For the Good of the State

There were lights ahead. And, because Jaggard had obviously foreseen that Audley would never obey orders exactly, it was so much the opposite of the truth that he couldn’t bring himself to give it a straight lie. ‘Not with that damn thing they gave me, David.’ He felt the discomfort of the police Smith and Wesson, and remembered that he had lied to Cathy Audley too. ‘If we meet your sniper again, for God’s sake don’t rely on me—I’ll most likely shoot myself in the foot.’

‘Hah!’ Audley chuckled, but then pointed suddenly. ‘Turn left by the pub—see the sign?’

Tom hadn’t time to read the sign, only to see that the road was empty behind as they swerved into a narrow side-road. So now, even if there was an unmarked police car behind them, it would end up heading for Winchester and disappointment.

‘I had a driver in Normandy—he was a damn good driver, too…

He tried to shoot himself through the foot… purely by accident, you understand…’

Now they really were lost, thought Tom. Except that there was a church and another pub somewhere ahead now.

‘Not that I blame him. We were in the bocage, you see—’ Audley sat back, oblivious to his surroundings, as Tom strained in the half-Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State light to see where he was going ‘—because I have three nightmares in my old age… One is of taking examinations, on subjects about which I know damn-all… But the other is about the bocage— every two or three years some damn fool asks me to go back to Normandy, to meet the old people whose houses we demolished, and the priests—I demolished a church in Normandy. That was probably my main contribution to winning the war—demolishing a church at point-blank range with 75-millimetre HE.’ Audley nodded. ‘It’s quite simple: you just knock the corners out, and the tower falls into the chancel then, with a bit of luck—’ Another nod

‘—and it was a fine old Norman church too, mine was, I think.’

Sniff. ‘There was a sniper in the tower, who’d just shot a friend of mine. He must have been a brave bastard!’ Pause. ‘There’s our church—do you see it?’

‘Yes.’ Tom caught a glimpse of a squat tower.

‘He missed me.’ Audley dismissed all churches from the conversation. ‘We were the last surviving tank in the troop, that night. And my driver also missed his foot.’

The church came into view. And there, sure enough, was another pub. So turn sharp left now—

‘Shot himself in the boot instead—missed his toes by a whisker.’

Another nod. ‘So we didn’t have to court-martial him, thank God!’

They passed the pub, which Tom thought looked uncommonly inviting, now that the light inside it was stronger than the evening blue outside.

‘So he was killed later on, after I’d left the regiment.’ Audley Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State shook his head. ‘But… Basil Cole, I was asking—?’

There was still a third nightmare outstanding, in Audley’s old age.

But Basil Cole, who had worked for Victor Fawcett, in some Old Testament progression— Someone begat Someone, and Someone-Else begat Someone-Else— was more important than Audley’s nightmares, from the Normandy bocage of forty years ago. Only, what mattered now on the darkening road was that they were only

‘a step or two’ from where Audley wanted to go. ‘Basil Cole—?’

‘Yes.’ Audley rallied under pressure. ‘ “Old King Cole”— you’ll like him, Tom.’ Chuckle. ‘Drunken old bugger!’

Drunken old bugger? thought Tom. ‘Basil Cole?’

‘Uh-huh.’ Audley sounded sure of himself now. ‘It was Old King Cole who sounded the early warning signals on Burgess and Maclean, before you were born—even almost before I was born, professionally speaking… Why are you slowing down?’

‘I caught a glimpse of a church, I thought. Up ahead.’

‘You did?’ Audley sat up, then gestured irritably. ‘Go on, go on!’

The church came into view. If Basil Cole dated from the early days of Burgess and Maclean then ‘ Old King Cole’ was right, thought Tom. ‘Here’s the church, David.’

‘I said a church and a pub. I see no pub. You just drive— I’ll tell you when. Okay?’

Tom accelerated. What he had to get used to was crossing England from pub to pub. ‘Okay.’

‘Okay. So… where was I? Go on, man—don’t dawdle…’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘You said Basil Cole was a drunken old bugger.’

‘Is—not was.’ Audley corrected him. ‘So they put him out to grass eventually—Fawcett did. Gave him his wooden foil and niggardly pension. Fortunately his wife had a bit of money—nice woman.

But hardly enough to keep him in his favourite tipple, you see.’

Tom didn’t see. But he needed to keep his eyes open for the next pub, so he decided not to admit it.

‘And that was where my old boss came in—I take it that he will not be unknown to you, Tom?’

‘Sir Frederick Clinton.’ Clinton was the near-legendary architect of Research and Development. ‘Colonel Butler’s predecessor?’

‘Correct—Fred, no less. And he was another animal who dated back to when the Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat. So he and Basil Cole were by way of being old shipmates. And he knew that in spite of Old King Cole’s heavy-laden cargo of years and empty whisky bottles there was nothing wrong with his brains—they weren’t so much addled as preserved. Which says a lot for the properties of Islay peat.’

Tom concentrated on the road ahead.

‘Also…“ Audley twisted sideways ’… you know, we’ve always run R & D on a derisory budget, you see. Old Fred liked to recruit people like me, with private incomes—he always said it was partly to save money, and partly so that they could indulge their own esoteric tastes without recourse to some third party. But actually it was so that he could divert our legitimate expenses into his slush fund, is what I know now—‘ He shook his head ’—which I only Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State know now because Jack Butler, who inherited that fund, is a friend of mine… or, a friend of a sort, anyway.‘ Pause. ’Huh!‘ Another pause. ’He was a downy old bird—or half-downy, half-foxy—was Fred! We were always bloody nonplussed by how much he knew… Whereas the truth was that he had this private ”Black Economy“ of his—paying selected pensioners of his own in used banknotes in little brown envelopes, to keep his private files up-to-date, and then feeding our main files with what he wanted us to see. Huh!‘ Another pause. ’That’s not the way Jack plays it now—

now they have to come in once or twice a week, and feed the computer—beastly damn thing… But at least we have access to it, even if Jack always knows who’s doing what now, more’s the pity!‘ He half-chuckled, half-grunted. ’Although he still slips ‘em their brown envelopes, just like Fred. And you know why—?’

Tom didn’t know why. What he knew was that they were at last coming to another scatter of houses in the half-light. ‘Why?’

‘Custom and practice, Tom—custom and practice.’ The half-and-half sound was repeated. ‘His father was a printer—Father of the Union Chapel, before he became Composing Room Overseer, and then Head Printer. So Jack’s a union man at heart. And he knows a thing or two about “old Spanish customs”—like little brown envelopes with no names on ’em. Huh!‘

There was a church coming up—and a public house—Tom strained his eyes to read the badly-illuminated sign outside it. ‘Is this where we turn left, David?’

‘What?’ Audley sat up. ‘Yes, of course it is—didn’t I tell you?’

The turning was narrow and awkward, with the brickwork on each Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State side testifying the failed efforts of those before him who had found it too narrow and awkward. ‘So Basil Cole works part-time for Research and Development—is that it?’

‘That’s right. M to R, to be exact.’

He wasn’t going to make it—not because there wasn’t room, but because there was a black-and-white mongrel dog in the way, sitting in the road.

‘M to R?’

‘Uh-huh. Fred had four old Moscow-watchers. Dorothy Marshall handles A to F, and Frank Hodgson G to L, and my own Sheila Ellis has S to Z—she feeds me directly now, every Wednesday, does Sheila—’ Audley sat up again ‘—what’s holding you up?’

There’s a dog in the road—M to R—?‘

‘Uh-huh. So including P… Run the bloody animal over, then… So Old King Cole is the expert on Panin— go on, man!’

Jesus Christ! He revved the engine angrily. ‘But I thought you were the expert on Panin—’ He caught himself too late.

‘Did you, now?’ The silky satisfaction in Audley’s voice confirmed his failure. ‘So you’re not just a high-grade minder, then? Not that I ever really thought you were, of course— run the bloody animal over—go on. Audley turned away from him. ’Well, there’s no one on our tail, anyway—at least, not from the other side, whichever side it may be… But you’re here to report back to whoever it may be, anyway—“What the devil is that swine Audley up to?”—but it could hardly be Frobisher… because he can’t be interested in anything I do… can he?‘

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Tom rolled the car forward. Everything Harvey had said was true, and he had betrayed himself. ‘I’m just here to get you to Panin, David… Which I’m not doing very well at the moment, actually.

Because we’re ninety minutes behind schedule already—’ The headlights picked out trees and more brickwork ahead ‘—so how far to Basil Cole, then?’

‘Not far. But do you have to be present when I exchange confidences with Nikolai Panin? Or do you merely deliver me to some agreed rendezvous?’ Audley waved ahead. ‘Which is it?’

Tom put his foot down. ‘They have someone with him. We have someone with you. Those are the agreed terms.’

‘Ah! That’s what Fred Clinton termed “Mutual Agreed Internal Distrust”. Which he used to codename “Orleans” , because Joan of Arc was the “Maid of Orleans”—M-A-I-D, you see—?’ He waved again. ‘Keep going.’

The houses fell away, the headlights catching on the canopy of trees above. ‘But I was told you were the expert on Panin—’

‘ An expert—but not the expert. Keep going.’

‘But you are old—acquaintances?’ Tom conjured up the material on the desk in the study, and added it to what Audley had just said

—‘ My own Sheila Ellis has S to Z—she feeds me directly every Wednesday’. ‘So you’re not researching him, then?’

‘I am not,’ agreed Audley. ‘And, to be exact, I am doubly not researching my… “old acquaintance”, as you put it so diplomatically, Tom.’

‘Not far’ was stretching itself. But then, if he had learnt anything Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State this afternoon and evening, it was that Audley seldom meant exactly what he said. ‘“Doubly not”? Is that some sort of algebraic lie, David? “Minus times minus equals plus”?’

‘No.’ Audley thought his own thoughts for a moment. ‘Actually…

it just means that we’re studying the possible new men in the Kremlin… and in the KGB, which amounts to much the same thing…’ Suddenly he raised himself again. ‘On the left, about three hundred yards—you’ll see a big copper beech… And a rather chi-chi carved house-name-plate attached to it… No—we’re into the new men, not the geriatrics—the has-beens, whom Comrade Gorbachev is busy kicking upstairs… or downstairs into the cellars, as the case may be.’

Now he could slow down legitimately. But then he began to remember the pink-stained names in Audley’s cuttings, which had included Chebrikov and Aliev and Lomako, as well as Shevardnadze and his own Shkiriatov. ‘And you’re just studying S

to Z, anyway… not Panin?’

‘Well… yes, you might say—’ Audley sat up ‘—just there! Do you see it?’

Tom applied the brake. ‘Not Panin?’ What those cuttings told him was that Audley had never learnt to obey orders exactly: and that was also what Jaggard and Harvey had both said. And now he believed what Harvey had said.

Audley twisted round to look behind him. ‘Aren’t you going in?

Go on—there’s nothing behind, so far as I can see.’

The driver’s privilege was to drive, or not to drive, as he chose.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Not Panin?’

‘Not Panin?’ Audley echoed the question as he untwisted himself.

‘You see where I mean?’ He pointed towards the great beech tree illuminated in the headlights. Then he looked at Tom. ‘No, not Panin, as it happens.’

Tom met the look. ‘Because he’s a geriatric? A has-been?’ He folded his arms deliberately. ‘He must be as old as your Basil Cole.’

‘Yes. So he is.’ A freak reflection from the dashboard glinted redly in Audley’s spectacles, as though hinting at fire behind them. ‘But I wasn’t referring to him. He’s a very different kettle of fish, is Nikolai Panin.’ He moved slightly, and the red fire vanished. ‘Basil Cole will tell you.’

It was the moment to confirm Audley’s perhaps erroneous suspicion that he was more than a superior bodyguard. ‘But I want you to tell me, David.’

‘Now you’re being difficult.’

‘Not difficult—’

‘Obstinate, then—’

‘Not obstinate, either.’ Tom switched off the lights. ‘Say… I want to hear what you have to say about him first—’ He lifted one hand from the other to cut Audley’s reply off ‘—because someone shot at you, David. Not at Basil Cole. Okay?’

‘Well… if that’s what you want…’ There was just enough half-light to convey the shrug of resignation, no more than that. ‘Panin is not about to defect, if that’s what you’re thinking, my lad—not Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State in this age of the world!’

It would have worried him if he’d thought of it, Tom realized belatedly. Because defection was always a killing matter on the Other Side. But neither Jaggard nor Harvey had even hinted at it; and to be allowed to go so far outside the London radius by his own side laughed that suspicion out of court, in any case.

‘He’s an old Communist—an old Red… from when “Red” meant something more than buying privilege in the Party’s duty-free shops.’ Audley’s voice was scornful out of the shadows of his face.

“There aren’t many of them left now—thank God!‘ The half-grunt, half-chuckle came from deep down inside the man again. ’Do you know what an ”Ironside“ is— was, anyway—?‘

Out of nowhere, in the gathering dusk, Tom realized that he was learning about something from the past at first hand, which was out of his more recent experience. ‘An Ironside?’

‘Cromwell’s Ironsides: they fought for what they loved, and loved what they fought for. Or maybe it was the other way round.’ The dark outline of the head, not close-cropped but just short of hair, nodded. ‘Or maybe old Nikolai didn’t love what he knew—I don’t know… But he fought for it all the way from Stalingrad, or whatever they call it now—“Volgograd”, or something? But I’ll lay you even money it’ll be Stalingrad again, one of these days…

But from there, anyway, all the bloody way to Berlin, in ’45—and bloody is right; across twenty-five million Russian dead. And I wouldn’t defect after that—not even if I was commanding the Devil’s Armed Forces, with the Hounds of Hell ready to slip!‘ The dark head shook again. ’I remember first checking him in ‘69—

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State staff officer in Khalturin’s division, in Chuikov’s army, all the way to Khrushchev’s Twentieth Congress, and afterwards… It took us one hell of a long time to pin down Nikolai Panin—in fact, I’m not sure that we ever did… But I only studied him because he happened to cross my path, anyway. It was purely accidental—or incidental, if you like. He’s never really been our meat. And we haven’t been his either, so far as I’m aware.’

The slaughterhouse image reminded Tom too vividly of Beirut realities, the blood and entrails of which were far removed from metaphor. But also it hardly fitted what Jaggard had said. ‘Not your… meat?’

‘He’s not a bloody First Directorate man, is what I mean. He doesn’t run networks—doesn’t control illegals, or recruit traitors, or anything like that…’ Audley trailed off. But then his face came round again. ‘What’s the biggest thing the KGB does—you tell me, Tom? What is it?’

Answering trick questions was a mug’s game. ‘You tell me, David.

I’m just a promoted minder.’

‘It’s internal security first.’ Audley hadn’t even wanted an answer.

“Then it’s disinformation—fucking up our foreign policy—when we have one… And now it’s also probably pinching our higher technology.‘ The old man sniffed in the darkness. ’I’ve got a cold coming on, damn it!‘ He sniffed again. ’Panin has always been disinformation or internal security—none of your vulgar spying for him!‘ Another sniff. ’The first time I met him, he wasn’t trying to screw us— he was quietly and murderously engaged in making sure that the great Red Army didn’t step out of line. We weren’t worth a Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State damn—we were just there to be deceived and used… Or bribed and used —huh!‘ Grunt-chuckle. ’I did him a favour. So, a few years later, he did me a favour. Which makes us quits, in his book.‘

And in yours, thought Tom. ‘But he wants to talk to you now.’

No reply. Which made Tom glance at the dashboard. But he had switched off the lights, so he could only guess how far they were falling behind schedule.

‘And he’s an expert on you, David.’

No reply again, for a moment. ‘Yes. And that’s another thing that worries me.’ Another grunt-chuckle—but this time more grunt than chuckle. “The first time, I studied him and he repaid the compliment. Which is fair enough.‘ Another long breath. ’And we also have some reason to believe that he’s taken a certain non-specialist extra-mural interest in Research and Development ever afterwards. Which is really none of his business.‘

‘Yes?’ Audley hadn’t really stopped there, Tom sensed.

‘Oh… I rather thought he tried to damage me last year.’ Audley shrugged.

Tom waited. ‘Yes?’

‘Oh… we lost a man…’ Audley bridled ‘… here in England, too.’

‘Yes?’ Tom remembered what Jaggard had hinted at.

‘Actually, it wasn’t my fault.’

He would have given good money to see the old man’s face. ‘No?’

‘No. Not that it matters whose fault it was.’ Audley was silent for another brief moment. ‘But we did a bit of research afterwards, just Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State to find out who we owed one to, for the future.’

‘It wasn’t a suitable case for… reciprocal action?’

‘No.’ Audley took up his moment of silence again. ‘He didn’t have red tabs on his lapels. He was just a poor bloody field officer.’ He looked at Tom in the darkness again. ‘If you catch a bullet in the line of duty they won’t avenge you, Tom. If I do… then they will.

You better bear that in mind for the next few hours.’

‘There’s no justice in this world.’ But it did make horrible sense, thought Tom sadly: in Lebanon, the biblical eye-for-an-eye payment had reduced local life to a murderous all-comers chaos.

‘Never was, and never will be,’ agreed Audley. ‘But we’ve got long memories in Research and Development—like old Fred Clinton used to say, “the baked meats of revenge are best eaten cold”. So… we’ve got a name: or two on the red side of our tablet now, anyway. And we’ll dish the buggers one day, you can depend on it.’ He sniffed. ‘Killing isn’t our style, we don’t have the resources for it, never mind the permission. But there are others we can use who think quite differently—the French, for example—’

He stopped abruptly. ‘But you’re making me digress. Because, the point is that I got Old King Cole to check up on Panin then, because he’s the resident Panin-watcher—right?’

‘“M to R”, you mean?’

‘Just so—M to R, right!’ Audley nodded in the darkness. ‘And he said that so far old Nikolai was still busy keeping an eye on his own side… That he might have given the First Directorate a bit of advice, as a consultant, but nothing more.’ He sniffed. ‘Actually, to Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State be heart-breakingly honest, he rather put me in my place, did Basil Cole. Huh!’

‘Oh?’ It took an effort to imagine such an occurrence. But the lightly self-mocking admission both established Cole as someone to be reckoned with and accounted for Audley’s present action satisfactorily. ‘How?’

‘He said that Panin had bigger fish to fry than me, in his own home frying-pan. And he also said that I wasn’t part of the man’s job—

just his hobby.’ Another sniff.

‘Somehow I find that neither flattering nor reassuring, you know.’

Then he sat up suddenly. ‘But now I’ll make the old swine eat his words: he can tell us why Nikolai Andrievich is poaching in my coverts again after all these years. Right?’ He rapped the dashboard sharply. ‘So not another word, not another question— in with you.’

Tom engaged the gear, and turned the big car cautiously past the huge beech tree into an overgrown rhododendron drive, still thick with unswept winter leaves.

They were still a long way from Panin, but he felt better now. Or, anyway, he understood why Audley was doing what he was doing, even if it also suggested that Jaggard was unaware of a real Panin-expert in their midst, who knew more about the Russian than Audley did. But then (to be fair to Jaggard) Cole might have acquired his expertise in retirement service for Research and Development, not in his previous existence.

The headlights picked up the red reflectors of a parked car, and then Tudor black-and-white half-timbering.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Pull round to the left,’ said Audley.

More piles of decaying leaves; and the house wasn’t genuine Tudor, but minor stockbroker’s mock-Tudor, with only just enough room for him to squeeze the Ministry Rover past the elderly Ford which was jammed against its garage doors beside the darkened house. (And he had learnt something about the arcane workings of R & D, too; about which Harvey had been half-scornful, yet oddly envious: that killing wasn’t their style, but that they had long memories when there was a name to enter in the ledger of unpaid accounts.)

‘It doesn’t look as though anyone’s home, David.’ He scanned the unimpressive house again: its most notable attribute was the circle of huge beech trees which surrounded it, embracing it with their enormous limbs and cutting out what was left of the last faint remnants of daylight above them.

