For the Good of the State

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

ANTHONY PRICE

For the Good of the State

GRAFTON BOOKS

A Division of the Collins Publishing Group LONDON GLASGOW TORONTO SYDNEY AUCKLAND

Grafton Books

A Division of the Collins Publishing Group 8 Grafton Street, London W1X 3LA

Published by Grafton Books 1987

First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz 1986

Copyright © Anthony Price 1986 ISBN 0-586-07296-9

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Collins, Glasgow Set in Times

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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State binding or cover other than that ir which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

For Fiona Barling

It is by my order and for the good of the State that the bearer of this note hits done what he has done.

3 December, 1627 Richelieu

(From The Three Musketeers by Alexandra Dumas)

PART ONE

The Gentle Art of Shibbuwichee

In the event, it was not Henry Jaggard himself but Garrod Harvey who connected the fate of the Department of Intelligence Research and Development with the projected British Museum Exhibition of the Treasures of Ancient Scythia. However, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had in some sense already pointed the way in its latest signal or the subject of the exhibition, in which the curious request of the visiting Third Deputy-Director of State in the Ministry of Culture had been passed to Jaggard for his attention; and it was Garrod Harvey’s private opinion ever Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State afterwards that Jaggard had already decided to do what he suggested should be done, and had merely been waiting for him to speak up…

‘So it was that fellow Audley who dropped the word to the Prime Minister?’ Typically, although he was far more worried about the situation in the Soviet Embassy, Jaggard embarked on the less pressing matter first. ‘Are you sure, Garry?’

‘Absolutely certain ’ In his role as ‘Creature to the Duke’, Garrod was accustomed to his master’s oblique approaches. ‘But he didn’t do it personally of course. So we’ll never be able to prove it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he’s no fool. He’s an interesting man, in fact —I’ve been studying his curriculum vitae for a couple of days, actually.’

Garrod was well aware of Jaggard’s view of the Research and Development Department, so this piece of anticipation had come all too easily, ‘He’s quite a distinguished scholar in his own right, did you know? Apart from his money and his connections— ’

‘Damn his money and his connections! Are you saying that I can’t go and read the riot act about him to Jack Butler?’

‘Yes, I am. Exactly that.’ The good thing about Jaggard was that he expected straight answers to straight questions. ‘It’s his connections which add up in this case, He’s got a great many of them, going back over nearly thirty years, Henry. Both sides of the Channel, and the Atlantic—the Americans think the world of him.’

‘And the Russians?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘And the Israelis,’ Harvey knew then that Jaggard had seen the FCO signal. ‘But in this case it was a woman named Deacon.

Laura Deacon, Henry.’

‘Laura— ’ Jaggard frowned at him. ‘Laurie Deacon’s daughter

— ?’

‘MP for North Wessex.’ He knew also that Jaggard would be making all the necessary‘ connections now. ’She inherited her father’s safe seat when he went to the Lords. And Audley’s always been very thick with the family: it provides his local MP… and one of his routes into the Commons back-benches, when he wants to have questions asked.‘ He couldn’t risk a smile with Jaggard in his present vengeful mood, so he shrugged instead. ’Perhaps we should be grateful he didn’t do that in this instance.‘

‘Oh yes?’ The mood hardened even more. ‘So it was Laura Deacon who spoke to the PM, you’re saying?’

‘They met last Friday. Laura Deacon dropped a name, and she also said that Colonel Butler would know all about it. And the PM

summoned Butler directly.’

‘And he spilled the beans directly, too. Why the hell did he do that?’

Harvey rejected the temptation to agree with him. ‘It was his duty, Henry—be fair!’

‘His duty?’

‘His duty.’ Harvey agreed whole-heartedly with his master about the Research and Development Department. But he also liked and respected Jack Butler as an honest and devoted officer. ‘The PM

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State has the right to go direct to the head of R & D, Henry. And the Head of R & D has direct access the other way—that’s how old Fred Clinton constituted it, from way back.’

‘I know that.’ Jaggard gestured dismissively. ‘But he also has a duty to me. And there was no reason why he shouldn’t have told me first—’ He stopped suddenly as he caught the expression on Garrod Harvey’s face. ‘Or was there?’

‘He didn’t have time.’ It was one strike to Jaggard that he also respected Jack Butler. ‘Audley deposited his report on Colonel Butler’s desk about five minutes before the PM’s office rang. So my guess is that he’d planned everything to the minute, practically: that the PM would hit Butler at once, and then the Minister himself immediately after that. He knew what everyone would do—maybe he even knew that the PM would be so pleased at being able to catch the Minister on the hop, as well as being able to suppress the leak—that there wouldn’t be anything we could do against him even if we could trace it all back.’ He watched Jaggard look in vain for loopholes. ‘Because the PM is pleased. So R & D is riding high at the moment, Henry. Because they came up with the information in time, just when it was needed.’

Henry Jaggard scowled at him. ‘But the Minister isn’t pleased.’

‘Ah… yes, I can well imagine that, Henry.’ And so he could.

(Another leak in the Minister’s department—albeit plugged in time, but not plugged by the Minister’s own expertise, only by the PM’s superior intelligence.) And he could also see why Henry Jaggard was incandescent with rage, Too. (The Minister was a good friend and ally of his when cuts and economy were the order Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State of the day.) ‘It’s unfortunate.’

‘It’s more than that, Garry. He’s been made to look a fool. And so have I.’ Jaggard’s better side showed as he grinned at Harvey. ‘I can survive that, but this makes him a two-time loser at No. 10.

And now I’ve got to tell his Special Adviser in fifteen minutes that I can’t give him the scalp he wants, so this sort of thing won’t happen again.’ The grin evaporated. ‘Is there no way I can give him a scalp, Garry?’

‘Audley’s?’ Harvey knew what his master wanted. But for what he planned to propose he needed more than that. ‘Colonel Butler will never give you Audley, he’d resign first.’ He shook his head.

‘Offering hostages isn’t his style. Besides which, R & D is too busy with Gorbachev at the moment. And Audley’s too valuable—

he’s right at the heart of the work.’

‘Yes.’ Jaggard well knew what R & D’s main present preoccupation was. ‘But… this wasn’t any of Audley’s damn business.’

‘That’s not the way David Audley would see it.’ He had to lead Jaggard on, evidently. ‘Clinton gave them carte blanche from the start—as well as direct access to the PM—remember?’ He knew that Jaggard remembered, even though R & D had been born—

born by Caesarian section—long before their time. ‘He gave them

“Quis cusiodiet ipsos custodes” as their motto. And he always said they were his Tenth Legion, Henry—remember?’

‘Huh! More like a Fifth Column now!’ Jaggard’s nostrils expanded. ‘Audley isn’t even the real problem—R & D is the real problem, itself—no matter how important the work.’ He shook his Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State head slowly. ‘It’s not “Quis custodiet” now—it’s bloody Imperium in imperio!. It’s become a state within a state—and it’s got to be cut down to size, Garry. For the good of the state it was founded to protect, in fact.’

They were almost there. ‘I agree.’ But he needed some reassurance, nevertheless. ‘But with reservations, Henry.’

‘With reservations?’ Jaggard gave him a fierce look. ‘What are you driving at?’

It wasn’t the moment to make some submissive animal-signal: Jaggard was almost as intolerant of yes-men as he was of R & D.

‘Their research is first-rate—particularly their analytical advice.

And they’re coming up with first-rate stuff about the Gorbachev appointments right now, Henry—the Americans are trading us all manner of things in exchange for it. So there’s no way we can abolish them—they’re far too useful.’

‘Who said I want to abolish them?’ The fierceness amended itself.

‘All we need is to control them, so that they don’t cause trouble on the side—’ Jaggard raised a slender hand ‘—and I don’t mean that they’re not damn good at covering up the trouble they make… and their mistakes too… because they are—I know that—you know that.’ The hand clenched. ‘But they do cause trouble—and they do make mistakes—every time they go into the field on their own account.’ The fist unclenched, and Jaggard tapped the file on his desk. ‘Even, for example, God only knows what sort of mayhem might result from this FCO signal if I let it go any further. Which, of course, I won’t—that, at least, I can stop, anyway.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State They were there at last. But Harvey craned his neck, as though attempting to read the superscription. ‘Which is that—?’

Jaggard covered it. ‘Audley’s too busy with the Gorbachev work.

Apart from which he’ll only cause more trouble in this case, if he runs true to form.’

‘’Which was that?‘ Harvey stopped pretending to read through Jaggard’s hand. Because Jaggard was going to tell him anyway.

‘Apart from which the KGB is undoubtedly up to mischief.’

Jaggard gave him an unblinking stare. ‘And since the FCO

processed the signal they’ll also want to know what the outcome is.

But I shall say “no”.’

‘Ah!’ Harvey let the light dawn. ‘That’ll be that odd communication about Professor Panin, I take it—?’ After letting the light dawn he let himself relax. ‘I was thinking… it’s a curious coincidence, isn’t it—eh?’

‘Curious?’ Jaggard stopped covering the file.

‘Well, there’s obviously no connection between what Audley’s just done and whatever Professor Panin and the KGB may be contemplating.’ He let that out as an arguable statement, because they both knew who Panin was, beyond what the Soviet Embassy and the FCO alleged he was. ‘So it is a pure coincidence, Henry.

There can be no question about that.’

The stare cracked, and Jaggard flipped open the file. ‘ “Professor Nikolai Andrievich Panin. Third Deputy-Director in the Ministry of Culture: one of the foremost authorities on the archaeology of the royal tombs (6th and 5th century BC) in the bend of the Dnieper, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State the districts of Poltava and Kiev, and the Crimea’‘? He looked up at Garrod Harvey, then down into the file again. ’ ”Dr David Longsdon Audley. CBE. Ph.D. MA (Cantab)“—‘ He looked at Harvey again ’—” distinguished medievalist“? ‘ This time he didn’t look down again. ’Have you seen this SG?‘

That wasn’t a trick question. ‘Yes. My name’s on the list, Henry.’

‘Yes?’ The nostrils blew out again. ‘But I’ve also got a clever-dick note from some wag in the FCO—did you get that too?’

That wasn’t a trick question either. ‘No.’

‘No?’ Jaggard locked down quickly to refresh his memory. ‘I’ve got: “1. Isn’t Panin one of theirs and Audley one of yours?” And

“2. What has 6th-5th century BC Scythia got to do with Medieval History?” And “3. Are there any Royal Scythian tombs on Exmoor?” ’ Jaggard considered Harvey dispassionately for a moment. ‘And then they advise me that Professor Panin is to be given all reasonable help and consideration, because HM

Government is concerned to improve Anglo-Soviet cultural relations, pending projected diplomatic and cultural exchanges running up to possible East-West disarmament talks later in the year.’ He gave Harvey another couple of seconds. ‘Are there any Royal Scythian tombs on Exmoor?’

‘Not that I’ve heard of.’ That was the moment, as the full awfulness of the FCO advice registered, when Garrod Harvey began to suspect that Henry Jaggard had been there ahead of him, thinking the same wicked thoughts. ‘Prehistoric ones, maybe—or Neolithic. But that could be Dartmoor, not Exmoor…’ He let Jaggard see that he had something else in his mind.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Yes?’ Jaggard paid his penny cautiously.

‘I was just thinking.’ On second thoughts it would be better to be honest—or fairly honest, anyway: that usually paid better with Jaggard. ‘Or… I have been thinking.’

‘About what?’ Jaggard hadn’t got his pennyworth yet.

‘About Audley. And Panin.’ He gave Jaggard a seriously questioning glance. ‘I take it the FCO doesn’t really know why Panin is here? That he’s General Zarubin’s Number Two, I mean?’

‘They certainly do not.’ There was a metallic curtness about Jaggard’s reply: it was the sound of the penny dropping. ‘Nobody knows except the Viking Group. You know that.’

‘Yes. So that’s just you and me, and de Gruchy.’ Garrod Harvey deliberately thought aloud. ‘But the Americans also may have an inkling, we decided.’

‘They may.’ Jaggard accepted the thought. ‘They’ve almost certainly got someone of their own in the Soviet Embassy. So it’s just possible they’ve also picked up a hint of the Polish operation—

agreed.’

‘Yes. But their man is at a much lower level than our Viking.’

Harvey could see that the very mention of Viking, the highest-placed contact they had ever had in the KGB’s London Station, made Jaggard cautious. Yet he still had to push matters further. ‘So the Polish operation is the one you want us to leave well alone.’

Jaggard stared at him. ‘The one we have to leave well alone, Garry.’ The edge of his patience was beginning to fray. ‘We’ve been through all this.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Even though we know that Zarubin—Zarubin and now Panin…

even though we know that they’re up to some bloody mischief.’

Harvey nodded, noting the shift to ‘we’, even though the emphasis had been on ‘have’.

‘Yes.’ Jaggard knew that it had been his rank-pulling decision over their indecision which had swayed the vote. But, to his credit, he had never been afraid of responsibility. ‘Viking’s worth more to us than any bunch of miserable Polacks. And they must be damn close to him already—in fact, I’m not at all sure that this whole Polish thing hasn’t been dreamed up just so that they can pin their leak down. Because we haven’t had a whisper about these so-called “Sons of the Eagle” from our people in Poland—they’ve never even heard of them. But whoever they are, and whatever the KGB’s doing, Viking is just too valuable to risk, that was the decision. So what are you after, then?’

The moment to break cover had arrived. ‘Maybe we don’t have to risk Viking, Henry. Because, according to the FCO, it’s Panin who wants to meet Audley. And Audley doesn’t know anything about Viking—it’s just that he and Panin are both “distinguished scholars”—’ He remembered Audley’s file ‘—and old friends too, maybe?’

‘ “Friends”?’ Jaggard tossed the question aside contemptuously. ‘I thought you said you’d read Audley’s file? Back in ’70—

remember?‘

‘Yes.’ Panin had got exactly what he wanted in ‘70. But Audley had totally humiliated him in giving him what he wanted, and that Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State would rankle for ever afterwards. But, much more to the point, Jaggard had read that file too. ’So Panin hates Audley. But then Audley also hates Panin, Henry: he’s an old Clinton recruit. And old Fred Clinton always made a point of recruiting on the KGB

principle of good haters—“cool head, hot heart”, and all that.‘ He watched Henry Jaggard accept the statement. ’True?‘

‘True.’ Henry Jaggard nodded, out of his recent scrutiny of the Audley file: over the years, others before them had crossed swords with David Audley (and had come out of each clash-of-steel with scars, and the wiser); but no one had ever even remotely hinted that his hot heart wasn’t in the right place, though he was a Cambridge man. ‘But Panin is a very dangerous old man, Garry. And—’

‘And so is Audley a dangerous old man, Henry.’ Now they were only negotiating the fine print of the agreement. But they had to go through it line by line, for the record on the tape under Jaggard’s desk. ‘It’s a toss-up which of them is the more dangerous. But I agree that there’ll be trouble when they meet.’ The thought of the tape concentrated Garrod Harvey’s mind. ‘Only my bet is on Audley—like last time.’ There was one more important thing to put on the record. ‘Old Fred Clinton must have made the same bet back in ’70.‘ Not that the tape mattered, really. Tapes could be edited, but editing tapes wasn’t Henry Jaggard’s style any more than throwing his subordinates to the wolves was Jack Butler’s.

’You’re quite sure that Audley doesn’t know about Viking, I take it?‘

Jaggard shook his head slowly, without bothering to answer what wasn’t even a question.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘What I mean, Henry, is that he doesn’t know— and we can’t tell him, not even if we wanted to, can we?’ Harvey paused deliberately. ‘Not even if he asked us about Panin. Which he won’t in any case, because that isn’t his way of going about things, you see.’

Jaggard leaned forward. ‘Just what exactly are you proposing, Garry? To let Audley go in blind?’

‘David Audley never went into anything blind in all his life.’ All Jaggard wanted was a little reassurance. ‘One of our problems with him in the past has been that he knows too damn much, not too little. So he’ll know Zarubin’s in London for sure—you can bet on that. And he’ll know who Zarubin is, too.’

‘But Poland isn’t his field.’

‘ Everything is his field. He’s a Clinton-vintage R & D man born and bred, Henry.’ Harvey briefly considered the possibility that he might have been wrong about Jaggard’s intention, but rejected it.

‘He’s an interesting man. ’

‘ “A distinguished scholar”—so you said.’ Jaggard knew there was more to come. ‘ “A medievalist”. But I would have thought the sixteenth century was more his period. The treachery was more three-dimensional then, if I remember correctly.’

‘Yes.’ That was Henry Jaggard’s period, of course. And, as a devout Calholic, Jaggard had equivocal views on it which were well known. ‘But did you know that he’s also a recognized authority on Rudyard Kipling?’

Jaggard nodded cautiously. ‘Kipling is down as one of his hobbies, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State in his file.’

‘It’s more than a hobby.’ Harvey silently blessed the young Garrod Harvey Junior’s stuffiest godfather, who had given his birthday presents with such old-fashioned seriousness. ‘He’s just written a series of articles in the Literary Journal. Which are going to be turned into a book, I believe. He believes that Kipling is our most underrated author—and our most misunderstood one.’

‘Indeed?’ Jaggard’s politeness was strained to breaking-point, like the window of the de Havilland Comet which Garrod Harvey’s own godfather had trawled up from the sea-bottom off Elba thirty years before. ‘So what?’

‘The most recent one was on Kipling’s children’s stories.’ Harvey gauged the moment when Jaggard would explode, as the Comet window had exploded. ‘You know, my wife tells me that “We are what we eat”. But it seems to me that, more accurately, “We are what we read”. Or… in the present generation what we don’t read

—I suppose it’s what we see now, on the television. Which is a truly dreadful prospect—’

‘ Garry—’ Jaggard controlled himself with difficulty. ‘I have to see the Minister’s Special Adviser in about two minutes. And I don’t think I’m in a position to stretch his patience—do you?’

It was time to lower the pressure. ‘I think we might have something to offer the Minister. At least… if he’s prepared to cover our flanks, if anything truly unpleasant occurs.’ Garrod Harvey couldn’t bring himself to recall ‘the good of the state’ as an ally, even though it had to be their only true good, for what he envisaged; because the Minister’s Special Adviser would only be Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State concerned with the good of his Minister. ‘Because Audley’s most recent article was on Kipling’s children’s stories, as I was saying

—’

It was to Jaggard’s credit that he merely opened his mouth and then closed it without exploding, like some of the Comets which had managed more flights than others.

‘There’s this passage he quotes—’ Harvey held Jaggard’s attention

‘—which just about sums up the way he operates, on the rare occasions when he goes out into the field. Because when it’s all over he always says “I didn’t do anything—it just happened that way. It wasn’t my fault.” It’s called “shibbuwichee” , apparently.’

‘It’s called what—?’

‘ “Shibbuwichee” . Which Kipling thought was a form of Japanese wrestling.’ Nod. ‘My elder boy was given a complete set of Kipling by his godfather last year, so I’ve been able to look it up:

“These wrestler-chaps have got some sort of trick that lets the other chap do all the work. Then they give a little wriggle, and he upsets himself. It’s called ’shibbuwichee‘, or ’tokonoma‘, or something” .’ He blessed old Hetherington again, and his own memory too. ‘And that’s how Audley operates. So what I thought was that we might do the same to him now, Henry.’

‘How?’ Jaggard was there, ahead of him.

‘If we tell him Panin wants to see him, he won’t be able to resist that—’

‘But if he does?’

‘We’ll make it irresistible. Leave that to me.’ Part of their usual Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State accord was that there were some things which Jaggard didn’t need to know. ‘But I don’t think he’ll want to miss Panin for a return game. And that could solve our Polish problem without the need to risk Viking. Because he’s never going to let Panin outsmart him.

So you can be sure that whatever Panin really wants, Audley will find out what it is. And he won’t let Panin get away with it.’

‘But… if it goes the other way—?’

