. ‘With a man named Szymiac.’

‘With—? Shimshe… ack?’

‘That’s right. S-Z-Y-M-I-A-C—one of their top men. Szymiac.

Panin knows exactly where to find him. He’s rented a house at East Lyn, just outside Lynmouth, In preparation for welcoming Zarubin to Exmoor.’ Tom wondered what the computer would make of that. But then, if it had fluffed the Sons of the Eagle it was unlikely to throw up Szymiac from its electronic stomach.

Jaggard growled unintelligibly. ‘What sort of deal can Panin possibly make with Sh… Ssshhim-shak?’ Are you—is he serious?‘

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘A very obvious deal.’ For an instant Tom heard the wind whistle round his cosy phone-kiosk. It was a cold east wind, which had freshened in the last hour, possibly blowing all the way from the Urals to Exmoor, across the prostrate body of his mother’s country.

‘It isn’t obvious to me, I said,’ said Jaggard sharply. ‘Are you there?’

‘Yes.’ Tom saw that Audley was holding up his wrist and tapping his wristwatch meaningfully. ‘Jaruzelski’s got a whole lot of Solidarity activists under lock-and-key. All he has to do is throw away the key—or worse. And that gives Panin pretty good bargaining power.’

Pause. Then pause-into-silence. And now Audley was shrugging at him. ‘I’m running out of time, sir.’ If Jaggard had forgotten Exmoor realities it was time to remind him. ‘Dr Audley is waiting for me. So I also need to know what you’ve got about everything that happened yesterday… sir.’

‘Yes.’ Was that an intake of breath? ‘What does Audley say about all this? Does he accept it?’ Only half-a-second. ‘But you want to abort—?’

‘I do.’ This was where the truth became too complicated. ‘He doesn’t.’

‘Why not?’ Jaggard ignored what he wanted for the second time.

‘He wants to find out what Panin is really up to.’ Even as he answered, Tom knew that he was on a loser; because Jaggard could no more resist that challenge than Audley could; and also because Jaggard was sitting safe and comfortably, while they were up at the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State sharp end.

‘Panin’s up to something else?’ Jaggard’s question was hedged with caution.

‘Yes, sir. I think he is.’

‘The hell with what you think! What does Audley say?’

He should have expected this. ‘It relates to why Zarubin is coming here, sir.’ He had thought to enjoy this tall story, but Jaggard had ruined his enjoyment.

‘Ah… yes…’ Jaggard temporized, as though he’d been untimely switched back to another outstanding question, which had already occurred to him but which he’d decided was relatively unimportant in his scale of priority questions. ‘What the blazes is he doing down there, where you are? Apart from risking his neck—?’

It would have been better to have reached this point earlier on, when Audley wasn’t making faces at him from the car. ‘What do our records say about him—about Zarubin?’

‘About Zarubin?’ Jaggard had been expecting an answer, not a question—and particularly not after his express order to the contrary. So, for a moment, he was close to answering. ‘What the hell are you playing at, Arkenshaw?’

‘I’m not playing at anything. What have we got on Zarubin?’

‘What—? Man, we’ve got what you’d expect: he’s officially a senior officer of the Red Army, ex-Warsaw Pact headquarters secretariat, seconded to the Foreign Ministry with effect from January 1985. With a list of decorations to match.’ Jaggard’s cool bent, but didn’t crack. ‘He’s career KGB, Second Directorate, with Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State the rank of general, dated December 1984.’

‘We don’t have the name of his father?’

Pause. ‘We don’t have the name of his father. Or his wife. Or his wife’s father. Or his wife’s uncle’s second cousin. Or his mother’s aunt—’ Caution suddenly ‘—what’s his father got to do with him coming to Exmoor?’

That was an unlooked-for gift. ‘Just about everything, according to Panin. Because Zarubin’s father was born in a fisherman’s cottage on Brentiscombe Head. On the day Mafeking was relieved.

Mafeking Day—May 17, 1900.’ Tom resisted the temptation to add that Audley himself had supplied the exact date after Panin had supplied the event. ‘Brentiscombe Head is up the coast from Lynmouth, towards Ilfracombe. Zarubin’s father’s name was Roberts… Or maybe his Christian name was Robert— Panin’s not too sure about that… at least, not as sure as he is about the cottage on Brentiscombe Head, anyway. Because Zarubin took his grandfather’s name—’ He could allow himself this satisfaction, anyway ‘—that’s to say, his mother’s father’s name… Do you understand?’

No hint of understanding came down the line. Which would have been gratifying if Audley hadn’t wound down his car-window to draw his attention to time’s winged chariot. So he nodded at Audley and re-applied himself to the telephone. ‘What he says is that Zarubin’s father was an Englishman—that he joined the Royal Navy straight from school, in 1914. And he served in HMS

Goliath, in the Dardanelles in 1915. And then, finally, he fell overboard, from HMS President Kruger, in the Caspian Sea in Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State 1920—’

‘ Where— ?’ Jaggard gagged on the Caspian Sea, without ever reaching HMS President Kruger, as well he might, thought Tom; even Audley had done a second take on that—as well he might, too: a child born in 1964 could have been sunk by the Argentinians in the South Atlantic in 1982, but it took too big a stretch of the imagination to have him fall off HMS Adolf Hitler the year after, in any conceivable war, never mind in the landlocked Caspian Sea where the Royal Navy had no obvious business.

‘Yes, sir. In the Caspian Sea… serving with the Royal Navy Caspian Squadron, in support of Dunsterforce.’ He couldn’t resist playing Dunsterforce for all it was undoubtedly worth. ‘We had a combined operation in Iran—in Persia— after the First World War, to keep the Turks first… and then the Bolsheviks… away from India, sir. And it was commanded by a man named Dunsterville—

Major-General Lionel Dunsterville. But it all came pretty-much unstuck, because of lack of support. Typical Foreign Office foul-up, probably.’

An indeterminate sound came down the line. ‘What the hell are you talking about, Arkenshaw?’

You may well ask, sir! ‘Zarubin’s father was taken prisoner by the Bolsheviks… somewhere off Astrakhan, at the mouth of the Volga in 1920, after he fell overboard. Or, Audley says he may have deserted… because there were some mutinies in the navy, about that time. That would account for the Bolsheviks not shooting him, anyway. Or maybe he was just a fast talker.’ He couldn’t repeat Audley’s theory that Able Seaman Roberts had developed an upper-Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State class taste for caviare which only membership of the Communist Party could satisfy.

Another strangled growl reached him. ‘This sounds like Audley talking. Is this what he’s saying?’

‘No, sir.’ The lie came quickly, because he was half-ready for it.

But there was also half-truth in it. ‘He’s extremely suspicious of the whole story: he says it could be all true, but he doesn’t like it.

That’s what I’ve been trying to say, sir.’

‘Why doesn’t he like it?’ Jaggard couldn’t avoid the obvious question.

‘He says it’s just the sort of damned cock-and-bull story Panin would dream up for him.’

‘It’s all hogwash, is it?’

‘Some of it’s true, apparently—about “Dunsterforce”, and HMS

President Kruger, anyway.’ He had to avoid even looking towards Audley now. ‘But he says Panin would expect him to know about it. Because everyone knows he’s dotty about Rudyard Kipling—

Panin included.’

‘Rudyard Kipling?’ The sudden growl in Jaggard’s voice, which overlaid its incredulity, suggested that everyone included him.

‘What the blazes has he got to do with Zarubin—or his father?’

‘Just about everything, sir. “Dunsterforce” was commanded by Lionel Dunsterville. And Dunsterville was Kipling’s best friend at the United Services College at Westward Ho!—just down the coast from here, outside Bideford—Dunsterville was Kipling’s actual model for Stalky in Stalky &Co-’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State (‘“ Your Uncle Stalky is a Great Man” .’ He heard Audley’s voice inside his head. ‘ And Dunsterville was, of course: eight languages, including Chinese and German and Persian, never mind all the Indian dialects. Crammed into the Indian Army from the United Services College—dreadful place… But crammed by Cormell Price, who was a great headmaster. And not an imperialist, even though USC only existed to supply the Empire with dedicated servants— he was “Prooshian Bates, the downy bird” in “Stalky”, Cormell Price… Friend of Swinburne, and William Morris, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Burne-Jones… Kipling should never have been in that school—he wasn’t going into the army. But Cormell Price was the perfect headmaster for him, nevertheless…

But the hell with that, Tom! See how that son-of-a-bitch has ambushed me again! I’ll bet he bloody-well knows I’m wasting time telling you about Cormell Price! ’

‘All right, all right! I get the drift, man. Panin claims Zarubin is half an Englishman, by blood if by nothing else. And Audley knows that this could be true—and we haven’t got anything to say that it isn’t…’ Jaggard trailed off for a moment. ‘But Panin can’t know for sure what we don’t know about Zarubin, or what we do know. So maybe it is true, damn it! So where does that leave us?’

