For the Good of the State

Tom—‘ Audley’s voice came from behind and below him ’— go!‘

‘No!’ Panin straightened up, still on his knees but fumbling into his Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State raincoat. ‘Your duty is to protect us, Sir Thomas. Let Sadowski—’

‘Shut up!’ Audley’s voice was level with Tom now, and it was deep-frozen with pure hate. ‘And if you find what you’ve got inside there, I’ll shoot you in the guts, I swear to God—as God is my witness!’ The old man’s voice modulated, as though he was surprised by his own passion. ‘I’ll shoot you in the guts, Nikolai…

because after all these years the only thing I can remember is to shoot low—so I may actually shoot your balls off instead— go, Tom! ’

Panin froze. Then swayed, as another gust shook him; but swayed like a frozen dummy nevertheless, unmoving even though moving.

‘That’s right.’ Thick velvet suddenly coveted the steel. ‘Now the hand comes out— slowly… ever-so slowly… that’s right! ’ Audley drew a deep breath. ‘God! You were bloody close then, I tell you!

Because it’s been forty years… well, maybe thirty years, give or take… But I never was very good with small guns. Okay with 75-millimetres, but no good with 9-millimetres… Go, Tom—for God’s sake, while this old devil and I frighten each other equally—go on, Tom! Go!’

Standing up on the path, even for an instant, also frightened Tom.

But then the beginning of returning logic steeled him to take a full look at the skyline above him, with the loss of precious time already also spurring calculation as he did so: Sadowski had gone straight up into the wuzzy, somewhere behind them — but why?

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Go on, Tom—go find out what he’s up to, there’s a good chap.’

Audley had his voice almost back to the conversational level. Yet somehow that sounded louder than a shout inside Tom’s head as he moved obediently to the order.

Sadowski wasn’t protecting Panin, as he ought to be doing—

The overhang, where the cliff- path had been cut from the living rock of the hillside, soon petered out. But then the gorse-wuzzy was still old and impenetrable as he searched for an opening further along as he followed the path round the headland, its sharp spikes and brown-frosted yellow flowers mocking him—

Like Sadowski, he wasn’t protecting his man now, so what the hell was he doing?

There was a gap just ahead, at last—

There was something very wrong here: he had promised Henry Jaggard implicitly, and Cathy Audley explicitly, not to do what he was doing; and he was risking his own life in breaking those promises. But, in the midst of what was now a huge disaster, David Audley had given an order, because his instinct was to fight disaster, to the last gasp and the last bullet—and—and by sweet Jesus Christ!—that was his own Polish instinct, too!

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Now there was the gap in the wuzzy—a gap where a summer-fire had burnt it back long ago, to let the heather and the bracken get a stronger foothold for a time until it could re-establish itself—so that was the way he would go—

The dead wuzzy and heath and bracken gave place suddenly to a crumbling stone wall, reinforced by a sheep-proof wire fence.

Over the wall and the fence: there was smooth hillside grass now, liberally sprinkled with sharp-focused sheep-dung and smaller rabbit-droppings, with the curve of the headland above him and the full fury of the wind at his back, driving him upwards towards the crest; indeed, even as he let the wind drive him, he saw real sheep away to his left, huddled against the inland line of the wall, and also the white danger-signal tail of a rabbit bobbing off to his left, into a square wall of windswept gorse—

But there was no other living thing, either ahead or left-and-right, as he came towards the high point, with the whole coastline behind him fully revealed and stretching into far rain-mist: this, almost to the very yard, where that dimpled trench-line marked the edge of the gorse square, must have been where the old Romans had built their signal-station, with this superb view of any Irish raiders sailing up the Bristol Channel—although in this bone- cutting wind it must have been more a punishment-posting than a mere watch-keeping duty—

Another ten yards, and he would be at the high-point of the ditch, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State where the ancient palisaded-and-revetted gateway must have been, with a high watchtower somewhere inside that wuzzy, all built with timber brought up from distant inland wooded valleys with great labour and organization far surpassing anything Ranulf of Caen and Gilbert of Mountsorrel could have managed more than a thousand years later, in a less efficient age of the world—

And then he saw them: and saw them both together, on the corner of another sheep-wall-and-fence inwards from the Roman signal station, but not in those other ages of Romans and Normans safely dead, but in his own now, with his own death shouting —

Which way?

They saw him almost in the same instant, perhaps by chance, or perhaps because they were being properly careful: it didn’t matter, because in his own age, if he gave that damned Green Machine rifle a clear sight, he was dead now—and the odds against him clogged his throat with fear even as he tried to make a decision—

Which way? Because if he went back the way he had come, the curve of the hillside would still give them a clear view as he reached the stone wall again, which was higher on this side, so that he would have to climb up it—

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State The thought became its own decision: there was a narrow band of grass between the gorse-wuzzy of the Roman fort and the steep bracken-and-heather below him, and his legs were already anticipating his brain’s instructions, already running him where he needed to go, automatically twisting and jinking him like that frightened rabbit which had itself showed him how to take cover in the wuzzy.

But he wasn’t going into the wuzzy like the rabbit: the gorse was old and thick on both sides of him, and even if he could break through it (which he didn’t think he could, anyway), it would slow him down too much—or it might even stop him altogether. And that was all the man with the rifle needed—

(‘The Green Machine’, Audley had called it, of course: ‘They had a break-in and lost a couple—’: and they had one in the car now—

but the other was up there on his flank somewhere! Damn, damn damn!)

He had to keep moving: so long as he was moving sideways—then he had a chance. Not even the best marksman liked deflection shooting: marksmen liked sitting targets—

But the damned wuzzy was still too high on either side, and he could feel the land falling away under his feet with each rabbit-bound. So what he was doing now was running back the way he’d come, parallel to the invisible