For the Good of the State

by Anthony Price

  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 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?’

  ‘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 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 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 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 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—’ Instinct pushed him further ‘—after them, but before Panin, David? You tell me—right?’

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

  Wrong—but close enough! ‘Or Pietruszka—’

  Audley gestured dismissively. ‘Same thing. Does it matter?’

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

  The old man watched him thoughtfully. “They’re both doing time in some Polish jail, aren’t they? Officially, anyway, if not actually. And … twenty-five years each, wasn’t it?‘ Sniff. ’Isn’t there a typical Polish joke about that—about Piotrowski and Pietruszka getting twenty-five-year sentences for murdering Father Jerzy Popieluszko? One year for the murder—and twenty-four for getting caught?‘

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

  ‘I’m not. Although I did learn quite a lot of Polish history when I was pursuing your dear mother so unavailingly long ago, when I cherished the foolish belief that the way to her heart might be through a profound knowledge of the Jagiello dynasty, and Sobieski’s ride to the relief of Vienna, and Pilsudski’s tactics against Trotsky.’ Audley smiled disarmingly again for a second. Then his face blanked over again. ‘But the murder of Father Popieluszko did rather interest me for historical reasons as well as professional ones, you see, Tom. Historical analogies always interest me, particularly as they bear on the conflict between the “Accident” and “Conspiracy” theories.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘ “Thenne longen folk to go on pilgrimages—”

  ‘—just like we all have to learn for School Cert, out of Chaucer … or it would have been “O-Levels” for you, presumably—

  ‘“And specially, from every shires ende

  Of Engelond, to Canterbury they wende,

  The holy blisful martir for to seeke,

  That them hath holpen when that they were weeke.”

  ‘Remember?’ Again the lip curled. ‘I’ve always thought that that was the one big mistake Marx made—not incorporating the Opium of the Masses into his formula somehow … Or Lenin might have managed an interpretative footnote or two, just to keep the non-party peasants quiet, like the feudal Church and State did, with a “treasure-in-heaven” clause … Just for the time being, anyway, before they were likely to get anything much on earth, while they were very obviously getting the rough end of the Revolution.’

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

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

  Audley beckoned him. ‘In the most obvious way. Can’t you guess—if you really don’t know?’

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

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

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

  The old man’s face suggested that he found himself where he didn’t want to be. ‘I suppose … if I said that I wouldn’t like that job, because I don’t think I could do it—?’ Audley shook his head. ‘But the hell with that! Because … the truth is, I don’t know whether it was a KGB hit, or whether they just agreed to it.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘Maybe Basil Cole could have told us more —I don’t know that, either—whether Jaruzelski was in on it, or not … Or whether he was in on it, but he was just obeying orders—I don’t bloody-well know, and that’s the truth!’ He cocked his head over his shoulder, towards Mountsorrel. ‘Which is why we’re going in half-blind now, I’m afraid, Tom.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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