‘Then there’ll be a scandal.’ Garrod Harvey shrugged. ‘But if we leave Zarubin and Panin to their own devices there’ll be a scandal anyway, most likely, Henry. But this way .. . this way it’ll be a Research and Development scandal. Because Audley will never come to us for help—it’s not in his nature to come to anyone, not even Jack Butler if he can avoid it. And certainly not when someone like Panin is involved. He’ll want to shibbuwich the man, like last time, Henry. David Audley’s whole psychology is dedicated to winning, not to Queensberry Rules games-playing.

But if loses this time… then you can blow R & D wide open, Henry.’

‘Yes.’ That enticing possibility plainly captivated Jaggard—as it had from the start. ‘But if he loses, Garry —Panin’s a murderous swine… and Zarubin—’ He fixed Harvey coldly ‘—Zarubin’s worse than Panin, in so far as that’s possible, Garry.’

That was the good Catholic speaking, echoing generations of good Catholic Jaggards from the Reformation onwards, who had sweated and suffered for their Faith then, and had been disadvantaged even in liberal England for the next three hundred years afterwards, down to the living memory of Henry Jaggard’s Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State own great-grandfather. ‘So?’

‘I can’t risk Audley.’ The cold look became deep-frozen. ‘Bringing R & D to heel is important. But what they’re doing at the moment is important also. And Audley’s done a lot of good work, over a lot of years, Garry. So risking him now just isn’t on.’

‘I agree—I do agree, absolutely!’ Harvey understood the complexity of his error and Henry Jaggard’s dilemma simultaneously: the professional and patriotic ninety-nine-hundredths of Henry Jaggard wanted what they both wanted; but the hundredth part of Henry Jaggard was old Catholic and very different—what it wanted, that hundredth part, was either Major-General Gennadiy Zarubin on his raw knees in front of the High Altar, praying for the forgiveness which the Holy Catholic Church never denied sinners… or Major-General Gennadiy Zarubin broken and bloody, and turned over to the Civil Power for appropriate final punishment, like in the old days.

‘I do agree, Henry.’ Garrod Harvey kept his face straight. Because what Henry Jaggard wanted was for Audley to win and lose at the same time; and that was exactly what he was now about to offer to Henry Jaggard, and the Minister’s Special Adviser, and the Minister, and the Prime Minister, and Her Gracious Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II! ‘But my money’s on David Audley—I think he’ll screw Panin into the ground, and General Zarubin with him.

But I also think we have to give him a bodyguard, to watch over him—’

‘A bodyguard—’

‘That’s right: a bodyguard.’ Nod. ‘I’ve taken that for granted.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Another nod, for good measure. ‘Not just to look after him, but also to keep us informed as to how he’s breaking all the rules in the book. Because that’s what he always does—he doesn’t even pay lip-service to the rules, Henry. So if he screws Zarubin—Zarubin and Panin… then, even then with a bit of luck, we can still make a scandal of it—if we have someone on the inside beside him, watching him—?’

Jaggard frowned, as though some long-outdated moral scruples were attempting to skirmish with pragmatic experience, like bows-and-arrows against machine-guns, which was no fair contest.

And yet (as though the longbowmen and crossbowmen were cheating, by capitalizing on the silence of their weapons), Jaggard was still frowning at him.

‘We have to have someone alongside him, Henry.’ He had to press home his technological advantage. ‘Otherwise he’ll weasel out of it somehow, like he always has before.’

‘He’ll never accept anyone.’ Jaggard left his moral scruple behind.

‘Or he’ll want someone he can trust, like Mitchell or Andrew from R & D, Garry.’

Garrod Harvey shook his head. ‘They’re all too busy, with their own Gorbachev work. And they don’t fancy minding Audley, at the best of times.’ He made a face at Jaggard. ‘Minding David Audley is a thankless task. And in the past it’s also been rather dangerous. But, in any case, R & D hasn’t got the manpower for it.

Or the womanpower.’ This time Henry Jaggard knew better, and merely waited for enlightenment.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Garrod Harvey turned the shake into a nod. ‘I fed a few notional facts into the computer this morning—profile facts.’

Henry Jaggard looked at him, trying to pretend that he knew

‘notional facts’ and ’profile facts’ from the double yellow lines on the road outside, far below them in Whitehall. ‘And—?’

‘I think we’ve got just the man for the job. At least… he’s a medievalist, of a sort. And he also speaks fluent Polish.’ Garrod Harvey smiled invitingly.

Henry Jaggard was so relieved to have left the computer behind that he accepted the invitation. ‘And—?’

They had passed the point where Jaggard might have said ‘What you’re proposing is monstrous, Garry,’ even though what he was now proposing was just that. ‘He isn’t Audley’s son, Henry. But he could have been. Audley will never be able to resist showing off in front of him.’

PART TWO

The Man for the Job

1

Tom moistened the end of his stub of indelible pencil and wrote

‘1025’ beside the line of the bailey ditch on his sketch-map.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State If Willy’s measurement of the motte ditch was about 500 feet in circumference, then the whole motte-and-bailey was a dead ringer for the Topcliffe castle in size, if not in date—obviously not in date, because Topcliffe was an early post-Conquest castle, and this was as yet not anything at all except an anonymous ‘earthwork’ on the ordnance survey map. So it just could be Ranulf of Caen’s adulterine castle, which certainly should be somewhere hereabouts if his calculations were right.

On the other hand, it was certainly not much of a motte, he thought doubtfully, looking up into the impenetrable undergrowth above him and trying to estimate the height of the mound. These were undoubtedly Ranulf’s lands, de facto, if the local bishop’s de jure, in the mid-twelfth century; and both Ranulf and the bishop had changed sides in the civil war, several times and not always at the same time. But the Norman barons—even a two-timing (or ten-timing) jumped-up shyster and petty hedgerow mercenary knight like Ranulf—had thrown up more impressive earthworks than this in a hundred other places, with little time and their enemies at their backs. So it still could be merely a fortified manor, a hundred years or more away from Ranulf’s brief medieval gangster flowering during the years of anarchy. So, allowing for the wear-and-tear and the wind-and-rain of all the 800 years afterwards, it all depended on Willy’s measurement, which should establish the circumference and diameter of his hypothetical motte, with its stockade and tower, which could perhaps be proved during his next leave—

The sound came from behind him—above and behind him, in the undergrowth which hemmed in the edge of the bailey ditch, at its Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State junction with the motte ditch (if this really was a genuine motte-and-bailey earthwork castle, he thought pedantically)—and he accepted that it had to be Willy, because the motte ditch was all thorn-bushes and brambles, even worse than the tangle above him, from which Ranulf might once have defied the might of King Stephen (or maybe the Empress Matilda, according to which side he’d been on at the time) —

So he would have to apologize to Willy (Willy would never give him the benefit of the doubt, after that last unfortunate slip on the edge of the moat at Sulhampstead, which had not really been his fault—but poor old Willy)—

But it wasn’t Willy: it was—he dropped his pencil as he stuffed the sketch-map into the back-pocket of his jeans, and automatically reached down to find it, but then stopped just as automatically in mid-fumble, half in nothing more than surprise, but then half in momentarily irrational fear, at the glimpse of a uniform.

Then the fear was subsumed by self-contemptuous irritation with himself, for letting the sight of an ordinary British policeman frighten him—not a Mister-Plod-PC-49 fatherly copper in the dear old high helmet admittedly, with red face and button nose and bicycle-clipped trousers, but a young copper in a flat cap, and no older than himself; yet a young copper who seemed just as surprised at the sight of him, and who was even now more concerned with extricating himself from the trailing bramble-sucker from last year’s blackberry growth which had snagged his uniform.

The trouble is, he justified to himself quickly, I have met too many Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State other sorts of policemen, of the shoot-first and who-cares? variety, these last two years, and that’s a fact! But the conditioned reflex was still nonetheless strong enough to make him pick up the stub of pencil slowly, and to hold it up between thumb and forefinger for inspection, complete with an ingratiating smile, as he straightened up in slow motion to match the gesture, as if to say:

‘ Don’t shoot, officer! This is just me—Tom Arkenshaw… And this is just my stub of pencil—not a grenade or a pistol!

But the young policeman only stamped down on the ensnaring blackberry thorns, innocently oblivious of his gestures of submission; which gave him time to come fully to his British senses, to wonder aggressively what’s a bloody copper doing here, sneaking up on me on the edge of old Ranulf’s ditch?

One final trample. And then the young policeman sucked his finger, where a thorn had caught it, before looking down at him again. But it was a damned hostile, suspicious look all the same, thought Tom.

‘What are you after, down here?’ The policeman frowned at his finger again, and then gave it another suck.

Tom’s hackles rose. This was old Ranulf’s ditch, or near enough—

not somewhere beyond the Green Line in Beirut, or a poxy Third World slum within mortar-range of a British consulate. But then he thought maybe I’m trespassing—? But there were no peasants in these coverts, so far south of Watford Gap, surely?

‘What—?’ Caution inclined him towards a show of ignorance, to probe the question further, before he pulled rank and privilege. But then a crunching-and-crashing sound, emanating from the floor of Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State the ditch, away to his right, diverted the policeman’s attention.

Other sounds accompanied the crunching-and-crashing, which Tom could guess at, but which he didn’t want to interpret as he bent down to look for their source and prepare for the emergence of their author.

‘What’s that, down there?’ The policeman assumed—assumed all too correctly—that whatever Tom was ‘after’ was related to the sounds.

Tom peered uneasily into the tangle. At the very lowest point of the ditch, which was probably all of six feet higher with in-fill than when Ranulf had forced the local peasantry to dig it, there was something like a tunnel. But, although it might be sufficient for the local fauna— foxes for sure… and maybe even badgers, if there were still badgers unpersecuted here—it was hardly enough for Willy, surely—? Because, for one thing, it was muddy—

‘Have you seen a gentleman hereabouts?’ inquired the policeman, obviously despairing of any other answer, and not expecting it to issue from the bottom of the ditch, anyway.

It was Willy: Tom’s ear, attuned to the worst, caught a word—two words, more precisely—from the other sounds which marked Willy’s passage, exactly according to his orders, with two-yard measuring pole in hand.

Tom turned towards the policeman. Perhaps it was just as well that he had a policeman in attendance, he decided. So the important thing now was to keep the man in attendance, to protect him from physical assault.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State The crashing became louder, and the words—good old Anglo-Saxon words, echoing the sentiments of the original ditch-diggers

—became clearer.

‘Eh?’ He encouraged the policeman to repeat the question.

‘Have-you-seen—’ The policeman took him in with a despairing glance ‘—a-gentleman—a -gentleman— round-here?’

‘No,’ said Tom truthfully. ‘Why?’

The direct question, following the direct answer, was just the right one for the situation, Tom decided. Because it detained the policeman for another moment; and, if Willy didn’t arrive in a moment after that, he could always try the next question—a good late Medieval question, which had been John Ball’s question—

When Adam delved, and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?

‘You haven’t seen anyone?’ Now the poor devil was caught between the suspicion that he had an awkward customer on his hands and the final arresting vision of Willy’s emergence backwards from the thorn-and-blackberry tangle; and the adjective was strictly accurate rather than Freudian, because Willy’s designer-jeans-encased backside was without doubt a vision sufficient to divert any man from his proper duty, thought Tom.

‘Only her,’ he answered again truthfully, but this time more doubtfully, as he observed the condition of the jeans.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘ Seventy-six—’ She still held the measuring pole in her hand as she broke free from the tunnel ‘— seventy-seven—’

But that wasn’t the whole circumference of the castle mound, thought Tom quickly. He had taken the longer line of the bailey ditch in all innocence, not knowing about the tangle on the far side of the mound which she must have had to fight her way through, which had left him time to measure that part of the mound’s circumference which fitted into the bailey. So that meant 77 plus 25, multiplied by six. Which meant that Ranulf’s castle was slightly bigger than Topcliffe, but not significantly so; which might mean that Ranulf had been building under the pressure of hot civil war, where William’s man in Yorkshire eighty years earlier would have been throwing up his defences against the sullen pressure of a largely unconquered but disorganized and leaderless Anglo-Saxon population. So that evened things up. But… but, at the same time, it firmed up his theory that this couldn’t actually be Ranulf’s headquarters in Sussex. Or… if it was his HQ, then that might mean

—

‘You bastard! ’ exclaimed Willy, sitting on her heels in the mud.

‘Look what you’ve done to me!’ She surveyed herself. ‘Christ!’

The designer-jeans were certainly not what they had been before he had sent her out to measure the castle ditch. And her hair had come down at the back—and at the front, too.

‘Christ!’ She let go of the measuring pole with one hand, in order to examine the other hand. ‘I’m goddam hurt!’

That would be the dead blackberry suckers from last year—or maybe the thorn-bushes in the tunnel. It was much too early in the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State year for stinging nettles, certainly. Because there had been no stinging nettles at Sulhampstead last week, nor within the old Roman walls at Pevensey, the week before.

Willy was busy sucking her finger—

Stinging nettles were interesting, thought Tom. They were always to be found in association with agricultural activity, rather than military or monastic work—was that true or false? There had been sheep at Sulhampstead, and cows at Pevensey. Or had it been the other way round? But, either way, there might be room for some intriguing research there—

‘ Tom!’

Tom experienced momentary irritation—he had never really thought about the incidence of stinging nettles before—but then he realized too late that what was expected of him was regret and guilt, and tried to contort his features appropriately. ‘Willy-love, I am sorry —’

‘ Bastard! ’ Her voice fell from self-pity to cold anger: she might well be remembering her experiences at Sulhampstead.

‘I said I was sorry—’

‘I’ll give you “sorry”!’ She picked up the measuring pole with both hands and jabbed it at him like a spear. ‘I’ll make you sorry—’

‘Now, Willy—don’t be like that.’ Tom skipped sideways as she jabbed at him again. He was just out of range, but she had risen to one knee and was aiming dangerously low, towards parts of him which he would undoubtedly be sorry to have injured. ‘ Willy! ’

‘Don’t you “Willy” me—’ Just as she was rising from the other Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State mud-caked knee, pivoting on it at the same time to reach his new location, she saw the policeman on the edge of the ditch above and behind him.

The policeman cleared his throat nervously, otherwise evidently struck dumb by the intended act of Grievous Bodily Harm he had been witnessing. Or it might be just the sight of Willy herself, thought Tom with proprietorial admiration.

‘Gee!’ In the instant of recognition the wide snarl had turned to jaw-dropped surprise, but in the next instant she had rearranged her expression so that now it merely registered interest. ‘Well, hi there, officer!’

Tom’s admiration increased, and he felt that same curious twinge of an emotion he had experienced several times just recently, but hadn’t taken the trouble to explore. Or maybe didn’t want to risk exploring—was that it? he wondered, shying away from the traffic light in his mind which shone red and green at the same time.

‘Good morning…madam.’ For a moment the policeman seemed undecided as to how to address her. But that would be as much because of the rich mid-western American accent—foreigners were always tricky—as because of the contradiction between her dishevelled appearance and her abundant self-confidence, Tom estimated.

‘He’s looking for a gentleman, Willy,’ he advised her.

‘Uh-huh?’ She didn’t even look at him as she stood up, using her ex-deadly-weapon to help her. ‘Well, I guess he better go look somewhere else—’ she smiled her sweetest smile at the policeman Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘—because there’s no gentleman here.’

Tom knew then what he knew he had known from the moment the young policeman had materialized out of nowhere, which he had only been resisting because he didn’t want to know it; because, when a man was more nearly happy and carefree than he had any right to be, he also had the right to resist the inevitability of a 99-percent certainty, just in case that last one-per-cent was on his side.

But he turned back towards the policeman, hating himself because he was suddenly even happier —no longer carefree, but excited now, and utterly consumed by that old addictive drug—because they wanted him this badly. And it still fed his happiness, as their eyes met, that the policeman knew too… although with nothing like that 99-per-cent certainty even now… that this unlikely gipsy-looking non-gentleman was nonetheless his gentleman— just his gentleman being awkward, no more.

The policeman struggled for five seconds against his remaining doubts, but then surrendered to the slightly higher odds. ‘Sir Thomas Arkenshaw?’

Tom sympathized with him. Half his stock-in-trade was derived from the wild accidents of twentieth-century history, which had crossed unlikely genes with a different environment; and also he knew that it was always painful for such a good solid Englishman as this to throw a 350-year-old baronetcy on such a questionable product.

‘I am Sir Thomas Arkenshaw.’ As always, the foreign half of him threw down the Anglo-Norman half contemptuously: the Dzieliwskis had ridden in a hundred battles before the low-bred Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State merchant Arkenshaws had made enough money to interest any parvenu Stuart King of England. ‘Yes.’

‘Thank you, sir—Sir Thomas.’ The policeman stumbled slightly over Debrett’s Correct Form of Address, one part of him obviously still unwilling to accept the identification. But then he squared his shoulders and gave Tom the full benefit of the doubt. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Sir Thomas—’ with an effort he didn’t glance at Willy

‘—but there’s… there’s another gentleman who wishes to see you… urgently. He’s waiting for you back in the lane, by the gate.’

Now it was Tom’s turn for disbelief. ‘Here?’

‘Yes, sir—Sir Thomas. By the gate.’

That changed matters. Being sent for was one thing: by routine they knew where he was shacked up with Willy, and the hotel people knew where he was to be found this morning. So, despatching the nearest policeman to find him was the simplest and quickest way of effecting his recall. But this automatic assumption had been wrong, for the mountain had come to Mahomet. And that was another thing altogether.

‘Right. I’ll come at once—’ He had started to move before he remembered his manners, and turned back to Willy ‘—if you’ll excuse me for a moment, Miss Groot—?’

‘Be my guest, Sir Thomas.’ As a good servant of a great republic Willy accepted the call to duty without demur, only with a proper disrespect for the undeserved and unrepublican title he bore.

‘Thank you, Miss Groot.’ Tom threw the words over his shoulder as he scrambled up the side of the ditch towards the policeman.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State (Sending someone down to scoop him up, and presumably to brief him on the spot… that might mean a panic, minor or major —) His foot slipped, and he slid back half a yard—

(How exactly did they build their ditches? Revetted with turf or with wood?)

(Alternatively… whoever it was who’d pulled rank on the local police— another gentleman suggested rank, so it could even be Phillipson —)

The policeman observed his problem, and extended a helping hand.

(Did Norman ditches differ from Anglo-Saxon works? Or from Roman ones—had their expertise been passed on? That sounded unlikely—in England anyway, if not on the continent… But what about the pre-Roman ditches of the great hill-forts—?) The policeman hauled him up the last few feet, catching his sense of urgency as well as his hand.

(There must be some specialist research on ditch-digging somewhere—just as there had to be something on the incidence of stinging nettles; that was always the way of it, simultaneously enlightening and frustrating: there was always someone who had got there, or been there, before, asking the same questions—)

‘Thank you.’ He made his peace with the policeman with a smile.

He must stop thinking about old Ranulf‘’s adulterine castle now. It might not be a panic at all, but just Phillipson (or whoever) pulling rank unnecessarily, for any one of a thousand footling reasons, to pick someone else’s brains. Or even to take a look at Willy, maybe

—

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State No, it could hardly be that. Willy was a known quantity, and he had registered his friendship with her, as the rules required. So they couldn’t read the riot act over her.

He lengthened his stride. Only another few yards and he would be able to look down on the lane which had once briefly been the busy road to Ranulf’s illegal strongpoint, but which must just as quickly have degenerated back to the mere farm track it had become for ever after, under Henry Plantagenet’s iron-fisted rule. Poor old Ranulf—

Poor old Tom! He amended the thought instantly as he looked down on the gateway, and saw Henry Jaggard. Poor old Tom!

Jaggard? Christ! When he’d thought of the mountain coming to Mahomet, he’d only thought of Snowdon or Ben Nevis, not Mont Blanc or the North Face of the bloody Eiger!