‘It wouldn’t—the sitting room’s at the back.’ Audley opened his door. ‘He’ll be in, don’t worry—he never goes out.’ He started to get out, but then stopped. ‘He’s somewhere inside a five-year drink-driving disqualification… not that I’ve ever noticed any difference in him, drunk or sober.’ He started to move again, and then stopped again. ‘Don’t kid yourself, Tom—drunk or sober, he’s good, believe you me. Fawcett was a fool for retiring him, and old Fred Clinton was nobody’s fool—I wish I’d known the game he was playing, years back, in fact—’ Then he grunted, and did at last lever himself out of the car.

Tom switched off the lights, and for an instant it was prematurely night. Then the half-light seeped back through the beech trees, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State slightly reassuring him, with Beirut as well as this afternoon in mind: this was close country, with no high-rise buildings or distant ridges allowing long shots; and neither the Russian nor the American-Israeli night-sight image intensifiers were much use in these conditions, if he had not been quite as clever and careful in shaking off any pursuit as he thought he had been.

All the same, he was uneasy: in full daylight one could expect the worst, and plan accordingly. But after that it was a case of negotium perambidans in tenebris. ‘Let’s go and meet your Basil Cole then, David.’

‘Okay.’ Audley stretched himself, oblivious of any danger, and then took three steps to the mock-Tudor door, and thumped it with his fist. ‘Open up there!’

Tom cringed from the battering-ram challenge: Stephen of Blois hadn’t hammered on the gates of Ranulf of Caen’s motte at Theckham more noisily than that, but half of England had heard him. Or Baldwin de Redvers certainly had—and the Bishop of Salisbury too… and probably Robert fitz Herbert, and Henry fitz Tracy, and William fitz Odo… and probably the unspeakable Earl of Chester too—

‘Open up there!’ Audley hammered on the door again. ‘Basil Cole, you drunken old bugger!’

The porch light flashed on, dousing them both in a sudden pool of yellow light which made Tom skip back out of it instinctively.

(Nobody turned on lights in Lebanon: rather, if there were any lights anywhere, they turned them off, inside as well as outside; and then they didn’t open the door until supplied with some very Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State different and less offensive pass-words.) But this door opened wide suddenly, regardless equally of insult and danger. ‘Yes?’

There was light inside the house, innocent of all precautions. And whoever it was in the doorway, it wasn’t Basil Cole, drunk or sober

—it was a woman. ‘What do you want?’

Audley drew himself up to answer, obviously put off by the woman, and by the coldness and unexpected question.

‘Ah… Good evening, madam—’ Then he seemed to flouder.

The wrong house? thought Tom. But that was impossible!

‘Mr Cole—?’ The great shoulders squared, ambushed but not defeated. ‘Mr Basil Cole—?’ Audley’s voice travelled from doubt to greater certainty. ‘You wouldn’t be by any chance Mr Cole’s daughter-in-law—?’

No answer. But there came another sound from inside the house, as of a squeaky mock-Tudor door opening.

‘What is it, dear?’ The new voice followed the mock-Tudor sound, not so much quavering as uncertain. ‘Who is it, dear?’

‘It’s all right—it’s nothing.’ The younger woman in the doorway threw back her answer harshly, almost dismissively.

‘My name is Audley.’ Now there was nothing soft about Audley’s own voice: being dismissed as ‘nothing’ was plainly not to his taste. ‘David Audley—’

There was a fractional pause. ‘David—?’

‘Margaret!’ Audley threw the name past the younger woman.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Mother—’ The woman tried to hit Audley’s reply back at him, and away out into the evening, but she was just too late.

‘ David Audley!’ Now there was someone else inside the doorway.

‘Why, David—how very kind of you!’ The someone bobbed up and down behind the pearls-and-twin-set obstacle between them.

‘ Mother—’

‘Christine, dear—you remember David Audley?’ The woman behind was not to be denied. ‘Come in, David—you remember Dr Audley, dear!’

‘Mrs Cole—’ Audley offered his hand to the obstacle ‘—actually, I don’t think we’ve ever met. But Basil has told me about you, of course.’

The obstacle winced, but still stood her ground obstinately, and without taking Audley’s hand. ‘Mother, I think it might be better if

—’

‘And this is my colleague, Sir Thomas Arkenshaw, of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Mrs Cole.’ Audley swept the unaccepted hand round to indicate Tom, like a general revealing a hitherto masked battery of heavy guns. ‘Who has come all the way from London to see—’

‘Sir Thomas—’ The obstacle had just started to frown incredulously at Tom, but now suddenly cut Audley off ‘—Dr Audley, of course, my mother-in-law has spoken of you, as one of my late father-in-law’s oldest friends—do please forgive my bad manners, Dr Audley—I simply didn’t recognize you—but I’m sure you’ll understand, in the circumstances— in the circumstances—’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State The younger Mrs Cole had to draw breath there, but she drew it so quickly that Audley only had time to open his mouth, not to speak, before she plunged on ‘— in the circumstances— my father-in-law’s death was so sudden, I’m sure you’ll make allowances for us—you do understand, don’t you?’

‘Ah…’ Audley opened his mouth again, but then closed it. And then he nodded. ‘Yes, Mrs Cole. Believe me, I do understand,’

“Thank you, Dr Audley.‘ The younger Mrs Cole stood aside at last, to allow her mother-in-law to get a clear view of their visitors.

‘David! And Sir Thomas—’ The elderly Mrs Cole peered at Tom through smudged spectacles ‘—it is so good of you both to come down so soon after poor Basil’s dreadful accident.’ She shook her head. ‘I still can’t believe it’s true—that I’m not dreaming some awful nightmare.’

‘Mother—’

‘It’s all right, dear. I’m not going to embarrass you, or disgrace myself.’

‘I didn’t mean that, Mother. I’m here, is what I was going to say.’

‘And so you are, dear—and I’m very grateful.’ The old lady smiled at Tom with her mouth as she blinked at him. ‘Having family is a great comfort, Sir Thomas. And now I know that his old friends and colleagues care too—enough to come all the way from London so quickly… when I know how busy you all are— ’ She transferred the smile to Audley ‘—although there really isn’t anything you can do. My dear daughter-in-law—who is more like a daughter—has been so good. So you see, you’ve really had a Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State wasted journey, David. I’m quite all right.’

‘I’m sure you are, Margaret,’ agreed Audley gently. ‘And you won’t need to worry about anything at our end. Colonel Butler and I will deal with everything there. But… if there is anything—?’

Audley rolled an eye at Tom. ‘I suppose there are formalities here…’

“There isn’t anything—‘ The younger Mrs Cole stopped suddenly.

’But if you’d like to take Dr Audley through to the sitting room—

the coffee’s just percolated—perhaps you would carry the tray for me, Sir Thomas?‘

There was an edge of command in her voice. But more than that, she was deliberately splitting them. ‘I’d be pleased to, Mrs Cole.’

‘Yes…’ The old lady blinked at Audley. ‘Or perhaps you’d like something stronger, David?’

‘Coffee will do. Mother.’ The cutting edge flashed. ‘Dr Audley is driving, remember.’

‘Yes, dear… of course. Do please stay, David. And I’ll tell you all about it—no, it’s all right… It’ll be good to talk to someone—’

She gestured Audley onwards ‘—it was all so silly— so unnecessary — ’

‘Yes.’ The younger Mrs Cole watched Audley and her mother-in-law cross the hallway, to disappear through a mock-Tudor doorway. ‘So unnecessary—you can say that again!’ She addressed the closing door with cold venom before turning back to Tom.

‘This way, Sir Thomas.’

Tom followed her meekly in the opposite direction. Audley was Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State about to get it all. But he, also, was about to get something. Only his share might not be so palatable, he suspected.

The woman touched the light-switch as she entered the room. For an instant nothing happened, then an overhead strip-light flashed, and flashed again before coming on, reminding him quite inappropriately of the flashing gunfire in the hills above Beirut.

It was just a kitchen: a rather tatty kitchen, styled in the last-word fashion of 1935, with all the attendant mess of a sudden and unexpected bereavement in the house: unwashed breakfast crockery, and innumerable coffee cups on the draining-board.

The woman turned on him in the harsh light: a handsome, yet utterly unfeminine woman, altogether different from his own dear Willy— Willy-on-the-town now, probably with that damned naval attaché—

Mustn’t think of Willy. Must look innocent. ‘Coffee cups—?’ At least he could smell the coffee percolating.

‘Damn the coffee cups!’ she blazed at him. ‘You aren’t the old swine’s “very kind” colleagues, are you? You haven’t any idea of what’s happened—have you?’

‘No. We haven’t.’ It was no good lying to this woman, any more than it was any good lying to Willy. And it was particularly no good because she’d obviously heard Audley’s unwise exhortation to his ‘ drunken old bugger’ and her ‘ old swine’ through the thinness of the mock-Tudor front door.

‘Who are you?’

He was used to this sort of doubt, because he didn’t look like the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Sir Thomas Arkenshaw’ people expected. But it was beginning to become irritating, that disbelief. ‘You are Mrs Cole, are you? Basil Cole’s daughter-in-law?’

‘Yes—’

‘Then I am Sir Thomas Arkenshaw, of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Mrs Cole.’ He reached inside his jacket.

‘And this is my identification.’

She examined his warrant card carefully before returning it to him.

So she had guts. But he knew that already.

“Thank you… Sir Thomas Arkenshaw.‘ She watched him return it to its place. But then she waited.

And she wasn’t scared, thought Tom. So he had to be brutal. ‘How did he die, Mrs Cole?’

‘He fell out of a tree.’

She wasn’t scared. But there was more to it than that. ‘He did what

—?’

‘He fell out of a tree.’ She repeated the statement so obstinately that he was all the more certain of its inadequacy.

‘What the devil was he doing up a tree, Mrs Cole?’

‘He was cutting off a branch.’ She grimaced at him. ‘All these old trees around the house… the copper beeches… they were planted back in the 1930s, Sir Thomas. And the fool who planted them stuck them too close to the house.’ She reached to turn the percolator off, on the working-surface beside her. ‘So there was this big one, at the back… He had put a ladder up, to get at it. He should have got a professional tree-feller to do it.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Tom was unbearably reminded of an Irish joke about ‘tree-fellers’, the punch-line of which he couldn’t remember, except that it had something to do with ‘three fellas’ and ’tree-fellers‘. But that had nothing to do with the fixed expression on her face.

Her nerve broke as he tried to remember the end of the joke.

‘When he cut the limb, it knocked him off the ladder… so it seems.’ She uncoupled the coffee percolator from its plug. ‘At least, that’s what the policeman thought… Apparently, people are always killing themselves, messing about with trees.’

Not good enough! She was a fine-looking woman, high-breasted and with a high IQ to match the lift of the twin-set under the pearls; and she had quite properly defended her mother-in-law from their blundering ignorance in the doorway, when they hadn’t known what was happening.

‘But there is something you can do, Sir Thomas.’ She recognized his doubt, and faced it honestly, breasts and IQ lifting together. ‘I never imagined that I’d ask such a thing. But it seems I can.’

Tom watched her reach towards a line of cups hanging on hooks under an old-fashioned glass-fronted cupboard and then search for matching saucers. ‘Ask what thing, Mrs Cole?’

She looked at him. “There’ll be an inquest, of course.‘

He wondered how much she knew about her father-in-law’s work.

Or, if she didn’t know, whether she had guessed. ‘Yes. But with an accident like this, it’ll be pretty much a formality.’

She moistened her upper lip. ‘It may not be, I’m afraid.’

He could legitimately frown now. ‘Are you suggesting it wasn’t an Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State accident, Mrs Cole? But you said . . the policeman said—?’

‘I’m not suggesting anything. But… my father-in-law worked for the Ministry of Defence, I believe—even after his retirement. I am presuming that you have influence. Isn’t that the way the world works?’

Tom frowned again. ‘What do you want, Mrs Cole?’

She stared at him, her mouth primly compressed. ‘It would be better… for my mother-in-law’s sake, it would be better if certain questions weren’t asked at the inquest. It won’t hurt anyone if they aren’t asked—no harm or injustice will be done.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘You see, Sir Thomas, I know exactly how he fell out of the tree—and why.’

Well, that was something! thought Tom gratefully. But then his gratitude evaporated as he realized that what he’d been thinking and what she evidently thought no longer matched at all. And one of them had to be wrong.

5

‘Well?’ said Audley.

Tom caught a last glimpse of the two Mrs Coles in his rear-view mirror: they were standing together in their doorway in a pool of yellow light. Then the dark mass of the rhododendron bushes erased them.

‘Well?’ Audley stabbed the word at him again. ‘What did she want Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State to say to you which she couldn’t say in front of the widow?’

The digital clock registered 7.30, and Tom’s stomach confirmed its accuracy. But now there were more pressing matters than hunger.

‘She wanted me to nobble the coroner before the inquest.’

‘Indeed?’ Audley pointed. ‘Go back to the village and stop at the pub. I want to make a phone-call or two. There’s a call-box just opposite.’

That was convenient. ‘Okay.’ But a little honest curiosity would be natural. ‘May one ask to whom?’

‘One may. When one has answered my first question more adequately.’

‘The old lady didn’t tell you, then?’

‘That he fell off a ladder, do you mean?’

‘No. That he was drunk when he fell.’

‘Ah… No, she didn’t add that ingenious embellishment.’ Audley shifted slightly. ‘But, since he only fell this morning, just how has that been so quickly established beyond a peradventure?’ Audley sniffed. ‘Although I can now well understand why Mrs Cole junior might not wish such choice circumstantial evidence to be emblazoned in the local paper.’ Another sniff. ‘But don’t tell me!

He smelt like a distillery and had an empty bottle of Johnnie Walker stuffed in his pocket—right?’

‘Substantially right. Except it was twelve-year-old Bunnahabhain malt, and it was only half empty. And it was in his garden shed, complete with a half-full tumbler.’ Tom could see the lights of the village ahead. And there was nothing behind. ‘Christine Cole says Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State it’ll make her mother-in-law very unhappy, if that comes out.’

‘Bunkum! The old girl’s used to what’s always been the truth—it will make Mrs Christine Cole, who is teetotal, and the Reverend Brian Cole, her husband, unhappy… although they might equally have taken the view that the poor old devil ought to be held up as a horrible example of the evils of drink in death, just as he had been in life. That would be what I would have expected, actually—

hmmm… In fact, I would have bet on it even, now that I come to think about it. Damn!’ Audley thumped the dashboard. ‘ Damn!’

‘What?’ The man’s sudden vehemence took Tom by surprise.

‘I was just being mildly ashamed of myself for being flippant. He was a drunken, difficult old devil. But—’ He pointed again ‘—the pub’s just ahead, on the corner—remember?’

‘But what?’ They were back to the awkward turning, and there was still nothing behind. ‘But what?’

Audley ignored him.

He negotiated the corner and swung the car on to the pub forecourt.

Audley still didn’t reply, and made no effort to move. ‘Damn!’

Very well! Tom decided. ‘But that didn’t give anyone the right to kill him, were you going to say?’

Audley turned slowly towards him. ‘Evidence?’

‘I hardly think there’ll be any. Not if it was professionally done. Is that what you think, David?’

Audley opened his door. ‘What I think is that I want to make a couple of phone-calls. Have you got any change?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘No.’ Tom knew that his pocket was full of coins. ‘Don’t use the call-box. Go and phone from the pub. They’ll give you change.’

Audley stared at him. ‘Is that minder’s rules?’

‘Just a precaution, nothing more.’

‘Okay. Come in and have a drink. I need one.’

Tom shook his head. ‘I’ll mind the car. Just another precaution—

okay?’

He waited for two agonizingly long minutes after Audley had disappeared into the pub before going across to the call-box himself. Only two minutes was a risk, he knew. But more than that opened up a risk later on, depending on how quickly the old man managed to make his own calls. But both risks were now outweighed by a greater one, in any case.

He dialled and fed in plenty of money.

‘Consolidated Slide-Dimmers. Can I help you?’

‘This is Thomas Arkenshaw for Henry Jaggard. And I’m in a public call-box, and I’m in a hurry.’ He had to trust Garrod Harvey’s promise. ‘Put me through.’

‘Putting you through directly, Sir Thomas.’

The only trouble was that Jaggard might well expect him to be phoning from halfway to the West Country, thought Tom. But if Jaggard didn’t ask, then he wouldn’t say.

‘Hullo, Tom!’ Jaggard sounded almost genial. ‘All well?’

Tom changed his mind. ‘I’m in a call-box in Hampshire, just off the A34. And I’ve got maybe three minutes.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

“What the hell—‘ Jaggard stopped ’Yes?‘

‘Do you know of a man named Cole? Basil Cole? He used to work for one of your predecessors.’

‘What’s—’ Jaggard stopped again. ‘Go on.’

‘Audley wanted to talk to him, about his old comrade. He said Cole was the expert now, not him. Only as of this morning Cole isn’t talking to anyone ever again.’

‘How?’

Well, at least Jaggard was getting the message. ‘He fell off a ladder and broke his neck. Apparently he was drunk at the time.’

‘So—?’ Jaggard evinced neither suprise nor regret. ‘Is that true?’

‘No one saw it happen. Audley doesn’t believe it. And neither do I.’

‘Why not? He was always a drinker.’ Jaggard pressed on. ‘Have you talked to the police? What do they say?’

‘Everyone thinks it was an accident.’ Easy was not going to do it, decided Tom. ‘Christ! We’ve already been shot at! What else do you want?’

‘Steady on, Tom! We’ll check on Cole—’

“The hell you will! Audley’s in a pub across the road from here doing just that, for a guess. If your people run into his people he’ll know I’ve blown the whistle on him.‘ Tom stared uneasily across the road towards the lights of the pub. ’I want back-up on Exmoor.

Because I can’t guarantee satisfaction on my own, not now.‘

There was a fractional pause. ‘Does Audley want help? Has he asked for it?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State The welcoming lights of the pub mocked him. Audley might just be asking for just that now. But somehow he doubted it, after the way the old man had dismissed his police escort—and, for that matter, after he’d been so outraged that anyone should dare to take a shot at him. ‘I don’t know what Audley wants. But I want backup, I’m telling you. Give me back Harvey, at the very least.’

‘No. Harvey was only marked to take you to Audley—and he’s busy now. But in any case… this is strictly a Research and Development matter now.’

‘Is it?’ Steady on Arkenshaw! Tom admonished himself. ‘Then what am I doing in the middle of it?’

Jaggard made a snuffling sound. Or maybe it was the line. ‘You’ve been seconded, Tom. Didn’t I tell you? Just temporarily, anyway—

Frobisher’s agreement. And Colonel Butler’s… So if Audley wants help, or you want back-up, the request must go to Butler through Audley. I’m sorry, but that’s the protocol. Is that clearly understood?’

Tom didn’t think it had been the line. ‘So I don’t have to report to you any more?’ Clearly understood. ‘Yes.’ Or maybe, on second thoughts, not so clearly understood! ‘Just order me who I have to protect: Audley or his old comrade—if it comes to the crunch, and they start throwing punches at each other? Just give me that order.’

‘Panin isn’t after him. He wants to talk to him.’ Jaggard’s tone softened. ‘Look—’

‘Someone’s after him.’ Then Tom came to a much greater fear.

‘And someone already knows too much about what we’re doing.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State The third pause turned him back towards the pub: he had to be on borrowed time now.

‘Who knew you were going to see Basil Cole?’

Jaggard was taking him seriously at last. But now he had only a useless answer. ‘No one. Or… no one except Audley.’

‘Right. Then Cole may actually have had an accident. Because drunks do have accidents But we’ll check up on that—and don’t worry, because we’ll check very circumspectly. Right?’ But again Jaggard didn’t wait for an answer. ‘And as for that bullet of Audley’s… don’t you worry about that.’

Oh, great! Tom opened his mouth to swear. But then he knew that he was too late.

‘Listen, Tom: Audley’s made a fair few enemies in his time. So we don’t think it came from the Other Side. There are lots of other candidates—’

It was a million years too late: Audley was outside the pub, peering into the car. And in another half-second he would be looking across the road.

