For the Good of the State

‘Yes.’ Panin had got exactly what he wanted in ‘70. But Audley had totally humiliated him in giving him what he wanted, and that Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State would rankle for ever afterwards. But, much more to the point, Jaggard had read that file too. ’So Panin hates Audley. But then Audley also hates Panin, Henry: he’s an old Clinton recruit. And old Fred Clinton always made a point of recruiting on the KGB

principle of good haters—“cool head, hot heart”, and all that.‘ He watched Henry Jaggard accept the statement. ’True?‘

‘True.’ Henry Jaggard nodded, out of his recent scrutiny of the Audley file: over the years, others before them had crossed swords with David Audley (and had come out of each clash-of-steel with scars, and the wiser); but no one had ever even remotely hinted that his hot heart wasn’t in the right place, though he was a Cambridge man. ‘But Panin is a very dangerous old man, Garry. And—’

‘And so is Audley a dangerous old man, Henry.’ Now they were only negotiating the fine print of the agreement. But they had to go through it line by line, for the record on the tape under Jaggard’s desk. ‘It’s a toss-up which of them is the more dangerous. But I agree that there’ll be trouble when they meet.’ The thought of the tape concentrated Garrod Harvey’s mind. ‘Only my bet is on Audley—like last time.’ There was one more important thing to put on the record. ‘Old Fred Clinton must have made the same bet back in ’70.‘ Not that the tape mattered, really. Tapes could be edited, but editing tapes wasn’t Henry Jaggard’s style any more than throwing his subordinates to the wolves was Jack Butler’s.

’You’re quite sure that Audley doesn’t know about Viking, I take it?‘

Jaggard shook his head slowly, without bothering to answer what wasn’t even a question.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘What I mean, Henry, is that he doesn’t know— and we can’t tell him, not even if we wanted to, can we?’ Harvey paused deliberately. ‘Not even if he asked us about Panin. Which he won’t in any case, because that isn’t his way of going about things, you see.’

Jaggard leaned forward. ‘Just what exactly are you proposing, Garry? To let Audley go in blind?’

‘David Audley never went into anything blind in all his life.’ All Jaggard wanted was a little reassurance. ‘One of our problems with him in the past has been that he knows too damn much, not too little. So he’ll know Zarubin’s in London for sure—you can bet on that. And he’ll know who Zarubin is, too.’

‘But Poland isn’t his field.’

‘ Everything is his field. He’s a Clinton-vintage R & D man born and bred, Henry.’ Harvey briefly considered the possibility that he might have been wrong about Jaggard’s intention, but rejected it.

‘He’s an interesting man. ’

‘ “A distinguished scholar”—so you said.’ Jaggard knew there was more to come. ‘ “A medievalist”. But I would have thought the sixteenth century was more his period. The treachery was more three-dimensional then, if I remember correctly.’

‘Yes.’ That was Henry Jaggard’s period, of course. And, as a devout Calholic, Jaggard had equivocal views on it which were well known. ‘But did you know that he’s also a recognized authority on Rudyard Kipling?’

Jaggard nodded cautiously. ‘Kipling is down as one of his hobbies, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State in his file.’

‘It’s more than a hobby.’ Harvey silently blessed the young Garrod Harvey Junior’s stuffiest godfather, who had given his birthday presents with such old-fashioned seriousness. ‘He’s just written a series of articles in the Literary Journal. Which are going to be turned into a book, I believe. He believes that Kipling is our most underrated author—and our most misunderstood one.’

‘Indeed?’ Jaggard’s politeness was strained to breaking-point, like the window of the de Havilland Comet which Garrod Harvey’s own godfather had trawled up from the sea-bottom off Elba thirty years before. ‘So what?’

‘The most recent one was on Kipling’s children’s stories.’ Harvey gauged the moment when Jaggard would explode, as the Comet window had exploded. ‘You know, my wife tells me that “We are what we eat”. But it seems to me that, more accurately, “We are what we read”. Or… in the present generation what we don’t read

—I suppose it’s what we see now, on the television. Which is a truly dreadful prospect—’

‘ Garry—’ Jaggard controlled himself with difficulty. ‘I have to see the Minister’s Special Adviser in about two minutes. And I don’t think I’m in a position to stretch his patience—do you?’

It was time to lower the pressure. ‘I think we might have something to offer the Minister. At least… if he’s prepared to cover our flanks, if anything truly unpleasant occurs.’ Garrod Harvey couldn’t bring himself to recall ‘the good of the state’ as an ally, even though it had to be their only true good, for what he envisaged; because the Minister’s Special Adviser would only be Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State concerned with the good of his Minister. ‘Because Audley’s most recent article was on Kipling’s children’s stories, as I was saying

—’

It was to Jaggard’s credit that he merely opened his mouth and then closed it without exploding, like some of the Comets which had managed more flights than others.

‘There’s this passage he quotes—’ Harvey held Jaggard’s attention

‘—which just about sums up the way he operates, on the rare occasions when he goes out into the field. Because when it’s all over he always says “I didn’t do anything—it just happened that way. It wasn’t my fault.” It’s called “shibbuwichee” , apparently.’

‘It’s called what—?’

‘ “Shibbuwichee” . Which Kipling thought was a form of Japanese wrestling.’ Nod. ‘My elder boy was given a complete set of Kipling by his godfather last year, so I’ve been able to look it up:

“These wrestler-chaps have got some sort of trick that lets the other chap do all the work. Then they give a little wriggle, and he upsets himself. It’s called ’shibbuwichee‘, or ’tokonoma‘, or something” .’ He blessed old Hetherington