For the Good of the State

by Anthony Price

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

  He had to find the number, and reverse the charges, with his imagination still ablaze.

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

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

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

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

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

  Pause.

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

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

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

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

  ‘You’ve talked to Panin?’

  Keep to the truth while you can. ‘Audley has. I’ve just listened in. Panin’s down here with a Polish minder, by name Sadowski. Major Kasimierz Sadowski.’ Wait, and let him feed that also to Harvey.

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

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

  ‘Go on.’

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

  ‘Go on. Go on.’

  ‘Do you know where Zarubin is now?’

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

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

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

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

  ‘How does he know?’

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

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

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

  ‘But what?’

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

  ‘What?’ Jaggard sounded irritated. ‘Set up Zarubin as a target? Why the blazes should he do that?’

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

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

  ‘M-A-R-C-H-U-K. L-E—’

  ‘I’ve got that. Go on.’

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

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

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

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

  ‘He wants to make a deal.’

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

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

  ‘Arkenshaw?’ Jaggard came on the line again. ‘I have confirmation on Marchuk. A suspicious road accident … Not a nice man, Marchuk. But then neither is Zarubin, by all accounts. But we haven’t got one damn thing on your “Sons of the Eagle”.’ Pause. ‘But you knew about them, did you? But … never mind. What deal? With us?’

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

  ‘With—? Shimshe … ack?’

  ‘That’s right. S-Z-Y-M-I-A-C—one of their top men. Szymiac. Panin knows exactly where to find him. He’s rented a house at East Lyn, just outside Lynmouth, In preparation for welcoming Zarubin to Exmoor.’ Tom wondered what the computer would make of that. But then, if it had fluffed the Sons of the Eagle it was unlikely to throw up Szymiac from its electronic stomach.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Yes, sir. I think he is.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  No hint of understanding came down the line. Which would have been gratifying if Audley hadn’t wound down his car-window to draw his attention to time’s winged chariot. So he nodded at Audley and re-applied himself to the telephone. ‘What he says is that Zarubin’s father was an Englishman—that he joined the Royal Navy straight from school, in 1914. And he served in HMS Goliath, in the Dardanelles in 1915. And then, finally, he fell overboard, from HMS President Kruger, in the Caspian Sea in 1920—’

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

  ‘Yes, sir. In the Caspian Sea … serving with the Royal Navy Caspian Squadron, in support of Dunsterforce.’ He couldn’t resist playing Dunsterforce for all it was undoubtedly worth. ‘We had a combined operation in Iran—in Persia—after the First World War, to keep the Turks first … and then the Bolsheviks … away from India, sir. And it was commanded by a man named Dunsterville—Major-General Lionel Dunsterville. But it all came pretty-much unstuck, because of lack of support. Typical Foreign Office foul-up, probably.’

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

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

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

  ‘No, sir.’ The lie came quickly, because he was half-ready for it. But there was also half-truth in it. ‘He’s extremely suspicious of the whole story: he says it could be all true, but he doesn’t like it. That’s what I’ve been trying to say, sir.’

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

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

  ‘It’s all hogwash, is it?’

  ‘Some of it’s true, apparently—about “Dunsterforce”, and HMS President Kruger, anyway.’ He had to avoid even looking towards Audley now. ‘But he says Panin would expect him to know about it. Because everyone knows he’s dotty about Rudyard Kipling—Panin included.’

  ‘Rudyard Kipling?’ The sudden growl in Jaggard’s voice, which overlaid its incredulity, suggested that everyone included him. ‘What the blazes has he got to do with Zarubin—or his father?’

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

  (‘“ Your Uncle Stalky is a Great Man”.’ He heard Audley’s voice inside his head. ‘And Dunsterville was, of course: eight languages, including Chinese and German and Persian, never mind all the Indian dialects. Crammed into the Indian Army from the United Services College—dreadful place … But crammed by Cormell Price, who was a great headmaster. And not an imperialist, even though USC only existed to supply the Empire with dedicated servants—he was “Prooshian Bates, the downy bird” in “Stalky”, Cormell Price … Friend of Swinburne, and William Morris, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Burne-Jones … Kipling should never have been in that school—he wasn’t going into the army. But Cormell Price was the perfect headmaster for him, nevertheless … But the hell with that, Tom! See how that son-of-a-bitch has ambushed me again! I’ll bet he bloody-well knows I’m wasting time telling you about Cormell Price!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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