‘Sir?’ At least he didn’t need to pretend not to be astonished. Even if he’d been wrong about Willy—even if Willy had been a KGB

major in drag—that wouldn’t justify the presence of Henry Jaggard here in Ranulf’s lane, just by the opening in Ranulf’s bailey ditch.

‘Tom, dear boy!’ Henry Jaggard surveyed him with fleeting distaste. ‘I am sorry to come upon you like this—’ He looked around ‘—in the middle of nowhere.’ He came back to Tom with a basilisk smile. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

The middle of nowhere was right thought Tom with sudden insight: Jaggard knew exactly what he was doing, and why he was here—

and who he was with, down to the room number in the hotel.

Because it was Jaggard’s right and business to know that. But it Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State was still the middle of nowhere.

‘I’m just doing another motte-and-bailey, sir.’ Tom accepted the fiction, and played up to it deliberately. ‘I think it’s one of the illegal castles Ranulf of Caen built during the reign of King Stephen—mid-twelfth century. But no one’s ever done precise measurements on it.’ Time for a disarming grin. ‘It’s down as a late-13th-century fortified manor in Herrick’s Medieval Earthworks, actually. But I don’t think Herrick ever took the trouble to look at it.’

‘Is that so?’ Polite lack-of-interest in exchange for disarming grin.

No one was fooling anyone. “That’s rather interesting, I should think.‘ Jaggard took another survey of the middle of nowhere. ’But I can perhaps understand why he didn’t—Herrick, was it?‘ Jaggard had plainly no more heard of Professor Albert Herrick than he had of—of, say, Ranulf himself… or of Ranulf’s contemporary, King Boleslas III of Poland, whom Tom’s Dzieliwski ancestors had served. ’It is rather inaccessible isn’t it!‘

Yes, thought Tom. And as good a place as Henry Jaggard could hope for, to meet poor Tom Arkenshaw unobserved and off-the-record!

Jaggard cocked a knowing eye at him. ‘And Miss Wilhemina Groot doesn’t mind braving the wilds of the English countryside with you, then?’

‘No, sir.’ The bugger didn’t need to throw Willy into the conversation so crudely. ‘Her ancestors built forts like this in Iowa and Minnesota, against the Sioux in the 1860s, so she tells me—’

Tom gestured towards Ranulf’s ramparts ‘—not the same design, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State of course… but the same general defensive idea, more or less—just earth and timber-work and man-hours— plus ça change, and all that.

‘Is that so?’ Henry Jaggard opened his mouth to continue, but Tom owed him one for Willy.

‘If you’ve got the time I can show you how it works. Motte-and-bailey is pretty much a standard Norman design, with minor variations. It’s a bit muddy and overgrown on the other side, but—’

‘Thank you, Tom! But… in the circumstances… no, I’m afraid.’

The very slightest edge of Henry Jaggard’s dislike broke through the surface of his confidence, like a shark’s fin in a smooth sea, warning Tom that whatever he had in store wasn’t going to be one of those plum diplomatic sinecures in safe East European communist countries where the food might be bad, but the scope for terrorism was limited to the point of boredom. Besides which, of course, with Tom’s well-known maternal background he knew himself to be automatically persona non grata in most of them, anyway.

And, also besides which, he had already pushed his luck as far as it was safe to do. So a bit of proper departmental enthusiasm was in order now. So… although this particular son-of-a-bitch will never promote you, Thomas Arkenshaw-Dzieliwski… show proper dutiful-enthusiastic-interest, damn your eyes!

Although, Henry Jaggard was a shrewd operator, who didn’t generally let his prejudices interfere with his duties, to be fair. So maybe he’d been a bit naughty, thought Tom, half-repentantly.

‘Yes, sir?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Jaggard estimated him for a moment. ‘We have a little bit of a flap, Tom. And… I’m genuinely sorry for descending on you, believe me… but you’ve got the exact profile for it, you see. So your leave’s cancelled, as of this date.’

That’s all right, sir.‘ Tom waved his own olive branch back. ’This earthwork isn’t going to go away.‘

‘And Miss Groot?’ In victory Jaggard was suddenly generous.

‘Senator Groot’s daughter, would that be? Or grand-daughter?’

‘Niece, actually.’ No, not generous at all. Merely politic— politic with Miss Groot, not Sir Thomas, whose true measurements were precisely known, and who was plain Tom in consequence. But he shrugged dismissively, nevertheless. ‘But I don’t think she’ll go away either. Not that it matters.’ Oddly enough, it was beginning to matter; though this was hardly the moment to admit it to himself, never mind to Jaggard. ‘A flap, you said?’ And it was even less the moment to pretend that he wasn’t surprised to see Jaggard in a flap in the middle of nowhere: with Jaggard he not only had no need to play stupid—he positively couldn’t afford to do so. ‘What sort of a flap?’

Jaggard looked past him, to make sure Senator Groot’s niece was not materializing inconveniently on the horizon. But the young policeman appeared to be doing his duty in detaining her where she was, for that one glance was enough. ‘Tom… when did you last have dealings with Research and Development?’

Tom was just about ready for any question but that. It could have related to anything from Beirut to Managua, by way of Belfast; or from Black September to the Red Brigade (as recently Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State reconstituted), by way of the IRA. But… it was one hell of a sight closer to home than that. ‘R & D?’ But Jaggard would know bloody well when he’d last consulted R & D: it was a suspiciously unnecessary question. ‘Not for ages… apart from their routine briefings—the ones I’m cleared to receive, anyway— ?’ He was entitled to end the statement on a question. ‘I mean face to face.

Not the briefings.’

‘Hell!’ Tom concentrated his memory. ‘One of them chipped in his piece at that seminar… He’d been over in Dublin— Field Research, he called it.’ Memory etched the face and the facts.

‘Mitchell was his name—“Source PLM” in the briefings… He was into the IRA and the KGB, by way of ancient history. We got the Irish foreign connection from the Fenians in America backwards, all the way through Napoleon and Louis XIV to Philip of Spain.

He’s a historian—a published historian, too—’ The etching included the man’s recommendations on the best Irish whiskies into the bargain; but that wouldn’t do for a teetotaller like Jaggard, by God! ‘—a military historian—?’

‘Who else?’ Jaggard crossed out Mitchell. ‘In R & D?’

Caution engulfed Tom. But he mustn’t show it. ‘Well—Colonel Butler runs their show, of course—’ But that was mere banality, insulting to both of them ‘—who else what? ’

‘Who do you know in R & D?’

The caution became murkier. ‘Who do I know? No one, really.’ It wasn’t that he had any particular loyalty to Colonel Butler’s band of brothers, who seemed to live in a world of their own, pursuing Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State their own ends (but which ends had so far mercifully been different from his, as it happened); but, in any case, before he admitted that he wanted to know why Jaggard was quizzing him now. ‘I’ve met Mitchell, And I know of Colonel Butler—who goes way back, of course—’ He couldn’t leave that of course to be questioned, because although Colonel Butler must go way back to be Director of R & D no one knew anything about him— any more than they knew anything much about anyone in R & D; so he must throw in some more names as ground-bait, and quickly ‘—and Macready, the economist… and they’ve got a Special Branch man, who’s an expert on trade union leaders—or rather, the young fliers who dropped out of circulation to learn their business over there, like—’

‘Andrew.’ Jaggard nodded, rising to Tom’s desperate indiscretion quickly ‘Ex-Superintendent Andrew.’ He nodded again. ‘And I think you must know Commander Cable—socially, perhaps?’

Now he must be close, thought Tom: to throw in James Cable as a dyed-in-the-wool R & D man, and not just a temporary attachment

—

‘James, of course,’ agreed Tom. So James really was Research and Development’s Society contact, not just a Royal Navy man waiting for his Trident appointment, in succession to his father’s original nuclear command.

‘And Audley?’ Jaggard relaxed enough to check that Miss Groot had not yet broken through their defences.

‘I’ve heard of him, of course.’ Who was it going to be? wondered Tom. The genuine 100-per-cent truth was that he didn’t know much at all about R & D: they were reputedly a bunch of weirdos Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State who produced good material by questionable means known only unto themselves, but who seldom issued out of their ivory Tower into the real world; which (rumour added, he thought uneasily) was just as well, because they only took jobs which no one else wanted, which ended in tears for someone.

But Jaggard was watching him very narrowly now, and that jogged his memory disturbingly, after the thought of Willy somewhere out there, behind Ranulf’s earth ramparts: R & D always liked to have an obligatory woman or two on their strength, someone had said.

And once they had had a little beauty, whom they had lost in particularly harrowing and incompetent circumstances; so now they had another one, whose intelligence was said to be only surpassed by her ugliness, which was altogether exceptional.

‘Yes?’ An old fox watching a young rabbit sitting just inside its briar patch, that was what Jaggard reminded him of, thought Tom.

‘I don’t really know anyone else.’ Oh no, Brer Fox! Whatever Jaggard might know about Willy, or any of Willy’s predecessors, she and they were strictly extramural activity. So if the man had any ideas about the Sycorax of R & D, he had another thought coming. ‘I really don’t know any of them —I told you.’

‘You don’t know David Audley?’ Jaggard sketched mild bewilderment. ‘Now… that does surprise me, rather.’

Audley? Tom frowned. ‘Why does it surprise you?’

‘I thought he was an old family friend. In fact, I’m sure he is, Tom.’ Jaggard exchanged suspicious disbelief for mild bewilderment. ‘Of your mother’s, as well as your late father’s—

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State eh?’

‘My—?’ Tom floundered for a moment, unable to bring up the shield of truth quickly enough ‘—my mother? Well, if that’s so, it’s news to me—’ The sudden doubt in his voice only made matters worse. Audley?

‘Not to say an old admirer, indeed.’ Jaggard agreed with himself smugly. Then he caught the look on Tom’s face. ‘Failed admirer, of course— proxime accessit, but failed— also ran, but unplaced, that is to say… and a long way back—’ Now he was actually attempting to extricate himself ‘—your late father and he were both rugby players at Cambridge, Tom.’

Oh— shit! thought Tom, momentarily ignoring his master.

Mother’s admirers had been legion, long before Father had cashed in his baronetcy for another set of wings but still within the scope of his own childish memory. So it ought not to be any surprise to him that there had been other and younger moths singeing their wings on her flame in her salad days— shit!

‘It was long before your time.’ Jaggard’s agreement with himself was no longer smug: it was insultingly apologetic. ‘I should have realized that.’ Then he recalled himself to his duty. ‘But he is an old friend, anyway.’

Tom was saved just in time by the same imperative from snapping back How the hell do you know? Because that was really only professionally interesting—because it was Jaggard’s business to know, was the immediate answer; and he could tax Mother with that question later, at his leisure, some other time. All that mattered now was that it was almost certainly true.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘At Cambridge?’ He got his voice back to the level of professional interest. “That would be rather before my time.‘ But… Audley, of all people—the name hit him again: Audley was… a bête noire now, or at least an eminence grise, as well as an elder statesman and something of a legend, rather than a proxime accessit—so…

trust Mother! But Jaggard was here, in the meantime. ’I’m afraid you’ve had a fruitless journey.‘

Jaggard took another look at his surroundings, for all the world like one of King Henry II’s men come to make sure that Ranulf of Caen was no longer occupying his illegally-constructed strongpoint.

‘Not fruitless, Tom.’

No? ‘I mean, I can’t tell you anything about him… that I’m sure you don’t already know—’

‘About him—Audley?’ Incredulity. ‘My dear Tom, I know all I need to know about David Audley already. He’s a very old colleague—not to say old friend.’ Jaggard half-smiled. ‘David and I go back a long way, almost into prehistory.’ The half-smile evaporated. ‘Of course, it would have been a bonus if you had been acquainted with him. But only a small bonus—it’s of no great importance.’

‘Importance to what?’ Tom couldn’t keep the suspicion out of his voice.

‘To what I want you to do.’

A flap, Tom remembered. ‘I’m due in Athens on Friday.’

‘That’s all taken care of. Frobisher has agreed to lend you to me for the time being.’ The half-smile began to condense again. ‘He Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State said you’d be pleased—that you don’t like dealing with the Greeks.’

‘I don’t.’ Frobisher himself would not have been pleased: Jaggard would have had to pull rank to obtain that ‘agreement’. ‘But we’re going to have a problem there—’

‘Then it will be someone else’s problem.’ Jaggard sliced through his half-heated protest abruptly. ‘As of this moment your problem is Audley.’

Being sliced like that irritated Tom. ‘But there’s no one else who can deal with it as I can. It isn’t a problem of protection—it won’t be a diplomatic hit next time, it’ll be a British tourist. And it’ll be a bomb. So someone’s got to galvanize the Greeks into pre-emptive action—’ The thought of Bill Bennett arguing with Colonel Stamatopoulos through an interpreter irritated him even more ‘—

and I can do that. Because…’ He caught his big mouth too late: he was not only kicking against the cut-and-dried inevitable, he was also devaluing Bill, who was not only better than he was in Africa and Central America, but a good bloke into the bargain. But that was too complicated to explain here on the edge of Ranulf’s ditch, with the first drops of today’s rain spotting his face.

‘Because you’re the best?’ Jaggard ignored the rain.

‘Because I speak Greek.’ Bill’s solution to Anglo-Greek relations would be to restore the Elgin Marbles, as though they were the same as General Wolseley’s Benin rubbish, from West Africa.

‘Because you’re the best, Tom.’ Jaggard ignored his answer. ‘But, as it happens, this isn’t so very different from what you’re Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State accustomed to do. In fact, the only difference is that it should be easier—the protection I want.’

It was time to stop arguing—or pretending to argue, thought Tom: It was time to find out what Jaggard actually wanted. ‘But Audley’s not diplomatic—’ But there was a short answer to that, he realized ‘—not over here, in England—?’

‘I don’t want you just to protect Audley—’ Jaggard stopped suddenly, and stared at him for a moment, his spectacles rain-blurred. ‘Of course, I do want Audley protected—not just because he’s an old friend, either . Because what’s locked up inside his head is probably of more value to us than anything Jack Butler’s got in his computer records.’

That was Research and Development in a nutshell, thought Tom: the only reason it still existed was that it had its own top secrets, which it played like cards close to its chest in spite of all orders to the contrary.

‘It’s a Russian he’s meeting, Tom.’ Pause. ‘It’s a somewhat fluid situation at this moment. But you may be able to solidify it for us, is what I’m relying on.’

A Russian, thought Tom. And then… a Russian in the UK—

Jaggard had implicitly said as much, in answer to his question about Audley, after suggesting that it wasn’t so very different from what he was accustomed to do. But what did he mean by

‘solidify’? ‘A Russian diplomat?’

‘A diplomat.’ But Jaggard’s face did not confirm his words. ‘Name of Panin—Nikolai Andrievich Panin.’ He met Tom’s questioning Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State expression without any sign of surprise. ‘Professor of Scythian Studies—or maybe it’s of Scythian Archaeology, I don’t know…

But for our purposes he has diplomatic status, as an umpteenth cultural attaché, to discuss the possibility of a Scythian exhibition at the British Museum the year after next.’

‘Uh-huh?’ Even without Jaggard’s deadpan expression Tom had his own experience of certain Russian cultural attachés in the Middle East, who had looked—and behaved—as though they could have set up prehistoric exhibitions from first-hand experience. ‘Which directorate would that make him? KGB

Archaeology—is there one for that?’

Jaggard looked up at the rain-clouds above, which still couldn’t make up their minds whether to drop their full load here, where there was no shelter, or further east, where there were more people.

‘Actually, that wouldn’t be wholly inappropriate for Comrade Panin, you know.’ He took a handkerchief from his pocket and began to dry his spectacles. ‘He really was a professor once upon a time, and an archaeologist too.’ He held up the spectacles to the sky. ‘But he also goes back a very long way in State Security—pre-KGB, pre-MVD even… possibly NKVD, early 1940s, in the War of Liberation—God knows, perhaps even before that, for all we know.’ He settled the spectacles back on his nose and looked at Tom again. ‘That makes him even older than David Audley—his old friend David Audley.’

‘Old… friend?’ As Jaggard seemed to be waiting for him to register surprise, Tom obliged him dutifully.

‘Old acquaintance.’ Having published his libel Jaggard carefully Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State retracted it. ‘Old adversary, of course.’ He smiled at Tom. ‘David will tell you a lot about Comrade Panin, if you ask him nicely.

He’s by way of being an expert on the subject. And…’ He trailed off deliberately.

Old, thought Tom. Old adversaries—old acquaintances… old friends—old family friends… even old admirers. Maybe not quite as old as old Ranulf and his adulterine earthworks, but old, old—

‘And?’ Jaggard hadn’t come to the point yet, but was waiting to be prompted.

‘Yes. I was just thinking…’ Jaggard pretended to be just thinking a little longer ‘… if you want to know about Audley, you could do worse—a lot worse—than ask Comrade Panin. It’s quite possible that he knows more about David than we do.’

That couldn’t be the point. ‘I’m going to meet him, am I?’

‘Panin?’ Jaggard wrinkled his nose as a large rain-drop spattered on his newly-polished spectacles. ‘Oh yes… In fact, you’re going to meet both of them—and very soon, too.’ He nodded. ‘This is a time for meetings, Tom: Comrade Panin is soon to meet David Audley—by request, and with our agreement, naturally. And you are going to mind them both, when they meet. And then you are to stay with Audley, like a limpet. Because we don’t think Panin has come over here for old acquaintance’s sake. We think he wants more than that.’

Tom was aware that he’d got more than he’d bargained for in answer to a simple question, and reeled slightly under the pressure of the disorderly mob of questions which crowded his mind. But Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State better to let another simple one through, while he imposed discipline on the big ugly ones. ‘What’s my authority for this, if Audley asks?’

Jaggard looked disappointed. ‘My dear Tom—aren’t you Diplomatic Protection? Panin has diplomatic status—’

‘But I only protect our own people overseas.’ Tom shook his head, even though he knew that he was nitpicking. ‘That’s bloody thin.’

‘But your section advises the Special Branch and the Anti-Terrorist Squad.’ Jaggard shrugged. ‘Use your wits—tell him whatever you think he’ll believe, for God’s sake!’

Actually, it wasn’t such a silly question, because a man like Audley wouldn’t believe any old rubbish. But that was his problem now. ‘Who can I call on for back-up?’

‘That depends on what Audley wants.’ Jaggard gave Tom a shrewd look, as though he’d seen more in the question than had been intended. ‘But if he wants anything, then you deal with Colonel Butler—you deal with him, but you report to me. And I don’t want my name mentioned. You just stay with Audley, and keep me informed as to what he’s up to. Right?’

It wasn’t at all right. ‘You want Audley watched— as well as protected?’

‘My dear Tom—not watched’ Jaggard registered mild outrage. ‘Of all people—not watched… if that’s what you’re suggesting—?’

It was beginning to rain: the clouds had come to a decision at last.

But Jaggard seemed oblivious of it.

‘I’m not suggesting anything.’ To his annoyance Tom found Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State himself thinking of Willy, out there in the rain behind him somewhere. ‘I just want to know what the hell you want me to do.’

‘Of course.’ All Jaggard saw was his annoyance, not the reason for it. ‘David is a difficult man… opinionated, arrogant—not to say eccentric. But his loyalty is above question—don’t even think about it… And quite outstanding in his field, Tom—quite outstanding.’ Jaggard nodded to emphasize the accolade. ‘We need him. And we need him now, with Panin on the premises.’

Tom could see the rain running down Jaggard’s face, and could feel it running down his own. And he thought if Jaggard’s a liar, then he’s a good liar. But then—

‘And we need him kept alive— alive, you understand?’

‘Yes.’ But then he would be a good liar, Tom’s train of thought reached its terminus. But he didn’t think the man was lying now.

‘Keeping people alive is my business.’ He nodded back at Jaggard.

‘So what?’

