For the Good of the State

Well… with the way Mamusia felt, he had always had to conceal his own inadequacy in the matter, which (if Audley’s theory was correct) must be his paternal inheritance: Father’s amused tolerance of almost everything had been a sore trial to Mamusia, even though it also embraced her extravagance, her admirers and her never-explained absences.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Father—

‘Well, Tom?’ Audley was a good passenger, oblivious to everything around him and only concerned with what was going on in his mind. But that was where his patience was exhausted new.

‘Well, Sir Thomas Arkenshaw?’

But Tom was momentarily inside his own thoughts, in the desolate grey country of wasted opportunities and lost might-have-beens, among the ghosts of all the things he had never shared with the one person he’d loved most and admired most in all the world, the memory of whom always made him a counterfeit, rather than an inheritor, of the Arkenshaw name.

‘Yes.’ He watched the brake-lights of the Cadillac brighten, already far ahead, as it was slowed-up by someone else who wasn’t breaking the speed limit sufficiently. What Mamusia always said about Father was that he hadn’t an enemy in the world: there were only his friends and the people who had never met him. But now he was neither his father’s nor his mother’s son, he was only himself. ‘I don’t give a damn what you do to Panin: you can kick him, or shake him by the hand, for all I care. My job is to see you safe home, that’s all.’ The trouble was that only himself was a liar.

‘That’s all, David.’

Audley digested the lie for a moment. ‘All right. Then, for a start, you’d better decide when to put me in my place, and not take bullshit from me.’

Tom held the wheel steady. ‘Such as?’

‘Panin is my problem, not yours. But that doesn’t mean you have Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State to let me patronize you. So… when you feel like it, you just tell me to go to hell—okay?’

‘Okay.’ Tom steadied the car and himself. The old man was full of surprises, arrogant and humble by turns. But then… but then, because of Mamusia… and, damnably, because of Jaggard too…

their relationship had an extra dimension which might confuse them both. ‘Go to hell, then!’

‘Or go to sleep, and let you get on with your job?’ Audley began to fumble with the seat-adjustment again. ‘Okay!’

‘No!’ Tom recalled himself to his duty, shutting out all other distractions. Jaggard expected more from him; and, even to do the job Audley at last seemed to be accepting as genuine, he needed more than that. ‘Tell me more about Panin. You said “clues”—

remember?’

‘I also said “need to know”—remember?’

‘Yes.’ He preferred Audley sharp and nasty to Audley kindly and fumbling. ‘If I’m to watch your back I need to know what I’m up against—and who. Every last damn thing you know about Panin, I need to know, David.’

Silence. So, although that was the truth, it was not good enough.

So he would have to play dirty.

‘And there are three other reasons. I wish there weren’t.’ That also was the truth, even though it was a truth which dirtied him—which didn’t set him free, but chained him in a dungeon for ever. ‘But there are.’

‘ Three…’ Audley stared at him in the dark, altogether perplexed, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State his face faintly lit on-and-off by the headlights of the oncoming traffic from the other side of the motorway ‘… three reasons? I can’t even think of one, Tom— three? ’

The bolts on the dungeon-door crashed into their sockets, and the iron key turned in the lock, and the chains rattled, echoing for ever.

‘Someone took a shot at you today, David—and missed.’ He couldn’t go back now, even if he wanted to. Because it would still have been the truth. ‘I’m never going to be able to face your wife… and Cathy… and my mother… if the next shot is a bull’s-eye, David. What am I going to say? I don’t think “Sorry” will be quite enough.’

Silence again. But this time it was a different silence.

The road ahead was suddenly dark, as they crested the last rise before the descent towards Bristol, and the motorway exchange to the West, and the South-West, and the North-West. But there would be no choice there, either: he couldn’t go back. And even if he could, Willy would be well into her steak, au poivre, very rare, by now, with a good Burgundy and a Lieutenant-Commander USN. So there was nothing to go back to, anyway.

‘Nikolai Panin is an interesting man. Even… in some ways… an attractive one. Although he does look a bit like a sad sheep.’ Sniff.

‘But he does his homework. So he’ll know you, Tom, I shouldn’t wonder—so don’t let him catch you off your guard, eh?’

That was about as unreassuring as he’d expected. So it required no astonished reaction.

‘But he’s a bad bugger, all the same—make no mistake.’ Pause.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘So, if he wants to talk to me, it isn’t for the good of my health, or the good of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or for the benefit of the Common Market and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization… or because he admires the Princess of Wales more than Mrs Gorbachev.’

A sign came up, advising them that Bristol was close, but the next motorway service area wasn’t.

‘Either he wants something so badly that he’s prepared to make a deal. But I doubt the deal will be much in our interest, even if it looks that way… Or he’s going to screw us somehow—like he’s the cheese in the trap.’ Pause. ‘And possibly a trap designed for me. Because he knows me. Like the back of his hand.’