‘Are you listening, Tom?’

He turned his back towards Audley. ‘I’m putting the phone down now—I’ll call you again when I get the chance.’ He cut the line, while still holding the receiver to his ear, and stared at the dialling instructions. Then he saw the spare coins he had piled up, which he had told Audley he hadn’t got. But then, that was a minor lie compared with the phone-call itself: he could always have said he’d reversed the charges—

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Reversed the charges—!

As the memory came back to him he knew he hadn’t time for arguments. All he could remember, as he fed the coins into the box, was all those reversed charges he had made in his student youth.

The ringing note sounded in his ear. It was a long shot, but he hadn’t had any luck today, so he was in line for some now. And at least Audley hadn’t seen him put the phone down and then pick it up again.

The ringing sound stopped as the phone at the other end was lifted: now he had time only for two quick questions, and two quick answers, and then one quick tapestry of falsehoods which he must hope would be believed—

He opened the door of the phone-box and beckoned across the road. ‘David! Come over here!’ Audley looked up and down the darkened village street, in which the main illumination was from the pub itself. Which was fair enough, since he’d been warned off the phone-box once already.

‘Over here, David!’ Audley’s caution gave him time for a few more words. And then—‘Hold on—here he is now—’ The look of naked and unashamed suspicion on the old man’s face (which his face was well-battered to demonstrate) encouraged him to shout for both of them ‘—my mother would like a word with you, David—’

He thrust the receiver at Audley ‘—here she is now—’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State He withdrew a few yards from the call-box, out of pretended tact, but actually because there was nothing he could do now. It all depended on her wits—

(‘Yes?’ She had addressed the phone peremptorily, as she always did, as though it was an inadequately-trained servant who had disturbed her rest.)

(‘Mamusia?’ That hadn’t been the first question, but it came out automatically, from his enormous relief, now that he had a chance.

‘ Do you remember an old boyfriend of yours named David Audley? A big chap— ?’)

(‘Darling boy—! How lovely! Who did you say?’) (If there was anything he hated but about which he could do nothing, it was being addressed as ‘Darling boy!’, like a character out of a play written even before her time. But this wasn’t a moment for recrimination: it was the moment for Question One, repeated.)

(‘Mamusia — do you remember David Audley? Answer me quickly!’)

(‘David—David!’ At the first ‘David’ Tom hung on a thread. But at the second one he was on a ship’s cable. ‘ Darling—of course I do! From long before you were born, darling boy! From Cambridge—before I met your father… Or… perhaps not quite before—’)

(Audley was moving now—)

( I once went to a ball with him—David Audley Question Two Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State started to become redundant before it was asked. ‘ Darling—I went as “Beauty”… and he went as “The Beast”—how could I forget him! Where did you meet him?’)

(Scratch Question Two!)

(‘Mamusia, he’s here now, waiting to talk to you. And he’s my boss. So just tell him I’ve been talking to you for the last five minutes—don’t argue just tell him that—okay?’ No more time.

‘Hold on—here he is now—’)

In the end he dawdled back to the car, plagued by the same old mixture of love and exasperation and admiration and doubt which he had always—or, not always, but at least latterly—shared about her with Dad: she was gorgeous undoubtedly (and what she must have been like in Audley’s youth, and in the full flush of her own, taxed his imagination beyond its furthest limits); but she had always

—no, not always, but sometimes—seemed to him the best and worst of mothers, by turns affectionate and uncaring, tactful and tactless, and intellectually brilliant and embarrassingly feckless: all he had ever known was that he could never be sure of what he knew about her—that he could never be sure of anything. And that had often been good fun, but not always. And now was one of those not-always times, although now he had only himself to blame

—But Audley was coming back now—

Audley got into the car, breathing heavily. ‘That was an exceptionally low-down action.’ The old man fumbled for his Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State safety-belt, and fumbled even more before he snapped it home. ‘

“Darling Boy”—“Darling Boy”?’ He looked at Tom in the darkness. ‘But I thought the phone-box was out-of-bounds—?’

But he didn’t sound angry, thought Tom. In fact, he sounded foolishly at ease, even happy, after that ‘low-down action’. So perhaps, just this important once, she had been not only at her most affectionate, but also tactful and brilliant—not (as she always had been with Willy’s predecessors) the other way round.

‘Yes—I’m sorry, David.’ That was true, and even doubly true: he had said that, but more than that he was vestigially sorry that he had played so very dirty; because, if calling her had been a fearful risk, using her against the old man hadn’t been cricket in Dad’s Cambridge definition of the game; but, then again, in his own definition—and in Mamusia’s— and, for that matter, in Audley’s—

in all of those, Dad’s definition didn’t apply: none of them had played Dad’s Cambridge game for a long time, if ever.

‘Sorry?’ Audley wasn’t so happy now. ‘I thought you Diplomatic Protection people were more into “safe” than “sorry”?’

‘Yes.’ Now he really was sorry, as he realized he must be more careful with Audley. ‘But I didn’t call her until I was sufficiently sure the road was clear. And I really don’t think my mother’s London line is insecure—not unless your old comrade is much better informed than he has any right to be, David.’

‘No?’ Audley was even unhappier. But at least he had been safely diverted from the true truth. ‘No, I might grant you that, Darling Boy. Or… I might, if you can tell me who is better informed—eh?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State They were far from the truth, safely. But they were right into the middle of a much more worrying truth.

Tom backed the car out, and started to drive. ‘Yes.’ He needed the fastest road to the M4 now, to the West Country, when Audley would be taking the M3 to London as his objective. But he wanted a lot more out of the man before the deviation became apparent; so Audley’s attention to road-signs and sign-posts must be diverted for the time being.

‘Yes.’ The trouble was that Audley was quite right, whatever convenient possibilities Jaggard chose to imagine: someone had got to Basil Cole, and very efficiently, even before someone had got to David Audley, even though their cruder solution to that assignment had failed disgracefully. ‘Maybe you should talk to Colonel Butler.’ The road was dark ahead, and dark behind: it was the hour when the early evening drinkers were drinking, and the rest of the world was settling down for its night’s television, or putting its children to bed, or having its supper. ‘You might even ask him for some more protection, while you’re about it. In fact, that’s what I’d advise now, professionally.’

‘Even though we’re not being followed?’ Audley sat back comfortably, more relaxed again. ‘Darling Boy?’

‘Yes.’ If Audley thought he was going to rise to Mamusia’s dreadful term of endearment he was much mistaken. ‘But if they already know exactly how you think, they hardly need to follow us, do they?’

‘Very true. And rather disconcerting, I agree.’ Audley fumbled down beside his seat. ‘How does one put oneself into the reclining Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State position, Darling Boy?’

‘You’re not going to go to sleep on me, are you?’ The thought of Audley snoring beside him during the long drive to the West Country was off-putting.

‘I thought I might shut my eyes for an hour.’ Audley found the seat-adjuster and sank out of sight. ‘We elderly persons… we don’t need so much sleep, but the occasional cat-nap works wonders…

Just wake me up on the edge of London. Then I’ll make a phone-call.’

‘To Colonel Butler?’ In return for getting his own way Tom was prepared to put up with the old man’s snoring. ‘For back-up?’

‘No. He can’t spare anyone… Research and Development doesn’t carry assorted minders on its payroll, we all work for our living…

And I don’t want anyone. Especially not any of the unemployed hoodlums Jack would have to hire.’ Audley sneezed explosively.

‘You will make the phone-call actually, Tom—to inform Nikolai Panin that we are changing the rendezvous, wherever it may be that has been agreed. Okay?’

‘What?’ The A34 advance warning sign flashed up ahead.

‘You’re quite right… somebody is too damn-better informed.’

Audley’s voice was starting to get sleepy. ‘So we’ll start out by meeting him on my chosen ground, where you won’t have to have eyes in the back of your head… Then we won’t need any of your

“back-up”… And too many people already seem to know too much, that I do know. So then we can start putting a stop to that.

So… just wake me up between Chertsey and Sunbury, there’s a Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State good fellow, eh?’

Audley thought he was heading for the M3 to London, to the east, not the M4 to Bristol, in the west, and the M5 and distant Exmoor after that. And there was a lot more also that the poor old devil thought which was just as much in the opposite direction, most of all regarding his Danny’s Darling Boy, who had somehow become one of Henry Jaggard’s hoodlums —

‘In Research and Development our job is to think, not to risk our probably over-valued necks protecting even less-valuable necks in foreign hell-holes… like you, Tom… “poor Tom”…’ murmured Audley. ‘ Thinking’s much more agreeable than worrying… You tend to enjoy a better class of life that way… ’he trailed off into what was more likely oblivion than thought.

Tom realized that he had just begun to fall into the error of being slightly sorry for Audley, even while he had at the same time been beginning to savour the thought of the old man waking up on the other side of England from suburban London and whatever ground he’d chosen for his rendezvous with the Russian. But suddenly he became aware of a greater error—or not so much an error as a hideous mistake: he might no longer be sure where his duty lay in relation to Audley and Jaggard, but nagging regrets and minor gratifications paled into nothing beside the need to keep this man alive. And, after that bullet and Basil Cole’s untimely death, his duty was inescapable.

‘We’re not going to London, David. We’re going to Exmoor.’

‘What?’ Audley swallowed the word.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘I said “We’re not going to London”—’

Tom hit the foot-brake to jerk Audley into wakefulness.

‘ What?’ The old man tried to sit up, but couldn’t. ‘To… where?’

‘To Exmoor, David. Panin’s meeting us at Holcombe Bridge—the Green Man Hotel, Holcombe Bridge, on Exmoor.’ He glanced at the digital clock. ‘Actually, we should be meeting him about now.

So I will have to stop before long, because it’s going to take me all of three hours to get there. Apart from warning Panin that we’re going to be late I need to make sure they don’t let our rooms to someone else.’

Audley was struggling to readjust his seat, fumbling and mumbling at the same time.

‘It’s a good hotel, anyway,’ continued Tom with false cheerfulness as the old man’s mumble deepened to a thunderous growl. ‘It’s in Egon Ronay and Rubinstein, and the Good Food Guide.’ Harvey had been envious, indeed. ‘So we shall at least be comfortable, David.’

‘Bugger that!’ Just as he seemed about to resort to brute force Audley was jerked upright. But then, somewhat to Tom’s surprise, the thunder died away into a silence which made him more nervous. Because now at last he had somehow pressed the button, and he sensed the man’s thoughts rocketing up, silently because they had left sound behind. And once that rocket went up, no one knew where it would come down—Jaggard and Harvey were agreed on that. And that, of course, was why he was here.

‘I’m sorry, David—’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Don’t be sorry.’ Audley’s voice was in neutral now, neither angry nor friendly. ‘Let me get things straight: your job is to look after me, and get me to Nikolai Andrievich… and to learn, mark and inwardly digest whatever may pass between us—have I got that right?’

The rocket was up, and in orbit. ‘Well… not quite. I only have to be present because they’ve got someone with Panin—because that’s the deal.’ Shrugging in the dark was useless. “They don’t trust his loyalty as much as you do… of course.‘

‘Of course. Whereas my loyalty is beyond suspicion… of course.

Like yours?’

‘What?’ Just as he had shrugged unseen, so Audley must have nodded ironic agreement unseen.

‘So who are you working for, at this precise but nebulous moment, Tom Arkenshaw? To whom do you report back, at regular intervals?’

At least he had an answer to that now. ‘I’m seconded to Research and Development—Mr Frobisher and Colonel Butler have both agreed to that.’ The half-truth of that chained him fast. ‘I have no instructions from Colonel Butler. But maybe I should have. Next time you call him you might ask him if he’d like me to—what was it?—“learn, mark and inwardly digest”? But isn’t that a misquotation? Isn’t it “read”, not “learn”—?’ But maybe it was a mistake to be clever. ‘But I am sorry, David: I should have told you about Exmoor before. Just… things got in the way, that’s all.’

‘Yes.’ The ensuing silence suggested that Audley had noted what Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State he’d said, but without either agreeing with or accepting it. ‘So…

they’ve let him run free. And so have we.’ Audley spoke to himself.

‘Panin?’ Tom decided to accept the question. ‘I gather he has some sort of diplomatic status. Cultural-dipIomatic status, anyway.’

‘Oh yes?’ Audley perked up, as though his brutish minder had shown an unlooked-for vestige of intelligence. ‘Cultural—of course!’

That had been another nod-in-the-dark. ‘Something to do with an exhibition there’s going to be in the BM next year, I think.’ Tom gave him a matching nod. ‘The Ancient Scythians, would it be? He is a genuine scholar, I believe. Or he was, in the dim and distant past, wasn’t he?’

‘Uh-huh. Weren’t we all?’ Audley sniffed. ‘In the dim and distant past…’He trailed off into silence again.

‘I never was.’ Tom had to break the silence.

‘No?’ The old man came back to him abruptly. ‘Don’t languages count as scholarship? Manchester University, wasn’t it? Russian and French there? And English and Polish before. And how many more now? Plus Latin at Waltham School, of course—they’d never let a linguist go without a dead language in his knapsack, would they! So how many is that then—seven? Eight?’

With the question of his present allegiance unresolved, he was being reminded that the old man had done his homework on Arkeshhaw, Thomas Wladyslaw Archibald. ‘Give or take a couple.’

He remembered the Caesar on Audley’s desk. ‘But my Latin’s a bit rusty now, like yours, David. So if we meet one of the arcani, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State or the frumentarii, sniffing around Exmoor, just don’t rely on me as an interpreter.’

‘Don’t knock your talent, Darling Boy. “The gift of tongues” is more of a negotiable asset than a nodding acquaintance with medieval history—or Ancient Scythia. If you blot your copybook with Frobisher, someone will always give you a job.’ Sniff. ‘Come to that, Jack Butler certainly would! He’s always on the look-out for people who can read between the foreign lines, not just translate them. Especially if I put in a good word for you.’

There was something odd here. ‘Are you offering rne a job? Or merely bribing me, David?’

‘Do you need bribing? Didn’t your late father do rather well with his merchant banking? Wasn’t he in on the Great Singapore Miracle

—and a good friend of Lee Kuan Yew?’ The old man’s inside information was offered sardonically. ‘Or has your dear mother got all the loot? But then… she sounded most affectionate. And you are the only son of your house—?’

The old devil was laying it on a bit thick. ‘Money isn’t everything.’

‘Isn’t it? Now, that is a great untruth beloved of those who have never been short of a buck. Because there’s always a bill for what you want… always supposing you’re wise enough—or lucky enough—to know what’s good for you, apart from what you want… But there’s always a bill—like self-respect, or honour, or peace of mind, or some such little thing… or talent wasted, even…

Believe me, I know, Tom. Because I have been poor—or briefly embarrassed, anyway. And I may well have lost something then, while I was busy disembarrassing myself… before I got lucky Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State again—’ Audley caught himself quickly. ‘But that’s ancient history, before your time. So… no, I’m not bribing you. Because Jack Butler won’t make you rich. At least… not unless you would count plenty of spare time in which to study those exceedingly esoteric mottes and baileys of yours—huh!’ Audley chuckled throatily. ‘Now, if that isn’t scholarship… But have you published anything yet, Tom? Wasn’t there something just recently?’

Christ! These weren’t defences! thought Torn. Somehow, Audley had reversed their roles, so that now he was the besieger, softening him up with mangonels and ballistas and trebuchets and belfreys—

‘I had an article in History Today not long ago—’ Short of a clever answer at short notice he was only able to defend himself conventionally and inadequately ‘—on Ranulf of Caen’s adulterine castle-building.’ He felt his defences weakening under Audley’s well-informed probing, much as Ranulf’s own had so quickly crumbled at Thackham under King Stephen’s lightning assault.

‘Ranulf of Caen?’ Audley pondered the name for a moment. ‘Now, Ranulf of Chester I know… Interesting man, that. But really rather before my own prime period, of course… But Ranulf of Caen…

He wouldn’t by any remote chance be the double-agent in Stephen’s army at Oxford in ’42? The one who fixed it so that the Empress Matilda could escape—when the old harpy shinned down the castle walls in a white sheet in the snow, in ‘42?’

Audley knew too damn much. ‘It could have been him, yes.’

‘Uh-huh?’ Audley pretended to be pleased. ‘You know, I’ve always had a weakness for King Stephen. A weak and foolish man, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State I know—always making the wrong decision if it was the easy one.

And always good at starting things, but never finishing them properly. And he had a shifty streak, I know… But not really a bad chap—probably would have made a good fast wing three-quarter on a club rugby tour. And good value in the pub afterwards…

although I certainly wouldn’t have let him organize the tour, I agree.’ Sniff. ‘But if that’s your period, Tom, the man you ought to study is John Marshall, the father of my great hero, William Marshall—John Marshall goes right the way through the whole Stephen-and-Matilda anarchy period. Right down into my period too, actually. Because he turns up at the Council of Northampton in his old age, as a back-room fixer in Henry II’s showdown with Thomas Becket. It’s a bloody marvel someone hadn’t topped him by then—he was a bad bugger—a real Norman… Whereas my William was the best knight in Christendom.’ Sniff. ‘An interesting thing is that our own dear Jack Butler is the living and actual reincarnation of my old William. Which is why I dedicated my little book on William to our Jack, of course.’

Now that was curious—and in a much more real way. Because, according to Harvey, Colonel Butler had got the director’s job in Research and Development a few years back, when Audley himself had been in line for it. Yet Audley’s affection for his rival was evident.

‘Yes.’ Audley paused as the motorway warning signs flashed in the headlights, offering them London or The West, among closer and homelier advice, plus the mileage information that Bristol and Exeter, and therefore Nikolai Andrievich Panin, were still a long Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State way away. ‘Yes, the great comfort of William Marshall—“the best knight that ever lived”, was what Archbishop Langton said of him after he died, Tom; and Langton knew him pretty damn well, too—

the great comfort is that, quite contrary to the custom-and-practice of the age… the Norman Age, and our age too… William always played a straight bat—kept faith, was always loyal to his salt, and his King, and his God—but came out on top of the heap, nevertheless!’

Tom was still thinking of Colonel Butler: to inspire this sort of affection in a devious old devil like Audley, he must be something special.

‘But I still have a sneaking admiration—or a sneaky admiration—

for William’s father, who was generally thought to be a right blackguard: “a limb of hell and the root of all evil”, is how he’s described in Gesta Stephani. Do you recall that, Tom?’

Tom was saved from having to reply by the problem of filtering off the almost-empty A34 on to the racing westwards traffic of the motorway, which was escaping from London all the faster because its drivers were already late for their weekends at this hour of the evening.

‘He was a good soldier—and a brave one… Left for dead, minus an eye from molten lead, covering Matilda’s retreat to Ludgershall… Maybe he did change sides a time or two—like your friend Ranulf of Caen… And he certainly wasn’t very fatherly to young William, at the siege of Newbury—Newbury, wasn’t it?’

Mercifully, Audley didn’t expect an answer now, but merely sniffed his characteristic sniff. ‘I reckon he knew Stephen was far Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State too kind-hearted to execute his hostages… But then Stephen is a good example of your fundamentally decent chap who is also a fundamental idiot, when it comes to politics… So perhaps John Marshall wasn’t so unspeakable at Newbury, when Stephen threatened to hang little William before the castle wall—you remember? And John said he had hammers and anvils to forge a better son than William—? “Hammers and anvils”, indeed! Dirty devil!’

Was that in Gesta Stephani! Tom put his foot down, irritated by his inadequacy. ‘I’m more into fortification than politics, David…

actually.’

‘Ah… yes…“ Audley settled himself down. ’Now… that is a rather impressive motte at Oxford, isn’t it? Just opposite that architectural monstrosity of Nuffield College—”the spirit is willing, but the fleche is weak“, don’t they say? With Oxford Gaol in the bailey— and St George’s Tower at the back? Is that Matilda’s Castle?‘

Was he being tested? ‘There were shell-walls in the Oxford motte.