‘So… Research and Development undertakes field-work occasionally. And I think this will be one of those occasions.

Because whatever Panin gives Audley, David won’t pass it on—

he’ll do it himself.’ Another nod. ‘But… he’s old, Tom.’

Old—

‘He always cut corners, and took risks—even in the old days—’

The old days—

‘I don’t so much want him watched, as watched over. So I want to know what he’s doing—and preferably before he does it. And I want to know why he’s doing it, and how he proposes to do it—I Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State want to know every last damn thing that’s happening. Do you receive me?’

Tom had seldom been given more equivocally unequivocal orders.

‘Loud and clear ’ All that remained was for Jaggard to explain what was actually happening, which required such precision. ‘And Panin?’

But Jaggard was looking past him, at whatever he could see through his rain-distorted lenses.

Tom turned, although he already knew what he would see.

‘Make your farewells to Miss Groot,’ said Jaggard. ‘There’s a car down the bottom of the lane with a man in it who’ll tell you about Panin—or why we think he’s here, anyway. His name is Harvey—

Garrod Harvey.’

In this downpour it would have been unreasonable to expect the young policeman to keep Willy in polite conversation. Short of physical restraint he could hardly have restrained her, and even as it was her hair was plastered close to her head.

‘You can keep the man and the car for the time being. He’ll explain who he is, but he can pass as your driver. Miss Groot can take your car. I’ll give you time to collect your gear from the hotel.’ Jaggard’s voice came from behind him. ‘Go and say goodbye to her— now.’

Tom had already raised his hand. There were too many questions still unasked, but an order was an order. But —

‘Harvey will tell you what to do, in the car.’ Jaggard filled the essential gap in his knowledge. ‘ Go on, man—’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Tom launched himself up the rampart, his feet slipping and sliding in the grass. Equivocally unequivocal orders was right! he thought.

It all depended on Harvey, whoever Harvey was—

‘Willy! I’m sorry, darling—’ She looked even wetter than he felt, with her shirt outlining her shape agonizingly ‘—I’m sorry!’

‘Duty calls—huh?’ Her lip drooped on one side.

Her understanding only made it worse. ‘It does. But I’ll call you myself as soon as I can. This may not take long.’

‘And then more mottes and more baileys? ’ She adjusted her unhappiness with an effort. ‘I can’t wait—’ The effort produced a grin ‘—at least it probably won’t be raining on you back in the Lebanon, I guess.’

Tom blinked the rain out of his eyes. ‘I should be so lucky!’ In front of Jaggard all he could do was touch her wet shoulder. ‘Take the car—I’ll call you soon as possible. Maybe this evening, maybe not. Okay?’ The thought of this evening without her was loss and desolation. ‘Goodbye, my love—’

‘Goodbye, my love—’ She echoed him ‘—take good care, Tom.’

He slipped and slid back, down past Jaggard and through the open gateway. There was a car far down the lane, already facing outwards, on to the main road. But, of course, they always turned round for a quick getaway, like adulterers parked in secluded driveways. That was the rule.

So it all depended on Harvey now—

Before the high hedge cut him off he turned back towards her: she was standing just as he had left her, on the edge of old Ranulf’s Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State rampart, like a statue.

Take good care, Tom, he thought.

2

The journey’s last hour, after he had divested himself of Harvey at a convenient railway station, was curiously disquieting, even a little frightening.

If there was one thing Tom prided himself on, it was the ability to concentrate his mind on what was important, to the exclusion of all minor matters, however gratifying and pleasurable. But now, when… after all Henry Jaggard had said (and not said), and with what Garrod Harvey had added… when that concentration should have been on Panin, Nikolai Andrievich and Audley, David Longsdon, and the web of circumstances which hypothetically bound them together… but now— now— he was faced with a damned, bloody mutiny of his thoughts against the direct and legitimate orders of his mind,

It wasn’t even as if they were merely wandering away into the countryside on either side of them, alerted by sign-posts which pointed towards early Norman castles known to him, or even to places adjacent to such castles— Aldingboume, Arundel, Bramber, Cadburn… Ashley, Barley Pound, Basing, Bishops’ Waltham, Castle Redvers— the counties’ roll-call came to him automatically and geographically as he drove westwards, as it did all the time, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State wherever he was, whatever he was doing elsewhere— Alton Charley, Eccleshall, Litchfield… Ascot Doilly, Ascot Earl, Bampton, Banbury— it would have been the same in Staffordshire or Oxfordshire; and he had walked them all anyway, or nearly; and even if an odd name had registered it would still only have been in passing and a minor matter; because (as he had already thought about old Ranulf’s almost forgotten motte only this morning) what had outlasted eight or nine centuries’ decay would still be there waiting for him another day, another time.

But Willy wouldn ‘t—

He shook his head at another approaching sign-post— Branding 4—

he didn’t want to go to Branding—

Or Willy might not be, anyway—

Then he caught sight of the place-names on the other arm of the sign-post: Upper Horley 5… Steeple Horley 6½!

And, by God, Steeple Horley was Audley, David Longsdon— and he’d hardly even thought of Audley since he’d deposited the wretched Harvey on that damp station forecourt, protesting only half-heartedly that this wasn’t what Mr Jaggard had intended. But at that moment it had been exactly what Sir Thomas Arkenshaw had intended, Tom had thought with obstinate satisfaction at the time. Because he wasn’t going to turn up at Steeple Horley, to beard Audley in his den, with a driver who quite obviously wasn’t a driver (in both conversation and driving-ability) because the man drove like a spavined cart-horse but talked too casually about old treacheries, and dropped old names with them, as though he knew it all, had seen and met them all.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State But that was where it had all gone wrong nevertheless, as he’d parked on the forecourt, with Garrod Harvey still talking—

There had been a girl—a very pretty girl, with a tip-tilted nose and breasts to match, such as he loved, and all the confidence of all three—there had been this girl about to cross the station forecourt entrance— God damn! he had stopped the car automatically, just to look at her… but, when he had looked at her, he had thought of Willy instead!

Only six-and-a-half miles—and he was still thinking of Willy. And, what was worse—what was much, much worse—he wasn’t thinking about the next time, if there was a next time: he was cursing Jaggard—Jaggard, and Ganod Harvey, and Audley, and bloody Panin—and wondering what Willy would do now, with the rest of her weekend—now this evening, now tonight and now tomorrow —

But this was foolishness—mere schoolboy foolishness—thinking about… not Audley, not Panin… but what Willy might be doing; tonight—

But she had said ‘ Goodbye, my love—take good care!’

The road curved more sharply than he had expected, and there was a great high downland ridge swinging away from him as he twisted the wheel, then swinging back into view, stark against the confused sky, which didn’t know whether it was winter or spring.

How much emphasis had she put on that? Had it been no more than a casual goodbye—a warning not to drive too fast? And why should that matter to her, anyway? Or to him?

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Even the bloody sun had come out now, suddenly hot through the windscreen, making him blink—when it had finally pissed down out of dark clouds over Ranulf’s bloody little ditches, and she had stood there watching him leave her in the lurch, and—

Oh shit! thought Tom. He had forgotten to pay the bloody hotel bill!

And there was another sign-post: Upper Horley that way, and Steeple Horley—

He had left her in the lurch, and soaking wet, and with the bill. And there was that naval attaché, clean-cut and crew cut, and a good Anglo-Saxon Protestant out of Annapolis and Polaris—or Trident

— whose father was a distinguished professor of something at Harvard, or Yale—

Of Scythian Archaeology, maybe—?

Tom gritted his teeth and jammed his foot on the brake simultaneously as he realized he was over-shooting the sign he’d been looking for, which was half-hidden in an overgrown tangle of hedge.

The car bucked and skidded slightly under him, on the loose gravel of a road which was only half-a-car’s width wider than a track. But mercifully there was nothing behind him to slam into his backside, only a distant cyclist he’d overtaken half-a-mile earlier. But… it had said The Old House, hadn’t it—?

It was very quiet, as much in the middle of a sudden sun-lit nowhere as he had been so happily this morning with Willy, under those rain-clouds. “Rain at first, followed by bright periods Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State spreading from the West” , the weather man had said on the radio this morning. But the truth was that ‘bright periods’ were all in the mind, not the sky.

He engaged reverse gear savagely, scattering the gravel again for an instant before remembering the lone cylist and jamming on the brakes again in panic, gripping the wheel convulsively as he squinted into the mirror.

But there was no cyclist in view now—

Tom frowned into the mirror, first relieved, then angry with himself for his carelessness, and then mystified, in quick succession. Where had the cyclist gone—?

He lowered the driver’s window and poked his head out of the car.

The high curve of the downland was still there, sharp against an outrageously blue sky—the last rearguard of this morning’s clouds were far to the east now. But… if this was Steeple Horley, there was bugger-all to it—not a roof in sight, let alone a steeple.

Then he saw the cyclist, watching from a gap in the hedgerow on the other side of the road, fifteen yards back, peering from behind a blackthorn tangle and a large pair of spectacles.

‘Is this—’ As Tom took a second breath to pitch his voice louder he couldn’t honestly blame the cyclist for taking cover from such a lunatic driver ‘—is this Steeple Horley?’ Manners! ‘Could you tell me, please?’

The head vanished instantly, but the rear wheel of the bicycle came into view just below where it had been, as though the cyclist—it had been a boy in an American baseball cap—was readying Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State himself for instant flight.

‘Steeple Horley, is this?’ Tom addressed the rear wheel.

The head appeared again, hesitantly and partially, and then nodded.

‘Yes.’

About ten years old, estimated Tom. And, as small boys must not talk to strange men, needing encouragement. ‘Where’s the steeple?’

The boy drew breath. ‘Sixteen-thirty—it fell down then.’

And ‘sixteen-thirty’ would be in the reign of King Charles the First, not at 4.30 yesterday afternoon: the spectacles somehow suggested precocious erudition to Tom, and encouraged him towards precision. ‘I’m looking for “The Old House”—where Dr David Audley lives—?’

The boy stared at him for a moment. ‘Why?’

That wasn’t at all what Tom had expected. But a straight question required a straight answer. ‘I have an appointment with him. He’s expecting me.’

‘Oh!’ The boy rose up on one tip-toe to apply his other foot to its pedal. ‘In that case… follow me! ’ Then he vanished again.

Tom backed the car obediently, until he reached the hedgerow gap again, and saw that he had been right the first time: the overgrown legend or the sign did indeed indicate that The Old House lay somewhere down the equally overgrown lane down which the boy had invited him. But of the boy himself, and the bicycle, there was no sign.

Twenty yards down the lane there was a gap in the great tangle of thorn and blackberry bushes on his left, revealing a tiny brick Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State cottage surrounded by apple-trees and an immaculately-tilled vegetable garden. But there was no boy and no bicycle waiting for him at its picket-gate. And there wasn’t any garage, or even a break in the brief ramshackle fence, and the lane continued beyond the gap; so did Audley have a son, then—and a wife—in this Old House of his? Harvey hadn’t said—Harvey must simply have taken it for granted that he knew, or that it was of no importance; or maybe Harvey had left him to stew in his own juice, on being dismissed; but he hadn’t thought to ask, anyway.

He accelerated cautiously. If the boy was Audley’s… allowing that he might be a spindly-twelve, home from some expensive local prep school… that would predi-cate a much younger wife, or an elderly mother—?

He was in the midst of an annoyingly ill-founded and inadequately-based hypothesis when the hedge fell away abruptly, and he saw what was undoubtedly The Old House, on his right—old stone and buttressed—an ancient roof, with an early-sixteenth-century pitch: as a house it hardly made sense in its lack of coherent architectural purpose, with what looked like a barn abutting it—a buttressed barn also, without windows, but with a fine arched doorway wide enough for a loaded wagon, and built of fine ashlar much too good for any barn in a countryside where worked-stone would have been at a premium, with no quarries handy, or rivers up which such stone could easily be brought.

He had to swing the wheel hard again as the lane ended while he was making nonsense of what he saw, to bring the car round into a wide square of gravel, in the L-shape of the eccentric house and the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State impossible barn: stone like that was like gold-dust—or gold-blocks

—like the high-cost outer skin of castles designed to resist rams at close quarters, or petraries and mangonels and trebuchets at a distance, in siege warfare; or to impress the neighbours when English life became more settled and civilized… but not for a bloody barn— not stone as beautiful as that, for God’s sake!

But there was a ditch, right in the middle of an expanse of rough-cut fieldgrass—

Tom got out of the car, frowning. It didn’t look like a serious defensive ditch, for there was no sign of berm or rampart. But maybe there’d been a palisade—it could have been a pathetically-defended manor house, or even an Anglo-Saxon site… compared with Norman works, domestic Anglo-Saxon work was a joke, mostly. And it was undoubtedly a very old ditch—

‘Can I help you?’

The question caught Tom between the shoulder-blades, at his greatest disadvantage, back in another time.

‘Yes—’ He swivelled in the gravel ‘—I’m sorry—’

‘Sir Thomas Arkenshaw?’

‘Yes.’ Tall, thin, blonde—slightly faded blonde—fortyish, and well short of pretty, but not uninteresting, Tom registered in quick succession: typical well-bred English stock, perhaps a shade over-bred.

‘Yes.’ She agreed with him coolly. ‘My husband’s office phoned.’

‘Yes?’ There was something not quite right about that vague, haughty stare of hers. Tom was used to people staling at him Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State unbelievingly—as the young policeman had done at first this morning, before the penny dropped; never mind his unEnglish face, few people knew what a baronetcy was, and expected an elderly knight, dubbed for long years of distinguished civil service or exuding commercial power and prestige. But although this woman wasn’t the type to make that mistake—and wasn’t quite staring unbelievingly, anyway—there was still something wrong.

‘Yes—’ He smiled hesitantly. ‘—I’m not late, am I?’

‘No.’ She ignored the smile. ‘But you do have some form of…’

she extended a long thin-fingered hand on the end of a matchstick arm ‘… of identification—?’

‘Oh—yes!’ The extraordinary thing was that she was somehow rather sexy with it—matchstick arms, vague expression and ash-blonde hair so pale that no one would know when she went off-white, thought Tom professionally; only the recent memory of Willy, as bouncy as a squash ball and as wholesome as her own proverbial blueberry pie, relegated the woman to the second division.

‘Thank you.’ She fumbled his identification, like the Tsarina accepting something rather nasty from a flea-ridden moujik, which she had to take but would have preferred not to look at before she passed it to someone else. ‘Why were you sorry?’

‘Why was I—?’ Now he was behaving like a moujik, damn it! ‘I was captivated by your beautiful house, actually—craning my neck like a tourist, when I should have been knocking on your door, Mrs Audley.’

‘I see.’ She waved his identification card briefly and very closely Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State in front of her face, but then smiled at him, displaying fetching dimples. ‘It is rather beautiful, isn’t it? We’re terribly lucky to live in it, David and I.’

‘But I didn’t understand it.’ Tom knew when he was on a winner.

With some women it would be their children—or their diamonds, or their dogs, or the expertise of their dress-maker. But with this one it was her home.

Nikolai Andrievich Panin, KGB and all the way back to the NKVD

of the 1940s, he thought: that was as far back as he wanted to go.

But, for this moment, Panin would have to wait!

‘The house—?’ She tried to take another look at his picture, but it didn’t seem to do her any good. ‘Or the barn?’ She abandoned his identification in favour of the barn. ‘David loves the barn—he says there’s nothing like it in the whole of Southern England.’ She favoured him with another loving smile. ‘You know about architecture, do you, Sir Thomas? But, of course, you must do, mustn’t you—in order not to understand it, I mean?’

He had to say something intelligent now, for God’s sake! ‘All that fine ashlar… better than the house itself!’ That was a fact, anyway: the porch in which Mrs Audley was standing had been added at a later date, but there was nothing unusual about that. But such stonework as he could see behind the wisteria which covered the house was far rougher than that of the barn. ‘But it’s that archway to the barn I really can’t understand, Mrs Audley.’

As he gestured towards the barn doors, one of them quivered, and then began to swing outwards towards them.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘The archway—of course!’ Mrs Audley gave him another tick, quite oblivious of the opening doors. “That’s what all the experts notice first—the man from Country Life was very taken with it, last year—particularly with the defaced stones on each side, where the coats-of-arms have been cut away. He thought that might have been done not long after the battle of Bosworth Field, in 1485.‘

She blinked at him, with sudden embarrassment, as though aware just too late that she had insulted him by unnecessarily adding the date to the battle. ’Henry Tudor gave the Honour of Horley to the Wilmots, after the Stokeseys had been killed at Bosworth. And the Wilmots had always hated the Stokeseys—at least, since Barnet and Tewkesbury.‘ This time she didn’t supply the date, but offered him the names of another two battles from the Wars of the Roses with another blink, as though they were two recent parliamentary by-elections.

‘Is that so?’ Tom was torn between the barn doors, which were now just outside his range of vision, and the dates of Barnet and Tewkesbury, in a civil war which had never particularly interested him, because it had not been distinguished by any good sieges. But it wouldn’t do to disappoint her—

Damn! he couldn’t resist those barn doors any more (which had to be not later than mid-fifteenth century now, and were even more inexplicable)—

The same small boy was poking his head out of the gap between the heavy doors, only now he could see that little face more clearly: enormous horn-rimmed spectacles, metal-braced teeth, and head encased in its baseball cap, which bore the legend ‘ Forget—

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Hell’, superimposed on the red-white-and-blue starred flag of the Confederate States of America; and, as he observed the tiny apparition, it succeeded in squeezing itself through the gap only to trip on its own feet, to sprawl in the gravel.

Barnet… and bloody Tewkesbury — ?

‘What is it, darling?’ Mrs Audley addressed her son, at her feet, as he searched blindly for his spectacles, which had jumped off his little nose, to fall just short of Tom’s feet.

‘Here—’ Tom bent to retrieve the spectacles, but failed to complete his sentence as he observed the long blonde plait which had fallen out of the baseball cap. Instead, he thought Christ! I’m slipping! I can’t tell the little girls from the little boys now!

‘Thank you.’ Little Miss Audley pushed her spectacles back on to her face quickly, and gave Tom half-a-second’s half-blind acknowledgement before offering her mother another pair of spectacles, which she had been carrying in her hand. ‘Your glasses, Mummy.’

‘What, darling?’ Mrs Audley gazed vaguely at her daughter for another half-second, and then accepted what was being offered to her. ‘Oh—thank you, Cathy dear!’

Miss Audley turned back to Tom. ‘Thank you.’

‘Not at all.’ Tom searched for something to say. She might be anything from eleven to fourteen, but now that they were both wearing spectacles each was a dead ringer for the other, straight up-and-down and flat as a board, and blonde, yet wholly feminine with it: how could he have failed to see! ‘Miss Audley—?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘My daughter, Sir Thomas,’ answered Mrs Audley. ‘Cathy.’ She nodded at the child. ‘Sir Thomas Arkenshaw, Cathy.’

Cathy Audley gave Tom a fearsomely precocious doubting frown, as baffled as any of her elders and betters, as she offered him her hand.

Smart girl, thought Tom. ‘Miss Audley.’ But to hell with her.

‘Your husband is expecting me, Mrs Audley, I believe?’

After having re-examined his identification through her thick-lensed spectacles, Mrs Audley looked at him properly at last. ‘Yes, Sir Thomas… Cathy, go and tell your father that Sir Thomas has arrived.’

‘Yes, Mother.’ Cathy focused properly on him again also, but again registered doubt. ‘Sir Thomas… Ark-Arken-?’ She began to retreat backwards towards the gap in the barn doors. ‘Arken-what?’

‘ Shaw,’ completed Tom. ‘Like in “certain”.’

She grinned at him as she slid into the gap. ‘Or “George Bernard”?

Or “Tripoli”?’

Tom frowned. Tripoli—! But by then she had vanished again.

‘I’m sorry, Sir Thomas,’ said Mrs Audley, shaking her head.