‘It’s why Zarubin’s coming here.’ Tom shook himself free from Kipling and Cormell Price. ‘He’s always wanted to see his father’s birthplace. He’s never made any secret of it, apparently. And this is the first time he’s had the chance.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Hmm…’ The silence at the other end suggested that Jaggard was running through Zarubin’s curriculum vitae again. ‘There’s nothing in his record to suggest filial piety. Or any other kind of piety, come to that—he’s a bloodthirsty Dzerzhinsky Centre-trained honours graduate, with a lot of scalps hanging outside his tent. Including your Father Jerzy’s, Arkenshaw, among all the others. In fact… he’s the sort Gorbachev shouldn’t be promoting now… if anything, that’s rather surprising. Except he’s the right age, I suppose.’ Pause. ‘What does Audley say?’

‘Maybe it’s just curiosity—on Zarubin’s part.’

‘Well, it’s damn dangerous curiosity, if there’s a hit-squad waiting for him down there,’ growled Jaggard. ‘It’s full of holes. It stinks, Arkenshaw, it stinks.’

‘Yes, sir—I agree. And that’s why I think we should abort.’ Tom’s heart lightened. ‘If you can intercept Zarubin… then I can warn Panin off. After all, he is playing games on our ground.’

Another growl. ‘Oh yes? And then someone puts a bullet into Zarubin outside the Dorchester one night? Is that it?’

‘We can send Zarubin back home. And Panin with him. Let them solve their own homegrown terrorism and leave us in peace.’ But Tom felt his argument weakening even as he made it: sending Zarubin home would be an unfriendly act, never mind an admission that the UK couldn’t protect a fully-accredited diplomat in her own backyard, even though that was sadly true.

Again the silence lengthened, as Jaggard made the same connections. ‘What does Audley say? Is that what he wants?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State The son-of-a-bitch has ambushed us, thought Tom bitterly, knowing what he must say, and then exactly how Jaggard would come back to him. ‘He says that either Panin’s up to something nasty, or Zarubin is. But he wants to find out what it is.’ He glanced towards the car, but the old man looked as though he’d given up and gone to sleep. So probably he was dreaming of Kipling and Dunsterville arguing about the pre-Raphaelites with Cormell Price on the windy beaches of Westward Ho! in the 1880s, before fame and Empire and the Caspian Sea overtook them. ‘But what about that shot someone took at Audley yesterday? And what about Basil Cole?’ This time, as he spoke, he decided to get stroppy, with desperation cancelling Jaggard’s huge seniority. ‘Someone has to have come up with something there, for Christ’s sake! Or am I on my own down here, and no one gives a damn what I’m doing—?’

No answer. And the old man in the Cortina across the road was settling himself more comfortably, no longer worried either about time or Panin—or even that he was parked on a blind corner; which only served first to increase Tom’s sense of desperation and isolation as he thought either he’s stupid or he trusts me; but he isn’t stupid, so he trusts me: but if he trusts me, then he is stupid—

‘Apart from which Dr Audley is waiting for me,’ he continued harshly. ‘And that’s what he thinks I’m finding out. So I have to have something to tell him… sir.’

‘Yes.’ After no answer the answer came smoothly now. ‘Don’t worry about that business at Audley’s house. We have that in hand, and it has nothing to do with what you’re engaged in, Tom.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State So it was Tom again now. ‘What d’you mean—?’ A hideous thought struck Tom between the shoulder-blades, coming appropriately from behind and stopping him in mid-protest. ‘I mean… what about Basil Cole, then? I’ve got to tell him something, damn it!’

‘That’s not so straightforward. Because… the accident seems fair enough, on the face of it. Because, with all the trampling around there, there wasn’t much evidence left. But he wasn’t really very drunk at the time, it seems. Or not morning-drunk, from the stomach contents.’ Pause. ‘And it appears someone got the wife out of the house on a wild-goose chase, at the material time. Which would have given someone else a free run there, when she was away.’ Pause. ‘So that does look like murder, we think.’ Pause.

‘Though whether it was your “Sons of the Eagle” or the Other Side, we don’t know yet.’ Pause. ‘So you just give him that, and embroider it a bit… Cole’s wife helps out at a hospital there, running relatives to visit their next-of-kin when it comes to the last rites. And she was given an urgent address by someone—someone they can’t trace, at the wrong address. That’s the strength of it, and we’re working on it. But… for the rest—’ Jaggard’s ingratiating tone dropped away from his voice, like a drop-tank from an old-fashioned fighter-plane as it zoomed into combat ‘—if that’s what Audley wants, then he’s in charge, Arkenshaw. And your job is simply to keep him in one piece. How may times do I have to spell it out for you?’

How many times, indeed! But then, even beyond the recurrent memory of his promises to Audley’s wife and daughter, Jaggard’s Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State crude image conjured up the man himself squelching through Farmer Bodgeir’s yard not half-an-hour previously—Audley sobered by his own responsibility for Tom Arkenshaw as he thought of blown-up legs and arms and heads joining together on the latter day. ‘You’re going to have to spell it out every time you talk to me. Because I didn’t like the odds yesterday, and I like them even less today. I think we’re going to be in trouble before we’ve finished down here. And I want to put that on record.’

Silence.

Tom took a deep breath. ‘Someone tried to kill Audley yesterday.

They may try again.’

‘Oh…’ It sounded not so much like anger as exasperation ‘… oh, all right, Tom—have it your way, then! Let me think, now…’

Tom didn’t require an order, he was surprised enough not only with Jaggard’s second thought, but also with his almost-confirmation of that knife-thrust of suspicion.

‘All right, then—’ Now Jaggard was his old self again ‘… I’m not going to call out the anti-terrorist squad, or the Special Branch, to line every hedgerow. There probably isn’t time, and we as good as promised Panin’s people that we wouldn’t interfere with his business with Audley… Apart from which we might scare off these “Sons of the Eagle” of his, which would only make matters worse, undoubtedly.’

That sounded suspiciously like ‘any aid, short of actual help’.

Indeed, it sounded even more like Jaggard covering his flank against awkward questions in some future inquiry. But what else Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State could he expect? ‘Yes, sir?’

‘But I’ll do what I can for you—I’ll put what I can scrape together on the road. They’ll be just over your skyline in a couple of hours.

And you’ve got the contingency number.’

‘Yes.’ Not good enough. ‘Yes.’ Tom came to a decision. ‘I’ll call you as soon as we’ve got anything.’ He had the contingency number. And he also had another number. ‘Goodbye.’

Audley was mercifully still wrapped in dreams, or daydreams, as he dialled the other number.

‘Green Man Hotel—can I help you?’

I hope so! ‘Room 12, please.’

‘Room 12—putting you through, sir.’

Tom’s conscience pricked him, but only slightly.

‘Hullo there?’

The conscience-pricking sharpened, and he was suddenly aware that his hand was sweaty on the receiver. ‘Listen, Willy—’

Audley yawned, and stretched against his seat-belt. ‘You’ve been a most unconscionable time, dear boy. What have you been doing?’

‘I’m sorry, David.’ Of course the car started at the first touch once more, with malignant obedience. ‘Everyone was busy saving the world.’

‘Oh yes?’ There was only the merest hint that the unconscionable time had re-aroused the old man’s suspicions, which the episode in Farmer Bodger’s yard had momentarily allayed. ‘Since the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State weekend is with us, I’m surprised you found anyone at all there.’

Better to counter-attack, as though from a clear conscience. ‘I didn’t think you were worried.’ He put his foot down as the road opened up ahead. ‘I saw you snoring.’

‘I was not asleep!’ Audley sniffed, and wiped his nose on the back of his huge dirty paw like a geriatric schoolboy. ‘I was thinking of Kipling and Dunsterville… and fact imitating fiction, actually.