And Gesta Stephani says there was water all round, plus marshes—

the Gesta says Stephen swam the river under fire, to take the city…

Doesn’t it, David?’

‘Does it? But he didn’t take the castle… Would his siege-works have been roughly where Nuffield College is now?’ For a moment Audley sounded genuinely interested. ‘But then the water-table at Oxford must have been very different then—to get a wet-moat up round the mound, surely? Don’t you have to go uphill, towards the appalling Westgate shopping centre?’ Then his voice faded. ‘Not Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State that it matters… since Matilda got away, down her rope, in the snow, to Wallingford Castle—didn’t she—?’

Wallingford had been the key strong-point on the upper Thames, the great strategic medieval honour of the region—

Damn! What the hell was Audley up to?

‘In the snow…’ Audley murmured the words to himself, but with a different emphasis, as though they had reminded him of some other White Christmas in Oxford, long after the Empress Matilda had contested Oxford and England with Stephen of Blois ‘… in the snow in Oxford? But now we have Russians, with snow on their boots, on Exmoor… But why on Exmoor, Tom?’

Audley had got there simultaneously, though in a different way. ‘I don’t know, David. But that’s where he wants to meet you.’

‘I believe you. Because, for the time being… and maybe for your dear mother’s sake… I choose to believe you. But also because I don’t really have much choice, at this moment—do I?’

They were settled in the fast lane now, with uneven lines of red rear-lights stretching far ahead of them, to be overtaken, while a matching line of yellow-white headlights whipped past them on the oncoming lanes to the right. So there was the twentieth century and sudden death a few yards away; but there was the twelfth century, with all its very different, yet nonetheless human, calculations of ends against middles, and loyalties and affections, still in the background of both their minds. And he had nothing to say about that.

‘Which leaves me with four questions, Tom.’ Unlike the Empress Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Matilda and King Stephen, and even unlike the Marshalls, John and William, and even Ranulf of Caen, poor old David Audley had no strong motte and bailey into which he could prudently withdraw: he was out in the open, committed to a parley with the enemy in unknown territory. But at least he knew it now.

‘Only four?’ Yet, as a good medievalist, the old man would have known better than to put his trust in stone and mortar, never mind an earthen rampart and a wooden palisade: there was no strong place couldn’t be taken, whether by force or guile or treachery:

‘the stronger the keep, the stronger the prison’, Stephen of Blois had once warned Ranulf of Caen.

‘Four to start with, anyway.’ Sniff. ‘Like… why you, Tom Arkenshaw? for a start—eh?’

‘Me?’ Tom flashed the car in front out of his way. In the medieval analysis he represented Jaggard’s guile rather than the enemy’s treachery. But it might yet amount to the same thing, near enough.

‘I thought we’d dealt with me: I’m just a slightly superior minder, aren’t I?’

‘Are you?’ Audley waited until the car ahead had surrendered its illegal 90-mph to their dangerous 100. ‘Well… time will tell—eh?’

At last he found his handkerchief, and blew his nose comprehensively. ‘ “Times levelled line shews man’s foul misdeeds”— Euripides?’

Nasty! thought Tom. ‘Very true, David. And—“Somewhere behind Space and Time… Is wetter water, slimier slime”— Rupert Brooke?’ But as that didn’t really mean anything, better to press on before Audley came to that conclusion also. ‘And Question Two, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State David?’

But Rupert Brooke stopped Audley in his tracks; and now there was a terrifying clot of heavy vehicles playing Grand Prix with an express coach making up lost time for Bristol, and shuddering the car with their slipstreams as he tried to reach the relative safety of open motorway beyond. ‘Question Two, David?’

‘Yes…“ Audley waited until they had broken through. ’ Why me? is next. But I suppose I can’t expect you to attempt to answer, if you really don’t know the answer to Question One—or even if you do… or you think you do.‘ He sniffed again. But then he found his handkerchief and blew his nose at last. ’But maybe one answer to

”Why Audley?“ is quite simply ”Panin“. Only that rather begs the answer to the third and most important question. Which is Why Panin?‘ He tried for a moment to return his handkerchief to his pocket, but then gave up the struggle, against the:restriction of his seat-belt. ’But at least he gives us a clue, does old Nikolai: with him at least we know who we’re dealing with.‘

Better just to drive (and hope that there weren’t any unmarked police speed-traps), and listen (and just listen). ‘But I thought you needed Basil Cole, to tell you about Panin?’

‘So I do—or, so I did… But I’ve got someone else looking into that now… How long have we got, before you get me to wherever it is?’

Tom looked down at the little green numbers on the dashboard.

‘Not very long—unless we get stopped for speeding.’ The thought of a dilettante crew like Research and Development extending Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State itself over the weekend was far from comforting. ‘You’ve got someone good on him, have you?’

‘Yes. I have.’ The old man became lofty. ‘How long?’

Tom glanced at the time again, and estimated it against distance; and that was no problem for nine-tenths of the journey, for all great roads were the same at night, motorway or autobahn, autoroute or autostrada. It was only that last tenth, in the wilds of Exmoor somewhere beyond Tiverton, which was imponderable. ‘Maybe three hours.’ The darkness was a pity, as well as the lost time: no chance now of taking in Robert de Bampton’s great motte, which King Stephen had besieged in ‘35, just north of Tiverton. ’Who, David?‘

‘Who-what, Tom?’

‘Who have you got checking on Panin now?’

‘Ah… now, you tell me why you need to know. And then I’ll tell you… maybe.’

‘Too many people seem to know too much already. I’ve said it—

you’ve agreed with it. But you’ve already told someone else. So I’d like to know who.’

‘Good try. But not good enough.’ Audley started fumbling with his seat-adjustment again. ‘At least I can get a good sleep for three hours.’

‘You really don’t trust me, do you?’

‘Don’t fret yourself. I don’t trust anyone. Except maybe old Nikolai Andrievich—him I can trust.’

‘I see. You can trust Panin…’ He noted that Audley hadn’t sat Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State back yet; so the old man was waiting for him to react ‘…but not me?’

‘Exactly right. But I told you before: he gives us a clue, maybe—

remember?’

Gives— not will give, Tom remembered: he had dismissed the wrong tense too easily. So now he could only crawl. ‘What clue does he give us, David?’

‘Clues., actually… or possibly, anyway.’ Audley’s voice was lazy on its surface. But Tom felt a prickle up his spine which he recognized suddenly as something he’d felt earlier, though without accepting it consciously, whenever Nikolai Andrievich Panin had been mentioned. That calm surface—even the deliberate cosy reduction of the KGB veteran to ‘Nikolai Andrievich’, or ‘Old Nikolai’, for all the world as though he was truly an old and trustworthy friend—that calm surface was a sham. The truth was that the old man was scared.

‘Clues, then?’ Now that he had recognized it, he understood it: the sea above the Great White Shark might be as calm; but the unseen horror beneath was such that it had to be belittled, otherwise it would be too frightening. And, after their bullet and Basil Cole, that was fair enough.

‘Possibly.’ Audley rocked slightly, from side to side. ‘You’re still rather an equivocal character, Tom—to me, anyway. Because I know that you’re on our side… but are you on my side? No… no, don’t answer!’ He waved a hand halfway across the car. ‘You are a minor equivocal consideration, compared with Nikolai Andrievich, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State who is a major unequivocal one—do you see?’

He had done the old man wrong. Because being scared might be part of it, but it wasn’t all of it: the old war-horse was also champing at the bit at the prospect of meeting this Russian again, after all the years in-between since last time. ‘You mean…

whatever side I’m on… at least you know for sure whose side Panin is on, David?’

‘ Ah . ..’ Audley breathed satisfaction, real or simulated, in the soporific warmth of the car-heater. ‘Perhaps that is what I do mean.

Or… at least I mean that Nikolai Andrievich is a simple Russian—

KGB, but Russian always… “KGB” is merely a set of initials: Holy Mother Russia, all the way from Stalingrad to Berlin long ago, was his education. So after that, no crime is any problem for him. Whereas I am a simple Englishman—good, solid Anglo-Saxon, with only a small tincture of Norman blood… So I have complicated hang-ups about killing people, which he wouldn’t even begin to understand. Even killing Germans, during the war…

most of the ones I actually met seemed perfectly decent chaps—

there were one or two exceptions of course… But there were exceptions on our side too. Notable exceptions, in fact: better dead than alive, certainly. Only that worried me, because we English haven’t suffered the way others have—like Panin. So we English are not good haters. Except perhaps of the French… but that’s really a sort of love-hate, flavoured with admiration… And there are some foolish middle-class children who try to hate the Americans, out of ignorance and frustrated envy… Not that I blame them, mind you: it must be hard to be one of a post-imperial Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State generation—poor little things!’

God! The old man was rambling! ‘And you’re not… “post-imperial”, David?’

‘Lord no! My eighth birthday cake had a model of HMS Hood on the top of it: the biggest warship afloat, in the biggest navy of the greatest empire the world had ever seen—all pink, the map of the world was. And I saw Portsmouth in ’44, before we went across the Narrow Sea— the English Channel—that last time, ignorant as I was—

“Our King went forth to Normandy

With Grace and Power and Chivalry.

And there, for him, God wrought marvellously—”

‘Ignorant as I was… But I saw it all, the whole D-Day armada, from the crest of Portsdown Hill, on top of one of old Palmerston’s forts—the whole shebang, Tom: from Portsmouth to Gosport, with the barrage balloons overhead, in the same anchorage where:the Roman Classis Britannica rode off Portchester, and Henry V’s fleet before Agincourt, before he “went forth”—and Nelson’s, before Trafalgar, too. Though I can’t honestly say that God wrought marvellously for the West Sussex Dragoons in the Normandy bocage thereafter, because Jerry bloody massacred us…

However, that’s another story.’ He stopped suddenly. ‘And you are also another story. Or the Polish half of you is, anyway.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State That took Tom aback. The Polish half?‘

‘Yes.’ Audley shook himself. ‘We had a Polish armoured regiment near us in Normandy… 1st Polish Armoured Division, attached to the 1st Canadian Army— mad buggers, they were! We were psyched up to fight Jerry all the way to Berlin, but they weren’t stopping there… One of them said to me—and he said it in broad Yorkshire, or maybe Lancashire… Because he’d been stationed there, and he’d married a Lancashire girl— or maybe she was a Yorkshire girl, I don’t know… But he had a Yorkshire/Lancashire accent anyway. And he said to me: “We fook the fooking Germans first. And then we fook the fooking Russians—okay, English!” ’

Audley sighed. ‘Poor bugger!’

‘Poor bugger?’ But it rang true, all the same: that was what Father had said about Mamusia’s countrymen, exactly: they were all mad buggers, the Poles.

‘Aye—“poor bugger”,’ agreed Audley. ‘Most of his lot were killed up beyond Caen, closing the Falaise gap… Killed a lot of Germans too, I shouldn’t wonder. But never got to kill any fooking Russians therefore, to their great and enduring sorrow.’ Pause. ‘But… but, anyway, that was how your dear mother felt about it, to come back to the point: “The only good Russian is a dead one”, is how she felt. The way General Sheridan felt about Red Indians.’ Pause. ‘So is that how you feel, Tom? About Nikolai Andrievich?’

Once again Tom rearranged his thoughts. Audley was speaking lightly again, but the inquiry beneath was heavyweight. And, by the same token, he hadn’t really been rambling on, like any old soldier: Panin was now for him, too. But how then should he reply?

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Well—

Somebody flashed him from behind suddenly—mercifully with no accompanying flashing-blue police-light, but just to overtake him in the overtaking lane even as he was himself shaking in the slipstream of an immense Euro-lorry going flat-out in the fast lane; so he could pretend for a moment to attend to the mundane matters of life-and-death on the road.

‘Just let me get out of the way of this other mad bugger behind us, David—’

Well… it was certainly true that Mamusia hated and despised all Russians and everything Russian with all the intensity of a natural-born hater-and-despiser; in fact, if she’d been a man she probably would have been one of Audley’s ‘mad buggers’; and it was small wonder that the old man still remembered that fierce passion, which would have burnt even more hotly in her youth, when Katyn and the great betrayal of the Warsaw Rising were still raw gaping wounds, not hideous old scars.

He pulled over to let the other mad bugger get ahead—not an English mad bugger, but a mad American bugger secure in his diplomatically-plated Cadillac immunity—

Well… with the way Mamusia felt, he had always had to conceal his own inadequacy in the matter, which (if Audley’s theory was correct) must be his paternal inheritance: Father’s amused tolerance of almost everything had been a sore trial to Mamusia, even though it also embraced her extravagance, her admirers and her never-explained absences.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Father—

‘Well, Tom?’ Audley was a good passenger, oblivious to everything around him and only concerned with what was going on in his mind. But that was where his patience was exhausted new.

‘Well, Sir Thomas Arkenshaw?’

But Tom was momentarily inside his own thoughts, in the desolate grey country of wasted opportunities and lost might-have-beens, among the ghosts of all the things he had never shared with the one person he’d loved most and admired most in all the world, the memory of whom always made him a counterfeit, rather than an inheritor, of the Arkenshaw name.

‘Yes.’ He watched the brake-lights of the Cadillac brighten, already far ahead, as it was slowed-up by someone else who wasn’t breaking the speed limit sufficiently. What Mamusia always said about Father was that he hadn’t an enemy in the world: there were only his friends and the people who had never met him. But now he was neither his father’s nor his mother’s son, he was only himself. ‘I don’t give a damn what you do to Panin: you can kick him, or shake him by the hand, for all I care. My job is to see you safe home, that’s all.’ The trouble was that only himself was a liar.

‘That’s all, David.’

Audley digested the lie for a moment. ‘All right. Then, for a start, you’d better decide when to put me in my place, and not take bullshit from me.’

Tom held the wheel steady. ‘Such as?’

‘Panin is my problem, not yours. But that doesn’t mean you have Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State to let me patronize you. So… when you feel like it, you just tell me to go to hell—okay?’

‘Okay.’ Tom steadied the car and himself. The old man was full of surprises, arrogant and humble by turns. But then… but then, because of Mamusia… and, damnably, because of Jaggard too…

their relationship had an extra dimension which might confuse them both. ‘Go to hell, then!’

‘Or go to sleep, and let you get on with your job?’ Audley began to fumble with the seat-adjustment again. ‘Okay!’

‘No!’ Tom recalled himself to his duty, shutting out all other distractions. Jaggard expected more from him; and, even to do the job Audley at last seemed to be accepting as genuine, he needed more than that. ‘Tell me more about Panin. You said “clues”—

remember?’

‘I also said “need to know”—remember?’

‘Yes.’ He preferred Audley sharp and nasty to Audley kindly and fumbling. ‘If I’m to watch your back I need to know what I’m up against—and who. Every last damn thing you know about Panin, I need to know, David.’

Silence. So, although that was the truth, it was not good enough.

So he would have to play dirty.

‘And there are three other reasons. I wish there weren’t.’ That also was the truth, even though it was a truth which dirtied him—which didn’t set him free, but chained him in a dungeon for ever. ‘But there are.’

‘ Three…’ Audley stared at him in the dark, altogether perplexed, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State his face faintly lit on-and-off by the headlights of the oncoming traffic from the other side of the motorway ‘… three reasons? I can’t even think of one, Tom— three? ’

The bolts on the dungeon-door crashed into their sockets, and the iron key turned in the lock, and the chains rattled, echoing for ever.

‘Someone took a shot at you today, David—and missed.’ He couldn’t go back now, even if he wanted to. Because it would still have been the truth. ‘I’m never going to be able to face your wife… and Cathy… and my mother… if the next shot is a bull’s-eye, David. What am I going to say? I don’t think “Sorry” will be quite enough.’

Silence again. But this time it was a different silence.

The road ahead was suddenly dark, as they crested the last rise before the descent towards Bristol, and the motorway exchange to the West, and the South-West, and the North-West. But there would be no choice there, either: he couldn’t go back. And even if he could, Willy would be well into her steak, au poivre, very rare, by now, with a good Burgundy and a Lieutenant-Commander USN. So there was nothing to go back to, anyway.

‘Nikolai Panin is an interesting man. Even… in some ways… an attractive one. Although he does look a bit like a sad sheep.’ Sniff.

‘But he does his homework. So he’ll know you, Tom, I shouldn’t wonder—so don’t let him catch you off your guard, eh?’

That was about as unreassuring as he’d expected. So it required no astonished reaction.

‘But he’s a bad bugger, all the same—make no mistake.’ Pause.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘So, if he wants to talk to me, it isn’t for the good of my health, or the good of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or for the benefit of the Common Market and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization… or because he admires the Princess of Wales more than Mrs Gorbachev.’

A sign came up, advising them that Bristol was close, but the next motorway service area wasn’t.

‘Either he wants something so badly that he’s prepared to make a deal. But I doubt the deal will be much in our interest, even if it looks that way… Or he’s going to screw us somehow—like he’s the cheese in the trap.’ Pause. ‘And possibly a trap designed for me. Because he knows me. Like the back of his hand.’

That was decidedly unreassuring. Except that presumably Audley and Panin both knew what the other was thinking.

‘But there is another possibility. Which the traumatic events of this day suggest, actually. Though we must be careful not to “make pictures”…’

Now they were coming to it. Because anyone might have followed Audley so far—or even preceded him. But this would be pure Audley.

‘That pot-shot at me… it was quite outrageous—altogether monstrous.’ Disappointingly, the old man seemed to go off at a tangent suddenly, speaking almost to himself. ‘Yet—I cannot say that I was overwhelmed with surprise.’

‘No?’ That was true, for Tom’s recollection was of a blazing rage rather than surprise. What was surprising now was that Audley Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State sounded like nothing so much as an elderly vicar musing sadly on an outbreak of hooliganism in his hitherto peaceful rural parish, for the benefit of his innocent curate.

The Reverend David Audley sighed. ‘There are some very violent types around these days. But then there always have been, I suppose.’

Tom remembered what Jaggard had said on the phone. ‘And you must have made a few enemies in your time, David.’

‘Yes. Haven’t we all?’ The Rev. David sounded properly philosophic. ‘However, as I recall, I was surprised that the blighter missed me.’

‘Not to say also gratified.’ Tom couldn’t resist the curate’s murmur.

‘Eh? Yes—of course.’ The old man had only half heard him. ‘So that was either gross incompetence… But often people are incompetent, it has to he admitted. Yet it could also have been a deliberate act, just to frighten me, or warn me… or even to encourage me to get my skates on.’

There was perhaps the faintest orange tinge to the night sky ahead, which could be either the westwards motorway junction or the city of Bristol itself. ‘But you didn’t think it was Panin, David.’

‘No. Or… if it was, then it has to be a deliberate miss. Because his man wouldn’t have been incompetent. But that, in turn, means that he’s running very scared, and he needs me— me, of all people!—

very badly, for some reason.’

‘Some reason?’ It wasn’t fear in the old man’s voice now: it was something more like satisfaction. ‘What reason?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘God knows!’ It was satisfaction. ‘Interesting, though, isn’t it!’ He fell silent, and Tom decided to let the silence work itself out without rising to it with fool questions.

‘Yes…’ Audley nodded eventually. ‘It was a long time ago…’

Tom waited for two miles, watching the red-orange glow in the distance. Driving towards Hell would be like this, he thought. And then wished he hadn’t thought such an ill-omened image. ‘What was?’

‘Eh?’ Silence again. ‘When I first met Panin, Tom. We knew so little about him… But then, of course, he was an internal security man: he’d never really messed us around. He really wasn’t particularly interested in us even then… Though it seems he became quite interested in me thereafter…’

Another silence.

‘Knowing people is really what our work is all about now—who’s who leads to what’s what. Machines can do most of the donkey-work now: spies-in-the-sky can do the damned spying… It’s who they are, and what’s in their minds, that matters.’ Audley sniffed. ‘I remember…’ But then he trailed off.