‘Sometimes she’s grown up. But sometimes she says things no one but her father understands—I’m sorry!’

‘Don’t be.’ Tripoli? wondered Tom. ‘She’s delightful, Mrs Audley

—like your house.’ Tripoli? he thought again. Exactly like the house! ‘But what did she mean by “Tripoli”?’

She shook her head again. ‘Heaven only knows! I certainly don’t!’

She laughed, half-regretfully, half-proudly. ‘But please—it’s Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

“Faith”, not “Mrs Audley”, Sir Thomas.’ She gestured towards the porch. ‘Do come inside—David will be with us directly.’

‘Then it’s “Tom”.’ The thought of Audley—not David, and a world away from Father— dragged Tom back to harsh reality. And not Tripoli either—Tripoli was a damnably nasty Libyan memory: he had been scared stiff that one time he’d been in Tripoli, sailing under false colours on a dangerous coast—once in Tripoli was enough, and he was glad that he could never go back there. ‘Please lead the way… Faith.’

He followed her into what seemed for a moment like cool darkness, smelling of furniture polish and the old-house-damp which so often rose from deep cellars beneath. Then he was at the foot of an oak staircase, looking up towards a window ablaze with stained-glass sunlight.

And Panin, he thought— Nikolai Andrievich Panin— who was another world away from David Audley here and these two females-of-the-species, but also in the same world that he and Audley both inhabited outside it.

‘Tom—’ Faith Audley accepted the diminutive as of right, having been quite properly unimpressed with ‘Sir Thomas’ even before she’d had a clear view of him ’—we have to go through the kitchen because we’ve lost the key to the French windows in the dining room. David says he hung it up, for the winter… but heaven only knows what he actually did with it… It’ll turn up one day, of course… He’s down in the orchard making one of his bonfires—

making a bonfire is one of the two jobs he’s good at… the other is making compost heaps—‘ She threw her domestic prattle over her Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State shoulder as she led him down a short passage towards a stone-arched doorway ’—bonfires and compost heaps are major scientific operations, according to him, and I’m not allowed to touch either of them—‘ Beyond the door lay a huge kitchen, dominated by an equally huge table, scrubbed pale with time and elbow-grease ’—which is ludicrous really, because I’m the scientist in the family, and David doesn’t really know why one wire must go on one terminal—‘

She was already opening another door while Tom was still taking in the kitchen’s weird mixture of ancient-and-modern, between its smoke-darkened beams and stone-flagged floor, and the gleaming plastic gadgetry of electric cooker and microwave and dish-washer, via a middle-aged solid fuel Aga stove, with a museum-array of copper saucepans and a blackened fireplace furnished with an iron turning-spit which could have roasted a whole pig to celebrate the news of any battle of the Wars of the Roses, if this household had been on its winning side.

‘Tom—?’ Faith Audley’s voice issued from the half-light of another passage.

‘Coming!’ Damn the Wars of the Roses! Tom shook his head.

Another short corridor, with a laundry room on one side and a larder on the other, and other doors—for the extremes of boiler and freezer, maybe—?

Tom blinked as the light streaming through the last door hit him, and stepped out of the house in Faith Audley’s wake, following her under another stone archway which had never started its life in a Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State kitchen garden wall, its crudely defaced heraldic shields reminding him of the bigger arch above the barn doors.

Then the full sun hit him as he emerged from the archway into a little courtyard at the back of the house, with a stone well-head in the centre of it and a fine view of the high downland away across a coarse winter lawn in the foreground.

But no sign of Audley—? He frowned towards the man’s wife.

‘This is the first good day we’ve had, when it hasn’t rained much

—’ She wasn’t looking at him, but at the grass ‘—but does he prune the roses? Oh no! ’ She turned to him at last, sniffing the air as she did so. ‘ He has to make a bonfire… and if the wind stays in this direction… we shall get the benefit of it—’ She swung round to look at the house ‘—in fact, I’d better go and close all the windows before it’s too late—excuse me, Sir Thomas— Tom… But I’ll put the kettle on for a cup of tea while I’m about it. David will be here directly.’ She indicated the nearest of a group of dirt-stained white ironwork chairs. ‘He knows I was bringing you here.’

Tom wondered what Research and Development had passed on to Audley about him, in preparation for this meeting. Whatever it was, it ought to be about him, not Panin, because Jaggard had indicated that the Russian had arrived unobtrusively, by agreement with the FCO. But R & D had ways of knowing things, Harvey had warned; and it would certainly know all about one Thomas Arkenshaw, Harvey had added nastily: ‘ He probably knows more about you than we know — and maybe more than you’ll find comfortable, old boy! ’

So what? thought Tom. considering the grimy seat of the chair. It Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State looked as though it hadn’t been sat on since last summer, and although he might have parked his castle-exploring denims of this morning on it he wasn’t about to mess up the good suit he had packed for tonight’s dinner-with-Willy that would never take place. Instead, he sauntered across the yard—it was more a terrace than a yard, separated from the lawn above it by a low stone wall—

until he reached the well, which was completely equipped with a rusty winder and an antique wooden bucket on a chain. Idly, he picked up a small piece of flaked stone from the rim and dropped it in.

One, two— plop!

‘Hullo, there! Arkenshaw, I presume?’

Tom controlled his involuntary start of guilt at being caught throwing something into another man’s well: there were parts of the world where that rated a bullet in the back. Also, he had somehow expected Audley to come from the direction of the lawn, rather than from behind him.

A slow innocent turn was required, anyway.

‘Good afternoon, Dr Audley.’ “Big, ugly old devil‘, Harvey had said off-handedly, and all those adjectives filled David Audley’s bill exactly: in his gardening clothes, which had not seen better days for many years, he resembled nothing so much as an ageing Irish navvy who had done his share of fighting for pounds and pints on the old fairground circuit of his native land. So that makes two of us, thought Tom, who don’t look like themselves! ’Im sorry to descend on you like this.‘ That was what Jaggard had said to Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State him; only this time it was no lie. ’But you’ve had a phone-call, I gather.‘

‘I have.’ Audley advanced across the terrace in his enormous navvy’s gumboots, which looked as though they had steel toe-caps, until he was able to look down on Tom from close quarters from his six-foot four. ‘But I won’t shake your hand.’

‘No?’ What confused Tom was that the big man’s intense scrutiny of him was nevertheless not in the least hostile—if anything his expression was as innocently friendly as his battered features allowed. ‘Well, you don’t have to—’ He stopped as Audley’s hands came up, palms upwards.

‘I’ve been making a bonfire.’ Audley presented two massive, dirt-encrusted paws. ‘So I’m not really fit for decent company—my wife won’t even let me in her kitchen. She says I’m like “Pig-pen”

in Peanuts.’ He grinned a huge grin. ‘Charlie Brown—? She’s a Charlie Brown addict, is my wife.’ He chuckled. ‘I see myself rather as Schroeder, the intellectual one—with her as Lucy, because she packs a mean right hook. But she sees me as “Pig-pen”—we never see ourselves as others see us, do we?’

Tom struggled against an enveloping sense of unreality. The idea of the willowy, blue-blooded Mrs Audley, pale and fragile, packing any sort of punch… the idea of her in those huge hands, bear-hugged… was incongruous to the point of disbelief. And there was also the unlikely offspring of this unlikely union, and Tripoli too, in the back of his mind.

But there was another explanation to all this, which was tripping him before he’d started to move: one thing Jaggard and Harvey and Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State rumour were agreed on was that Audley was tricky. So he had to be tricky too!

‘Your daughter packs a mean punch too, Dr Audley.’ He grinned back at the man.

‘She does?’ Audley hadn’t expected that reply. ‘She does—yes.’

He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Yes?’

‘Yes. She had me with a reference to “Tripoli”—in relation to George Bernard Shaw and Thomas Arken-shaw. But I shall have to work it out before I take you away from your bonfire, anyway.’

Another possibility opened up. ‘And I suppose I should be glad that it was a bonfire and not a well-rotted compost heap—?’

Audley stared at him, momentarily off-put. Then his eyes softened, and he smiled the ugly man’s smile—the legendary smile Tom had heard of, which had softened women down the ages according to Willy.

‘Ah! Now I see it!’ Audley nodded at him. ‘I didn’t see it at first…

and I don’t really see it now—the resemblance. But it’s there in the mind—Danny—and now Tom Arkenshaw! ’

‘It?’ Tom realized that Audley had been too quick for him. ‘What resemblance?’ The second question came out before he could stop it. ‘Danny?’ The third was too closely-coupled to the second, damn it!

‘Danuta— Danushia… or Danka—?’ Audley closed his eyes for an instant, and when he opened them again he wasn’t looking at Tom at all, but at someone else who wasn’t on the terrace with them, but in another place and another time. ‘But Danny to us, Tom Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Arkenshaw— Danny Dzieliwski—’ He pronounced the name better than most Englishmen did: Den-chev-less-ka—‘your mum, Tom Arkenshaw—Diana, Lady Arkenshaw, dowager baroness, I suppose that would be now, eh?’ Suddenly Audley’s face was an inscrutably battered mask, like the defaced coat-of-arrns on the archways of his home. ‘Now that she’s sailing under British colours? And whose colours are yours this afternoon, Tom Arkenshaw, I wonder—eh?’

Bloody Jaggard had miscalculated! was all Tom could think for a moment. If he’d thought that Audley wouldn’t see through this, by God!

‘You know my mother, sir?’ He felt dreadfully young now.

‘I did.’ Audley’s face was no longer inscrutable—it was brutal now. ‘Don’t mess with me, boy: you may not know that as well as I know it, but you know it well enough. Because that’s why you’re here—because someone thinks I’ll treat you better because of it…

Baynham, it could be… It wouldn’t be Jack Butler—he doesn’t play games like that… Or it could be Stacey—or Jaggard… Or, most likely, because he’s inclined that way, it could be Garry Harvey—’ All the time he’d been building his bonfire, out in the orchard since that phone-call, Audley must have been going through the possibilities, against what Research and Development would have told him; but, although he’d got some of them spot on, he hadn’t had enough information for certainty.

‘That isn’t why I’m here, sir.’ That was all Tom could manage as he thought I should have phoned up Mother—I’m an idiot!

‘No?’ Audley grasped the winding handle of the well, and swung it Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State as idly as Tom had thrown the stone into the well, making the chain squeak. ‘But… the bugger of it is that I will treat you better.

So whichever of them it is, he’s no fool!’ He dropped the handle.

“Tripoli”, she said, did she? Well, you’ll have to work that one out for yourself, I’m afraid!‘ Then he frowned at Tom. ’But as for your long-forgotten—long-forgotten, but never-forgotten—mother, Tom Arkenshaw… how is the dear girl… after longer than either of us would care to remember? She’s well, I hope?‘

That was more than Tom cared to think about. ‘My mother is very well, sir.’ He had to buy time to think about that, although thinking about Mamusia as a ‘dear girl’ was altogether too much to think about. ‘And my job now is to keep you in the same excellent state of health—that’s why I’m here, Dr Audley.’

‘Me?’ Audley sniffed the air suddenly, and Tom was aware that he’d caught the same smell, of that distant bonfire taking hold,

‘What’s that supposed to mean, may I ask?’

They had come to the point. And it was mercifully a world away from Mother. ‘It means Panin, sir—Nikolai Andrievich Panin.’

‘Panin?’ Audley sniffed again, and then relaxed. ‘Well, he doesn’t constitute a health warning, I wouldn’t have thought—?’ Then he frowned at Tom. ‘But you’re diplomatic protection—overseas protection—? How does Nikolai Panin concern you?’

‘He’s here in England.’ As Tom nodded he smelt bonfire smoke again. ‘And he wants to talk to you.’

‘He does?’ Audley was unrelaxed now. ‘Then he’s your problem, Tom Arkenshaw—not me.’ He sniffed again, and turned suddenly Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State towards the house, as though he had realized what his bonfire was about to do. ‘ Damn?

‘No, sir—’ Something cracked sharply inside and outside and above Tom’s head, and the French window behind Audley simultaneously exploded into fragments—

Audley started to jerk back against the splintering window as Tom’s conditioned reflexes reacted out of Beirut experience: with a car bomb when the world fragmented you were already too late—

but with the bullet you heard you had one fragment of time before the next one, which you wouldn’t hear, arrived—

He grabbed the man by whatever he could take hold of—which stretched under his hand for one agonizing delaying instant before taking the strain as he dragged Audley down with him on the stone-flagged terrace, behind the pathetically inadequate protection of the wall, before the next bullet arrived.

3

From where Tom finished up lying behind his own stretch of wall, he found himself looking directly at Audley across a gap through which three or four stone steps connected the terrace with the lawn.

But although they were thus facing each other at about the same distance as a moment before, the unnaturalness of ground level seemed to bring them much closer together, so that he was quite irrelevantly aware first that the big man hadn’t stood very close to Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State his razor before breakfast.

But then the features beneath the grey stubble annexed all his attention: as he watched them they were contorted into even greater ugliness by what Tom thought for an instant might be a mixture of surprise and fear—but which he knew in the next instant was red, blazing rage, only half a second away from an irrational explosion of movement.

‘For Christ’s sake— keep your head down, man. ’ What lent urgency to the command was the inadequacy of the wall. ‘Unless you want your great brain spread all over the terrace?’

Mercifully, the old ploy of the crudely descriptive warning, which he had used in far less desperate circumstances on far less imaginative men, worked well enough with Audley: the glare in his eyes flickered, but then faded as he subsided physically, shrinking down like any sensible man who had suddenly realized what the smallest piece of nickel-plated steel could do at high velocity to flesh and blood and bone. And with Audley there ought to be recollection as well as imagination: it might be half a lifetime or more since he had been under fire, but he had once been in a real war, Tom remembered.

‘All right, all right!’ The features twisted again, and then Audley showed his teeth like an old wolf. ‘You think he’ll try a second shot?’

‘I don’t know.’ Tom shifted his position slightly, to get a view of the terrace and the house. The well-head offered secure protection not far away. But where could he go after that?

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Aren’t you supposed to be the expert?’ Audley had his second wind now.

‘I don’t know where he fired from.’ Tom estimated the distance from the well to the French windows (but they might be locked)…

and then to the archway leading to the kitchen passage (but that was too far for safety). ‘You were looking down the garden, weren’t you?’

‘I was looking at you, actually. You were telling me how you were going to protect me, as I recall—’ Audley stopped abruptly. ‘I’m sorry! I’m not in practice for this sort of game, Tom Arkenshaw—

forgive me!’

Tom concentrated on the damaged French window. There were two steps up to it, from the terrace, and the bullet had struck high up, at the exact junction of four small lead-lights, driving the lead inwards and cracking others below them. So—

‘A long shot,’ said Audley. ‘It was a long shot.’

‘How do you know?’ But he was almost certainly right, thought Tom. ‘Or are you trying to reassure me?’

‘I’m trying to reassure myself, more like! I don’t know—’ Audley checked himself again, but only for a fraction of a second. ‘ Stop there! Not another step, Cathy! ’

Tom shifted his gaze from the smashed window, and saw half of what Audley had seen from where he lay, which was framed in the arch.

‘But, Father—’

‘Not another step—understand?’ Audley’s voice steadied. ‘Do you Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State hear me?’

‘I hear you, Father.’ The visible part of the tea-tray quivered. ‘But I don’t understand you. Is there something— ’ The tray lurched slightly ‘—Father… what on earth are you doing?’

‘Where’s your mother?’ The man’s voice was almost conversational now. ‘Not another step—remember? And I mean that. Where’s Mummy?’

‘She’s shutting the windows,’ Cathy snapped back irritably. ‘To keep out your smoke, Father… And I think she’s just broken the one that sticks, in the little bedroom— I heard the glass go… So she’s not going to be very pleased with you, because she’s been asking you for ages to make it easier to close.’ She paused only for an instant. ‘Is there something I can’t see, that I’m about to step on? Because this tray weighs a ton!’

‘Go—’ Audley choked slightly on the word, and Tom sympathized with him as he cleared his throat ‘—go back to the kitchen.

Don’t…’ He trailed off, as though he was thinking again, and drew a deep breath. ‘Someone’s just taken a shot at us, love—from somewhere up on the hillside. What you heard was the bullet hitting the window— okay?’

For a moment of disbelief the tray was steady as a rock. ‘Yes, Father?’ Then it trembled. ‘Now?’

‘Wait!’

Tom stared at Audley, aware irrelevantly that he could now smell the bonfire against which Faith Audley was closing her windows.

‘There’s my good girl!’ said Audley softly. ‘Go back and find your Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State mother. Keep away from the windows. Find her… and say to her

“Limejuice”—“Limejuice”— got that?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Repeat it—’ Audley held his voice so unnaturally steady that the steadiness somehow emphasized his urgency ‘—repeat it, love, please.’

‘ “Limejuice”.’ Cathy sounded slightly offended. ‘ “Limejuice”, Father.’

‘Jolly good!’ The false encouragement sounded equally unnatural.

‘Off you go then, love.’

But that wouldn’t do for Cathy Audley—Tom wanted to shake his head at the man, but he was staring too fixedly at the archway.

The edge of the tray stayed in view. ‘But… but…’

‘Off you go!’ Then Audley looked at Tom, and understood the limits of obedience belatedly. ‘I’ve got Tom Arkenshaw here to protect me, Cathy love—that’s what he’s here for.’ He grinned hideously at Tom. ‘Isn’t that so, Sir Thomas—?’

Tom smelt the bonfire again, and thought that he would never smell a bonfire in the future—if there was a future—without smelling his own inadequacy. ‘That’s right, Miss Audley,’ he agreed.

‘ What’s this?’ Another voice from somewhere behind the child startled him just as the tray, and that part of her which he could see, disappeared. ‘Have you broken something, Cathy—?’

‘ “Limejuice”, Mummy—’ The child cut through her mother’s angry question ‘—Father says “Limejuice” !’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Tom strained his ears to catch the woman’s reaction, but there was only a moment’s silence hemmed in between the wall and the house, against the distant drone of a faraway aircraft. Then there came a clink of teacups on the tray followed by the sound of the back door closing. So… whatever it meant exactly, that codeword, it was a Word of Power—and Audley was blessed with intelligently obedient womenfolk, young and old, when matters came to their crunch.

‘As I was saying… I don’t know.’ Audley attended to him again.

‘But. . he missed, anyway.’

Tom felt the hardness of the flagstone under his hipbone. ‘You also said that he fired from somewhere on the hillside.’

‘So I did.’ Audley sounded curiously relaxed now. ‘Because from the bottom of the garden he couldn’t have missed —I also made that assumption.’

Tom frowned at him, trying to remember the bottom of the garden.

There had been a hedge—? He couldn’t remember, damn it!

‘It’s a bare hundred yards.’ Audley shook his head. ‘I think the bullet went just over my head, maybe a bit to one side… It’s a long time since I’ve had that disagreeable sensation—or I suppose it could be called “agreeable”, relatively speaking… But then, again, I wouldn’t have imagined that I heard it if it hadn’t missed, would I?’

How could he be so damned cold-blooded? thought Tom irritably.

“Thirty-nine years, to be exact.‘ Audley’s eyes glazed at the memory. ’And I was also sniped at several times in Normandy, the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State year before—Jerry loved to pick off silly fools who poked their heads out of their tanks… But, of course, I never heard a bloody thing— no— there was one time…‘ He focused on Tom, and dropped the rest of the irrelevant anecdote instantly. ’About a hundred yards, the end of the garden, anyway. So if he had a Brown Bess, and this was Waterloo, that’s about what I’d expect.

Because the French skirmishers shot at Mercer in front of his battery for about half an hour—and from considerably less than a hundred yards, too—also without hitting him.‘ He nodded at Tom, as though childishly pleased with himself at the thought. ’ ”So long as they were aiming at me I wasn’t worried“—didn’t he say something like that?‘

Tom smelt bonfire again. And now there was a wisp of smoke to go with the smell. But, much more confusing, was the thought that any competent marksman, let alone a professional, could have missed anything, at any practical range, with a modern rifle; or…

had Audley moved— or had he himself moved— at that precise instant, when the finger had squeezed so gently—?