Because he must have written Puck of Pook’s Hill… oh, all of thirty years before Dunsterville got the dirty end of the stick on the Caspian—just like Parnesius got the dirty end defending the Roman Wall, and de Aquila did at Pevensey—one of your few good Normans, Tom, defending England for bad Normans against worse ones!’ He studied Tom for a long moment. ‘You’re not married—? No, I can see you’re not! But when you are, and your union is blessed with a son or a daughter… and preferably with a daughter like my Cathy… I shall then present one of my First Edition Pucks, suitably inscribed, to your offspring… In the remote hope that she—or even he— may accidentally read Puck’s Song in it, and then get some faint idea about what it’s all about—

“As for my comrades in camp or highway, That lift their eyebrows scornfully, Tell them their way is not my way—

Tell them that England hath taken me!”

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘But no—I have not been asleep, in answer to your fairly insulting statement. Because, if I looked as though I was snoring, then that is only because I can no longer breathe through my nose.’

Tom felt chastened. But he also wondered whether the old boy had a secret and medicinal hip-flask; only he couldn’t smell anything suggesting that. ‘You weren’t thinking about Panin, then? Or Zarubin?’ Another road-sign, sprouting out of a Normandy-bocage-high bank, indicated that Lynmouth and Lynton were now dreadfully close, with Willy still far behind. ‘Don’t they rate ahead of Kipling, at the moment?’

‘Oh, they do—they do!’ Audley had seen the same sign, but it didn’t seem to frighten him. ‘I thought of them first off, when I made those silly signals to you, Tom—for which I really must apologize… when you were busy, too. But that was when I came back to Kipling, from our previous conversation. And I must admit that I found him much more interesting to think about. And more relevant too, by God!’

‘Relevant?’

‘That’s right. Because he’s already said it all. The way it is, the way it always was. And the way it always will be, Tom—’

There were houses ahead, just the first irregular scatter of them here and there, half-hidden on a steeply-wooded hillside.

‘—which, of course, you know all too well, as you demonstrated back in that farmyard. But which, sitting in my comfortable research department, protected by my great age and seniority, I keep having to remind myself:

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

“No proposition Euclid wrote,

No formulae the text books know,

Will turn the bullet from your coat, Or ward the tulwar’s downward blow.”‘

There was a sign up ahead: East Lyn ½.

Audley grinned cheerfully at him. ‘I always find Kipling relaxing.

It’s such a pity they don’t make children learn poetry by heart nowadays. We had reams of it dinned into us. In the end it becomes… not so much easy—although Kipling and all the other good old rhyming stuff is easy… but not so much easy as a habit…

And, do you know, my feet are almost dry. Must be the car heater, I suppose, eh?’

Tom followed the sign uphill. The old man was blethering. But then, the old man was frightened, and this was merely the sign of his fear. But also, the poor old bugger had every right to be frightened in these circumstances, with Panin and the Sons of the Eagle ahead, and the tricky, treacherous Tom Arkenshaw at his side. Even, very likely, the older one got, the more one had to draw on one’s diminished reserves of courage in such situations. And old men must know better than young ones that they weren’t immortal, so their ‘borrowed time’ must seem all the more valuable.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Well, there’s old Nikolai, waiting patiently for us.’ Audley pointed suddenly. ‘But I don’t see the talkative Major. And I don’t see their car, either. So they must have tucked that round the side somewhere, I suppose… Still, the Comrade Professor doesn’t seem very nervous. And that’s reassuring.’

Panin certainly didn’t appear worried: he was watching a hooligan crowd of small birds fighting over something edible in the middle of the road. But otherwise Audley was still blethering about the obvious.

As Tom scattered the birds the Russian looked up and saw them, but gave no sign of having done so. And in that instant Tom decided whose side he was on.

He drove fifty yards before stopping, and then watched Audley release his seat-belt.

‘Listen, David—’ As he put his hand on the old man’s arm he realized that this was the first time he’d touched him. On the terrace yesterday they hadn’t shaken hands because Audley’s had been dirty from his bonfire-making—about as dirty as they were now. ‘Listen, David…’

Audley regarded him inquiringly, his battered features suddenly scrubbed clean of all other emotions. ‘Aren’t you going to back up?’

Panin was standing still and the birds were back in the road, Tom observed in the rear-view mirror. ‘He can wait. Do you know who I’m working for?’

Audley’s face didn’t change. ‘I did rather wonder. From time to Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State time.’

‘Henry Jaggard, David. I have to report everything you do to him.’

Still no change, but a tiny nod. ‘Ah… well, that’s also reassuring.

He’s a sharp fellow, Henry Jaggard—very clever. But at least he’s on our side.’ Then a slight frown. ‘Jack Butler doesn’t know this, I take it?’

‘No. Not as far as I know.’

‘No.’ The frown vanished. ‘That’s reassuring too. One doesn’t like one’s idols to have clay feet. But… you don’t by any chance know what Henry Jaggard is up to? Apart from securing the defence of the realm and furthering his own career, that is—?’

Tom flicked a glance into the mirror again. Panin was still waiting patiently, and there was still no sign of Major Sadowski. ‘No.’ He shook his head at Audley. ‘My job is to protect you. And to obey your orders, David.’

Audley’s eyebrows lifted slightly. ‘That doesn’t seem too outrageous. But, since I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, he must be having a rather frustrating time.’ A hint of the old Beast-grin. ‘So what’s your problem?’

‘If I had my way we wouldn’t be here. Or… we’d have a lot more back-up right now. But he won’t have that.’

Nod. ‘He’s quite right. A troop of heavy-hoofed Special Branch men in clean black Rovers would frighten the natives. And they wouldn’t turn a bullet from my coat, either—not if it’s got my name on it, Tom. Or, put another way—it would be my friend and colleague Paul Mitchell’s way, because he’s into 1914-18 poetry…

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State and so, to a quite remarkable extent, is Jack Butler, too:

“Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so That it be not the Destined Will.”

Not Kipling, that But it could have been. So not to worry.‘ He reached for his door handle. ’We just have to keep our powder dry, that’s all.‘

‘No—’ Again Tom touched Audley’s arm ‘—that’s the point, David… That bullet yesterday…’

‘Yes?’ Audley nodded. ‘I did rather wonder about that, too.’ The eyebrow cocked again. ‘Henry Jaggard too—? To galvanize me into urgent and furious activity instantly?’

‘He isn’t as worried about it as he ought to be.’

‘He isn’t, isn’t he?’ Audley twisted in his seat to gaze out of the rear window. ‘Well, I suppose that could be quiet confidence in himself… and in you… however misplaced.’ The old man’s tone hardened with each word. ‘Or… It could be Henry Jaggard or one of his minions leaving nothing to chance, as you suggest… But here’s the Galloping Major now, anyway. So let’s go and join the bird-watching party then, eh?’ Audley straightened himself and opened his door.

Tom felt ridiculously anti-climaxed. He had burnt his boats—

perhaps even, subconsciously, he had burnt them for Mamusia’s sake, too. But Audley had been there, or nearly, before him, so he Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State might just as well have kept his options open.

A gust of wind, damp with fine cobwebby rain, caught him full in the face as he frowned across the top of the car at Audley.

The old man was smiling at him—not grinning the Beast-grin, but smiling an old maid’s almost hesitant smile; which, since his face was so dirty, made him look foolishly-beastly. ‘I really need my raincoat now, dear boy. But, since you say I mustn’t wear it, I’ll chance pneumonia instead. Because I am vastly obliged and obligated to you now.’ The smile twitched. ‘And because I also know the difference between betrayal and keeping faith in the fine print at the bottom of the contract, you see. Because I’ve been there too… So let’s go and do it again, then.’

Tom watched him walk away, with the walk instantly lengthening into that characteristic long-legged stride. Then he bent down into the car and reached for the cast-aside raincoat in the back, using the required contortion also to ease the Smith and Wesson out of its holster into his hand to hold under it before he backed out again.

Audley had already reached Panin and Sadowski, and was nodding in answer to the Russian. Tom dropped the car key into his pocket (who would steal a heap like this? ), and settled the coat untidily over his right hand. Mercifully, there was a lot of raincoat; but then, any raincoat made to cover Audley had to be tent-like.

