For the Good of the State

by Anthony Price

  ‘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?

  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.

  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 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, 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. ‘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 sa
y 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 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?’

  ‘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 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 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.

  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?’

  ‘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, 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.