‘You said… from the hillside?’ Tom felt his anger well up. ‘And bugger Waterloo!’

‘Yes—quite right!’ Audley mistook anger for urgency. ‘My dear boy—I’m only talking because I’m shit-scared—I’m sorry! You may be used to this sort of thing, from the Lebanon, or wherever…’ Audley closed his eyes and screwed up his face. ‘Im only trying to reassure myself… that he isn’t coming down the garden right now, to spit in my eye, for God’s sake!’ He kept his eyes closed. ‘But… there’s a track up the hillside—it goes Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State diagonally from left to right, with bushes on the outer edge for cover… And that would give him a nice clear long shot on to this terrace… God only knows the distance, downhill—more than a quarter of a mile, but less than half, so say about six hundred yards.’ He opened his eyes again. ‘Easy access from the road down the bottom—quick getaway. The bugger must be kicking himself now, missing at that range, whether he’s still there or not—eh?’ He watched Tom. ‘But how long do we wait for him to get cold feet?

Until I get rheumatism?’

‘No.’ At that range the man shouldn’t have missed, thought Tom.

But he certainly wouldn’t miss twice, if he got a clear shot.

A clear shot! he thought suddenly, staring upwards.

‘No,’ he murmured, twisting himself off his hip on to all fours.

‘So what—’ Audley’s mouth opened as Tom raised his head above the parapet ‘—for God’s sake, man! Get down!’

Tom studied the view gratefully. If there was a hedge at the bottom of the garden he couldn’t see it, never mind the hillside beyond.

What had deceived him had been Faith Audley’s estimation of the direction of the wind: it wasn’t blowing directly towards the house, but more diagonally, so that they were only on the edge of the thick clouds of smoke which were now billowing from the orchard across the lawn.

He got to his feet. ‘Your wife said you were good with bonfires.’

He grinned happily down at the big man. ‘I can see that she was right.’

Audley stared at him for a moment, then raised himself quickly.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Ouch!’ He rubbed his hip fiercely. ‘Damned old bones!’ Then he considered his handiwork. ‘Ye-ess… I’d forgotten about that.’ He nodded at Tom. “That’ll be the damp stuff on the top catching—

smoke… The trick is to get the driest material underneath, with an access for air to windward—that makes for a hot heart, and then you can burn anything if you’ve graded it properly. But you must get the ash straight on the flower beds, when it’s properly cooled, and before it has a chance to rain—it’s useless once it’s been rained on, you know.‘ He climbed stiffly to his feet, to tower over Tom.

‘Is that so?’ said Tom politely.

‘Yes. The rain washes out the potash.’ Then Audley gestured towards the archway. ‘Do you think it might be advisable to run like hell now, while we can? Before I exhibit unbecoming twitches of fear—?’ He started to move before Tom could reply. ‘In fact, I think I’ll lead the way, just in case you’ve forgotten it.’

Tom followed him back into the kitchen passage, and watched him lock the back door and shoot a massive iron bolt.

‘There now!’ Audley turned to him. ‘I observe that you are unarmed. But I take it that you have your armament in your car?’

‘As a matter of fact… no, Dr Audley.’

‘What?’ Audley started to move again. ‘But I thought you fellows were all armed to the teeth—’ He flung the words over his shoulder ‘—apart from which, I had the impression that you said that you had come to babysit me—?’

‘Yes—’ Tom had to trot to keep up with him as they reached the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State kitchen ‘—but we weren’t expecting—’

‘Not expecting?’ Audley cut him off as he prised a 12-bore shotgun off two wooden pegs on the wall above the fireplace.

‘Now where the hell are the cartridges—?’ He frowned around the enormous kitchen.

‘They’re on the table,’ said Tom, pointing.

‘Ah!’ Audley broke the 12-bore and loaded it. ‘That comes of having a good wife, by God! Not that she isn’t going to give me hell for this!’ He snapped the gun together. ‘Not expecting? I thought that was what girls say, whose mothers didn’t teach them the facts of life, Sir Thomas Arkenshaw.’ He thrust the gun into Tom’s hands. ‘Here—you take it—you’re the ruddy expert! And your reflexes are evidently better than mine. And so they should be.’ He waited while Tom examined the weapon. ‘Do you think he’ll have another try?’

It was no good saying that he didn’t know, so Tom shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. But if he’s stupid enough to miss, then perhaps he’s stupid enough to try.’ But first things first. ‘I don’t want to wait for him on the ground floor, anyway.’ He looked around. ‘And… where’s your wife—and your daughter?’

‘You don’t need to worry about them.’

‘I’ll be the judge of what I’ll worry about, Dr Audley. Where are they?’

“They’re safe. That’s all you need to know.‘ Audley made an obstinate face. ’This is an old house. It’s got nooks and crannies in it that it would take you hours to find. You let me worry about their Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State safety, Tom Arkenshaw—you just worry about me. Because that’s who I’m worried for.‘

So that was what ‘Limejuice’ had signified— Take cover!— thought Tom. And that was why Audley had relaxed once the family codeword had been transmitted, and his family was safe. ‘Very well, Dr Audley. Then I want to get you one floor up. And I want some back-up before I get you away from here. So I need to make a phone-call.’

Audley shook his head. ‘You don’t need to worry about that, either. Faith will have made that call. That’s the first half of Limejuice—she knows what to do.’ He pointed towards the door through which they had first entered the kitchen. ‘I’ll lead the way

—’

‘No.’ Tom pushed past him. ‘Which way at the top of the stairs?’

‘Right.’ Audley nodded submissively. ‘The door at the end of the landing is the one you want.’

‘Close all the doors behind you as you go.’

‘Okay—I know the rules.’ Suddenly there was a note of weariness in Audley’s voice which made Tom pause. The man might know the rules, but it was probably a long time since he had had to apply them, so there were allowances which had to be made. Indeed, he had said as much— I’m not in practice for this sort of game‘, he had admitted.

He grinned at the big man—big old man, was what he had to remind himself: considering that the last time Audley had been shot at (or the last time he was admitting to it, anyway) had been Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State before he, Tom, had been born… and considering also that the man had now just been shot at with his family around him and his garden bonfire smouldering peacefully—considering all of that…

he could have been a lot more troublesome. ‘It’s just a precaution, Dr Audley,’ he said reassuringly. ‘Almost certainly quite unnecessary. Because I think he’s long gone. I wouldn’t have put my head up if I’d thought otherwise.’

‘Aye.’ Audley gave him an old-fashioned look, as though he understood exactly what Tom was doing. ‘And you’d never be able to face your dear mother if you’d lost me, would you?’ Then his expression hardened. ‘So let’s get on with your unnecessary precautions, shall we?’

The old house was wrapped in stillness ahead of him, so that every sound he made echoed for an instant and was then extinguished as the silence damped it down. But at least that made their passage easier, the more so since the man at his back really did remember the rules, standing still whenever he stopped, and moving again only when he signalled, until they reached the room at the end of the landing.

Suddenly the carpet was thick underfoot, after the stone flags of the ground floor, which had seemed to have the whole world under them, and then the solid oak of staircase and landing, with only the occasional rug from Bokhara or Tabriz which (with everything else around him) had served to remind him that Audley did not depend on his pay for his lifestyle.

This was the master bedroom, with a duvet-covered bed tailored to Audley’s size and the loneliness of the long-distance runner before Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State finding any other occupant. But, more importantly, there were windows on three sides of it, with views of front and back.

‘Wait!’ Audley’s voice had recovered its note of command during their journey.

Tom watched him fumble beside the bed, observing his bedtime reading at the same time with a sense of unreality: on the oak table in the hall below there had been the whole morning’s take of newspapers, from the Sun to Pravda; but here was Patrick Wormald’s Festschrift for his old tutor, Wallace-Hadrill, of early medieval fame; and Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society somehow weakened his hold on more pressing matters.

‘What are you doing?’ He forced himself to check the terrace first, through an arrow-slit window alongside a very twentieth-century en suite bathroom which had been built into one corner of the vast bedroom.

‘I’m… I’ve just switched on the bloody alarm system—’ Audley straightened up cautiously, as though he well knew how close his head came to the beam directly above him ‘—is what I’ve just done. So now… any exterior visitor will be welcomed with a klaxon loud enough to wake the dead.’

Tom commenced the long walk to the dormer window at the other end of the bedroom. ‘So you’re used to this sort of thing, then?’

‘No—’ Audley followed him with his eyes ‘—no, we damn well are not!’

The sweep of gravel at the front, with his black Rover in the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State middle of it, was equally empty. But Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society had hardened Tom’s heart. “Then why such a sophisticated alarm system?‘ He turned back towards Audley, setting the butt of the shotgun on the carpet.

Audley’s face became brutal. ‘There are such people as burglars—

they wear masks and striped jerseys, and have bags over their shoulders labelled “Swag”—don’t you have them in London?’

Audley paused. ‘Or Beirut? Or Athens? Or Cairo and Alexandria and Khartoum?’ Another pause. ‘Or is your brand of security purely political, and not capitalist?’

Tom admired the view from the third side, across open fields in which sheep were busy recycling grass on the edge of the downland ridge for half a long mile, up to a fence beside a road which climbed the ridge. That would be the road which connected with the track… but there was nothing on it now, of course.

‘I used to keep geese, to do the same job much less expensively.

And I ate the ones I didn’t sell at a profit,’ said Audley bitterly. ‘I rather like geese. They treat human beings with proper contempt.

But Faith doesn’t fancy them—either as geese or goose. And…

she’s a scientist by training, so she has to believe in electronic gadgets.’

Tom thought of the Persian carpets, which would roll up very easily, and of some of the other objects he’d seen. So burglars was fair enough—except for one thing. ‘And what is “limejuice”, then?’ He tore himself away from Audley’s rural tranquillity. ‘And why “limejuice”, anyway?’ He injected pure curiosity to soften the sharpness of the question with a half-smile, remembering that he Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State must make allowances.

Audley blinked. ‘I once had the doubtful honour of serving with an armoured regiment which couldn’t really protect itself properly when it ran into Germans.’ He blinked again. ‘In great big tanks.’

Tom waited. And then restrained himself, and continued to wait.

‘Eighty-eights were fortunes of war—misfortunes, rather… And Mark IVs were about even-steven—’ Audley looked clear through him ‘—the only trouble was, the Germans were better than we were, like the First XV playing the Second XV… On a good day, with the wind in our favour, and some of them sick, we could maybe take them, with a bit of luck—like, if we mixed up with a good infantry battalion, who had things under control… and a couple of 17-pounders to blunt Jerry’s enthusiasm—’ Suddenly he was looking at Tom. ‘But T-Tigers— Mark V’s— and especially King T-Tigers… that was like playing the All Blacks—we really couldn’t handle them at all. You just had to hope that you were in the reserve troop that day, on the touchline cheering the team on.’

He nodded. ‘Because then—then if you were lucky, and spotted them first… then you could call up your little spotter plane, who was stooging up and down in the clouds up above, trying to be unobtrusive at about the speed of an invalid tricycle, and hoping he’d be lucky too… And then, if it really was your lucky day and his, there’d be a squadron of rocket-firing Typhoons within call.’

He drew a long breath. ‘Some days there wasn’t—or not quickly enough for the lead troop… Some days the spotter bought it… But that was Limejuice anyway: it was there to protect us from our just deserts.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State And genuine history it was, too, thought Tom—like Mamusia remembering dead Uncle Henryk; and, also, perhaps not something Audley was normally so garrulous about, except that now he was in mild shock from the terrace. It was a phenomenon Tom had observed before, and most recently on the part of an elderly Palestinian Arab, who had regaled him with his memories of the King David Hotel bomb in ‘46, in gory detail, after that last Beirut massacre.

‘But Limejuice now—’ Audley caught his expression ‘—our duty man will pass it on to Special Branch liaison. Which means we’ll have the nearest police unit in the first instance. Then an Armed Support Group—or whatever they call it now—’

‘The police arrive unarmed?’

‘God knows!’ Audley had evidently accepted his ‘merely a precaution’ reassurance at face value. ‘But it’s certainly an

“Approach with extreme caution” job… And finally, in God’s good time, a couple of our own people will appear—it’s all laid down in the Contingency Book… Which Jack Butler updated not long ago, as it happens.’ He sniffed. ‘Which is why I’ve got it all off pat —I had to sign that I’d read it… You don’t think this is an everyday occurrence, do you?’

Tom had drifted back to the front window. ‘I was beginning to wonder.’

‘Well—you can stop bloody wondering. It isn’t. At least, not to me, by God!’

The square of gravel was still empty. ‘Not ever?’ He turned Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State towards the open field with the sheep, deliberately not looking at the man.

Audley didn’t reply to the question, and Tom remembered his Arab again as he crossed to the arrow-slit window. ‘Not ever?’

‘In twenty-five years…’ Audley spoke against his better judgement, just like the Arab ‘… I’ve had trouble three times here.’

The old Arab had had constant trouble since the 1930s. So Audley had been damn lucky, thought Tom: he was still living in the same house. And the terrace was as empty as the forecourt, so he was still lucky. ‘Three times—?’

‘Only once…’ Audley searched for the right word, committed now to his indiscretion ‘… genuinely.’

Now what the hell did he mean by that? wondered Tom.

‘The other two were illegitimate intrusions. And heads rolled because of them, on the Other Side, I can tell you!’

‘They did?’ Tom was disappointed in his man suddenly.

‘They did.’ Just as suddenly all the heat went out of Audley’s voice. ‘You think I’m bull-shitting you, Tom Arkenshaw—I can see that. Right?’

‘No—’

‘If you want to think that, then you do that. And if you think I’m trying to impress you… well, you can think that too.’ Audley paused. ‘The last time was ten years ago. And I was in Italy at the time. It was about the time your section was formed.’ Another pause. ‘And if you care to check the record you’ll find that it was formed on my recommendation. You were in your second year at Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State university at the time. You were secretary of the Anglo-Polish club and treasurer of the Wine and Food Society, which must have been a lot more enjoyable.’ Another pause. ‘And would you like me to give you the name of the woman who recruited you?’

Harvey had been right— sod the bastard! ‘Not especially, Dr Audley. But I would like to know why you’re assuming this is the Russians.’

‘I’m not assuming any such thing. And for God’s sake call me David—otherwise I’ll have to call you “Sir Thomas”. It’s bad enough that I’ve had to explain to my daughter what a baronet is, without having to do that.’

‘Yes?’ Tom grabbed the diversion gratefully. ‘What did she say?’

‘She was quite relieved.’ Audley fell for the diversion like any doting father. ‘You had confused her somewhat, I think.’

‘If it’s any consolation to her, she’d confused me too, you can tell her—David.’

‘Yes?’ Then Audley saw through him. ‘I’m not assuming any such thing.’

He’d better not go on underrating Mamusia’s old admirer. ‘No?’

Besides which, he had to keep checking the windows—not so much for some mad bugger with a rifle as for some poor devil of a policeman saddled with an “extreme caution” order. And that meant the forecourt again. ‘Then who else could it be? Who have you offended?’

‘Nobody—that’s the trouble, Tom.’ Audley’s frown indicated that he had already tackled the problem, but in vain. ‘I’m not into Irish Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State matters nowadays—I’m not reliable there… And the same applies to Arab-Israeli business—no one trusts me with them either…

except the Arabs and the Jews themselves, that is—and they don’t matter…’ He bit his lip.

‘But you’re a Soviet specialist—aren’t you?’

‘Supposedly… sometimes.’ Audley bridled slightly.

‘Like now?’

Audley chewed at his lip, as though he didn’t like its taste. ‘In so far as it’s any of your business—yes… But nothing contentious…

Interesting, maybe— bloody fascinating, if you like—’ But then he shook his head decisively ‘—only I don’t see how it could be them

—not this time… if ever.’

Tom felt reality slipping again. ‘You’re sacrosanct, are you?’

‘What?’ Audley focused on him as though he hadn’t heard.

‘Where I come from they aren’t above hitting people, David.’

Audley stared at him for a moment. ‘But you aren’t where you come from. And I’m not “people”, Tom.’ Now Audley was focusing exactly on him. ‘No, don’t get me wrong, my lad: no one’s sacrosanct, I agree… But at my level, over here and over there, there are a few unwritten rules, Tom.’

‘What rules?’

‘ What rules?’ The brutal look returned. ‘In theory the rules exist at two levels—at least, according to Jack Butler, who’s a great man for rules—“Rules of Engagement”, as he puts it—okay?’ But then he read Tom’s face. ‘You’re used to terrorists, boy—uncontrolled ones and Soviet-controlled ones— I know! But that’s not what I’m Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State talking about now.’

‘So what are you talking about?’ The fact that Audley knew the score made it more confusing. ‘What two levels?’

‘Okay!’ Audley nodded. ‘There’s the gentlemanly level— which Jack truly understands. Which is like Wellington at Waterloo, when this artillery officer comes up to him, and says he’s got a clear view of Napoleon and his staff, and a battery pointing in that direction, and he’s ready to fire. But the Duke says “No! no! I’ll not allow it. It is not the business of commanders to be firing on each other.” Okay?’

Tom felt he had to argue. ‘But what about us trying to hit Rommel in North Africa—the Keyes commando raid? And the Americans killing Yamamoto with that aerial ambush, after they’d broken the Japanese naval code?’

‘That was different.’ Audley waved a vague hand as he peered out of one of his own windows, across the pacific sheep. ‘That was hot war, not cold war.’

‘Wasn’t Waterloo hot war?’ That had been the second time the man had mentioned the Battle of Waterloo, which fitted neither what Harvey had said about him nor Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society.

The hand waved again. “That wasn’t disgusting twentieth-century war—it was gentlemanly. . .‘Audley gave him a cautious sidelong look ’… at least, it was on Wellington’s side, anyway—if you are about to throw Sous-Officier Cantillon at me, eh? But then Bonaparte was no gentleman— he was just a National Socialist Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State born a century too late—‘ The sidelong look suddenly became sardonic’—although I suppose you, of all people, wouldn’t admit that, eh?‘

Bloody hell! thought Tom: what was ‘ You, of all people’ meant to mean? ‘Who?’ And this wasn’t either the time or the place for such games. ‘Why— who! ’

‘Didn’t Bonaparte pretend to be nice to the Poles? Apart from fathering a child on Marie Walewska?’ Audley circled round him, to take a view of the terrace on his own account. ‘Count Walewski

—Napoleon III’s ambassador in London, to Queen Victoria, wasn’t he?’ He concentrated on the terrace for an instant. ‘All clear this side.’

The conversation was taking an unreal and tangential turn, reminding Tom of his earlier passage of words with the elfin child on the forecourt. But then the wife had warned him that they were like each other; and everything that had happened here had been unreal—even the house itself was unreal, and this sudden unseasonable outburst of sunshine and blue sky, when he’d left grey clouds and rain in the real world.

‘Hadn’t you better keep an eye on the front?’ Audley chided him gently. ‘The police will come up the drive, like Christians. But they’ll be scared, so I wouldn’t wish not to welcome them—you understand?’

Audley was quite matter-of-fact, but somehow that only made it worse, projecting Tom’s memory back out-of-reason into his own childhood, when Mamusia, beautiful and sweet-smelling, had read him to sleep with some silly story about the Elf-King and his Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State daughter, who lived Under the Hill, half in their world, and half in our world, where the flowers were brighter but the dangers were more dangerous… and this was under a hill, or nearly, and there was an equivocal daughter—and an even more equivocal father, who’d known Mamusia herself, too… and where danger was undeniably more dangerous than it ought to be on a quiet afternoon in England!