‘Tom—’ Audley called across the decreasing yards as he approached them ‘—Tom—’ Now the raincoat received half-aglance, and Tom’s guts twisted; but then the old man ignored the coat ‘—of course, they’ve cheated, as you would expect!’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Cheated?’ Tom let his outrage at the word further cover the coat’s untidiness. ‘How?’ He looked accusingly at Panin, ‘What?’

‘Not exactly… cheated, Sir Thomas.’ The Russian lifted a hand quickly. ‘As a precaution we have had men watching this place, to see who has come; and who has gone, you understand?’ The fingers of the hand opened, and the hand shook defensively. ‘With General Zarubin so close there is no margin for error, Sir Thomas.

We cannot afford to be careless.’

‘Which, translated, means that they’ve counted all the Poles out, and then they’ve counted them all in,’ snapped Audley. ‘And there are only two of them.’

“That is correct.‘ Panin took a confirmatory nod from Sadowski before nodding himself. ’One is Szymiac, the other we do not know. But they operate in two-man cells, we do know. And Szymiac will have scouted the ground, and will drive the car. For he is the brains, and not an assassin—it is the other man who will fire the shot.‘ He fixed Tom through his eye-slits. ’Small units, quickly in and quickly out, regardless of everything after proper reconnaissance: they learned that from us, I suspect.‘

That hadn’t been how it had been with Father Jerzy, thought Tom.

But then, they had used Polish scum for that, because only scum would work for them, and scum was reliably stupid. But these men were patriots, however deluded now. Or… maybe not so deluded?

But he must not think Polish thoughts now: England had taken him, and their way was not his way now, and that was the end of it!

‘So they’re both inside.’ He looked up at the houses above him: a Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State well-spaced row of very English houses, rather gimcrack-1930ish, each detached from the other behind its garden, which rose up the hill from the road. ‘Where?’

‘There.’ Panin pointed to one further on from where they were standing. ‘And we must act now, this minute, because our time is running out… Szymiac has already brought out their car from the garage… Dr Audley?’

‘Suits me.’ Audley shrugged. ‘Let’s get it over with. Tom—?’

Time running out wasn’t to Tom’s taste. But then nothing since Ranulf of Caen’s ditch yesterday had tasted right. And the nasty little Major— more Polish scum!— was already accepting his orders, like the little obedient swine that he was.

They walked the few yards of respectable pavement, then turned up the drive to the house, between rock gardens which had once been lovingly well-tended, when the house had been private and not for hire, but which were now tended just enough to keep them respectable.

And Panin and his watchers had been right: there was a car parked ready, outside the peeling cream-and-brown front door; and, by the coincidence of successful mass-production, it was also a Ford Cortina—and one which matched the front door, near enough, in common milk-chocolate-brown, with a pale beige hardtop, like a million other cars and doors.

‘So what do we do, then?’ inquired Audley politely. ‘Just knock on the door and ask for Mr… Shim-she-ack?’

Panin half turned towards him. “That is exactly what we shall do, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Dr Audley. We come in peace, to preserve the peace.‘ He nodded to the Pole. ’Major Sadowski, if you please—?‘

The Pole slid by him and flattened himself against the wall of the house on the left of the door. And, as he did so, he drew a short-barrelled revolver from inside his jacket, holding it flat against his chest.

‘Some peace!’ murmured Audley.

‘A precaution, no more.’ Panin turned towards the door. ‘Have confidence, Dr Audley—David.’ He reached for the heavy black door-knocker.

Audley sneezed explosively as the knocker banged, while Tom stared helplessly at the weapon in the Pole’s hand, which was a kissing cousin of the one he held in his own. All he could do was to remember that peacekeeping forces the world over were usually and prudently armed to the teeth, and hope that the Pole knew his business.

The echoes of Panin’s knocking died away into silence. But then there came an indeterminate sound from inside the house, part scraping, part slithering, followed by a footstep.

‘But first a moment of play-acting.’ Panin nodded to Sadowski again, who seemed to flatten even more against his wall, dead-faced.

The door opened slowly, first only a crack, then somewhat more.

‘Good morning, sir—’ The Russian’s habitually-drooping shoulders had squared, but his voice had stiffened and deepened even more unnaturally. ‘—I wish to speak to Mr Sizzeemeeack.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State And my name is Smith—Chief Detective Inspector, CID, Exmoor Division, West of England Police Authority—and I must advise you, sir, that I ’ave a warrant to search these premises, which are surrounded by my officers, acting under my orders.‘ Panin lifted one foot as he spoke, and placed it firmly in the opening of the door.

Audley sneezed again, as a kaleidoscope of bright unreal thoughts and images burst inside Tom’s brain: Professor Nikolai Andrievich Panin’s foot-in-the-door (like an encyclopaedia salesman who didn’t intend to take ‘no’ for an answer) was as heavily caked in red Devon mud as his own: and the Russian’s stage-policeman’s voice, even down to its one carefully dropped ‘h’, was as unnatural as a two-pound note or a three-dollar bill: and maybe Audley’s sneeze hadn’t been a continuation of his self-pitying common cold, but the beginning of a shared hysteria—

But then Panin added his hand, placed flat against the door in support of his foot-in-the-gap, and his flattened Polish scum edged his shoulder along the wall, closer to the door, with the weapon in his hand aching to be used, not for peace-keeping but for argument-settling if the door started to close. And then it was no kaleidoscope, and the Smith and Wesson under Audley’s raincoat was huge and heavy, and it was no joke—

‘So we don’t want any trouble now, do we?’ Suddenly Panin’s voice also wasn’t funny, as he caught his breath: it was maybe a travesty of the falsely-friendly, deceptively matter-of-fact policeman’s voice in every tight corner, when the unarmed Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State representative of The Law in all its majesty had to humour some mad bastard who was long past law and reason. But then Panin adjusted his position slightly, spreading the hand suddenly towards Audley while keeping his foot in the door. ‘And I have with me…’

The hand passed Audley ‘… Sir Thomas Arkenshaw, of the Home Office—’ The hand came back from Tom to Audley ‘—and also Dr David Audley… who wish to talk with Mr Sizzeemeeack… So, if you would be so good as to inform ’im of our presence… then that would be to our mutual advantage, sir—‘

Tom struggled against the weight of the Smith and Wesson and his sense of unreality again, knowing that he would nevermore be able to address Jaggard, or anyone else, with such old-fashioned deference: after Panin, with this poor damned anonymous murderous fool, no one could ever be ‘ Sir’ again!

But… it was working, it was working: the door was opening, and Panin was moving into it—and… and even Sadowski was dropping the kissing cousin back into the holster inside his coat—

‘Excuse me, David—’ He pushed past Audley in Panin’s wake, out of the way, ahead of the unwinding Major, too ‘—Minder always comes first—sorry!’

A last breath of rain-sodden wind hit him again, just as he entered the hall: one door dead-ahead, with half a lavatory-pedestal in view, glimpsed between Panin and his victim; closed doors each side, left and right, with a small table on the left and an old-fashioned hat-and-coat rack on the right, hung with coats; coats under which two cheap, well-worn suitcases and what looked like a golfing bag were inadequately concealed—they had been the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State source of that scrape-and-slither he had heard before the door was opened, piled ready for departure in the centre of the hall, he could even see the tramline marks they had left on the dirty linoleum on the floor—

But Szymiac’s man was moving again—crabwise and hesitantly towards one of the doors on the left now, where previously he had backed up unwillingly before the advance of the bogus Chief Detective Inspector Smith of the probably non-existent Exmoor Division; and the man’s smooth unhealthy face was as obsequiously blank as Major Sadowski’s—maybe that was their joint stock-in-trade expression for survival on both sides of the law in their native land.

‘ No! You stay where you are!’ Now that they were inside, Panin’s hold on Chief Detective Smith’s voice was already slipping: where it should have been a bark it came out as a biting snap. ‘Zzz—’ But he just managed to catch Sadowski’s name before it completed the slip ‘—Major!’

Sadowski brushed Tom’s shoulder, as he must also have brushed Audley’s in getting ahead of him after Tom, also in the exercise of his minder’s prerogative.

‘Watch this man.’ Panin didn’t take his eyes off this Son of the Eagle. ‘He’s in here, is he? Mr Sizzeemeeack?’

Tom was half-aware of Sadowski on his right, somewhat entangled with the hat-stand-coat-rack and the pile of luggage, but was equally unwilling to take his eyes off the Son of the Eagle, who merely nodded confirmation, as voiceless and obedient as Sadowski himself.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Good!’ Panin caught Tom’s eye now, and nodded, almost as though he knew what was under Audley’s trailing raincoat, as he raised his hand and rapped sharply on the door with his knuckles.

