For the Good of the State

while you’re about it. In fact, that’s what I’d advise now, professionally.’

‘Even though we’re not being followed?’ Audley sat back comfortably, more relaxed again. ‘Darling Boy?’

‘Yes.’ If Audley thought he was going to rise to Mamusia’s dreadful term of endearment he was much mistaken. ‘But if they already know exactly how you think, they hardly need to follow us, do they?’

‘Very true. And rather disconcerting, I agree.’ Audley fumbled down beside his seat. ‘How does one put oneself into the reclining Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State position, Darling Boy?’

‘You’re not going to go to sleep on me, are you?’ The thought of Audley snoring beside him during the long drive to the West Country was off-putting.

‘I thought I might shut my eyes for an hour.’ Audley found the seat-adjuster and sank out of sight. ‘We elderly persons… we don’t need so much sleep, but the occasional cat-nap works wonders…

Just wake me up on the edge of London. Then I’ll make a phone-call.’

‘To Colonel Butler?’ In return for getting his own way Tom was prepared to put up with the old man’s snoring. ‘For back-up?’

‘No. He can’t spare anyone… Research and Development doesn’t carry assorted minders on its payroll, we all work for our living…

And I don’t want anyone. Especially not any of the unemployed hoodlums Jack would have to hire.’ Audley sneezed explosively.

‘You will make the phone-call actually, Tom—to inform Nikolai Panin that we are changing the rendezvous, wherever it may be that has been agreed. Okay?’

‘What?’ The A34 advance warning sign flashed up ahead.

‘You’re quite right… somebody is too damn-better informed.’

Audley’s voice was starting to get sleepy. ‘So we’ll start out by meeting him on my chosen ground, where you won’t have to have eyes in the back of your head… Then we won’t need any of your

“back-up”… And too many people already seem to know too much, that I do know. So then we can start putting a stop to that.

So… just wake me up between Chertsey and Sunbury, there’s a Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State good fellow, eh?’

Audley thought he was heading for the M3 to London, to the east, not the M4 to Bristol, in the west, and the M5 and distant Exmoor after that. And there was a lot more also that the poor old devil thought which was just as much in the opposite direction, most of all regarding his Danny’s Darling Boy, who had somehow become one of Henry Jaggard’s hoodlums —

‘In Research and Development our job is to think, not to risk our probably over- valued necks protecting even less-valuable necks in foreign hell-holes… like you, Tom… “poor Tom”…’ murmured Audley. ‘ Thinking’s much more agreeable than worrying… You tend to enjoy a better class of life that way… ’he trailed off into what was more likely oblivion than thought.

Tom realized that he had just begun to fall into the error of being slightly sorry for Audley, even while he had at the same time been beginning to savour the thought of the old man waking up on the other side of England from suburban London and whatever ground he’d chosen for his rendezvous with the Russian. But suddenly he became aware of a greater error—or not so much an error as a hideous mistake: he might no longer be sure where his duty lay in relation to Audley and Jaggard, but nagging regrets and minor gratifications paled into nothing beside the need to keep this man alive. And, after that bullet and Basil Cole’s untimely death, his duty was inescapable.

‘We’re not going to London, David. We’re going to Exmoor.’

‘What?’ Audley swallowed the word.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘I said “We’re not going to London”—’

Tom hit the foot-brake to jerk Audley into wakefulness.

‘ What?’ The old man tried to sit up, but couldn’t. ‘To… where?’

‘To Exmoor, David. Panin’s meeting us at Holcombe Bridge—the Green Man Hotel, Holcombe Bridge, on Exmoor.’ He glanced at the digital clock. ‘Actually, we should be meeting him about now.

So I will have to stop before long, because it’s going to take me all of three hours to get there. Apart from warning Panin that we’re going to be late I need to make sure they don’t let our rooms to someone else.’

Audley was struggling to readjust his seat, fumbling and mumbling at the same time.

‘It’s a good hotel, anyway,’ continued Tom with false cheerfulness as the old man’s mumble deepened to a thunderous growl. ‘It’s in Egon Ronay and Rubinstein, and the Good Food Guide.’ Harvey had been envious, indeed. ‘So we shall at least be comfortable, David.’

‘Bugger that!’ Just as he seemed about to resort to brute force Audley was jerked upright. But then, somewhat to Tom’s surprise, the thunder died away into a silence which made him more nervous. Because now at last he had somehow pressed the button, and he sensed the man’s thoughts rocketing up, silently because they had left sound behind. And once that rocket went up, no one knew where it would come down—Jaggard and Harvey were agreed on that. And that, of course, was why he was here.

‘I’m sorry, David—’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Don’t be sorry.’ Audley’s voice was in neutral now, neither angry nor friendly. ‘Let me get things straight: your job is to look after me, and get me to Nikolai Andrievich… and to learn, mark and inwardly digest whatever may pass between us—have I got that right?’

The rocket was up, and in orbit. ‘Well… not quite. I only have to be present because they’ve got someone with Panin—because that’s the deal.’ Shrugging in the dark was useless. “They don’t trust his loyalty as much as you do… of course.‘