‘Yes.’ He pretended to scan the empty forecourt again. The trick in Mamusia’s story was to hold on to something from his own world: the boy in the story had held on to his penknife: all he had to feel the shape of in his coat-pocket was the little wallet with his credit-cards in it; but then nothing could be more real world than credit-cards, after all. ‘Who the hell is—or was—“Sous-Officier…

Cantillon”—?’

‘Cantillon?’ Audley seemed to expect him to know who the man was. ‘Why—he was the Napoleonic veteran who tried to assassinate Wellington in Paris in 1814, dear boy.’ He paused interrogatively. ‘And the unspeakable Bonaparte left the fellow 10,000 francs in his will— not the sort of thing a gentleman would do, as I said—did your dear mother never tell you that story, Tom?’

‘My mother?’

Audley gazed at him for a moment, reflectively. ‘No, I can see that she didn’t—perhaps understandably, in the circumstances.’

Tom was beginning to feel foolish. ‘What circumstances?’

‘What circumstances?’ Now Audley seemed surprised. ‘My dear boy, your mother— my Danny Dzieliwski— your dear mother was—

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State and presumably still is—quite devoted to Napoleon Bonaparte.

And all things French… quite uncritically, if I may say so. The dreadful Corsican was one of her great heroes—after Marshal Poniatowski, of course. “The epic of Napoleonic Poland” was one of her favourite themes… I won’t say that I learnt all my Polish history from her—rather, I learnt it so that I didn’t have to sit listening to her without being able to argue back, when she swept her generalizations halfway across Europe. In fact…’ Audley raised a large dirty finger ‘—in fact, I became quite an authority on Casimir the Great and Jadwiga of Anjou in my own right, thanks to her. But I never really got beyond the medieval period in any detail, to be honest—modern history is mostly far too complicated for me.’

It was happening again—

‘So don’t get the idea that I’m an expert on Bonaparte—’

‘No—’ It must be stopped, thought Tom desperately.

‘No, indeed! I just happen to be reading this book my wife gave me, about Colquhoun Grant, who was Wellington’s Head of Intelligence in the Peninsula—brilliant field operator, quite brilliant… And I had an ancestor who was killed there, you know—

on my mother’s side—charging with Le Marchant at Salamanca in 1812. So she’s always on the look-out for books on the Peninsular War—Faith is, I mean, not my mother—’

‘ David! ’ Tom finally cracked. ‘For Christ’s sake—I don’t want to know about your mother—or my mother… Or Casimir the Great and Napoleon, for Christ’s sake!’ And what the hell had the child meant by Tripoli? ‘Somebody just took a shot at us, David—

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State remember?’

‘At me, dear boy—not you. How could I forget?’ Audley screwed up his ugly features. ‘I’m only talking because I’m frightened—I told you. It’s a reflex in some people. But at least it’s preferable to other physical reflexes I’ve encountered—’ He stopped suddenly.

‘You don’t think he was shooting at you, do you? But… he would have had to be a very bad shot, surely—?’ He stopped again, and frowned at Tom. ‘But then, he was a very bad shot—wasn’t he!’

Audley had got there at last, however belatedly. ‘Yes.’

‘Yes…’ Audley’s frown deepened. ‘A sitting target—or a standing-still one, anyway… And he would have had plenty of time to sight-up, and make all the necessary allowances, too…’ He stared clear through Tom.

But that had been one of the problems. ‘He would?’

‘Oh yes.’ Audley nodded through him. ‘He would have spotted me in the orchard. But I was moving around, and the trees wouldn’t have given him a clear shot.’ He drew a breath. ‘Only, after we had word of your impending arrival, and the sun came out… after that Faith got the chairs out and put them on the terrace. So then he would have known he’d get a clear shot.’ He focused on Tom again. ‘But then he missed—eh?’

‘Yes.’ That was one problem solved—which only left another in its place. ‘Yes?’

‘So it can’t have been the Other Side?’ Audley cocked his head.

‘But… they have been known to miss, Tom.’

‘Not often.’ It was time to push the old man. ‘And not when Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State someone of Panin’s seniority is involved, David. He wouldn’t have used Sous-Officier Cantillon for the job.’

‘No… no, that’s true.’ Audley drew another breath. ‘But this isn’t Nikolai Panin anyway.’ He shook his head. ‘No.’

They were back to Jack Butler’s ‘Rules of Engagement’. But, whatever Jack Butler and the Duke of Wellington might believe, there were no rules that couldn’t be stretched and broken outside the playing fields of Eton—the small print of military and political necessity legitimized every successful action retrospectively —

that was why the Belgrano was at the bottom of the South Atlantic.

‘He’s a gentleman, is he?’ But Audley had referred to two levels, he remembered. ‘Or is it that you’re old friends, and he’s sentimental?’

‘Huh!’ Audley didn’t mind being needled, Tom realized in that instant; or being Danny Dzieliwski’s boy maybe did confer an advantage, as Jaggard had calculated? ‘Old Nikolai’s no gentleman, that’s for sure! He’s a true-red child of the Revolution

— homo Sovieticus Stalinus— he may have been an old-time cool-head, hot-heart patriotic Russian during the war—the “Great Patriotic War”—and afterwards, for a time… But surviving the last thirty-five years has surely corrupted him into a cold-hearted bastard who knows exactly which side his fresh white bread is buttered, by God!’ He shook his head at Tom, almost sadly.

‘That’s the bugger of their system, young Tom—it corrupts ordinary decent men more efficiently and comprehensively and quickly than ours does… apart from bringing the absolute shits to the top even more quickly than we can manage—eh?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Interesting, Tom began to think, when a slight sound from outside broke the thought suddenly. ‘So Panin was an ordinary decent man once upon a time—?’ He turned towards the window casually.

‘Was he?’

‘I think he might have been. He was certainly a damn good archaeologist once upon a time, by all accounts. And he’s undoubtedly one of their best disinformation men.’

‘And you know him from way back?’ He was torn down the middle between what Audley was saying and what had just come into sight, down the track from the road.

‘Not from way back. I first met him fifteen years ago.’

Tom held his face rigid. The measure of Audley’s intelligence memory was that fifteen years wasn’t way back to him. And the measure of the difference between Nikolai Panin’s world and their own was what he was watching now, outside.

‘I did him a good turn… after a fashion—’ Audley was slightly thrown by his failure to turn back from the window this time. But, for the life of him, he couldn’t tear himself away from what he was seeing ‘—and he returned the compliment, a few years later… after a fashion.’

‘Yes?’ What that meant was that self-interest and cooperation had briefly coincided for David Audley and Nikolai Panin, no more.

But also that those two occasions had been the beginning of some sort of relationship between them over fifteen years, nevertheless.

If But he couldn’t go on watching. ‘Yes? What was his fashion, then?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘None of your business—’ Audley read his face. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Now he wants to meet you again, is what’s the matter, David.’

‘And now I want to see him.’ Audley frowned, dissatisfied with that explanation. ‘What were you looking at, Tom?’

‘The police have arrived, David,’ he admitted.

The old man relaxed slightly. ‘They have?’

‘Not “They”, David—it’s just one policeman.’ Tom turned back to the window, inclining suddenly towards cruelty. ‘He’s just taking his bicycle clips off his ankles now. And he doesn’t seem very scared, either—he’s just parking his bicycle alongside my car…

and he’s looking around as though he owns the place—six-foot-plus, slim build… about forty, forty-five… fair complexion—red weather-beaten, or a winter holiday on the Costa del Sol, or regular visits to your local pub—I don’t know which at this distance.’

‘Yes.’ Audley took one step, but then stopped. ‘That’ll be Alan—

Constable Grant… Does he have a carrier on the back of his cycle?’

‘Yes—’ Tom stared at the bicycle ‘—he’s got some vegetables in it

—or something green—?’

‘Bedding plants, most likely,’ agreed Audley. ‘Alan knows just where to go in the village, to fill his garden in the spring. That’ll be him, right enough. So… Faith will have to give him some of her plants, from the greenhouse—’

‘ David— for Christ’s sake!’

Audley stood where he was. ‘It’s all right. She planted far more than we need for bedding-out… And no bugger’s going to shoot a Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State village policeman, Tom—not at 600 yards, in default of me—or you.’ He shook his head. ‘Not even Bonaparte would pay him 10,000 francs for that.’

Harvey had said that Audley wasn’t popular in certain quarters, and Tom could see why that might be true. ‘So you’re not scared any more?’

Audley swayed, and then steadied himself. ‘Oh… I’m still scared

—’

A heavy front-door-knocker banging echoed in the distance, from somewhere in the depths of the house.

‘That’s Alan.’ Audley nodded. ‘There’s an electric bell, and a bell on a chain, out there. But Alan always uses the door-knocker. He doesn’t believe in gadgets.’

The echoes died away, but now there was another sound—of tyres scattering gravel, and then of a car coming up the drive from the road.

‘I’m about as scared as Nikolai Panin should be,’ said Audley.

‘Because Fred Clinton laid down a sanction—oh, about twenty years ago, after some rogue East German tried to do for him what Sous-Officier Cantillon tried to do for Wellington, without KGB

clearance… And Fred wasn’t going to have that game played with impunity by all and sundry, with apologies afterwards.’ He gave Tom one of his brutal expressions. ‘Fred was no more a gentleman than Bonaparte was—or Nikolai Panin is, you see, Tom.’

Tom heard the police car scatter gravel again, as it reached the forecourt. But that was no longer important.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘So he invented MAD— or his version of it—long before the Pentagon did… “Mutual Assured Destruction” , eh?’ Another nod.

‘Only his version wasn’t a general holocaust—it was much more precise… But not exactly precise, in case one particular KGB boss wanted us to take out one of his rivals—you understand, Tom?’

He had heard of this, although almost as a legend rather than the truth: the life-for-a-life consensus in the intelligence community, which constrained and inhibited them from killing each other at the higher levels.

‘You know what I’m talking about?’ Audley had heard the doors of the police car slam, but he ignored the sounds.

‘Yes.’ The revenge-names were pricked at the highest level, the word was. And Research and Development was the highest level.

This time the electric bell pealed out, from down below and up above simultaneously, halfway to the sound of the burglar alarm.

‘So if I’m taken out, then Panin can’t expect to celebrate this Christmas either. Because he’s my exact opposite.’ The bell rang again, and Audley waited for the echoes to die away. ‘So the sooner we meet now, the better for both of us.’

4

To Audley’s scrambled phone Tom said: ‘ Would you hold for a moment, sir’, as the door of the study opened; and then, to the Special Branch man, ‘ What is it? ’, holding his temper in check as Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State he heard the sound of Audley’s voice approaching, through the open door; and then Faith Audley’s voice too, raised in protest—so she had been retrieved at last, from her bolt-hole, wherever it was—

‘Sir—’ The Special Branch man also heard the approaching voices, and paused understandably — but then jinked strangely, as though something unexpected had touched him from behind, lifting his left arm and looking down into the gap at the same time.

‘Sorry!’ Cathy Audley’s little face, eyes magnified behind their spectacles, and teeth metal-braced, appeared alongside him. ‘Hullo, Sir Thomas!’

‘What’s happening?’ said Jaggard in Tom’s ear. ‘Are you there?’

‘I know what a baronet is,’ said the child earnestly. ‘Father said to look it up. So I did—in my Everyman’s Encyclopaedia… That’s what he always says: “Look it up” , he says. So I took BAR to CAM

into the hole. And-’

‘ Cathy! ’ Faith Audley bulldozed the Special Branch man out of her way. ‘That’s enough!’

‘Are you there?’ repeated Jaggard.

‘But I didn’t tell him where the hole was, Mummy,’ the child protested. ‘I was just talking about baronets—’

‘Be quiet!’ Mrs Audley concentrated on Tom, ignoring her daughter. ‘Sir Thomas, will you please tell me what’s going on in my house?’

‘Yes,’ said Tom into the receiver. Come back Beirut, come back Tripoli! ‘Would you hold for a moment, sir.’ He frowned at the child as she squeezed past the Special Branch man: Tripoli?

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Audley appeared behind his wife. ‘Faith love—for God’s sake!’ he caught Tom’s eye. ‘I’m sorry, Tom—’

‘Sir!’ The Special Branch man tried simultaneously to hold Tom’s attention while giving ground to Audley and his wife and avoiding a rather fragile table piled high with books. ‘Sir—?’

Come back Athens, come back Nicosia, come back Tel Aviv! But at least Jaggard was quiet now, in his ear—

‘Sir Thomas—’ began Mrs Audley again.

Tom held up his free hand. ‘Just a moment, Mrs Audley—’ He nodded at the Special Branch man ‘—yes?’

The hill is clear, sir.‘ The man took a deep breath. ’There’s no one up there now—‘ He rolled his eyes sideways ’—but…‘

‘Yes?’

This time the man swallowed. ‘It was a high-velocity bullet. It went through the window, and then a lampshade on a table, and then into the panelling on the wall, on the far side. But we’ll have to wait for forensic to recover it. They should be able to tell us a lot more.’

‘Thank you.’ Properly speaking, there was nothing else Mrs Audley needed to know—properly speaking, she had already heard more than she was entitled to hear, even. But in her own house, and since she was David Audley’s wife, it might be prudent to entitle her to more than that. ‘So what else are you doing?’

‘Tom—’ Audley’s mouth opened. ‘Who’s on the phone?’

‘It’s okay, David.’ It would never do for Audley to know that: Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Jaggard was on the other end; it was bad enough to know himself that Jaggard was quite remarkably laid-back with this hideous turn of events, almost as though he’d expected them; or, at least, that they didn’t surprise him, ‘Just the duty man—’ He turned back to the Special Branch man quickly. ‘—Well?’

‘There’ll be more support manpower here soon.’ The man didn’t know quite what to say. ‘It’s almost too late for road-blocks—

we’re very close to the motorway here. And we’re almost into the Gatwick radius, anyway…’ He shrugged ‘… we can’t inhibit traffic inside that without Home Office clearance, sir.’

So much for Limejuice, thought Tom: if someone in Athens had taken a shot at Colonel Stamatopoulos, or one of his friends, then half of Greece would have ground to a halt. But in the Home Counties of England, and with no blood spilt, the traffic had to get through regardless.

‘David—’ Mrs Audley addressed her husband, failing Tom.

‘I told you, love—some fool has got his lines crossed, that’s all.’

‘You also told me that Limejuice was just a precaution, after last time—’

‘That was… that was ten years ago, love.’

‘I don’t care if it was a hundred years—’

‘Mrs Audley—Faith—’ Obligation and self-interest suddenly coincided: he needed Audley to himself and he had to get the man away from her and here as soon as possible. But now he had a chance to cement a relationship which Mamusia had begun before he had been thought of ‘—your husband’s right, actually.’ He Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State remembered the Special Branch man. “Thank you, Sergeant. I’ll come back to you. But we’ll want an escort vehicle—‘

‘And a car for my wife,’ said Audley. ‘I don’t want her here tonight.’

‘Right—that too.’ Tom nodded the Special Branch man out of the room before turning back to Faith Audley. But then he also remembered Jaggard. ‘Hullo?’ There really wasn’t anything else that he wanted to say to Jaggard, the bugger seemed so remarkably laid-back in the circumstances of their high-velocity bullet. ‘I’ll call you again when I’m free.’

‘Don’t bother, Tom. I’ve got the general picture well enough. You just watch over Audley and his old friend, that’s all. Just get Audley to the rendezvous first—then I want to know what he gets up to—where he’s going, and who he’s talking to. And preferably in advance—do you understand that?’

‘Yes.’ It took no effort to slam the phone down. Come back Beirut… but, most of all, where are you now, Willy? ‘I’m sorry, Faith—’

‘No.’ Some of the fire seemed to have gone out of her, damped down under the fine drenching spray of cruel reality. ‘I can see that I’m getting in the way of more pressing matters.’ She gave her husband a weary little smile. ‘There’s a right time for being difficult, and this isn’t it.’ She bit her lip. ‘I’ll go quietly, Sir Thomas—in fact, I’ll just go and pack my toothbrush. All right?’

‘No.’ It was working out so well that Tom was almost ashamed.

‘What I meant was that some fool has got his lines crossed—and I Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State am the fool. So your husband was really just protecting me.’ He knew that he mustn’t look at Audley, for fear that she might do the same. ‘The bullet was for me, Mrs Audley, you see. Not for him.’

‘What—?’ The lie caught her in the act of turning away. But that, most annoyingly, left her half-facing her husband. ‘David—?’

‘Ahh…’ A lifetime of dissimulation had greased the big man’s mental reflexes. ‘Well… to be fair, that’s for the experts to say, Tom.’

‘It was for me, David.’ He could only admire the crafty way Audley had fixed the lie, with so little warning. ‘But… you understand, Mrs Audley—Faith… that I can’t tell you what I usually do. But, in any case, I’m not doing it now—’ True, Tom Arkenshaw, you lying bastard! But what could he say next ‘—so I trust it won’t happen again—’ Not good enough! He could see that in her face ‘—but I’ll keep an eye on him now, I promise you, anyway.’ True again! he thought. But what a fearful promise! But, for better or worse, it was made now. And that sort of promise couldn’t be unmade, which was worst of all.

‘Huh!’ Audley chuckled obscenely. ‘Just keep away from me—

that’s all!’

‘ David! ’ She gave him a broken look. ‘You look after yourself too, Sir Thomas.’ She drew a breath. ‘I have to believe that my husband is indestructible.’ She took another breath. ‘I’ll go and find my toothbrush, anyway.’

Tom watched her depart, chin up.

‘I shall get hell in due course,’ murmured Audley. ‘But, in the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State meantime—’

‘No!’ All Tom wanted to do was to think in peace for a moment, before they all came back to him again: to think about what Jaggard had said, and hadn’t said; and about what Harvey had said, and had hinted at; and about Audley too; and maybe even about Mamusia. ‘You just go and pack your toothbrush too, David. We can talk in the car—okay?’

At first Audley didn’t reply. Then, when he did, he sounded as though his gratitude was already being stretched. ‘I was only going to thank you for that little white lie. But…’ he shrugged ‘… if that’s the way you want it, you’re the boss.’ He turned in the doorway. ‘For the time being, anyway.’

Tom waited for a moment, then turned back to the huge cluttered desk, staring for another moment at the red phone among the tower-blocks of books and magazines and buff folders, and the scatter of notes and notebooks and photo-copied newspaper cuttings, which together left no square inch of its surface free.

Jaggard had not really been surprised, he decided—

Places in the books—and in the magazines—were liberally reminded with numerous slips of differently coloured paper, pale pink and green and blue; and there were passages marked in the newspaper cuttings too, Audley-interest-stained with broad soft-felt pen-ink of similar colours, like cross-references.

It was always hard to tell for sure on the phone, a practised liar always had the edge on the phone—he could deceive anyone except Mamusia on the phone ~

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State The whole room was full of books: books shelved from floor to ceiling of every wall, books crammed between the shelves laterally where there was room, books in ranks and piles on the floor; there was only that one little dark gap behind the high-backed oak chair, to the right of the door, where that tall grandfather clock ticked away now in the silence like a monstrous death watch beetle, which had no books, apart from the leaded windows with their fringes of wisteria.

So… because he had already decided that Jaggard had not told him everything, or even half of it… that was a subjective conclusion

—

He turned back to the desk. There were books on it which didn’t fit among their fellows—or, even more, among the pink-stained names in the topmost cuttings from a wide range of Soviet and American specialist publications: Chebrikov from the Politburo, and Aliev, from the KGB… and the geriatric Lomako, who was (wasn’t he?) a survivor from the prehistoric 1940s… and…

Shevardnadze— who the hell was he? But there was that bastard Shkiriatov, anyway, from his own recent Syrian experience—

So this was what Audley was doing right now: trying to pick this year’s Kremlin Grand National winners—or at least fix the odds!

