Jaggard took another look at his surroundings, for all the world like one of King Henry II’s men come to make sure that Ranulf of Caen was no longer occupying his illegally-constructed strongpoint.
‘Not fruitless, Tom.’
No? ‘I mean, I can’t tell you anything about him… that I’m sure you don’t already know—’
‘About him—Audley?’ Incredulity. ‘My dear Tom, I know all I need to know about David Audley already. He’s a very old colleague—not to say old friend.’ Jaggard half-smiled. ‘David and I go back a long way, almost into prehistory.’ The half-smile evaporated. ‘Of course, it would have been a bonus if you had been acquainted with him. But only a small bonus—it’s of no great importance.’
‘Importance to what?’ Tom couldn’t keep the suspicion out of his voice.
‘To what I want you to do.’
‘That’s all taken care of. Frobisher has agreed to lend you to me for the time being.’ The half-smile began to condense again. ‘He Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State said you’d be pleased—that you don’t like dealing with the Greeks.’
‘I don’t.’ Frobisher himself would not have been pleased: Jaggard would have had to pull rank to obtain that ‘agreement’. ‘But we’re going to have a problem there—’
‘Then it will be someone else’s problem.’ Jaggard sliced through his half-heated protest abruptly. ‘As of this moment your problem is Audley.’
Being sliced like that irritated Tom. ‘But there’s no one else who can deal with it as I can. It isn’t a problem of protection—it won’t be a diplomatic hit next time, it’ll be a British tourist. And it’ll be a bomb. So someone’s got to galvanize the Greeks into pre-emptive action—’ The thought of Bill Bennett arguing with Colonel Stamatopoulos through an interpreter irritated him even more ‘—
and I can do that. Because…’ He caught his big mouth too late: he was not only kicking against the cut-and- dried inevitable, he was also devaluing Bill, who was not only better than he was in Africa and Central America, but a good bloke into the bargain. But that was too complicated to explain here on the edge of Ranulf’s ditch, with the first drops of today’s rain spotting his face.
‘Because you’re the best?’ Jaggard ignored the rain.
‘Because I speak Greek.’ Bill’s solution to Anglo-Greek relations would be to restore the Elgin Marbles, as though they were the same as General Wolseley’s Benin rubbish, from West Africa.
‘Because you’re the best, Tom.’ Jaggard ignored his answer. ‘But, as it happens, this isn’t so very different from what you’re Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State accustomed to do. In fact, the only difference is that it should be easier—the protection I want.’
It was time to stop arguing—or pretending to argue, thought Tom: It was time to find out what Jaggard actually wanted. ‘But Audley’s not diplomatic—’ But there was a short answer to that, he realized ‘—not over here, in England—?’
‘I don’t want you just to protect Audley—’ Jaggard stopped suddenly, and stared at him for a moment, his spectacles rain-blurred. ‘Of course, I do want Audley protected—not just because he’s an old friend, either . Because what’s locked up inside his head is probably of more value to us than anything Jack Butler’s got in his computer records.’
That was Research and Development in a nutshell, thought Tom: the only reason it still existed was that it had its own top secrets, which it played like cards close to its chest in spite of all orders to the contrary.
‘It’s a Russian he’s meeting, Tom.’ Pause. ‘It’s a somewhat fluid situation at this moment. But you may be able to solidify it for us, is what I’m relying on.’
Jaggard had implicitly said as much, in answer to his question about Audley, after suggesting that it wasn’t so very different from what he was accustomed to do. But what did he mean by
‘solidify’? ‘A Russian diplomat?’
‘A diplomat.’ But Jaggard’s face did not confirm his words. ‘Name of
But for our purposes he has diplomatic status, as an umpteenth cultural attache, to discuss the possibility of a Scythian exhibition at the British Museum the year after next.’
‘Uh-huh?’ Even without Jaggard’s deadpan expression Tom had his own experience of certain Russian cultural attaches in the Middle East, who had looked—and behaved—as though they could have set up prehistoric exhibitions from first-hand experience. ‘Which directorate would that make him? KGB
Archaeology—is there one for that?’
Jaggard looked up at the rain-clouds above, which still couldn’t make up their minds whether to drop their full load here, where there was no shelter, or further east, where there were more people.
‘Actually, that wouldn’t be wholly inappropriate for Comrade Panin, you know.’ He took a handkerchief from his pocket and began to dry his spectacles. ‘He really was a professor once upon a time, and an archaeologist too.’ He held up the spectacles to the sky. ‘But he also goes back a very long way in State Security—pre-KGB, pre-MVD even… possibly NKVD, early 1940s, in the War of Liberation—God knows, perhaps even before that, for all we know.’ He settled the spectacles back on his nose and looked at Tom again. ‘That makes him even older than David Audley—his old friend David Audley.’