Tom stared, transfixed in the first fraction of a second by the action and the sound; and then, in the next fraction, by Panin’s hand as it grasped the door-knob; and then, in the last and almost simultaneous instant of time, by the unwilling acceptance of the thought that Panin was as brave as Audley, when it came to the crunch of actually risking his skin in the front line—

‘Mr Sizzeemeeack—?’ Panin turned the knob. ‘I am Chief Defective Inspector Smith—and I am coming in—do you hear me?’

The thought amended itself slightly as Panin threw open the door: the knock and the challenge were a calculated risk, that the Poles weren’t about to challenge the British police, whatever they might want to do to General Gennadiy Zarubin; to which might be added the Russian’s confidence that Szymiac was the brains, not the brawn of the operation—the brawn which even now was covered by Major Sadowski’s pale eyes behind them. But then the memory of the Russian’s last nod, which had deliberately appealed to him, activated his own reflexes as Panin stepped over the threshold into the room.

‘Mr Sizzeemeeack?’ Panin confirmed his suspicion by taking his second step to one side, after the first one had been forward, to give him something like a clear field of fire.

Again, Tom had the sense of photographing everything, in that split-second.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Insanely, even as he saw the man himself, the room summed itself up for him: it had come down in the world, just as the man himself must have done to be here inside it, far from home and in a foreign land and doing a dirty patriotic job—

‘ Shim-she-ack!’ Panin snapped the name accurately in Polish.

(In its better days, the room had had pictures on the wall, and other furniture which had left empty ghost-marks behind on the wallpaper; while the man himself was also a shadow, more like the men outside, Sadowski and his charge, but unreal compared with the menace of Panin and Audley.)

‘You know why I am here, don’t you?’ snapped Panin, utterly himself now, in his accentless English. ‘I represent—’

The deafening explosion outside the room which cut him off seemed, in its own fraction of time, more than the gun-shot it was: it was almost a physical concussion of shocked surprise inside Tom, wrong-footing him mentally even as the second shot followed it almost instantaneously.

Ever afterwards he saw the next seconds in slow motion, fragmented frame by frame: the man Szymiac is staring at Panin, with his mouth open: the mouth is framing a word, but the ringing echoes from the hall, together with a splintering-crashing-thumping all-in-one sound blot out the word; Panin himself is throwing his shoulder against Audley, away from the door on the very edge of his vision: the man Szymiac is also moving, so fast even in slow motion as to be a blur, clawing as he moves inside his buttoned-up jacket; and the sound and jerk of his own Smith and Wesson are overtaken by another and much louder explosion in the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State doorway behind him; and, finally and somehow always strangely in the slow motion progression, the man Szymiac stops in his sideways movement and is thrown backwards, slammed against the wall by his own and Sadowski’s bullets.

But the slow motion itself ceased then, as he whirled towards the doorway, flinging aside Audley’s raincoat to face Sadowski and then freezing as the Major slowly lowered his revolver, two-handed, until it pointed at the floor—at, in fact, a single coat-button with a long thread attached to it which lay midway between them on the threadbare carpet.

Tom sniffed, and smelt burnt cloth; which perplexed him for only a moment, as his eye caught the edge of the tangled wreckage of Audley’s coat, through which he had fired; which made him think, with a touch of hysteria, Mrs Audley won’t like that—poor old David’ll never be able to explain all those burnholes as a carelessly thrown away cigar butt, because none of us smokes—the best thing he can do is say he lost the whole coat somewhere—

‘You… bloody… bastard,’ breathed Audley. ‘You… bastard!’

Panin looked away, to where the man Szymiac lay tumbled awkwardly against the wall, in an inhumanly uncomfortable position and quite without dignity, reminding Tom of Beirut scenes he had been working to forget. Then Panin was looking at Sadowski, who returned the look without the least sign of emotion, let alone apology, before he turned away back into the hall.

‘You bastard.’ On his third repetition Audley sounded almost conversational. ‘You never intended to talk to them—did you?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Panin faced him again. ‘A most unfortunate accident, Dr Audley.

Major Sadowski was obviously forced to protect himself. And—’

He flicked a glance at Tom ‘—and Sir Thomas reacted in the same manner, of course. With the most commendable speed too, if I may say so.’ No trace of irony: the Russian’s tone was as bland as his face was expressionless. ‘But that, of course, was an inevitable sequel to what had gone before.’

‘Yes—of course.’ Audley blew his nose on his bedraggled handkerchief. ‘Do put that damned thing away, Tom.’

Tom slid the Smith and Wesson back into Its holster.

Audley blew his nose again. ‘Or, if not a sequel to a most unfortunate accident, the second part of a most fortunate and deliberate double murder?’

Panin actually produced a frown. ‘A… double murder, Dr Audley?’

‘That’s right: a double murder to which—as you always intended—

I have just been a witness. Or practically an accomplice… although not even you could have expected such luck in advance. So just a witness.’ Audley glanced again at Szymiac’s body, and then moved so that he faced away from it. ‘But now, presumably, I am cast as the undertaker, with no questions asked? And the First Gravedigger too, maybe? With Sir Thomas as my assistant? Is that my next role? Do let me know, Professor.’

Panin started to shrug, but then stopped. ‘I cannot accept your alternative suggestion, Dr Audley. But… as to what you should do now, I would not presume to advise you what to do, in your own country.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Ah… my own country!’ Audley accepted the scoring point without any good loser’s grace. ‘You’re giving it back to me now, are you?’

‘You misunderstand me—’

‘No I bloody don’t! But do go on—?’

Panin coughed. ‘I was going to say… my Government would certainly not appreciate publicity in this unfortunate matter—’

‘I’ll bet they wouldn’t!’ With Audley, an invitation to ‘go on’

evidently had only a five seconds’ life. ‘And maybe you wouldn’t either? Or was this massacre cleared from the start?’ An edge of bitterness entered the old man’s voice. ‘Without Basil Cole I find it a little difficult to put two-and-two together—as I’m sure you foresaw I might… But I shall pick up all the pieces in the end, never fear!’ He grinned falsely. ‘So what are you offering in exchange for amnesty and oblivion, then?’

Panin seemed taken aback. ‘What am I offering? My good David, if I am in some slight difficulty perhaps… then you are in some much more considerable difficulty undoubtedly, I would have thought!’ He cocked his head slightly at Audley. ‘A shared secret

—’

‘—Won’t do!’ Audley shook his head quickly. ‘You are mistaking the nature of our positions again: my difficulty may—or may not—

be more considerable than yours. But I don’t give a bugger about that: before they can sack me I’ll quit, and warm my feet on my investments, and to hell with them! But your difficulty… what makes you think I’m going to sweep this under the carpet? Do you Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State think you can just walk away from this?’

Unlike Audley, Tom didn’t have his back completely to the thing that had been a surprised human being a few minutes before, but which was even now surrendering its body-heat for the last time.

And that thought ran cold up and down his spine as he heard the two of them bargaining in the presence of the poor damned thing…

Not that the poor damned thing was objecting.

Once again Panin seemed off-put to the point of almost-frowning.

‘You cannot be threatening me, surely?’

‘Threatening you?’ Audley paid the Russian back in his own coin.

‘Would I do that—?’ But as he cut himself off he caught the look of distaste on Tom’s face. ‘What is it, Tom?’

There was no way of expressing the truth of what he felt. So he had to lie. ‘I was thinking that I ought to make a phone-call.’ Must do better than that. ‘In case someone heard those shots.’

Audley made a derisive sound. ‘No one hears anything these days.

Or, if they do, they turn up the television, so as they won’t hear anything else — ’ Then he focused on Tom. ‘But if you want to phone—’

Tom remembered his duty suddenly. ‘No.’ He looked at the Russian. ‘I couldn’t bear to leave you when you have Professor Panin by the balls, David. Do please swing on them—and take not the slightest notice of me. I’m just a fly on the wall.’ He smiled at the Russian as sweetly as his duty-remembered face allowed.

Panin regarded him curiously. ‘He has me… by the balls, Sir Thomas?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Duty beckoned. ‘Oh yes—so it seems to me, Professor.

Undoubtedly.’