But then… where did Kennedy’s Revised Latin Primer, and Cassell’s Little Gem Latin Dictionary (the former old and ink-stained, the latter brand new) fit into this field? Or, right in front of him, on top of a pristine copy of yesterday’s Izvestia, this antique little blue Volume IV of Caesar’s Gallic Wars, open at that point where ‘ Caesar’s arrival encourages his men—acting on the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State defensive he retires—stormy weather prevents further action—

large forces swell the enemy’s camp, confident of victory.’

There still wasn’t a sound from that interesting little book-free gap, behind the chair, where there were four framed sets of campaign medals on the wall beside the grandfather clock, and darkness below.

Quibus rebus perturbatis nostris novitate pugnae tempore opportunissimo Caesar auxilium tulit— God! He couldn’t make sense out of that! But instead he addressed the shadows behind the chair. ‘So what do you know about baronets then, Miss Audley?’

No sound. But Jaggard had not been surprised, and Tom was ultimately convinced by his own instinct. ‘King James I —1611?’

Infinitesimal sound, less than the scuffle of an October field-mouse refugeeing in the house. For the defence of Ulster—?‘

‘That’s right.’ Tom was torn between his memories of Caesar, and more recent ones of Arkadi Shkiriatov, and the presence of Miss Audley, never mind Jaggard and King James I. ‘To raise money for the defence of Ulster in 1611—go on!’

‘People who had enough money had to become baronets. And they had to pay for thirty soldiers, at eight pence a day, for three years.’

The voice strengthened. ‘But Scottish baronets were different.

They paid their money for the colonization of Nova Scotia. You aren’t Scottish, though.’

‘No.’ So Jaggard must have a damn good idea what Panin wanted, even if he didn’t know for sure. ‘Tell me more?’

‘Do people often shoot at you?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State That was the point: if it wasn’t Panin (and, even apart from that MAD sanction of Audley’s, Panin would hardly have the man he wanted to meet shot before the meeting) then someone else knew about it, and had done it. ‘Does your father often do your Latin prep for you?’ He turned towards the chair.

‘No.’ The pale little face barely topped the chair-back. ‘Only when I’m really stuck.’ She blinked behind her glasses. ‘Do you shoot people?’

That was also a point, thought Tom. Terrorist groups the world over, from his own Mediterranean to that same Ulster which had forced a title on the original Sir Thomas Arkenshaw… terrorist groups shot people without a second thought. But the agencies of the First Division players, the sovereign states, only resorted to violence when they were really stuck—that was also very much the point.

‘No.’ It wasn’t funny, but he must smile at her. ‘Only when I’m really stuck, anyway.’ But Audley would have worked all this out much more quickly. ‘I think you ought to go and get your toothbrush too, oughtn’t you?’

‘Mother will do that. What I want to know is—’ She stopped as he raised his hand ‘—what—?’

‘I also think she’ll be looking for you, Miss Audley.’ What I want to know, thought Tom, is what you meant by ‘Tripoli’. But I don’t think this is the moment for asking! ‘And then she may remember where she last saw you—?’

The little hand, with its long thin fingers, covered the braced teeth Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State in sudden consternation. At this stage, thought Tom professionally, it was a toss-up whether she’d flower into the slender beauty of her mother or merely end up thin and plain. But either way she would be an interesting young woman one day, for the young man who could match her spirit.

‘Golly—you’re right!’ She ducked out from behind the chair, but then halted in the doorway, just as her father had done, but with her chin up, like her mother. ‘You will look after Father, won’t you?’

What Jaggard had ordered, and what he had almost unthinkingly volunteered to obey in order to get rid of this child’s mother, came home to him again. ‘I’ll do my best. But I rather think he’s quite capable of looking after himself, you know.’ He grinned at her reassuringly.

But she was totally unreassured. ‘No, he’s not,’ She shook her head almost angrily. ‘That’s what everyone thinks—they think he’s so clever, and so does he. But he isn’t at all—he really isn’t.’

‘He isn’t—?’ Tom was totally taken aback.

‘Oh—he knows a lot—’ She caught his thought in midair ‘—he knows everything about everything—’ She had to be quoting someone, thought Tom; and most likely it was her mother ‘—but when he wires up a plug he fuses everything, and when he cuts anything he usually cuts himself too—honestly, he does.’

Definitely, this was Faith Audley overheard; and this child had already proved she was good at overhearing; and yet… in a curious way all this echoed what Harvey had said about Research and Development, too: its unmatched intellectual performance was Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State seldom matched by its performance in the field, whenever it strayed out of its back room.

‘He does need looking after, Sir Thomas.’ The little serious face matched her earnestness. ‘So you will look after him, won’t you?

Won’t you?’

He had to get rid of her, for his own peace of mind. But only one answer could do that. ‘Yes. I will look after him.’

She gave him one dreadful signed-and-sealed nod, and then vanished. But then, just as he was starting to heave a sigh of something less than pure relief, her face appeared again, suspended halfway up the edge of the door.

‘I bet you don’t miss!’

Mm? ‘Miss… ? Miss Audley—?’

‘When you shoot at anyone—you don’t miss!’

Nothing less than a categorical answer was again required. So he turned his hand into a pistol. ‘Never, Miss Audley.’ He pointed the pistol-finger at her, knowing that he mustn’t smile. But that wasn’t difficult because it wasn’t a smiling matter—indeed, it was doubly not so, he thought grimly, because he would need to carry a real gun now, just like in Beirut. And there had been nothing remotely funny about that. ‘Never. So off you go then.’ This time he wanted to smile, but couldn’t. The Special Branch unit would have a couple of revolvers, most likely those ‘safe’ Smith and Wessons they favoured but he didn’t like: he could certainly pull enough rank to get one of those. But meanwhile she was still staring at him fixedly through her pebble spectacles. ‘Otherwise your mother will Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State miss you, Miss Audley. And I don’t think that would be healthy for either of us.’

As he sighted his finger on her she vanished, and a moment later he heard her whistling in the passage with all the preparatory innocence of an old lady who knew just how to answer the question ‘Where have you been?’ with a calculated half-truth. And that would be a Greek-meets-Greek situation, if ever there was one

—

But he mustn’t waste his thoughts on women and children—even Audley women and children (who both agreed that their man couldn’t look after himself!)—

He was looking at his pistol-hand, which was still pointing at the half-open door, out of which that shrill, tuneless whistling still issued, far off now—

He turned back to the desk, to the red phone among the cuttings from Soviet Review and Izvestia and É tudes Russes, and Caesar’s Gallic War.

What was that tune? It ought to be from Anna and the King of Siam

—

He needed a hand-gun. And with all the havering that request would occasion he ought to go and ask for it now. But—

What it ought to be was ‘ Whenever I feel afraid/I hold my head erect—And whistle a happy tune/So no one will suspect/I’m afraid

—’ But it wasn’t—

But he wanted to phone Jaggard again, and ask him what the bloody hell was actually happening.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State But it sounded curiously like the proud battle hymn of the United States Marines—

But Jaggard already hadn’t admitted that he had any idea what Panin wanted, so he was unlikely to admit more than that now.

And, for that matter, Audley hadn’t even bothered to ask that same obvious question. So… either he had guessed correctly that Sir Thomas Arkenshaw was not privy to its answer… or he already knew that answer, and therefore didn’t need to ask the question—?

The sound faded into the otherwise-silence of the crazy old house, with its newly-broken window. But it surely had been that old US

marine threat: ‘ From the halls of Montezuma/To the shores of Tripoli/We will fight our country’s battles/By the land or by the sea

—’

The whole Audley family was getting its toothbrushes, and Tom Arkenshaw needed a gun—that was the long-and-short of it, he thought.

But… Tripoli, again?

He didn’t like guns. The theory with guns was that they settled all arguments finally, of kings and cowboys as well as terrorists. But that was as facile as ‘ the best things in life are free’, when Willy (and his best suit, which had not been tailored to suit a Smith and Wesson five-shot hammerless) certainly didn’t come without a credit-card or a cheque-book— guns, experience warned him, were never the end of things, but only the beginning of other things, more complicated and embarrassing first, and more unending afterwards.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State But, in spite of all of that, he still needed a gun—

Finally, he got the show on the road, more or less.

There were cases in the hall, with Mrs Audley and Miss Audley beside them, and a plainclothes man beside them.

The front door was open, and he could see Audley himself in the porch, talking to one of the drivers, who had an Ordnance Survey map in his hand.

‘Not outside, sir—if you don’t mind,’ said the plain-clothes man as Tom gestured to Mrs Audley, after he had just failed to stop her husband.

Tom dearly wanted to hear what Audley was saying, but there were limits to what he could achieve, with another Special Branch man — the sergeant, no less — striding towards him now.

‘Mrs Audley—’ He had promised her to keep his eye on her husband, and he couldn’t escape her now.

‘Sir Thomas.’ Unlike her daughter, she wasn’t whistling. But she was still chin-up. ‘I thank you, for all your help.’

The sergeant coughed politely, and offered him a completely-holstered Smith and Wesson, with the good grace to be embarrassed in front of Audley’s family.

‘Thank you, Sergeant.’ What made it worse was that he would have to put the damn thing on here and now— what the devil was Audley doing, pointing to the map, when he didn’t even know where he was going? — because the other SB certainly wouldn’t let him outside carrying it like a pound of sausages.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Let me hold your coat, Sir Thomas,’ said Faith Audley.

‘And I’ll hold the other—’ Cathy Audley seized the weapon and its harness before anyone could stop her while Tom himself was trying to catch what Audley was saying. So all he could do was to give his coat to the wife and recover ‘the other’ as quickly as he could, but much too late for his peace of mind.

‘Ah!’ Audley returned to them, eyeing him critically as he put his coat on again. ‘ “Arma virumque cano”—“forced by fate, and haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate”… But I fear it would break your tailor’s heart—it doesn’t sit at all well under that good worsted, Tom. Makes you look like a soldier from Chicago, rather than a soldier of the Queen—what d’you think, love?’

‘I think you’re being your usual self, David,’

‘There now!’ Audley plainly couldn’t see that his attempt to lighten the occasion was only making it worse. ‘All the sympathy she can spare from herself, she freely gives to you, Tom. Which is probably not a lot.’

The sergeant coughed again. ‘If you would care to sign for the…

equipment, Sir Thomas. And we would like it back when you’ve finished with it, if you don’t mind.’

‘Well, love…’ Audley drew a deep breath ‘… after we’ve made ourselves scarce the sergeant here will take you both to your mother’s. And he’ll leave a man with you, just for form’s sake…

And he’ll also leave someone here too, just to mind the silver—

you do know how the burglar alarm works, don’t you, Sergeant?’

‘Yes, Dr Audley.’ The sergeant recovered his requisition form.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Thank you.’ The weight of The Thing reminded Tom how much he hated guns. But it would never do to admit that he didn’t want to start with it, never mind finish. But what he wanted to do most of all was to get at the police driver whom Audley had briefed.

‘Mrs Audley—’

‘Sir Thomas—’ She wanted to say more. But at least they both knew what couldn’t be said ‘—perhaps we shall see you again some time? I gather my husband was at Cambridge with your mother—?’ That was the most she could manage.

‘Yes—yes, I’m sure we shall… in much more agreeable circumstances.’ That was all he could manage in reply. ‘Miss Audley—’ But he had to do better in her case, so he patted the Chicago bulge before he offered her his hand in farewell‘—

goodbye, Miss Audley.’

Miss Audley opened her mouth, but then she caught her mother’s eye and all the things she wanted to say remained mercifully unsaid, so she didn’t say anything at all by way of farewell.

‘I’ll see you in the car, David.’ He transferred his serious smile from the daughter back to the mother without looking at Audley, disliking himself for taking the credit for his delicacy when all he really wanted to do was to talk to the police driver outside.

Outside, there were visible evidences of Limejuice, in the form of his own car now very close to the door, sandwiched between two police cars, and with armed men on the gravel beyond who were not in the least interested in him.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State The man he wanted must be in the lead car—

‘What was that you were discussing with Dr Audley?’

‘Sir?’ The driver blinked at him, then recovered. ‘Dr Audley was giving me a route to the main road, sir.’

‘Yes?’ That was logical, because Audley obviously knew the country roads in his own territory. But then so did the police driver. ‘Show me.’

‘Show—?’ The urgency of the order overrode the man’s surprise, and he reached for the same map which he had consulted in the porch. ‘We’re here, sir—’ he crinkled the map towards Tom and stabbed it with a blunt competent finger ‘—and we go as far as…

there, sir. Right?’

There was out of the spider’s-web of minor roads around Steeple Horley, along a main road. But it was well to the west of the direct line towards London, which Audley should have presumed was his direction—unless he knew better… But he bloody-well couldn’t know better—could he?

And there was something else, by God! ‘As far as you go?’

The man looked questioningly at him. ‘As far as you want us to go with you, sir… is what I meant… sir?’ He wasn’t sure now if he’d got it right.

‘Ah… yes.’ Tom nodded, and straightened up. If that was where Audley wanted to go, then it suited him very well, because it gave them good access to the westward motorway, so there was no need to countermand it. And once they were on that main road their escort would be superfluous, anyway.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State But now he heard the front door slam behind him. So the old man—

once Mamusia’s young man, but his old man now— the old man, who knew where he wanted to go— had made his proper untearfully stiff-upper-lipped farewells, and they were going at last. But now going, it seemed, to two different destinations—

‘Well, thank God for that!’ Audley stretched the seat-belt wide with relief, and then fumbled incompetently but quite happily to find its anchorage.

‘You don’t mind abandoning your family?’ Tom slammed him back into his seat with a clear conscience as the car ahead accelerated: the rule was to keep tight and fast, risking collision rather than a three-second clear shot for any potential sniper along the way; but it was Audley who was taking him for a ride now, not vice versa, anyway.

‘Not in the very least—quite the opposite!’ Audley let the strap wind itself up again. ‘The further I am away from them, the safer they are—huh!’

‘Huh?’

‘Huh!’ Audley settled back comfortably. ‘Having a large policeman in the house—in my esteemed mother-in-law’s house…

that’ll poach the old haybag to rights, by God!’ He twisted suddenly towards Tom. ‘In fact, I do her an injustice: she’s a dear old bird—and a tough one, too… But having a policeman there will flatter her, so she won’t quarrel with her daughter, she’ll be too busy making him endless cups of tea, and generally making his Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State life a misery—’ He concentrated on Tom ‘—or… what would your dear mother do, if she suddenly found a large policeman in her parlour, because of you—?’

The car in front swung out of the drive into the road, much too fast for safety and taking Tom by surprise until he saw the uniformed man who was waving them on. ‘I’ve never bothered her that way, David.’

‘No? Mmm…’ Audley trailed off, evidently summoned again by rose-tinted recollections of his undergraduate past. ‘Mmm…’

Well—damn his memories! ‘Where are we going?’

‘Where—?’ A particularly deep pot-hole in the uneven surface of the road helped to shake the old man out of his temps perdu. ‘Ah…

now, I was meaning to tell you about that. A minor detour, no more.’

There was no point in protesting. ‘Yes?’

‘I should have told you.’ Audley suddenly sounded contrite. ‘It was remiss of me—I’m sorry, Tom.’

‘It’s okay.’ The trouble was, contrition didn’t suit the man, it just wasn’t his style; which, if it was because of those ancient memories, would very soon become irritating if it wasn’t nipped in the bud at once.

‘It’s hardly out of your way. We can still pick up the London road… oh, in just a mile or two from there.’ Audley got in before he could start nipping. ‘We may even save time, in the end.’

Unless the old liar had discovered a shorter line between two points than a straight one, they were going in very nearly the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State opposite direction, that was the truth of it. ‘Just tell me what the hell we’re doing, David.’

‘Yes.’ Audley’s meekness was as bad as his contrition. ‘Well…

we’re going to talk to someone—someone I need to talk to. So when we get to the main road… we bear left there, until we come to the Three Pigeons—which is a big pub with coloured lights…’

Left would be even further to the west, or at least north-west. ‘Yes?’

‘And then, about five miles further on… there’s another pub—just by the church… the Bear and Ragged Staff. You turn sharp left there.’

That would be due-bloody-west. Which was fine for Nikolai Andrievich Panin, who would probably be already within sight of the Bristol Channel by now, speeding down the M5. But for a man who ought to presume that he was going to London it was a bad joke.

‘Yes?’ Tom stifled the temptation to ask Audley whether he habitually navigated across England from pub to pub, with the occasional church thrown in.

‘Yes.’ Audley nodded. ‘It really will save us time. And maybe not time alone, Tom.’

‘Yes?’ But pubs didn’t matter. What mattered more was… who the hell did Audley want to see, who mattered more than Panin, who wanted to meet him so urgently on Exmoor?

And, come to that— Exmoor! Because the Russian would have needed Foreign Office dispensation to go so far. But—never mind the Foreign Office!—he would have required Moscow Centre Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State dispensation too, to swan off into the far unexplored West of England, to meet his old friend, and Mamusia’s—

‘I’ll tell you where to go then. But it’s only a step or two from there.’

A step or two to the west, near another pub? The Red Lion, or the Eight Bells, or the Vine, or the George and Dragon—or the Old Castle, where even now, in a better world, Tom Arkenshaw ought to have been drinking champagne cocktails with Miss Wilhemina Groot, in the privacy of the bridal suite? Bloody hell!

‘Who are we going to see then, David?’ He thrust Willy out of his mind, back to London where Audley thought he was going, but wasn’t.

‘Ah…’ Audley jerked forward as the police car in front illuminated its hazard lights, ahd then slowed; and then signalled left, as it drew aside on to the grass verge by the side of the road. ‘You go ahead here, Tom.’

Tom drove ahead into the first beginnings of evening, unsure whether he was glad or sorry as he lost sight of the flashing lights behind him. He didn’t know where he was, because he’d never castle-hunted seriously in Hampshire. Somewhere to the north of this, or more like north-east, Henry of Blois had thrown up one of his 1138 strongpoints at Farnham, certainly. And there were other 1138 ‘illegals’ at Waltham and Wolvesey. But he couldn’t place either of them on the map in his head. Yet—much more to the point

—the A34 Winchester to Oxford road couldn’t be far ahead, and that would take him fast to the westward-bound M4 and M5.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State But it was no use fretting (Farnham was an interesting site, which he’d always intended to measure: the motte there had been revetted with a buttressed shell-wall allegedly comparable with the Crusaders’ keep at Acre in Israel; although that hadn’t prevented good old Henry Plantagenet from demolishing it in 1155). He was going to be late, bringing them together, but that wasn’t his fault—

so it was no good fretting.

‘You were saying, David—?’ The brief intrusion of Henry of Blois and Henry Plantagenet, eventual Lord of England, Wales, Ireland and two-thirds of France, and of their great works, restored his sense of proportion, as always: the two Henrys, and David Audley and Nikolai Panin and Tom Arkenshaw, and all the ants in all the ant-hills, engaged in great works. But it would all be the same in the end—always the only question was sooner or later?

‘Yes.’ Audley had been quite content for him to go ahead in search of the bright lights of the Three Pigeons public house. ‘Did you ever meet Basil Cole? Or was he before your time?’ Once committed, Audley perked up. ‘Probably not, even if he wasn’t.

Because he worked for Fawcett—Victor Fawcett—? Who worked for “Digger” Wilmot… I don’t think he was still in post when that clever bugger Jaggard came into his inheritance.’

Tom felt Audley’s eyes on him as he searched in vain for bright lights ahead. ‘No.’ But if they were into name-dropping, he’d better drop one or two. ‘ “Digger” Wilmot took me on—he was at school with my father. And I’ve met Henry Jaggard since, of course.’ That was the truth—even if it was the truth naked and ashamed. ‘But I work for Frobisher, David.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Yes. And he approves of you, too.’ Audley spoke derisively. But, to give him the benefit of the doubt, that might be because he didn’t wish to patronize Danny Dzieliwski’s son too obviously. ‘At least, that’s what he gave Jack Butler to understand. He says you’re a straight-shooter—is that true?’