Tom was equally grateful that he dropped ‘Darling Boy’ and his irritatingly friendly ‘Nikolai Andrievich’ as the memory of that first meeting came back to him. ‘You remember?’

‘Yes.’ The old man’s voice was suddenly cautious. ‘It was about the time I met my wife… But tell me, Tom: did your dear mother remember me?’

‘What—?’ The sudden change in direction caught Tom Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State unprepared. ‘She remembered you very well, David.’ Obviously, the memory of the woman who had said ‘yes’ to him had drawn him back to an earlier memory, of the woman who had said ’no‘.

‘She did?’ On its surface Audley’s tone was exactly right. But there was something beneath that casual self-satisfaction.

‘Yes.’ Or… perhaps he had seen Tom put the phone down and then pick it up again. ‘Yes.’ But he couldn’t have seen that. But he could still be checking. ‘She particularly remembered a fancy dress ball. She went as Beauty. And you went as… The Beast, David—?’

Silence. And what was coming up ahead now was the M32

exchange to Bristol City, with the larger M5 interchange to the West, and to Wales and the North, promised just beyond.

He didn’t want to know about Mamusia’s youthful love-life, anyway. Or, anyway, not at this moment—at this moment he wanted to know more about Panin.

‘It seemed a good idea at the time,’ said Audley. ‘We’d just seen Cocteau’s La Belle et La Bete— the film. That was what gave us the idea.’

He didn’t want to know about old films, either—

‘Jean Marais played The Beast. I can’t recall the girl’s name, who played Beauty. But Danny—your dear mother, Tom—she was far more beautiful.’

Audley seemed to have forgotten Panin altogether, never mind that bullet of his. And never mind Basil Cole, too.

‘She had a superb dress. Cobwebby lace and pearls, and floating gauze.’ Audley’s voice was dreamy. ‘And I had a superb mask, for Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State The Beast—’

He didn’t want to know about fairy stories and fancy dress balls—

‘But I never got to wear it—’

It had happened in the wrong order— the thought came to Tom from nowhere— Basil Cole’s accident and then Audley’s bullet.

‘I got kicked in the face playing rugger that afternoon. Broken nose and two black eyes, and lips like a Ubangi tribesman. It was so painful I couldn’t get the mask on.’

‘David—’

‘So I had to go as I was, without it—’

‘David—why did they kill Basil Cole in the morning when they were planning to kill you in the afternoon?’

‘But we still won the fancy dress competition. Apparently—all too apparently—I was the beastliest Beast anyone had ever seen,’

concluded Audley. ‘You’re absolutely right, Tom.’

The M4/M5 spaghetti junction loomed ahead. ‘I am?’

‘Yes. That’s the contradictory fact. But only if you look at it from the wrong point-of-view. Plus the fact that Panin’s internal security. Plus ancient history repeating itself, even against the odds.’ Sniff. ‘But then, there are some damn queer things happening over there, now that young Gorbachev’s come to the throne. So maybe that’s not so unlikely.’

The interchange traffic was heavy and fast, racing to reach its weekend destinations and forcing Tom to concentrate for a moment on finding a place in it even as Audley’s words sank in.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Damned traffic—

And those other, earlier words—

Damned traffic! It was like this all the way to Exeter—

Earlier words—

He found a slot in the overtaking lane at last. ‘You think Panin’s maybe gunning for someone on his own side?’ He frowned as he spoke. ‘But over here? And you got in the way somehow?’

‘I think maybe he wants me to do the gunning. Like before. And maybe someone else doesn’t like the idea. Also like before. At least, it’s a working hypothesis, for a start.’

‘And Basil Cole?’

‘He’s part of the hypothesis.’ Audley sat up. ‘Slow down a bit, there’s a good fellow—you’re beginning to frighten me.’

‘We’re going to be very late if I don’t get a move on.’

‘Let the bugger wait. Or go to bed, for all I care. I’d rather be very late than the late. Just take it easy.’

Tom shifted lanes. ‘Basil Cole?’

‘Oh… that, I think, was Panin.’ Sniff. ‘The bastard.’

‘Even though he wants you to help him?’

‘Even though—yes. Just because he wants help, it doesn’t follow that he wants me to know what I’m really doing… which poor old Basil might have had a lead on. So Panin will tell me just enough, but mostly lies.’

Two enemies, thought Tom. One was usually enough. Plus Henry Jaggard at his own back. ‘While someone else is gunning for you?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Ye-ess… Nasty prospect, isn’t it?’ Audley sat back again. ‘Still, after Lebanon you must be used to this sort of thing. And we’ll get old Nikolai Andrievich on to my would-be executioner, anyway…

in return for our services.’

‘You’re going to help him?’

‘I’m going to sleep, actually… Wake me up on Exmoor, Tom.’

Not yet, you’re not! ‘You’re going to help him?’

‘Yes, I’m going to help him.’ Audley drew a deep breath and snuggled down in his seat. ‘And I’m also going to pay him back for Basil Cole, Tom. In full.’

6

Tom stared up incredulously at the thin sliver of light which showed through a narrow gap in the curtains of the main window of his bedroom in the Green Man Hotel, Holcombe Bridge.

Not my room? The night wind blew cold on the back of his neck as he forced himself to question his judgement. He had been given the best room in the hotel, the bridal suite no less—the Princess Diana Suite, with dressing-room and sitting room and palatial bathroom as well as oaken-beamed bedroom with a bed the size of a rugger ground; and nothing surprising there really, from past experience of hoteliers presuming that Sir Thomas expected his titled due if it was vacant, and could pay for it; and, in this case, nothing surprising that mere Dr Audley (attendant physician to Sir Thomas, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State perhaps they’d thought?) had a small room under the eaves nearby.

The thought of Audley made him run his eye along the low bulk of the hotel, darkened now against the starless and soundless night which pressed the Green Man into its fold in the invisible moorland all around. But Audley’s little window was unlit; so Audley, like Panin in the annexe, was taking his rest while he had the chance, it was to be hoped.

His eye came back to his own window (no mistake: this whole end of the Green Man, above the silent stream by the bridge, belonged to Princess Diana and Sir Thomas this night!). And, as it did so, the curtains shivered suddenly, confirming his fear and his certainty beyond further question and shrinking him back against the wall’s safety, out of sight if they were wrenched open.

But they weren’t. Instead the sliver of light was extinguished, and night was complete again in front of the Green Man. But there was someone in his room now.

It didn’t make sense—

The solidity of the wall at his back was comforting, but it was the only thing that was. Because everything else was incomprehensible now.

It was his room, and someone was inside it now. But the key was in his pocket, and it couldn’t be any visiting chambermaid or under-manager, looking to his creature comforts at this hour, close to midnight—

Even, it had almost seemed a foolish conceit, to make this present night-round after he had seen Audley safely locked into his little Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State room, with such precautions advised as could be made, and Audley contemptuous of them, replete as he had been with the late-night smoked salmon sandwiches and profiteroles which had been all the hotel had offered, together with the hugely expensive wines Audley had chosen to go with them (which had perked up the hotel management almost comically, but which had at least confirmed their estimation of ‘Sir Thomas’ as he’d ordered them, which had taken a knock when they’d got their first sight of Sir Thomas as he was)—

‘They’re offering Beaumes de Venise by the glass, Tom. But if they bought that at Sainsbury’s, or M and S, or wherever… that’s a bloody rip-off, isn’t it? So… if we had that nice Chateau Climens instead, maybe? ’

Tom had wondered for a moment what Henry Jaggard would make of the Green Man bill, as a departmental expense, with Thomas Arkenshaw in the Princess Diana Suite and David Audley into the Chateau Climens: and then he’d thought the hell with Henry Jaggard!

And, later on, he’d thought: I’d better make some sort of night-round, to check the lie of the land, after I’ve put Audley to bed; although, for all the good it will do in total darkness, and with no one else watching our backs, it will be no more than giving me a breath of air before I turn in—

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State And he’d said to the barman/under-manager, who’d been hovering:

‘I’ll just take a walk outside, for a few minutes… to blow away the cobwebs before I turn in.’ And the barman/under-manager had said: ‘ Well, you’d better take a torch, Sir Thomas. It’s very dark outside—or, it will be when I switch off the outside lights… And I’d better give you a key to the outside door, too.’

And now he felt the solidity of the wall at his back, which had been built, stone and mortar and rough plaster, before Lorna Doone had met John Ridd, back in the deeps of fictional Exinoor. And, with no back-up out there in the night—no back-up because neither bloody Henry Jaggard nor bloody David Audley appeared to have any interest in professional protection—the bloody wall at his back was all he had, in the way of safety, now. But, more to the point, it simply didn’t make sense— Because this wasn’t the moment to search his room, at this time of night, when the room would be occupied (and when there wasn’t anything in the room worth looking at, anyway)— that didn’t make sense—

And… maybe there was back-up, out there in the night, which Henry Jaggard hadn’t told him about: the ceaseless watch-andward of the old Royal Navy, of those storm-tossed ships which the safely-guarded English never saw, but simply took for granted—

because Jaggard’s attitude didn’t make sense otherwise, by God!

He pushed himself away from the wall, suddenly irritated by his Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State own crass irresolution, to stare again at the darkened facade of the hotel. The only thing he knew for sure about Henry Jaggard was that he was a tricky bastard—almost as tricky as Audley. But the only thing he knew for sure about his present situation was that someone was in his room, and this was no time to make pointless pictures about anything else—

Mercifully, the night-key turned easily in its well-oiled lock, with only the slightest of clicks.

He closed the door carefully behind him and then stood, listening to the silence. After the pitch-blackness of the night behind him the reception area had seemed bright at first, but now the feebleness of its minimum lighting returned. More pronounced after the clean moorland air were all the stale night-smells of the hotel, dominated by tobacco and alcohol from the bar on his right and the more acceptable hint of wood-smoke from the huge open fire in the residents’ lounge on his left, where the last log of the day sat on its huge pile of ash.

Tom exhaled the smells and was conscious also that he was mixing them with a self-pitying sigh. He knew that he was tired now, and that he had a right to be tired after so long a day, which had started so fairly and had developed so foully, and which had nevertheless kept its last, more dangerous moment to its very end, when he fell least able to cope with it.

Then, from his hidden reserves, he summoned up self-contempt to drive out self-pity. Looked at from the opposite direction (and, just for this final moment of reflection, forgetting Willy), this had been Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State a damn good day—even a lucky one: because Henry Jaggard, faced with an emergency, had chosen Tom Arkenshaw to handle it; and Audley’s would-be assassin had missed; and now someone, up in his room, had been careless—

He reached inside his coat, to settle the .38 in its holster, letting the weight of it comfort him: now someone had been careless—but this time Poor Tom wasn’t defenceless!

Two tip-toe steps to the left, and he was off the flagstones and on thick carpet, and on his way silently—

Memory flowed smoothly. The under-manager had led the way, through that door in the corner— this door— up the narrow (but still carpeted) private staircase to the Princess Diana suite— this stair, these stairs, two at a time and soundless now—

The short passage above was empty, and five silent steps took him to the door, back safely to the wall and the .38 in his hand, pressed to his chest.

There would be no sound inside, but he would listen anyway—

Sound — ?

He straightened up again, back to the wall, frowning.

For Christ’s sake! That was… ? Radio One—Radio Three—

whichever was the all-night pop music station—?

Ear to the door again, to confirm the impossible truth that someone was listening to pop music in his room, after midnight, in the Green Man, Holcombe Bridge— for Christ’s sake!

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State All inclination to wait vanished in that instant. And, as his free hand hovered for a second over the room-key in his pocket, that inclination also evaporated. Instead, the hand tried the door-handle, and felt the door yield, inviting him to fact the music and the uninvited music-lover—

The smell hit him first, in the first millisecond of entry, out of that most ancient of human senses, which must once have made all the difference between being the hunter and the hunted, but which had already been activated down below by stale beer and tobacco, and wood smoke, and a menu full of faint cooking smells garnished with a hint of floor-polish—

But—not so much a smell as a fragrance— an unforgettable, unforgotten fragrance—Chanel, Lancôme, whoever—

‘Darling honey—where the hell have you been?’ Willy raised herself on one elbow, all honey-gold and freckled and frilly silken white on the brocaded rugger-field of the great bed.

Tom felt the warmth of the room on his face, registering another sense, after sound and smell and impossible sight as she flexed one slender leg at the knee, cascading the cobwebbed silk down in a movement so characteristic—so well-remembered from last night, and other nights—that it tore his heart with its reality.

‘Willy—?’ He heard his own voice try to make a question of her, although he knew she was unquestionable—although he knew, as he knew that, that she was real at last, and that everything that he Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State had had before had been an illusion. ‘Hullo, Willy.’ He wanted to keep the defeated unsteadiness out of his voice, but he couldn’t.

‘Well… this is a… a very pleasant surprise, I must say.’

‘Uh-huh?’ She moved slightly, letting the thick glossy page of her magazine spring back, brushing one perfect breast as it did so, and closing both the magazine and their friendship at the same time. ‘Is it, Tom? Is it?’

Grasping at a straw of comfort, he started to read sadness and regret into her expression. But that was a luxury he could no longer afford: he had to reject the past, as resolutely as that last log on the fire had refused to burn in the fireplace below. Henceforth he must lie on the ashes of their relationship, charred and scorched, but still substantially unburnt. ‘Well, maybe not pleasant, Miss Groot.’

Certainly not pleasant; because there were still things he couldn’t work out, in that relationship, now that her cover was off. But they would have to wait until he had better and sharper weapons to hand. ‘But a surprise—I must admit that—’ Simultaneously, he felt the weight of the weapon in his hand and saw her eyes fix on it. ‘I was expecting someone else… I’m not quite sure who, to be honest… But not you, Miss Groot.’ He slid the .38 back into its holster, settling it comfortably with elaborate unconcern under his own breast as though to emphasize that he could see very clearly that she carried no such weapon under hers. ‘Not you, Miss Groot.’

Then he looked round the room. Its three other doors were all ajar, but he somehow felt that they concealed no back-up, either CIA or KGB. And there was really very little point in confirming his instinct, anyway.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State So he came back to her, with the best smile he could manage. ‘Or, as you would say, Miss Groot… “I sure as hell took him—you should have seen his face when he came in”.’ As he looked at her, and saw a muscle twitch on her cheek, he had to force himself to believe that the smile wasn’t hurting her. Because, whatever else she was, she was damn good at her job, he must believe. ‘Okay. So you took me, Miss Groot. So what next?’

She reached across herself to adjust the too-revealing lace. ‘It’s no good my saying that you’re one-hundred-per-cent wrong, I guess

—?’

No!

‘Not the slightest good, my dear.’ What made it worse—or worst—

was that he had never been taken like this before. ‘You take me once… that’s because you’re good at your job. But you take me twice… then that’s because I’m stupid. So please don’t insult me by pulling the other one—okay?’

She considered that for all of half a minute before replying. Then she felt under her pillow and threw a little automatic pistol on the green brocade. ‘Okay, Tom. So you put that somewhere on your side, and come to bed—okay?’

It was one of the new .22s he’d heard about, but had never seen. ‘I get a freebie, do I? For old times’ sake?’

Now she was beginning to hate him. And he liked that more than anything since he had caught that treacherous fragrance. ‘Okay.

You get a freebie. Just this once.’

He wanted her to hate him, he realized. ‘I’m not sure I’m in the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State mood. Crawling round Ranulf of Caen’s ditches… and trying to look after David Audley… and driving all the way down here.’ A weird thought struck him suddenly. ‘You didn’t come down in a big black Cadillac, by any chance—? With CD plates?’

The dead look behind her eyes flickered questioningly for an instant, enabling him to turn away victoriously towards the hanging cupboard. With his back to her, he took off his coat, and then the harness of the .38, and then his tie, hanging each up in turn. Then he began to unbutton his shirt.

‘Did you?’ The quite appalling truth was that he was in the mood, in spite of everything: he wanted her with an anger and a self-loathing which ought to have revolted him but didn’t. ‘A black Cadillac?’ He moved slightly so that he could see her in one of the dressing-table mirrors. She was still on that same elbow, but was busy adjusting one shoulder-strap as though to make herself hallways decent, as she had never thought to do before. ‘Was that yours?’

She looked up suddenly, straight into the mirror. ‘Uh-huh.’

Strangers in the mirror, thought Tom. Last night we were lovers, but now we’re worse than enemies, we’re strangers. He moved again, staring at himself. And here’s another stranger, too!

He sat down on the dressing-table stool and began to take off his shoes, half-fearful that he might find cloven-hooves in them, with the toe-caps filled with devil’s oakum, as in the old Polish fairy-tale Mamusia had told him years ago. ‘But it isn’t in the hotel car park, is it?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘They gave me a Metro, Tom.’

They? ‘Yes. I suppose a Caddy would have been a bit obvious, at that.’ Now he was down to his trousers. But, very strangely, the brutal stranger inside him was embarrassed, as the old Tom had never been—just as the stranger on the bed had been embarrassed about her slipped shoulder-strap.

‘You’ve been checking out the place, then?’

It was a curiously innocent question, delivered in a voice which had suddenly become curiously shaky, ‘Not well enough, apparently.’ There had been a Metro in the car park: a silver MG

Metro, B-registered. But there had been no Wilhemina Groot in the hotel register to match it, of course.

‘W-what took you… so long?’

He remembered his pyjamas—the pyjamas he hadn’t worn last night. Mamusia’s Christmas-tree present from last year, still in their festive wrapper: Christian Dior, Midnight Blue, finest silk.

They were the natural partners of the thing the blonde stranger on the rugger pitch was wearing. And they were in his case in the dressing-room. ‘I was checking the place out—not well enough—’

He threw the words over his shoulder as he found Mamusia’s unopened present ‘ —I just told you.’

They? he thought again. The odds said CIA, but he couldn’t take that for granted. All he knew was what Audley had already concluded, that too many people already knew too much.

‘I mean—’ She threw the words back at him, out of the bedroom

‘—what took you so long to the hotel, Tom honey?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State He ripped the wrapper savagely—ridiculous things—

(‘They’re lovely, Mamusia dear. But you know I don’t wear pyjamas.’)

(‘But you should have them nevertheless, my darling. Whenever you go away… if there is a fire. Or a husband knocking on your door. Or… on your wedding night, my darling… there is a moment of delicacy—’)

“There was a pile-up on the motorway, just before the Taunton intersection, Miss Groot.‘ Mamusia cherished a long love-hate relationship with the idea of her only son’s hypothetical marriage: she didn’t want to be a mother-in-law, but she wanted a daughter-in-law to dress and dominate; and she didn’t want to be a grandmother, but she dearly wanted a grandchild to mould, having failed with Tom himself. ’We were held up for an hour or more.‘

What twisted his heart now, as the silk slid up his legs, was that of all the possibles, Willy Groot (the former occupant of the stranger on the rugger pitch) would have resisted Mamusia best, both as a wife and a mother. But that was water under the bridge, now and for ever. ’As a matter of fact, I wondered whether it was your Cadillac which had piled up.‘ The memory of Mamusia’s ambitions and his own was swallowed up in the more recent and far more horrific image of obscenely mangled metal, and the false fairyland of flashing blue and red lights, as the fluorescent-coated policemen had at last flagged him from one clogged motorway lane to another with angry urgency on the edge of the disaster area.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

’Because you came by me like a bat out of hell.‘ The coincidence of the Cadillac vanished as he thought about it: there was only one road westwards, so they had both taken it, quite naturally; the only questionable unresolved coincidence was Willy Groot’s relationship with Tom Arkenshaw, which now must be questioned and resolved. ’If that was your Cadillac, Miss Groot, I take it?‘

No answer. So he surveyed himself in the full-length Princess Diana bridal mirror in the emptiness of her silence—

Yes… well, in Mamusia’s custom-built pyjamas, at least he looked like he was taking the bridegroom’s role, if not Hamlet’s father’s—

‘Such was the very armour he put on—’

It was like Peter Beckett had said in Lebanon, that last time: everyone knew the big Hamlet speeches, but the part most people knew, and the lines, were those of Horatio—

‘So frown’d he once, when, in angry parle, He smote the sledded Polack on the ice—’

‘It probably was.’ Her voice came to him almost in a whisper from the bedroom. ‘We had a Marine captain driving us, from the embassy guards, who said he’d driven in the Indianapolis race.’

