For the Good of the State

path below him and the great grey sea itself. So this route would trap him on the very point of the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State high ground, on that last straight stretch after the zig-zags had brought them up from Brentiscombe meadow. So… he must bear right—must take the risk that they were on an interception course above him: once down in that heather-and-bracken, among the stone outcrops, then he’d have a chance as they came over the skyline in their turn, because he still had his gun—

Even as he changed direction the slope in front of him seemed to drop away and the whole combe sprang into view far beneath him, with its tiny houses huddled under foreshortened trees and the line of model cars parked beyond them. But in the very instant that he saw the combe a bullet cracked viciously—cracked and double- cracked—the sound was above him, yet also somehow behind him and ahead of him too in the same fraction of time before the howling wind carried it away.

As Tom threw himself forwards he already knew that he could never keep his feet on such a descent, but he managed an impossible succession of downward rabbit-leaps towards the nearest outcrop before the ground slipped from under him on the rain-sodden bracken. Yet even then, by some acrobatic miracle, he contrived to control his slide for another twenty yards, first on his bottom and then on his back, until one foot suddenly snagged in a deep-rooted patch of heather, twisting him sideways with an explosion of pain. And then earth and sky whirled, and he was rolling and tumbling helplessly, grabbing— grabbing—

Christ Jesus! He’d lost the gun!

Heather and bracken tore his hands as he tried to slow his descent, but then the hopelessness of recovering the weapon opened them Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State again, even though he felt that it was like letting go of life itself as he slid and tumbled the last few yards to drop over a miniature cliff on to the path below.

The fall jarred stars in front of his eyes for a moment—red and yellow stars, seen hazily through blurring rain and sweat. But then they weren’t stars at all: they were a huge red-and-yellow kite, straining to escape from their owner up the path, a few yards away.

‘Get away! Get away!’ Tom screamed at the boy as he tried to struggle to his feet. ‘Get away!’

The kite and the boy parted company: the kite soared upwards and outwards, and the boy seemed to disappear outwards and downwards, over the edge of the track. And Tom cried out in anguish as his ankle grated and gave way under him.

He fell on his side, and for a second he wanted only to curl up into a ball and disappear. But then his brain ordered hands and knees—

hands and knees if not feet, Tom!

He heard himself cry out again in agony as he righted himself and the broken bones of his ankle screamed at him. And then it was too late.

It seemed hugely unfair that Major Sadowski had made the same descent somehow intact: the Major should have fallen too, and lost his gun, and even broken his bloody neck, thought Tom angrily.

But Sadowski hadn’t. And neither had the man in the combat jacket, who swam into view—unfocused and then focused—with the white eyes in the blackened face and the rifle in his hands. And that was unfair, too.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State In fact, everything was unfair—even being killed on his hands and knees on a muddy path was unfair. And his ankle hurt like hell, too

—

He wiped his sweaty face with one hand, hypnotized by the muzzle of the gun in Sadowski’s fist, which was pointing at him. But then, inexplicably, it wasn’t pointing at him as the man in the combat jacket said something—or started to say something as Sadowski shot him at close quarters, spinning him clear off the path.

Tom frowned uncomprehending at Sadowski, watching him replace the gun methodically in its holster. Then the Major took three steps and started to reach down for the rifle, which his murdered comrade had so suddenly relinquished.

‘ Leave it!’ shouted a shrill voice from far behind Tom.

The Major froze for a second, his hand halfway to the rifle. Then his head moved slightly, so that he was staring past Tom, up the path towards the sea.

The urge to turn himself in the direction of Sadowski’s stare and towards that weird far-off imperious voice, yet at the same time keep his eyes on the Major himself, was too much for flesh-and-blood: wishing to do both taxed Tom’s enfeebled powers of decision so that he attempted to do both, and ended up by doing neither as he exerted pressure again on his smashed bones and was facing uselessly into space across half an empty mile, towards the zig-zag path on the hillside on the other side of the combe, as the blinding pain and the explosive chatter of a machine-pistol confused his senses.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State The distant hillside blurred and the treacherous wind took the noise and spread it into infinity, so that the echo was only inside his head instead of reverberating up and down the combe and far and wide over the high empty Devon coastline. But it froze him nevertheless, just as the strange shrill voice had held Major Sadowski for that lost moment in the past, before he had come to what Tom knew— knew without needing to understand—had been his final and inevitable decision, because that had always been the Major’s game—

Kill, or be killed!

The far hillside became crystal-clear, so that Tom could observe with detached interest that it was steeper than his own, with less vegetation and with avalanches of rocky scree; and thought (light-headedly) that if Major-General Gennadiy Zarubin (who was dead) had climbed that way, then maybe Major Sadowski (and maybe the man-in-the-combat-jacket, with the black-face- but-white-eyes) wouldn’t be dead; but he hadn’t, and they were—he was, and they were… so now Tom Arkenshaw—so Tom Arkenshaw, against all the odds—

He lifted his bad ankle again. And, though it still screamed out at him, he was almost grateful for the pain’s reassurance that he was still in his own world, the world of the living, as he contrived to look over his shoulder at last—

He saw the child’s push-chair first, on the bend in the patch where it turned to follow the coastline a dozen yards away, almost on the very spot where he said ‘I shall resign’ to Audley, five hundred feet above the great grey angry sea, so very recently—so very Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State recently and so long ago for Zarubin and Sadowski and the camouflaged man… for them, in fact, it had been the rest of their whole lifetimes—