‘But… how?’ If the curiosity wasn’t genuine, it was well simulated.

‘This is England, sir.’ Stiffen it up: make like ‘Sir Thomas Arkenshaw’. ‘Or… the Exmoor Division of the West of England Police Authority?’ He put a cutting edge into his voice. ‘We don’t just lose inconvenient bodies to order, Professor Panin. We have to have good and sufficient reason for doing anything like that.’

‘I see.’ But Panin had had time to rally. ‘And General Zarubin is not good and sufficient reason?’

‘General Zarubin?’ Audley fielded the name quickly, before Tom could react to it. But then he stopped, to stare past them both.

Tom turned from them both, to find Major Sadowski in the doorway again—and armed again, too. But this time it was with a very different sort of weapon.

‘ Ah. ’ Panin gave the long rifle only half a glance before nodding at Audley. ‘Now perhaps you will believe me, David—eh?’

Audley reached out and grasped the rifle, but for a moment the Pole wouldn’t let go of it, so that they seemed on the edge of an undignified tug-of-war. Then, either because of the bigger man’s main force or because of some tiny signal from his Russian master, Sadowski let go.

‘See this, Tom?’ Audley thrust the weapon towards him for closer inspection. But it was not something he’d ever seen before, although he recognized it all too well: the long slender barrel, and the chunky rectangular butt (with elliptical cut-out providing a Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State pistol-grip behind the trigger)—and, above all, the telescopic sight above—identified its purpose beyond all doubt.

‘They call it “the Green Machine”, so I’m told.’ Audley hefted the rifle in his big hands, as though estimating its weight. ‘It’ll be the army’s new standard sniper-issue, starting in ’87. They haven’t had anything new for donkeys’ years—nothing even as good as the Argies had, even. In fact, what they had was based on the 1914

Lee-Enfield, I rather think. But this’ll do a lot better—‘ He canted the weapon sideways ’—Schmidt and Bender sight, to correct cross-winds at longer ranges.‘

Tom goggled slightly, not so much at the weapon itself as at Audley ‘s unlikely expertise.

‘I only know because of accident—I hate firearms.’ Audley picked up his astonishment. ‘But there was a bit of a scandal late last year, during the testing, when they had a break-in and lost a couple of these little beauties… Minus the sights, of course. But Schmidt and Bender must have sold a few of those elsewhere, I shouldn’t wonder. Only… anyway, someone thought it was the IRA. And someone else thought we might look into it, just for old times’

sake. But Jack Butler wisely said that we were too busy with other things—’ Audley gave Panin a sidelong look, just as he simultaneously threw the rifle back at Sadowski; who caught it, but with a fumble and only just; and rewarded the big man with a millisecond’s glare of red hate before his eyes went dull again ‘—

but I always thought it was a GRU job . . I’m told they’re very hot on new weaponry—is that so?’ He pretended to relax. ‘But then you’ve never liked the GRU, have you, Nikolai? They’re basically Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State just brutal and licentious soldiery, aren’t they? Spetsnaz cannon-fodder?’

Panin gave the Pole a curt dismissive nod. ‘See what else you can find—’

‘No!’ Audley recollected himself. ‘Better give it to Sir Thomas here

— if you please? He reached out again, and the same tug-of-war restarted.

Panin gave the Pole another nod. ‘Evidence, David? Very well!’

Audley took possession of the rifle again. ‘Stolen property.’ He presented it to Tom. ‘At least I shall be able to give Jack Butler something.’

Tom felt the weight in his hands. But, even more than that, he felt its dreadful life-and-death power: at 500 yards, or even a thousand, with wind-drift allowed for, if this was what Audley must have been thinking of all the time since yesterday, in those throw-away lines of Kipling, then no wonder that he had been scared.

‘You can give him much more than that, David.’ Panin didn’t even look at Sadowski as he dismissed him again. ‘General Zarubin will give you more.’

Audley waited until Sadowski had disappeared again. ‘I wish he’d bloody say something—just once… even if it was only

“Goodbye”.’ He blinked at the Russian. ‘He isn’t a lip-reading deaf-mute by any chance, is he?’ Then he turned to Tom without waiting for an answer. ‘See what that poor devil’s got in his pockets, will you?’

Tom frowned at him. ‘What?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘My dear boy—we’re going to be hanged, drawn and quartered for this if he was just reaching for his wallet.

But if he has… had… a gun in there, then perhaps they’ll only hang us. Besides which I should have thought it might set your mind at rest somewhat?‘ Audley blinked again, and then sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ’Okay?‘ He returned to the Russian. ’You were saying, Nikolai—?‘

Szymiac’s coat was open now, and Tom could see the broken threads and the slight tear where the coat-button on the floor had been ripped out. And the man’s shirt was bloody in two places, over the heart and lower down, near the waistband of his trousers: the spreading stains had mingled but the different wounds were still quite plain. And he could guess which Smith and Wesson bullet was which from Sadowski’s evident professionalism as well as from the memory of his own unsatisfactory firing position, which for one pathetic moment now had roused the half-hope that he might have missed altogether.

He saw the shoulder-holster immediately, tucked under the left armpit, as the body slid back and down under his touch, as inanimate as a sack, the head lolling heavily forward to reveal a bald patch like a tonsure at the back. He started to think well, a real tonsure wouldn’t be inappropriate, but then he thrust the thought away from him and concentrated on extracting the pistol delicately from its cradle. It was small and light and short-barrelled, not unlike a Makarov, but with a distinctly different grip which reminded him of a Walther.

Then he became aware that both the dreadful old men were Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State watching him in silence, so he held it up for their inspection.

‘Well, that’s something,’ murmured Audley. ‘Not much, but better than nothing, I suppose.’ He took a step towards Tom and reached for the weapon. ‘Evidence, Tom.’ He showed it to Panin for a second, and then dropped it into his pocket.

‘P-64.’ The Russian nodded. ‘Polish Army issue.’

‘Is that a fact, now?’ Audley seemed only mildly interested. ‘Well, I suppose it would be, wouldn’t it! But… you were saying—?

General Zarubin wants to give me something—to give to Jack Butler, was it? Or what—?’

Tom let the coat fall back on the blood-stained shirt, watching them both intently as they stared at each other — two really dreadful old men!

‘You were saying?’ Audley opened the bidding formally.

‘He will be grateful.’

‘Uh-huh?’ Audley nodded, then looked down at the rifle, which Tom had leant against a chair, and then nodded again at Panin. ‘I can well imagine that. But as we’ve already done his— your— dirty work, that would seem a somewhat devalued currency now. I’ve never been able to pay any bills with gratitude: the next word after

“Thank you” is usually “Goodbye”.’

‘But he still has business to transact here. Which, of course, is his main business, you understand?’

Another nod. ‘Yes—of course.’ Audley gestured towards the rifle, and then patted his pocket. ‘This is your business. For which you too are grateful—of course. But if you are insufficiently grateful, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State and I make waves… then that will interfere with his business—I do apologize for being so slow on the uptake, Nikolai? What you mean… is that General Zarubin’s gratitude is only just beginning, eh?’ Innocent understanding did not sit well on the old man’s face; somehow it only made his expression more brutal. ‘All I can do to you is get you on the next plane home, as persona non grata. And then you have to take your chance. But General Zarubin doesn’t want to go home either—he’s got a lot to lose too, has he?’

The Russian’s mouth tightened. ‘You have much to lose, also—’

‘That won’t wash.’ Audley cut him off. ‘We’ve been there before, too.’

‘And Colonel Butler?’

‘Jack will take his chance, like you.’ Another shake.

‘And your country?’

Audley sniffed, not with his head-cold, but derisively.

‘Just make me your offer, and stop buggering about.’ He made a hideous face at Panin. ‘You always knew it would come to this—at least, that it would if your dumb-mute did his work properly.’

Panin stared at him for a long moment. ‘I can’t give you an offer, David. I am not empowered to do so. But General Zarubin will trade you a name, face to face. And that will… will perhaps clear you from this—’ He pointed past Audley, towards Szymiac ‘—

with your superiors.’

‘Tom!’ Audley was no longer looking at Panin, and made no attempt to follow his finger. ‘Better make your call now, just in case, so someone can clear up after us.’ He fixed Tom Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State unblinkingly. ‘And we’ll go and see what Henry Plantagenet has to offer, in exchange for not doing penance for Thomas Becket.

Right?’