At least it hadn’t been that bloody USN fellow! thought Tom. Not Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State that this poor frowning Anglo-Polack needed to worry about that now.

‘He did drive rather fast,’ the small voice concluded.

Tom dismissed himself from the mirror. Whichever self that was, it didn’t matter—it didn’t matter any more than who had got her here, Navy man or Marine, one jump or two ahead of him. Why she was here, and to what CIA end, was all that mattered. And it wasn’t one of Mamusia’s ‘moments of delicacy’ now, either.

He switched off the dressing-room light and re-entered the bedroom, squaring his shoulders in preparation for what had to be done.

She had moved, but only slightly, to face him from her pillows.

The glossy magazine had disappeared, but the disgusting little pistol still lay where she’d thrown it. And now she was biting her lip, as though readying herself mentally for that freebie, with which they’d each insulted the other. And she also looked much smaller, and heart-rendingly less confident, than the tough Wilhemina Groot he’d left this morning on Ranulf’s defences.

‘Okay, then.’ The old Tom would have been into that inviting bed faster than light. But Tom the Stranger had other fish to fry first, and merely sat on the end of it. ‘So why was I one-hundred-percent wrong, Willy?’ Almost to his surprise, he discovered that Tom the Stranger wasn’t stupid.

She stopped biting her lip, but he could see that she hadn’t expected him to go back to an answer he’d already scornfully rejected: she looked as though she’d expected to get raped while Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State thinking of America, and George Washington, and the Statue of Liberty, and whatever else good little patriotic American girls thought of when Queen Victoria had been thinking of England in the same missionary position. So now it required one hell of an effort to adjust her thoughts to a more demanding intellectual challenge, as opposed to the less demanding physical one for which she’d arranged herself.

Or, alternatively, she was damn good, he reminded himself quickly.

Finally (or maybe craftily), she seemed to come to a decision.

‘David Audley, Tom—’

‘David Audley—yes?’ Better to assume that she was damn good.

‘David Longsdon Audley, CBE, Ph.D, MA—’ He parroted Harvey’s snide encapsulation of the old man’s official career ‘—

sometime Second Lieutenant, temporary Captain, 2nd West Sussex Dragoons, latterly attached Intelligence Corps… Rylands College, Cambridge… the King’s College, Oxford… Civil Servant, Department of General Research and Development, 1957 to date.’

The rest had been out of Who’s Who, Harvey had admitted, including parentage, and publications and hobbies; but he couldn’t remember it all now. ‘David Audley—right?’

‘He’s here, with you, Tom—’

‘You’re damn right he’s here!’ Need and desire coincided: he had hit back and he wanted to. ‘But how, as a matter of academic interest, did you get here—into my bed?’

She squirmed slightly against her pillows, and that shoulder-strap slipped again. ‘I had help, Tom—’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘ Had—?’ It was hard to keep his mind on the job: the former Willy had been a wonderful companion, naked and unashamed; but this one, in courtesan’s frills and ashamed, was something else. ‘Or have?’

She swallowed. ‘He’s in big trouble, Tom.’

‘ He’s in big trouble?’ Tom tore himself away from that alabaster curve. Tor Christ’s sake, Miss Groot—I think we’re all in big trouble, aren’t we?‘ The whole unacceptable truth opened up before him. ’Someone took a shot at David this afternoon—or yesterday afternoon, as it is now… And there’s a man dead now—

have you heard about him, Miss Groot, eh?‘

‘Tom—’ She tried to sit up, with what would have been delectable consequences in another world, but not now.

‘So I’m in trouble too, Miss Groot.’ He hated her and himself equally. ‘And you are in trouble, right now… And, I shouldn’t wonder, Comrade Professor Nikolai Andrievich Panin, in Room Five in the annexe at the back— he’s also in trouble, I shouldn’t wonder, eh?’ On balance, even while trying to allow that she was a two-faced bitch, he felt himself weaken. So he hardened himself against his weakness. ‘But I’m sure you know all about that. So what’s new, then?’

She ran her hand nervously over the flowered sheet. And he had seen that same hand, mud-encrusted, hold his measuring rod only this morning. But now it was clean and treacherous, with pearly nails on long fingers. And he still had his freebie to come.

The thought of that brutalized him. ‘Just who the hell are you Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State working for—tell me that’?‘

The hand grasped the sheet. ‘Who the hell do you think I’m working for—damn it! And damn you, Tom Arkenshaw!’

That was more like her! ‘You were an embassy secretary in Grosvenor Square when I last knew you, Miss Groot.’

She drew a deep breath, and drew herself up as she did so, regardless of what all that did to what was on view. ‘Tom… you call me Miss Groot just once more—just one more time… and you can all go screw yourselves—you, and Dr Audley, and Professor Panin— and Colonel Sheldon, too! ’

Well, that was nailing the Old Glory to her mast, and no mistake, thought Tom. There had been a routine flimsy waiting for him on the subject of that certain Colonel Sheldon— Sheldon, Mosby Robert, Colonel USAF (ret)— just a few weeks back. So as befitted a blue-blooded All-American CIA girl, Miss Wilhemina Groot was starting her name-dropping at the top.

But now she was staring at him defiantly as the name dropped, and it was maybe time for a different approach to his problems.

‘I’m sorry, Willy darling.’ Perhaps, in fact, this was how he should have started. ‘The truth is… I’ve had one hell of a day since this morning.’ That was so much a genuine understatement of the truth, that it made him grin sadly at her. ‘And you did rather catch me by surprise.’

She continued to stare at him, but the defiance had been drained by his apology, it seemed. ‘I’m sorry too, Tom. And I haven’t had such a good day either—that’s the truth, too.’ She sighed. ‘Not that Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State you’re ever going to believe it… oh— shit! ’

He wished he could remember more about Sheldon, Mosby Robert, from the flimsy. But all he could recall was his thought that the personnel and hierarchy of the CIA’s London Station had had little relevance to his own line of business then. But Audley would know, anyway: Audley had always been very thick and buddy-buddy with the Americans, Harvey had said. And… and, come to that, maybe that just might account for the presence of Groot, Wilhemina Maryanne at Holcombe Bridge, if not in his bed.

‘Tom…’ she trailed off uncertainly.

He realized belatedly that he’d been frowning at her, thinking of Sheldon and Audley. But she had related his face to her last statement. ‘Yes, Willy?’

She plucked ineffectually for a moment at her revealing neckline, then let go of it. ‘I haven’t been on your back, these last few weeks

—can you believe that, Tom?’

It would be an agreeable belief, Tom realized: it would take the metallic taste of betrayal out of his mouth for a start. And it wouldn’t make him feel quite such a simpleton. But agreeable beliefs were always unwise and often dangerous. ‘Does it matter—

now?’

She nodded. To me it does.‘ Another sigh. ’But I don’t blame you.‘

Either she was very sad or she was very good. But it was just remotely possible that she could be both. And, anyway, he owed these last few happy weeks a gesture. ‘It matters to me also, Willy.’ He shied away from the truth of his gesture. ‘Where will I Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State ever find another girl to join me in muddy ditches?’

She looked as though she was about to burst into tears. ‘With stinging nettles and brambles? Don’t forget the stinging nettles and brambles.’

Or… not just very good. Better than that, even? ‘Stinging nettles and brambles—okay.’ It didn’t really matter what he believed or disbelieved. But this way he could at least apply mutual regret like a soothing ointment to his wounded self-esteem, half believing its efficacy. ‘But now you are on my back as well as your own—okay also?’

‘Not on your back, Tom.’ She shook her head. ‘They’re very worried for your Dr David Audley—that’s why I’m here.’

“They” again? ‘Colonel Sheldon, you mean?’ He accepted her nod. ‘Well, that makes two of us, my love. And I bet I’m more worried than he is!’

‘Don’t joke, Tom honey—’

‘I’m not bloody-joking. Someone took a shot at him this afternoon.

And I’m supposed to be looking after him. And that isn’t a joke, by God!’ He stared at her. ‘You know about the shot?’

She plucked the sheet again. ‘Half London knows about it. The Russians have been quizzing all the Warsaw Pact embassies, like the wrath of God—’

‘The Russians—?’ It was no surprise to him that the Americans had picked up such panic-signals: it was common knowledge that they had contacts inside those unwilling allies’ intelligence-gathering operations. But… if this turn-up for the book wasn’t Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State deliberate disinformation… then it complicated everything quite appallingly.

‘And they’ve been reading the riot act to their IRA liaison group—

the Provisional and the INLA—’ Willy stopped suddenly. ‘What’s

“the riot act”, Tom? Because that’s what Mosby Sheldon said: “the Riot Act”—?’

So Sheldon knew his nineteenth-century English history. ‘It means they’ve got to stop whatever they’re doing, and pack up their bags and go home. It’s… it’s what used to happen in the old days before plastic bullets and petrol bombs and policemen with riot shields and face-masks: after the Riot Act was read the military took over, with drawn swords and fixed bayonets.’ He frowned at her.

Because, if Sheldon had it right, that meant the Russians really were on Audley’s side, even if somebody else wasn’t. But where did Basil Cole come into it?

‘Uh-huh?’ His frown stopped her for a second. ‘Well, they all say they’ve got nothing to do with it, the word is. And that’s the very latest information, of about an hour ago—not long after you’d arrived, Tom honey.’ She regarded him questioningly for an instant. ‘But you said… you said someone was dead— dead?’

So the Americans didn’t know about Basil Cole. And maybe the Russians didn’t either… Or maybe one or other of them did know… or both knew? But the possibilities were infinite, so to hell with that, then! ‘So David Audley’s in trouble.’ He sank down along the foot of the bed. ‘If that’s all you’ve got to tell me, Willy darling, then it’s right neighbourly of Colonel Sheldon to want to tell him—“right neighbourly”?’ The damn bed was as soft as a Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State wedding bed ought to be, but it only served to remind him of how tired he was, and of how quickly the remains of the night were draining away beneath him. ‘But we do already know that—all too well, we know that, actually.’

She pulled herself upright. ‘Who’s dead, Tom?’

He shook his head. ‘You ask Colonel Sheldon, my love—not me.

I’m just a bodyguard—’ Quite dreadfully soft, the damn bed ‘—a

“high-class minder”, as I have been reminded myself, more than once, today: mine “not to reason why” , in fact… Ask Colonel Sheldon, Willy love.’ The bed invited him backwards, and he found himself staring at the beamed ceiling suddenly, waiting for her to react to his refusal to tell all.

It was a beautifully beamed ceiling, with its eight radius-beams converging on a boss in the form of a carved wooden face in its centre.

God! It was The Green Man himself! He would have known that even without the knowledge in the back of his mind: the acanthus leaves grew out of the face quite naturally, from brow and nose, eyebrows and upper-lip and chin—acanthus leaves, not the vine-leaves he might have expected.

He felt her stir in the bed, under the covers beneath him.

The Green Man himself, indeed! And, although the face wasn’t quite directly above him, the deep-carved black holes of the Green Man’s eyes were not looking straight down, at nothing, but slightly obliquely, into his own eyes, and perhaps into his own soul, with ancient wisdom.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘How much does Audley know about Professor Panin, Tom?’

Her voice came from nowhere, above him. Indeed, except that it was her voice, it might have come from that foliate mouth, with its classical leaves but northern-pagan imagery, which was neither cruel nor hostile, but knowing.

‘How much should he know?’ Green Man, or Jack o‘ the Green, or Green Knight from Sir Gawaine, or Wodwo, Wild Man—if I knew what you know I wouldn’t need to ask! Because you know it all!

‘He’s in bigger trouble than Audley is—you’re right, Tom.’ She waited for only half a second, as though she didn’t expect him to react. ‘Do you know? Or were you just guessing?’

That had been why Basil Cole had died, the Green Man told him. ‘I was guessing.’ But not guessing, all the same. Because Basil Cole’s death hadn’t really been silent. ‘Just guessing, Willy.’

She didn’t reply to that, and he guessed also that it annoyed her, that he was lying on his back, staring up at the Green Man. But then the Green Man hadn’t been a woman’s god in any of his incarnations, either before or after the coming of the White Christ.

He rolled sideways, on to his elbow, and raised himself to look at her. ‘I was just guessing, Willy darling. But I think he wouldn’t come here if he didn’t have to, so far from his home ground—eh?’

Still she said nothing, and he saw too late—much too late—that the Green Man had betrayed him, coming after his refusal to tell her about Basil Cole. So he must exert himself now.

‘Why are you telling me all this?’ (She hadn’t told him anything yet; but no matter!) ‘Why don’t you tell Audley himself?’ He Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State nodded past her bare pale pink-white-gold shoulder at the brocaded headboard of the great wedding bed. ‘He’s in Room Two, just a yard away.’ (He could imagine Audley snoring now, in his own esoteric dreams.)

Still not good enough. ‘Or why isn’t Sheldon telling me this, anyway?’ Should he make it nastier? ‘Or are you expendable—like me?’ (She must answer that, out of loyalty, if for no other reason!) A shadow crossed her face, but he couldn’t read her expression: either she hadn’t wanted to see him again, or she had—it was one or other of those two extremes. ‘Dr Audley doesn’t know me. But you do.’

Very true! thought Tom. I know you from that first English-Speaking Union meeting—from that first traditional kindred-spirit eye-contact across a crowded room, like in “South Pacific”; and later in bed, and in many a motte-and-bailey afterwards: I know you socially, Willy—and biblically, and in every other way except one… which in our business is the only one that counts, eh?

‘Yes.’ ‘ Wilt thou have this woman—?’ ‘I do.’

‘And I’m not official—’ She shook her head against the pillow ‘—

my darling Tom… if things go wrong… and I think they think things are going to go wrong, I’m afraid… then I’m just a junior cypher clerk, working in low-grade traffic, who shacked up out-of-school with a middle-grade FCO Brit—’ She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again they were dead ‘—a Brit who happened to have a handle to his name. Which they reckon puts me safely in a fine old American tradition, from Consuelo Vanderbilt onwards.’ She paused for a moment, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State watching him. ‘They know all about you, of course. And more than I ever told them.’

‘Of course.’ As an embassy employee — even as a secretary, never mind an intelligence cypher clerk — she had had to put her private life on the record. But he’d taken that for granted, because he had done the same.

‘Of course.’ The mouth twisted. ‘So… I’ve got the right clearance for running errands. But if things go wrong I’m not Company talent

—I’m just your “bit of crumpet”… “Bit of crumpet”—okay?’ The twist became more pronounced. ‘That seems to be the British term for me.’

The room was hot, he could feel its warmth on his face. But there was a cold area spreading up his back which came from inside him.

Because, if Audley’s friends in Grosvenor Square were concerned to keep this sort of distance from Holcombe Bridge, then Holcombe Bridge was no place to be.

‘What sort of trouble is Audley in then, Willy?’

She relaxed slightly. In the ruins of their relationship, coming back to Company business took her mind off personal desolation. ‘His own side’s gunning for him, Tom.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s been playing politics. Political politics—with politicians.’

‘ Audley?’ Audley had never been political—even Harvey had said that the old man disliked all politicians equally. ‘Never!’

‘You’re wrong, honey. There’s this guy he doesn’t like—who is a top politician.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘He doesn’t like any of them, Willy.’

‘He doesn’t? Well, I don’t know about that… but he seems to have set this guy up, by leaking some dirt about the insecurity of his department. And that seems to have been a big mistake.’

He wanted to ask Why? again, but then he decided to limit his interruptions. If she was just passing on Sheldon’s message without understanding it, questions would only confuse her.

‘The guy’s very close with their intelligence brass— your brass, I mean, Tom honey… There’s a man named Jaggard, who’s very smart—and who’s on our side, pretty much— our side including the US of A… But he owes this politician some favours. And he wants to owe him some more favours—’

Sweet Jesus Christ! thought Tom. Now he really was in the middle of it!

‘So he’s ready to throw Audley to the wolves—even to Russian wolves, maybe.’ She blinked at him. ‘Are you with me still, Tom honey?’

Nod. He was with her, all too well. Nod again.

‘Uh-huh?’ She looked at him as though surprised that he had nodded so readily. ‘Well… Colonel Sheldon likes this fellow Jaggard, but he doesn’t trust him—Commodore Jaggard, is it?’

‘Air Commodore.’ Jaggard had been so perfectly pinstriped civilian that it was hard to imagine him pioneering the P1127, which had transmogrified into the Harrier, more than twenty years ago. But at least it hinted why Colonel Sheldon USAF might be on his side, emotionally. ‘Royal Air Force, Willy. Once upon a time, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State anyway.’

‘You’ve met him—Commodore— Air Commodore—Jaggard?’

‘Briefly.’ That was strictly true: even that last time, when Henry Jaggard had blinked the rain out of his pale-blue eyes on the top of Ranulf’s ditch—that had been a brief meeting. ‘But Colonel Sheldon likes David Audley too? At least, enough to warn him?’

‘Oh yes—he surely does.’ She nodded back at him quickly. ‘He knows Audley from way back—he even calls him “David”… And he did a job with him, over here, once. He has a high regard for him, Tom. And the work Audley is doing is too important to be screwed up, he says.’

Here was a pretty tangle of Anglo-American loyalties! thought Tom. Because, if Jaggard needed his political allies, Sheldon also needed his British allies—and Audley too! So Sheldon was in trouble now, too.

‘But not important enough to come and talk to him now?’ He saw from her expression that she had thought the same question, even if she hadn’t asked it. ‘So what does he advise, anyway?’

She licked her upper lip. ‘He says you should both cut and run, Tom.’

That certainly sounded like good, friendly, special relationship advice, even if it was useless. ‘He won’t do that, Willy.’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘So I can’t—even though I’d like to.’

‘No.’ She nodded again. ‘He said Audley wouldn’t run.’ Nod. ‘Not even after what happened yesterday.’ This time, no nod; merely curiosity. ‘He said Audley wouldn’t run—and wouldn’t trust Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State anyone except himself.’

He might as well feed her something, to take back to her boss.

And, after he’d let it slip, the CIA would pick up Basil Cole’s accident soon enough, anyway. ‘He’s also lost an old colleague, from yesterday morning.’ The memory of Audley’s anger came back to him. ‘So it’s personal, as well as professional. I think he wants blood for blood now.’

The words seemed to push her back into the pillows of the great bed, making her look smaller and, for the first time, a little frightened. For an instant, in spite of himself, he almost believed what he wanted to believe, even though he knew she wanted him to believe it too: that she wasn’t really Company talent, but just a cypher clerk whose private life had come in useful to her bosses.

But then his credulity snapped, and he grinned at her. ‘So… you see, I wasn’t altogether guessing when I said that Professor Nikolai Andrievich Panin was in trouble, Willy darling. Because your boss, Colonel Sheldon—he’s damn right about David Audley: he may be an old man, but he’s a tough old bastard. And he’s in a nasty frame of mind right now, I rather think—a nasty revengeful frame of mind. And not just because some foolish fellow took the liberty of shooting at him in his own home. And he doesn’t regard that as cricket… But some other foolish fellow has terminated someone he values.’ He couldn’t hold the grin. ‘So if this was your home-state, back in the old days, you’d be watching the smoke-signals in the hills, and hearing the war-drums in the distance. Because these are his ancestral hunting-grounds, Willy. So maybe you should be giving Colonel Sheldon’s advice to Comrade Professor Panin, not Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State to me.’

‘Uh-huh?’ She had got her cool back, and she was almost his old lost Willy again. ‘But you haven’t talked to him yet—?’ She busied herself suddenly with plumping up the pillows alongside her, shifting from her almost-central position.