10

The road outside was reassuringly empty except for a young woman exercising her children and her dogs, regardless of the weather. But then suddenly it wasn’t reassuringly empty at all, Tom realized.

Chiefly it was the children and the dogs which disguised Wilhemina Groot initially, because children were not her favourite human beings and dogs were her least favourite animals. But she was also more conventionally disguised in clothes which, to his certain knowledge, had never before featured in her wardrobe: the Willy he knew and now knew that he loved had hitherto either been a smart city girl, dressed by Bruce Oldfield and Yves St Laurent, or a motte-and-bailey girl, dressed in jeans and his own cast-off sports gear for lack of anything better, never a Young Farmer/Young Conservative/Sloane-Ranger-far-from-home, uniformed in Barbour jacket and green Wellington boots, with her blonde hair concealed under a tweed deerstalker.

Tom cursed under his breath, recalling his precise phone instructions, which were the last element of her disguise. It had been her helper he had asked for, as an ally at a pinch, not this complication of Willy herself. But this was unarguably Willy Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State herself now being fraternized by one of a pair of damp and over-exuberant Dalmatian dogs inadequately controlled by a pair of damp children, and he had to make the best of it.

Still, there was a plus as well as a minus in the scene, he told himself desperately: if he hadn’t immediately identified her, then maybe Panin and Sadowski hadn’t either, ahead of him—ahead of him ostensibly to superintend the Zarubin rendezvous, but more likely to get clear of their victims as quickly as possible; to which action Audley had all-too-readily agreed—a worryingly preoccupied Audley (as well he bloody-might be!), but an Audley who was even now four strides ahead of him, on the way back to the parked car; and, at the very least, there was no sign of any of Panin’s own watchers at the moment.

But now he was close to her, and although she had pretended to enjoy the Dalmatian’s affection for Audley’s benefit as he passed her she was looking at him now, and with a much greater desperation than his.

‘There’s a lovely boy, then!’ She observed the Dalmatian’s juvenile owner’s momentary glance at Tom, and hit the dog hard on the jaw with her fist. ‘Hi, Tom!’

The dog emitted an astonished yelp of pain on discovering (as Tom himself had already done) that despite her lack of inches Willy packed a mean punch, and sprawled sideways away from her into the gutter.

The dog’s owner was further diverted by the yelp, but then her spotty little brother, who had been trying to ride the other animal, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State fell from its back, and added his own anguished cries to the confusion as both Dalmatians set off in different directions.

“They’ve just gone—‘ Willy skipped to avoid her dog as it tried to pull the little girl away from them, in the same direction as its comrade ’—your friends have gone, Tom… They just pulled out, like a bat out of hell… in a grey Austin Montego with dirty number plates—thataway.‘ She pointed past Tom. ’I only just got here. I’m sorry.‘

‘Did they recognize you—’ Tom stopped as he saw her face.

‘Recognize me?’ Her fuse ignited. ‘For God’s sake, honey! You called for help, and you didn’t give us much time—I told you last night, this isn’t my league! So how the heck should I know? I didn’t see them last night—if they can recognize an embassy secretary being raped by a goddamn bit-part player from a Walt Disney production—raped in the rain before lunch in the middle of nowhere—?’ But then, in her turn, she also stopped. ‘What’s wrong, Tom?’

‘Nothing’s wrong.’ In the circumstances that was something less than the truth. But at least she was right: if he himself had only just spotted her, disguised by clothes and dogs and children, then she ought not to have rated a second glance. ‘I was expecting… hoping for… your helper, that’s all, Willy. In the front line, as it were—

that’s all I meant.’

‘ “As it were”?’ She mimicked him. ‘My most efficient “helper” is keeping an eye on us, don’t you fret. Colonel Sheldon wouldn’t like me to come to any harm—Dad wouldn’t take kindly to that.’

But then, in spite of the typical Willy-banter, she was frowning at Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State him with that sure insight of hers, the ignited fuse quite extinguished. ‘Only you didn’t mean that, did you? Because I know you, Tom Arkenshaw. And this is like last night, when I dropped those names, and it was wrong then. But it’s even more wrong now—isn’t it? Isn’t it?’

Tom looked around quickly. He couldn’t see any All-American marine, but at least he still couldn’t see Panin’s back-up either.

Only, Audley had reached the car; and although he was busy kicking one of the Dalmatians right now he could hardly be unaware that Sir Thomas Arkenshaw was busy chatting up some strange young woman when they ought both to be already on the way to Brentiscombe Point.

‘I told you—don’t fret! My “helper” is what you’d call a “pro”, Tom honey.’ She was already grinning, at once wickedly and reassuringly at the same time, as he came back to her. ‘ “Big panic”—or “SNAFU”, as my boss says… only I’m not supposed to know what the “FU” stands for, because he knows my uncle and my dad—is that what you really mean, Tom?’ She almost reached out to him, but then restrained herself. ‘So what do we do now?’

She was lovely. But her helper was all he had for backup, so he owed them both a true signal now, with no pretending. And to hell with Audley, who was looking at him. ‘All right, Willy darling…

Maybe big panic, or maybe the worst is over—I don’t know.’ Then he remembered Audley pocketing ‘the evidence’, and knew beyond doubt that the big man had been concerned to arm himself as best he could. ‘But my guess is there’s more to come—though I don’t see how.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State She struggled with that for a second only. ‘The worst is over—?’

She was quick, too. ‘We have to get away from here quickly, as well as after Panin. Because there are two dead men in the house, back up there. And even if the neighbours didn’t hear the shots, then there’ll be one of our removal vans here soon enough, and it probably won’t be too healthy. But we have to follow Panin anyway. Because he’s leading us to Zarubin, Willy.’

‘Zzz-Zarubin-?’

‘Don’t ask me how or why. There isn’t time—and if there was, you wouldn’t believe it, in any case. But he’s made us an offer we can’t refuse, apparently.’ Time had run out, once again; he didn’t even need to look at Audley to know that. ‘Have you got a good map in your car?’

The Zzz of Zarubin was still on her lips, and she had to change their shape to get rid of it. ‘Yes, we’ve got a whole lot of maps—

your big maps, with every goddamn thing on them… like every motte and bailey.’

Naturally, with its funds and its forethought, the CIA always had an unlimited supply of Ordnance Survey large-scale masterpieces.

‘Brentiscombe Point is up the coast from here, towards Ilfracombe.

There’s a stream comes down to the sea there, and a few cottages.

And the Devon Coast Path runs along there, eastwards—there’s a

“Roman Fortlet” marked just inland from it.’ He could remember Audley’s voice in his ear. ‘It wasn’t really a fort, it was a signal station. You’ll find two others marked further east—this is the last of the three. On the path under the fort is where we’re meeting Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State him.’ He concentrated on her. ‘Tell your man I want back-up there.’ Now for the truth. ‘And you keep well away this time, Willy. Because if you’re there I shall only worry.’ That was the truth, and there was no way of wrapping it up, ‘You’ll just be in the way. Do you understand?’ And, anyway, it was best unwrapped. ‘Do I make myself clear?’

‘Oh sure! You make yourself very clear. All too clear!’ She almost ignited again, but caught her temper with a conscious effort.

‘Okay, Tom: message received.’ What she wanted to do, he could see, was look over her shoulder at Audley. But she controlled that desire also, and merely nodded. ‘Problems you’ve gotten yourself, but I’ll try not to be an extra one. It’s my bodyguard you want now, not my body. Message received. So off you go, then.’

She was so close to him that he could see the fine moisture of the wet wind on the finer golden down on her skin. And he knew then that of all the things in the world he wanted to do, ‘going off away from her was the last and worst. ’Willy—‘

‘No, Tom!’ She raised her hand, almost as though to touch him again; but then she drew it back, as if their polarities repelled each other.‘ “Stand not upon the order of your going—go at once!”—I learnt that at college, when we played Macbeth.’ She smiled up at him. Tom goggled at her. ‘You played Lady Macbeth—?’ ‘Hell, no! It was a ladies’ college—so I played Macbeth… Go on, Tom, for God’s sake!‘ The hand waved urgently at. him. ’But… just you be very careful out there, like Sergeant Esterhase says—okay?‘

Almost embarrassingly, Audley wasn’t fuming at the delay: he was Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State as avuncular as a bishop at a vicarage tea party.

‘I’m sorry, David!’ Still no sign of Panin’s man—any more than of Willy’s: the road was empty enough to risk a three-point turn across it.

‘Don’t be.’ What was worse than not-fuming was the big man’s unashamed interest; and, looking in all directions as he completed the manoeuvre, Tom observed Willy crossing the road ahead of him now; which would bring her to Audley’s side, for further inspection. ‘There’s no hurry, now that we know where to go—’

The car’s angry acceleration slammed him back into his seat as Tom put his foot down ‘—just take it easy! Because Major-General Zarubin will wait for us, Tom.’ As they reached her, Audley raised his hand in a parody of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s much-loved wave; and, what was worst of all, Wilhemina Groot returned the wave. ‘ Yes . . Major-General Gennadiy Zarubin will undoubtedly wait patiently on our coming, Tom.’ Audley settled himself back comfortably, even folding his arms to demonstrate his equanimity. ‘He has a name to give us. So he needs us.’

Tom became aware that his foot had the accelerator flat down; and that this was both unnecessary, because the damage was done, and dangerous, because they were already approaching the next corner too fast. ‘What name, David?’

‘What name?’ Audley jerked forward as the brakes began to do the best they could. ‘Now… would that have been Mosby Sheldon’s young woman, by any remote chance, Tom?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Tom cooled himself down, helped by the relief of getting round the bend on four wheels and on the road. ‘And if it was?’

‘Then he’s still running true to form. Because he had a very pretty woman in tow last time I met him. And she didn’t look the part either, as I recall…’ The old man twisted in order to observe him more closely. ‘But… what you omitted to tell me, young Tom… is that you already know her quite well. Or even better than that, perhaps?’

Tom forced himself to watch the speedometer. ‘What?’

‘Oh, come on, now!’ Audley’s voice teased him. I may be almost superannuated, but I still have some of my eyesight and all of my memory. And—apart from that—I wouldn’t for one moment question your taste, either. For she seems to be a spirited young woman, as well as a stylish one—am I right?‘

It was that damned return wave, thought Tom, But then that was Willy, to the life. ‘And if you are right?’

‘My dear Tom! Don’t snap at me so— I have never objected to such imaginative extensions of the “Special Relationship”—quite the opposite!’

‘I wasn’t snapping.’ As Tom cut him off be realized that he was making a fool of himself. ‘I didn’t expect her—not here. That’s all.’

‘Of course!’ Audley hastened to spread agreement on the subject.

‘But… what I meant to say, in my clumsy way… is that we take a somewhat more laid-back, view of friendly contacts with friendly powers in Research and Development. Much more so than your boss Henry Jaggard probably does, to take an example. Which is Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State not to say that he’s wrong, in taking a narrower view of his activities… But we are in the business of contacts and fair trading, without too much red tape, you understand… So some of my very best friends— real friends—the ones I can rely on to play honestly with me anyway, even though we both know that we salute a different flag every morning, and when the sun goes down, are Americans… or Germans.’ The old man sniffed. ‘At least, so long as we are of value to each other. Which makes life more interesting. But also sometimes even makes it safer, too.’

Tom had the feeling that he was tuned in to a commercial. But since Colonel Sheldon had despatched Willy and her helper to the Green Man last night it was a commercial with a demonstrably convincing sales story: because the CIA obviously cared for Dr David Audley’s skin. In fact, if anything, they cared rather more for it than Henry Jaggard seemed to do.

‘Hah-hmm…’ Audley cleared his throat. ‘So what did your young lady have to tell you then, Tom?’

So that was the object of the commercial break then, thought Tom bleakly: the old man was trying to talk his fears away again, possibly letting the sound of his voice blot out the thumping of his heart as usual. But he was also desperate for more information, in the certain knowledge that he was sailing much too close to a rocky shore in almost total darkness, with the boom of the breaking waves in his ears.

‘Nothing more, I’m afraid, David.’ There was a Brentiscombe sign ahead on the empty wind-and-rain-swept road; and Tom could hear the same sound in his head, beneath the steady rhythm of the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State engine, of those cruel breakers which would accept no error of navigation. ‘Except they’re almost as frightened as I am, I think.’

He took the turning, which split him on to a narrower road, and then on to an even narrower one, further splitting Brentiscombe from Hunter’s Inn, which forced him to concentrate on his driving.

‘Well—’ Audley stopped as Tom negotiated a blind bend between high banks ‘—well, that makes all of us scared shitless—Panin included.’

‘Panin included?’ Trees arched over the road, some naked, some still obstinately refusing to let go of their long-dead leaves. ‘Panin too?’

‘Aye. And that’s what scares me most, Tom.’ Freed from his ancient bocage memories, Audley relaxed again. ‘This bastard Zarubin must be something quite exceptional, to make old Nikolai twitch the way he did, when he said “Follow me” back there.’ He shook his head. This is another of those moments when I wish I had Old King Cole whispering drunken insults in my ear.

Because… because your damn computer print-outs may be good, and all very well if you’ve time to read them. But they add two and two, and two and two ad infinitum… But they never bloody-well tell you when two-and-two equals five— or fifty-five, or minus-five… Because they don’t smell the difference between dead men and dead mules, Tom—it’s all carrion to them… And, if you’ve ever smelt the real-life difference—Christ!‘

They had gone up and down, and now they were going up and across and down; and, although he couldn’t smell the sea, Tom felt its presence. ‘Dead men are worse, are they?’ The road wasn’t so Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State much narrow as ridiculous now, with a rocky stream on one side, and trees on the other, and pot-holes everywhere.

‘God—no!’ The old man lurched against him. ‘Men are just quite unspeakable. But… they ask to be buried, I suppose… I don’t know. But horses are worse, and they take a lot more burying. And so do cows, actually… But mules… You ask Jack Butler about mules—he’s an expert, and he says they’re much worse. Because I never had to bury a mule in the war, after its guts had burst.’

They turned sharply, and Tom suddenly saw the sea ahead of them in a deep cutting between steep forested hillsides, battleship-grey under lighter grey layers of rain-clouds. ‘You said Panin had a name for us, David.’

‘I didn’t say it. He said it, Tom. Remember?’ Audley divested himself from his comparative study of the smell of dead and corrupted flesh. ‘He said Zarubin had the name.’

The road-sign warned of a l-in-4 drop, somewhat belatedly. ‘But what name?’

‘For God’s sake—I don’t know!’ Audley had found his handkerchief again. ‘But I do know that we’ve got someone inside their London operation.’ Sniff. ‘I’m not supposed to know, but I do. And I’m thinking… if I know, then maybe they’re on to him.’

He blew his nose, and then he stuffed the rag back into his pocket.

‘If he traded that name—traded the fact that they knew it… and let us have the man himself, because he’s no damn good to them now: the only thing worth anything is that they know now, that he’s tipping us off— I don’t know, damn it. ’ He shook his head. ‘But that would be good enough to trade for whatever he wants, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State anyway.’ He looked at Tom suddenly. ‘And don’t get the wrong idea, boy. Because it certainly won’t be “Panin”, that name…

Because Nikolai Andrievich Panin isn’t going to defect—not in this age of the dirty world… Of all men, it won’t be Nikolai Andrievich: I don’t need Basil Cole to tell me that— that I know for myself, even if I know practically bugger-all else!’ He shook his head again, still looking at Tom. ‘If Nikolai Andrievich is scared, the only possible reason I can think of is that it’s Major-General Gennadiy Zarubin who is about to make the great leap from darkness to light, boy.’

There was a stream falling vertically down a moss-covered cliff, with white water splashing across the roadway, covering it with a detritus of twigs and dead leaves; but he had to steer through the mess, because there was a rocky waterfall on the other side, a foot away from his nearside wheels; and there was utter confusion in his mind.

‘But—’ The Cortina crunched through the barrier, with one thicker branch banging against the floor under his foot, and then scraping away behind him ‘—but… Zarubin—? ’

‘He put down your Polish Thomas Becket?’ Audley neatly avoided trying to pronounce Father Popieluszko’s name. ‘My God! That’s maybe only the half of it! What if he was also the man behind that Turkish lunatic who put a bullet into the Pope—how’s that for size as a bonus, eh?’

The last one-in-four descent brought them out into the floor of the combe, where it reached the sea itself between a steep wooded hill on its sheltered southern side ami an even steeper hillside of rocky Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State scree and bracken on the other, with a lush water-meadow between, secret and surprising,