‘The Comrade-Professor?’ In another moment she was going to invite him in beside her. But he wasn’t ready for that: from beside her, he wouldn’t be able to see her full face—her beautiful, golden-freckled, treacherous face. And the rest of her would play hell with his concentration, too. ‘Hell—you know we haven’t!’ (An incongruous recollection of the motorway accident scene returned, when he had wanted to pull rank over the police, to get ahead, and Audley had rejected the idea out-of-hand: ‘ But we’ll be here an hour, David!’—‘So I get another hour’s sleep, then. Let the bugger sweat, wondering what we’re up to. I’m not at his beck-and-call, keeping unilateral engagements, anyway, damn it all!’) ‘I’ll phone ahead, to say we’ll be late.’ (That had been when Audley had animated himself for a moment: ‘Tell them I want two rounds of smoked salmon sandwiches, cut thin but with the crusts included…

and a bottle of good White Burgundy (they won’t have a decent Graves, they never do) … And I shall want a pudding—something with chocolate—milk chocolate… and their best Sauternes or Barsac, on ice—on ice, mind you, not in the bloody fridge: tell them that, Tom.’)

‘But he left a note—?’

And I’ll bet you’ve read it, too! ‘Yes.’ (That neat, meticulous, grammatical note, traced by a hand accustomed to Cyrillic, if not Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State classical Greek, he had thought.) ‘He said that he’d had a long day, with the flight and all the boring formalities, and the long drive.’ (And meticulously formal, too: ‘My dear Doctor Audley…“

and ’this long journey which we share…‘ down to ’With respect and sincerity‘—huh!—before that elaborate signature.) ’He wants to meet us tomorrow, somewhere in the open, but somewhere safe, Willy.‘

She pretended to chew on that, as though it was news to her.

Jezebel! She wanted to ask him where, but that was too obvious even for her.

But, instead of answering straight away, she reached across and twitched open the covers on what had to be his team’s side of the rugger pitch. ‘Come inside, Tom.’

He mustn’t be that easy. ‘You said he was in trouble—“big trouble”. What sort of trouble?’ He ignored the unbeatable offer, as though he hadn’t heard it. ‘Bigger trouble than Audley is—?’

‘Yes.’ This time she pretended that she was recalling what had been said to her—a mere cypher clerk suddenly briefed beyond her competence, on matters which she’d never deciphered or enciphered. “They say he’s out of favour, in Moscow. They said he was almost ready for the scrap-heap, Tom. They were surprised he’d even been let out, to talk to your Dr Audley.‘

Was that what his Dr Audley had hinted at? But he had said more than that. And she was fishing now—and she was bloody good at it.

So he could fish back, equally innocently. ‘Do they think he’s open to offers?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘No.’ She shook her head so quickly that a golden tendril flopped down, across the rise of one breast. ‘Colonel Sheldon said that was why he was let out—because he never would defect, he said.’

So Colonel Sheldon agreed with his old pal, David Audley. ‘So what exactly does he want with David Audley, Willy?’

‘We don’t know, exactly.’ She smoothed down his half of the pitch. ‘But they gave me three names, to tell you—to tell Dr Audley.’

Maybe not-so-good. Because, if they’d discussed the possibility of Panin’s defection in front of her, they would have talked about a lot more than that. But he must let that pass, for the time being.

‘What names, Willy?’

She took a remembering breath. ‘Zarubin, Gennadiy Ivanovich—’

She might just as,well have said Smith, Peter John, with a couple of hundred million to choose from. But maybe Audley would know better. ‘Yes?’

‘Marchuk, Leonid—Leonid—’ The rest of Marchuk, Leonid got away from her for a moment ‘—Leonid Nikitich Marchuk.’

Another bloody Peter John Smith. ‘Marchuk. Yes—?’

‘Pietruszka. Adam Pietruszka—’ she breathed out her relief at remembering the alien name ‘—Adam Pietruszka.’

Tom got up, and set himself to walk round the end of the bed. The curtains in the big window overlooking the road, through which he had seen that tell-tale sliver of light, were properly drawn now, he noted.

‘Marchuk?’ Pietruszka! ‘Pietruszka? Zarubin?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Colonel Sheldon said he’d know the names.’ She spoke in a small voice, diffidently, as though she knew that her Anglo-Saxon-American accent left something to be desired when she tried to wrap it round Slavonic names.

He came back to her at last, round the last right-turn. Pietruszka!

Big smile. ‘Then I’m sure he will.’ Pietruszka, for Christ’s sake!

Pietruszka—Piotrowski—Wolski—Chmielewski—Pekala!

But if she was expecting him to react to that last name, then she was going to be disappointed. Because instead he sank into the bed, and took her into his arms, enfolding her softness even as that treacherous fragrance also enfolded him, mixed with her own unique Willy-smell, unforgettable and unforgotten, warm-and-female; and hated her and himself as he did so, in a mutual betrayal.

Pietruszka—that bloody—cowardly—murdering—Red —fucking—

bastard — treacherous — swine!

But she pushed at him—tried to push him away, almost convulsively, turning her face from him.

‘You’re so cold—God!’ She pushed at him again, turning her head quickly left and right. ‘God! I’m just crumpet now, aren’t I! I’m just a sodding freebie now!’ She stopped shaking under him, and became boneless and defenceless, staring up at him accusingly.

‘Just a freebie!’

Pietruszka! he thought, as he let himself be repulsed.

She stared at him as though she didn’t know him. And they hadn’t known him either, when he’d been taken out of the Wloclawek reservoir: his own brother had only identified him from a birth-Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State mark on the side of his chest, they had beaten him so badly—

Audley was right: blood for blood!

Everything came together in that instant, and he knew exactly where he was. And, better than that, he was at last where he wanted to be—which was more to the point!

He pulled back from her. ‘I’m sorry. You’re quite right—’ Pull back further: go sideways, away from her ‘—I think I want you more than I’ve ever wanted you… Because I need you… But if I’m cold it’s because I’m scared too, Willy.’

‘Tom…’ That great lie, which was also not a lie, weakened her and confused her ‘… I’m sorry, too.’

He sat back on his heels, in the midst of the great disordered bed.

At least they were both agreed on something. But she mustn’t know why he agreed with her. And, anyway, it wasn’t a great lie, actually, at all: he was scared, and he did need her… and only a blind idiot wouldn’t have wanted her, the way she was now.

But, beyond David Audley and Nikolai Panin there was Adam Pietruszka now. And that changed the priorities—

Blood for blood! But he must control himself, too.

‘Don’t be sorry.’ He sank back into the bed. And, the irony was, he would be warm now that he was in control of himself again. ‘Don’t be sorry. Willy.’ He reached out for her. Then he stopped, and reached up instead for the light switches, even as he re-inserted himself into the bed.

Darkness —

He reached out for her again, and this time she didn’t reject him.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Rather, she melted into him.

Darkness and silence. And he could almost feel the high folds of the moorland outside, protecting them.

But then she stirred uneasily, in the crook of his arm. ‘Shouldn’t you tell Audley those names, Tom?’

Zarubin—Marchuk… Pietruszka?

He looked up into nothingness, as she snuggled against him, knowing that the Green Man was up there above him.

Pietruszka—Piotrowski—Wolski—Chmielewski: no doubts about those names! And Pekala, too!

The Green Man was still looking down on him, with that ancient inscrutable wisdom of his, dark and clear: his green leaves had once been symbolic of the pleasures of the flesh, but he also understood the necessity of sacrifice too, as part of regeneration: so his understanding was part of Father Jerzy’s, pagan and Christ-like and complete.

‘Tomorrow morning will do—’ He had surrendered to exhaustion, and there was no going back on that white flag now; because sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof… and blood for blood was for tomorrow ‘—let Audley get his night’s sleep—okay?’

She sighed. But then she snuggled again, without knowing what she’d accepted… which maybe Jaggard didn’t know… and maybe Panin didn’t know, either… But Audley would know, as Tom Arkenshaw knew now—

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Pietruszka— damn his black soul to hell!

Tom felt himself divide, into his English half and his Polish half, as he held the woman he still loved in his arms, and deceived her.

Yet it was not a complete description: Father’s gentler English half had once demanded blood-for-blood, the old Anglo-Saxon wergild

— but that was long ago… so that half could cherish Willy now. It was Mamusia’s side which wanted blood—

Somehow, he must preserve David Audley tomorrow, and yet he must exact wergild for Father Jerzy also—

‘Tom, honey… hold me tight, Tom—’

Like Audley, Father also had Norman blood in him. And Norman blood had a pragmatic virtue: it attended to first things first.

So that was what he would do now, then.

7

Audley blew his nose noisily, and with evident self-pity, and surveyed the elderly Ford Cortina with distaste, and muttered again under his breath.

Out of the corner of his eye Tom observed the garage man bestow the crisp new bank notes into a back pocket, and the garage man caught his glance and nodded ingratiatingly. ‘She’s a good runner

—you can take my word for that, sir,’ he added quickly, in support Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State of his nod. ‘An’ I’ll put your car under cover.‘

‘If you’d just get in the car, David.’ Tom moved into the pause before Audley could explode into disbelief. ‘Then we can talk.’

Audley opened his mouth, but another sneeze caught him before he could pronounce on the garage man’s word; and, before he could recover, Tom had ducked round to the other side of the Cortina and was into the driver’s seat; and, with commendable prudence, the garage man followed him as far as possible, bending down and tapping on the window, leaving Audley isolated.

Tom wound down the window.

‘I know she don’t look much—’ The man massaged his pocket, as though he couldn’t believe his luck ‘—but that engine there…

that’s sweet as a bell! You just start ’er up, an‘ listen to ’er.‘

There was 95,000 on the clock, and the state of the bodywork suggested that this was the second time round. But Audley had surrendered to the inevitable and was climbing in on the other side, so he turned the ignition key quickly.

The engine roared—and roared louder as he revved it to drown out what Audley was now saying.

‘What did I tell you?’ The garage man’s reaction was a masterly overlay of gratified confidence above relieved surprise. ‘That’s a good engine, that is—sweet as a bell… An’ two new tyres on the back… You just want to watch the hand-brake—best to put ‘er in gear when you leave ’er on a hill… I still got a bit of work to do on that—like I told you, didn’t I?‘

‘Yes—thank you.’ It wasn’t stopping, it was getting away that Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State mattered now, and the road was open and the way was clear. ‘I’ll be off then.’ He engaged the gear and released the defective hand-brake to suit his words. ‘Goodbye—goodbye—’

‘Goodbye, sir—’ The Cortina’s movement sloughed off its proud owner, but not quite ‘—don’t forget what I told you about the hand-brake— the hand-brake, sir—’

They were moving. And there was a surge of 2-litre power under his foot now, and a clear road ahead and behind, for the time being.

Audley muttered again. And then sneezed again, and blew his nose again, to demonstrate that his cold was much worse this morning, as well as his temper.

Tom put his foot down, listening to the sound of the engine above the other assorted rattles from all sorts of places around him, inside and outside and underneath ‘the good runner’.

‘If there’s one thing I hate—’ Audley managed to speak at last, and with cold concentration ‘—or two things… or maybe even three things—’ A paroxysm of sneezes engulfed all the things he hated.

Still nothing behind. Which was reassuring, even if it also shamed Tom a little for all the proper precautions he had wished on the poor old bugger this morning, before and after their hasty breakfast.

‘What do you hate, David?’ Still nothing. And what made him feel worse was that he felt better himself: better after last night (which had been better than better); and better because there still wasn’t anything behind, as they climbed up on to the high shoulder of Cherwell Down, into open moorland, where anything behind would be nakedly following; and best of all (although that was Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State treacherous to Willy, to think it best), because he had always wanted to see Mountsorrel—(to hell with them all—Jaggard and Audley, Panin and his po-faced Minder… even, almost, with Willy herself!)— he had always wanted to see Mountsorrel! ‘What do you hate, David?’

Audley emitted a growling sound, half hate and half common head-cold. ‘I hate Ford Cortinas—and particularly two-tone brown Cortinas!’

Now that, thought Tom happily, was irrational, in the circumstances. ‘Two-tone Cortinas, David?’ There was nothing behind, for a mile or more.

‘My wife bought one once, fourth-hand—’ Audley caught himself suddenly, as though he realized at last what a fool he was making of himself. ‘Damn it, Tom! What the hell are we supposed to be doing at the moment?’

That was fair enough. ‘We’re just taking precautions, David.

That’s all.’ But he mustn’t sympathize with Audley too much.

‘What other things do you hate?’

‘Huh!’ Audley was getting back his cool, in spite of his cold. ‘I’m too old to enjoy your precautions—if that’s what you mean by all this bloody cloak-and-dagger business.’

Should he count ‘cloak-and-dagger’ as Things Two and Three?

‘But I’m your Minder—remember, David?’

‘Remember?’ The old man slumped down resignedly. ‘How could I forget?’ He sniffed against the cold. ‘Although it’s a bloody long time since I’ve been professionally-minded… But no—I Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State remember…’ Then he gestured towards the battered dashboard, with its gaping hole where the radio had been. ‘This is a precaution, is it?’

They came to the cross-roads on the top. ‘This is a different car.

The one we had yesterday was in the hotel car park all night. So I couldn’t watch it absolutely.’ So I was busy last night—okay? ‘So now we’ve got a clean car.’

Grunt. ‘Metaphorically speaking.’ Grunt— sneeze—

Poor old bugger! ‘It was the first place that offered cars for hire, David.’

End of sneeze. ‘So you’re into not trusting anyone, then? Even here?’ Audley considered his handkerchief with distaste, much as he had surveyed the Cortina. ‘Or do you know something I don’t know?’

He mustn’t think ‘ Poor old bugger’ again. ‘We’re meeting Panin this morning—“in the open”, like he wants… And someone took a shot at you yesterday, David—and you didn’t think that was his doing, I know. But that doesn’t matter, because if it wasn’t him then it was someone else… In fact, I’d rather it bloody-well was him—at least we’d know it then, wouldn’t we!’ He put his foot down again, and began to think better of the garage man in spite of the body-rattles. ‘But, in any case, there’s also poor Basil Cole to bear in mind: somebody knows too damn much—you said so yourself. So a bit of cloak-and-dagger is fair enough. Okay?’

Audley said nothing for a few seconds. Then he harumphed chestily, and fumbled again for his handkerchief, and finally blew Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State his nose again. ‘You’re saying someone— somebody— may have bugged that big black monster of yours last night? To keep tabs on us today? Someone— somebody— who managed to follow us all the way to the Green Man last night?’ He paused, to let the memory of the M4/M5 drive speak for him. ‘Like Superman, perhaps?’

It was time to poach Audley to rights. But it might be as well to do it circumspectly. ‘It could have been bugged when I left it outside Basil Cole’s house last evening, David—they could have been watching and waiting for us… So I was careless there: we should have changed horses somewhere down the line yesterday, instead of here… just in case.’ And now was the time to frighten him.

‘Or… alternatively…’

He didn’t have to drive far before Audley cracked. ‘Alternatively

—?’

They were already coming off the high moor, down into one of those ancient valleys where prehistoric men had grubbed a living of sorts: and, in the case of this particular valley, where Gilbert of Mountsorrel had briefly been king of his castle in King Stephen’s short days.

‘Come clean, Tom, damn you!’ snapped Audley.

Tom frowned at the long downhill road ahead. They had come back too quickly to Audley’s ‘ Do you know something I don’t know?’ when he had thought he’d headed the old man off the question. ‘Come clean—?’

‘Huh! Or as clean as you know how, anyway!’ Audley shifted, to fix a direct eye on him. ‘Last night you were pissed off… You Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State didn’t know what the hell was happening, Tom— I know the signs… because I have been there before myself—in no-man’sland, with one hand tied behind my back, and one foot in a bucket, and some silly fool to look after… I have been there, so I recognize the symptoms… so don’t fuck me around, eh?’

This was bad, thought Tom: once again, he had underestimated the man, and he needed more time to sort out the how and the why.

‘What—?’

‘I said—’ Audley stopped suddenly as the road narrowed and fell away steeply between high earth-banks. ‘Watch your speed, man, watch your speed!’

Tom was already doing just that, with the garage man’s warning about the brakes suddenly ringing in his ear. The old car could certainly show a clean pair of rear wheels to its peers on the straight, he had established. But it wasn’t good running he had to worry about now, it was good stopping. And, from the way he was tensed up in the passenger’s seat, Audley was sharing his fears.

Slowly, under insistent pumping of the foot-brake, the car agreed to decrease its speed to the point where he could enlist the gears to help him. ‘I’m sorry, David. I was thinking of other things.’

‘So was I.’ Audley sniffed and hugged himself. ‘This bloody bocage— it always gives me the creeps.’

‘“Bocage”?’ Then Tom remembered Audley’s ancient history as a teenage yeomanry tank-commander in 1944, and seized on it gratefully. ‘You mean, this is like Normandy, is it?’

Audley didn’t reply, but sat hunched up and silent until Tom Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State himself recalled out of his subconscious the long lines of graves in the Polish war cemetery on the road from Caen to Falaise, so many of which marked the last resting place of tank crewmen who had died half a continent away from home, for their country’s freedom and in vain.

‘Yes—’ Audley sat up suddenly ‘—yes and no. Like and unlike.’

Sniff. ‘Funny thing, memory: it goes away for years. Then it comes back.’ He sniffed again, and turned towards Tom. ‘Now, young Thomas Arkenshaw… alternatively, you said. And, alternatively…

someone didn’t need to follow us yesterday because that someone already knew where we were going, hey?’

Tom nodded. Over the next ridge, then Mountsorrel would be somewhere down the other side, to the left. ‘It’s possible.’

‘Yes,’ Audley agreed harshly. ‘Our side knew. And Nikolai Andrievich’s side knew. And neither of those sides can be trusted, for a start. But there’s more to you this morning than that deplorable truth. Which, for another start, wouldn’t cheer you up—’

‘David!’ Old memories of blazing tanks, more often British and Polish than German in the bloody bocage, had given Tom more time, and more time advised him to come clean. Or, at least, fairly clean. ‘Let me—’

‘No!’ Audley cut him off. ‘Don’t attempt to deny it—or explain it… at least until I have finished thinking aloud, anyway.’ Sniff.

‘Yesterday you were unhappy… and, as you have admitted, somewhat careless. Today, you are happy, but careful… And you refused to talk business until we were away from the Green Man and in a safe—huh! relatively safe—car, in the middle of nowhere.

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

Tom managed to open his mouth, but Audley forestalled him. ‘And I do not think—I do not believe— that your happiness is simply the product of youth and a good night’s sleep.’ A handkerchief appeared from nowhere and the old man blew his nose on it.

‘Whereas I had a dreadful night, full of fly-blown nightmares…

But that is because I have heard the chimes at midnight too often, and now I like to have my own true woman within reach beside me, and my own true mattress beneath me… But now the fresh air has blown the cobwebs from my brain and I can see clearly again.’

The old man balled up the damp handkerchief and stuffed it into the pocket of his pale expensive raincoat, and flourished a fresh one from another pocket. ‘So—I tell you this only for your dear mother’s sake—so if you are about to deceive me, I caution you to do it well. Because, for her sake, I have decided to trust you this morning until I think you are playing me false. But then, also for her sake, I will pack you back to that pen-pushing paper-hanger Frobisher, and you can make your peace with him as best you can.’

Audley wiped his face with the fresh handkerchief. ‘Is that crystal clear, now?’

They breasted the new ridge, and Tom caught a glimpse of heather-dark moorland away to his left, with its sharply treeless skyline under the rain-clouds. But he knew that he couldn’t see so far into Audley in spite of Jaggard’s calculations and the man’s own admissions—even in spite of that once-upon-a-time special relationship with Mamusia. Because Audley had his own true woman now; and, anyway, Audley was also not to be trusted, in his Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State own right.

‘Crystal clear, David.’ And yet, in spite of that mistrust (and perhaps because of Mamusia; but more, perhaps, because he had never met anyone in the service like this strange, garrulous, dangerous old man), he felt himself drawn to him, and into the game. ‘If I double-cross you, then you’ll shop me. Right?’

‘Hmm…’ For the first time, Audley was taking notice of his surroundings. ‘Just tell me one thing then, Tom—’

‘One thing?’ They were going down again. But this time he had the right low gear in advance; because, although he could see nothing as the high Devon bocage banks reared up again on each side, he knew that Mountsorrel must be down there somewhere, just ahead and to the left, on its own spit of land above the ancient river crossing.

‘Yes.’ Audley’s tone was casual, but his big hands were squeezing each other nervously on his lap, again as though his bocage-memories of well-sited German 88s and lurking panzerfaust infantry had returned with the earth-banks. ‘One simple question to start off with, anyway. Now that we know where we stand, as it were.’

The road twisted, and then straightened again so that Tom could see clear down to the parapets of a narrow little stone bridge at the bottom of the hill. So there had to be an opening of some sort on the left before that. ‘Go on, David.’

‘Yes.’ The hands continued to work. ‘Just where the devil are we going?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Ah!’ There was a gap ahead, in the high bank on the left; and although it looked small… and it was unsignposted (but then Mountsorrel wasn’t National Trust, of course)… it was the only gap he could discern in this last hundred yards, before the bridge.

‘ Ah! ’ He pumped the foot-brake furiously, debating whether to overshoot and then back up the hill rather than attempt the turning on his first run. ‘ Here, as it happens, is where we’re going… I think

—’ The hell with it! he thought, swinging the wheel.

The old car creaked in every metal bone and sinew, and canted over dangerously as it slithered in slow motion into a sharp left-hand turn, so that for a moment he feared that it would slam broadside into the bank which rose up again on the lower side of the entrance. But, by the grace of God, it accepted his change of direction, and then stalled in a final protest.

‘Indeed?’ Audley had lurched against him, swearing under his breath, as they had taken the turn. But now his voice was only mildly incredulous. ‘And where, pray, is here, Tom?’

He might well ask, thought Tom, surveying the unpromising vista up the muddy rutted track ahead between future luxuriant banks of stinging nettles.

“That is to say—‘ Audley amended his question suddenly ’—does Panin know how to get to Bodger’s Farm?‘

‘Bodger’s Farm?’ Tom followed Audley’s pointing finger. On the passenger’s side, on the wreck of a five-bar gate propped against two oil drums, a crudely-painted board bore that legend.

‘Is this where you wanted to go?’ inquired Audley politely. ‘And, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State if it is, will he be able to get here?’

Tom’s confidence weakened. But then long experience of similar places reanimated it. ‘He has my Ordnance Survey map with the rendezvous marked. I gave it to his escort this morning, before breakfast.’

‘His escort? His minder, you mean?’ Audley grinned wolfishly at him. ‘What was he like?’

Tom turned the ignition key, and the engine purred sweetly at the first touch. ‘He didn’t look the part.’ He grinned back at Audley.

‘He seemed a rather inoffensive little fellow, actually.’ He engaged first gear cautiously. ‘Very polite, he was, David. In barely adequate English.’

‘Is that so?’ Audley looked around him curiously. ‘Well, I’m sure appearances are deceptive… We’re going on, are we?’

The wheels squelched and spun, and then took hold.

‘For a little way. Then we shall have to walk across the fields, I expect.’

‘You expect? You haven’t been here before, then?’

‘No.’ Tom caught a glimpse of a grey roof through the straggling hedge on his right, down the side of the hill.

‘You didn’t see Panin himself?’

‘No.’ More roofs, and a hint of yellowish-grey stone. And, in the left foreground, the ruin of an antique farm-tractor half-sunken on the verge beside the track, with the remains of last year’s dead nettles still entwined in it.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘I see—’ Audley stopped suddenly as Bodger’s Farm presented itself to them at last, in all its agricultural squalor.

Tom decided against entering the farmyard morass, even though that would take him closer to what must presumably be the farmhouse itself, for lack of a more likely parking place: any vehicle with less than four-wheel drive attempting that yard might find itself a permanent resident—like the abandoned Rover, old but not yet vintage, which lay wheel-less on one side, to serve now (judging by its present occupants) as a chicken-house.

‘You did say…’ Audley’s tone was gently hopeful, looking for confirmation rather than information ‘… that we weren’t actually meeting… here… didn’t you?’

‘Yes—no—’ Tom caught a flicker of movement at one curtained window in the blank face of the house ‘—I’ll just go and get directions, David. Okay?’ He opened his door, observing what seemed to be the farmer’s domestic refuse pile, which included non-biodegradable washing-up liquid containers among other unspeakable material which was already sodden and well-rotted.

‘If you’d like to go up there, towards the field—by that gate?’

He stepped out gingerly, into the mud in preference to the domestic midden; which, from its smell, included fish-heads as well as cabbage leaves; and thought, as he did so, that a high, dry summer might not be preferable on Bodger’s Farm, because this would be the kingdom of flies, and blow-flies, and all manner of winged insects then. But he must move, now that he was moving, before Audley could protest.

A large dominant cockerel, with bright red upstanding comb and Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State jaunty tail-feathers, eyed him sidelong from its vantage-point on the roof of the Rover with bright reptilian certainty, regretting only that he was too big to be edible, then turning away and defecating nervously on the stained and pitted metal, which had once been some Sunday driver’s pride-and-joy.

Tom searched for something just slightly better than filth on which to place his good clean shoes, wondering as he did so what Audley was wearing (and, for God’s sake, what shoes Comrade Professor Panin and his minder might have laced up this morning, in all innocence!). But long before he reached the flagstones set in the overgrown grass in front of the farmhouse door he gave up the attempt, and walked through the muck regardless.

(The trouble was, he decided, that the farm was huddled into the hillside, halfway down on its own platform across which all the rainwater from the top evidently made its way, unregulated by anything so outrageously Roman or modern as a drainage system, so it seemed.)

There was no bell or button on the door, which had last been painted when King George VI (or maybe his father) had been on the throne. But there was nothing to push or pull, so he rapped on it with his knuckles instead.

No answer—no sound from within. But he had seen that movement at the low window on his left, with its half-drawn faded curtains.

So he knocked again, more sharply than before.

(The incongruous ambience of this squalid place, he thought, was its clashing colours: against the old natural greens and red-browns Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State and greys of grass and mud, and roof and wall, there was the garish yellow of the ranks of plastic drums outside the barn and the vivid orange of the plastic sacks he could see inside it; and the bright red of the brand-new tractor also inside it, beside the sacks—all probably paid for by the EEC, yet as out-of-place and unnatural as the empty squeezee Fairy Liquid and Palmolife pressure containers on the cabbage-stalk-fish-nead garbage heap through which he’d walked just now.)

The door-latch snapped behind him, making him jump just as he had reached Audley in his survey (Audley stamping through the mud, oblivious of it!). But the door didn’t open, it only shivered as he turned back to it; but then the bolts inside cracked, and the key inside clicked, and the door began to open, scraping on the floor beneath it.

Tom composed his face into a mask of obsequious inquiry even before he could see anyone in the opening.

‘Good morning—’ (Could the farmer be Mr Bodger? But could anyone be Mr Bodger?) ‘—sir… I’m sorry to bother—’ (or should it be bodger? he thought insanely) ‘—to bother you, so early in the morning, sir.’

No answer, not even a grunt. Only the shadowy presence of someone taller than his own ceiling, therefore stooped under it, and a waft of smell composed of innumerable elements, in which damp walls predominated but paraffin and unwashed clothes and fried bacon fat also played their parts, among other things which he could not even guess at.

Tom tried to continue without breathing in too much of it. ‘Do you Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State mind if…’ The incongruity of the request enveloped him, like the smell ‘… if I go to see your castle, sir?’ The incongruity increased beyond his imagination as he thought of Gilbert de Merville riding to Mountsorrel Castle this way, on his iron-shod destrier, eight hundred years ago— eight-and-a-half hundred years ago— in this same mud, if not this same world.

The presence shook itself. ‘Cross the fields. Follow the track.

’Bout ‘alf a mile. You can’t miss it—church is on t’other side, opposite.’

Tom was overwhelmed by gratitude and relief, so that he felt in his pocket willingly. ‘There is a charge, I presume?’

‘No charge.’ The presence also seemed relieved, as though he had expected someone worse, in direct descent from Joscelin himself, demanding money rather than offering it. ‘Jus’ make sure you shuts the gates…’cause I’ve got beasts up there, that way.‘

‘Of course.’ Tom remembered Panin, and offered what was in his hand nevertheless. ‘I have two friends—two foreign gentlemen—

who are also coming shortly… If you would be so good as to direct them… This is for your trouble, sir—’

The door started to close, with the bank note ignored. ‘No trouble.

Jus’ so they closes the gates, that’s all.’ The words just managed to escape as it snapped shut, and as Tom turned away he heard the key click in the lock and the bolts rattle back top and bottom.

He crossed the yard diagonally, through a mixture of what looked like one part of Exmoor mud to three parts of cow-dung, to where Audley stood unconcernedly in a clump of dead nettles beside Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State another antique farm-gate which was secured to its post by a loop of bright orange plastic rope.

The old man regarded him quizzically. “This is the right place, then?‘

‘Yes.’ As he unhooked the gate he observed that Audley’s shoes were only slightly less mud-and-dung encrusted than his own. But they were stout heavy country shoes, and Audley didn’t seem to mind, anyway; if anything, he sounded much more polite and friendly than earlier, when he’d been in relative comfort. Perhaps the sight of all the piles of refuse reminded him of his beloved compost heaps. ‘This way—about half a mile.’

‘Indeed?’ Audley waited while he closed the gate. ‘Now, tell me, Tom… what gave you the idea of this particular rendezvous?

Rather than any other?’

Tom winced. It had seemed an innocently interesting idea, both in his head and on the map, after reading Panin’s note the night before. ‘I was rather hoping you weren’t going to ask that.’ He studied the deeply-rutted track with distaste. ‘Shall we walk on the grass?’

‘Yes. That would be the sensible thing to do,’ agreed Audley. “I rather approve of it, that’s all.‘

‘Approve of it—?’ Tom failed to avoid a rich new cow-pat, and slid dangerously in it for a second before he regained his balance.

‘Ye-ess. In the open, and nice and private, like he wants. But make the bugger suffer a bit for his privacy. Yes… I like it, Tom.’

Audley beamed at him. ‘So now you tell me why you’re so happy Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

—or why you were so happy first thing, if not now… Right?’

They had already topped a minor corrugation in the side of the valley, so that now a small lateral re-entrant lay below them. But there was no sign of Mountsorrel on the spur ahead. ‘I had a visitor last night, David.’

‘A visitor?’ Audley was striding out on his long legs, his pale raincoat flapping, as though he knew where he was going. Or as though, even if he didn’t know, he was confident of getting there.

The memory of Willy cheered Tom, restoring his happiness in that instant. ‘A girl I know. A very pretty girl, too.’

‘Well, well!’ Audley didn’t miss a step. ‘Now that is cunning such as I love to hear. Or uncommonly good management, anyway… Or quite exceptional good luck—which will do just as well.’ He sniffed, and then chuckled throatily. ‘Give me a minder who’s lucky—then I’m truly safe, by golly!’ He threw a grin over his shoulder. ‘Perhaps that fellow yesterday really was aiming at me.

But with you beside me he never had a hope, eh?’

The old man was in good shape, in spite of his cold, thought Tom, lengthening his stride. And in good heart now, apparently. Or was this just an old war-horse—on this track an old destrier— snorting at the prospect of what he’d been trained for, with his iron-shod hoofs?

‘Not any of those, I’m afraid—’ The ground at the bottom of the re-entrant was boggy, with grass mounds standing out of water; but it might have been Trafalgar Square for all the notice the old man took of it: he splashed through it regardless ‘—she works for the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State CIA, David.’

‘ Ah! ’ Audley checked and turned as he reached firmer ground beyond the bog. ‘Now, that’ll be the new chap, Sheldon—Mosby-Something-Sheldon? Major, USAF when I first met him, but always “Doc” to his associates. And “Mose-honey” to the girl he had in tow last time I met him… and she was a very pretty girl too

—and she worked for the CIA too, as I have good reason to recall.’

He cracked another grin, but this time it wasn’t a real one. ‘He’s quite a good chap, actually. Sound Virginian Confederate stock, is our major.’

‘He’s a colonel now.’

‘Is he so? Well, they would have had to promote him.’ Audley turned away, up the hillside. ‘He’s a dentist by profession—one-time profession, anyway. Which proves his patriotism, if nothing else. Because I’ll bet he could make a lot more money “hanging out his shingle”, or whatever they do, and building expensive bridgework, than hanging out the flag… and sending pretty girls to visit you late at night.’ He gave Tom a sidelong look. ‘So what did she have to tell you? And what did she want in exchange?’ Sniff.

‘And what—w-what did you give her—?’ The sniff turned into a giant sneeze, which occasioned a desperate search for the reserve handkerchief. ‘Or shouldn’t I ask?’ The old man blew his nose.

‘Damn blasted cold!’

Tom blessed the cold for giving him time to straighten his thoughts and his face. ‘She says you’re in trouble.’

‘Huh!’ Audley tossed his head and breathed in deeply. ‘That’s nothing new. What have I done this time?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘You’ve offended some politician or other, she says.’

‘Oh… that?’ Audley shrugged. ‘It wasn’t anything personal. He just needs to tighten up his department, that’s all. Serve the bugger right!’ He gave Tom another sidelong look, but this time he winked as well. ‘I’ve got any number of enemies in high places, boy. But I’ve got one or two friends as well—and maybe in higher places, too. So no need to worry about that.’ The eye which had winked became fish-cold. ‘What else?’

‘She said Panin was also in trouble.’ It was no good passing on the

‘cut-and-run’ advice: Audley would just laugh at that. ‘The Americans are quite surprised he was let out to talk to you.’

‘Ah…’ Audley stumped up the hillside in silence for a moment or two ‘… now that is interesting. Even if it’s hardly surprising.’ He grimaced at the grass beneath his feet. ‘Although that’s the sort of thing, properly elaborated with chapter and verse, which Basil Cole could have explained… ye-ess… But now he can’t, can he?’ He stopped suddenly, and turned again, stone-faced to match the cold eyes. ‘So we shall have to live on my fat, pending nourishment from elsewhere, for the time being.’ The eyes looked through Tom, and then past him, but not at anything, quite unfocused. ‘If he is in trouble, so you say…’

In spite of himself, Tom had to turn, even though he was close to the crest now. But there was nothing behind them: Audley was looking at things inside his head, which pointed from the past into the present. ‘She said, David.’

‘ She said—yes…’ The look continued ‘… and I said “friends”—so Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State I said.’ The old man blinked, and snapped back to him. ‘Perhaps I delude myself when I say I have friends… So perhaps we are both in trouble—as she says.’ The corner of his mouth twitched. ‘But what we have to remember is that Panin lives in a different world from ours, in which “trouble” has a different meaning.’

It was a statement, not a question. But it seemed to be looking for an answer, nevertheless. ‘His trouble could be terminal, do you mean?’

Another twitch. ‘It’s hard to say now. Basil Cole could have told us.’ It was the right answer, all the same, the twitch suggested.

‘But he has no friends—not even with a “perhaps”. He just has success or failure—and then a fresh lease or bankruptcy, as the case may be.’ He nodded suddenly. ‘But you’re quite right, Tom: he has the advantage on us because we’re only playing games, but he’s playing life-and-death, maybe. So he plays harder, always.’

Tom thought of Basil Cole. ‘And he kills people, maybe?’

‘Without a second thought—’ Audley twisted away, up the hillside again ‘—or without investigative journalists, or questioning civil servants, or inconvenient questions in Parliament, anyway… if he pulls it off, boy—if he pulls it off!’ He stepped out again, leaving Tom behind.

Tom opened his mouth, wanting to stop the big man reaching the crest before he could, because Mountsorrel ought to be visible from there and he wanted to be the first to make sure that it was.

But Audley’s legs were too long and he had too much momentum, and the first words that came into his head were useless, anyway: if Panin was already ‘in trouble’ they both knew the KGB’s Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State unforgiving attitude to failed overseas operations mounted to restore a waning reputation.

‘David!’ Even as the right Audley-stopping words occurred to him he saw that it was too late: Audley had stopped of his own accord at the top. ‘She did give me something else—’

‘Well!’ Audley was staring ahead, hands on his hips. ‘I might have known!’ He squared his shoulders and shook his head. Then he turned back to Tom abruptly. ‘What else did she give you, Sheldon’s woman?’

Willy described as ‘Sheldon’s woman’ cut deep, and the accuracy of the description turned the knife in the wound. But at least Mountsorrel must be in view at last, and that made him stand firm where he was, down the hillside. ‘What might you have known, David?’ he inquired innocently.

Audley tossed his head. ‘What did she tell you?’

All the pleasure of Mountsorrel was gone before he had set eyes on it. ‘She gave me three names, David.’ He paused deliberately.

‘Does Zarubin ring any of your bells?’

‘Zarubin?’ Against his backdrop of grey rain-clouds Audley looked huge above him. ‘Yes—he rings bells… albeit discordantly, Tom.’ He gave Tom back an equally deliberate pause. ‘He’s a 24-carat KGB shit, is Colonel Gennadiy Zarubin… If that’s his real name. Which it almost certainly isn’t, because only God and Central KGB Records know that.’ Sniff. ‘But yes, he certainly rings bells—a whole bloody peal of them, with umpteen thousand changes: KGB Triple-Cross Major, that might do for him… And I Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State can maybe think of a few people who’d like to see him hanged—or

“hung”, should it be, in this context?—but… strung up, anyway.

And there’d be some jostling in the queue to pull on his rope too, by God!’ He nodded. ‘Gennadiy Ivanovich Zarubin—’ He stopped suddenly, frowning at Tom as though he’d remembered something.

‘Yes, David?’

‘Mmmm…’ The frown was edged with calculations. ‘But you said names, didn’t you, Tom? So ring another bell then—eh?’

It was no good: he’d been too slow. ‘Marchuk. Leonid Marchuk.’

No surprise. Rather… satisfaction? ‘Yes.’ Nod. “That’s a good name.‘

‘Good?’ The old bastard had remembered something.

‘Yes.’ Audley showed the edges of ivory-yellow teeth, which were damn good imitations if they weren’t his own. ‘“Good” in the General Phil Sheridan sense, of the-only-good-Indian being a dead one.’ He stopped again, but this time raised an eyebrow. ‘But you didn’t know that—?’

‘He’s dead is he?’ Tom relaxed slightly. Because if Audley knew…

then that was really rather reassuring, on balance. ‘Marchuk’s dead?’

The eyebrow lifted again, but disbelievingly now. ‘On the Czestochowa road, to Katowice, was it?’ Audley murdered the Polish place-names, as every good Englishman always did.

‘Another tragic accident—like Basil Cole’s? Except that poor old Basil fell out of his tree, and poor Leonid lost control of his KGB-issue Mercedes—?’ Audley tut-tutted insincerely. ‘All these tragic Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State accidents! “In the midst of life we are in death…” It makes me quite grateful that I didn’t take my own car out this morning—or climb one of the trees in my garden… One can be so accidental, can’t one?’

On the Czestochowa road? Willy hadn’t known that detail, so Audley knew more than the CIA did about Marchuk’s death.

‘Perhaps he didn’t have a minder, David. Or maybe he didn’t do what his minder told him?’

Audley acknowledged the message with the very slightest of bows.

‘Perhaps.’ Then he dropped the shutters on casual pretence. ‘Three names. So give me the Third Man, and stop pissing me around, Tom—right?’ He turned, to take another look at what lay beyond, and then came back to Tom. ‘Right?’

Not right. Because (as always), the more he let himself be bullied, the more he would be bullied: but the lesson of King Stephen was that when one was in the weaker position it might be safer to let oneself be bullied than to antagonize someone who was not yet an enemy. ‘You tell me, David.’ Instinct strengthened him. ‘You tell me who your Third Man is—after Zarubin and Marchuk—’