For the Good of the State

scornfully rejected: she looked as though she’d expected to get raped while Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State thinking of America, and George Washington, and the Statue of Liberty, and whatever else good little patriotic American girls thought of when Queen Victoria had been thinking of England in the same missionary position. So now it required one hell of an effort to adjust her thoughts to a more demanding intellectual challenge, as opposed to the less demanding physical one for which she’d arranged herself.

Or, alternatively, she was damn good, he reminded himself quickly.

Finally (or maybe craftily), she seemed to come to a decision.

‘David Audley, Tom—’

‘David Audley—yes?’ Better to assume that she was damn good.

‘David Longsdon Audley, CBE, Ph.D, MA—’ He parroted Harvey’s snide encapsulation of the old man’s official career ‘—

sometime Second Lieutenant, temporary Captain, 2nd West Sussex Dragoons, latterly attached Intelligence Corps… Rylands College, Cambridge… the King’s College, Oxford… Civil Servant, Department of General Research and Development, 1957 to date.’

The rest had been out of Who’s Who, Harvey had admitted, including parentage, and publications and hobbies; but he couldn’t remember it all now. ‘David Audley—right?’

‘He’s here, with you, Tom—’

‘You’re damn right he’s here!’ Need and desire coincided: he had hit back and he wanted to. ‘But how, as a matter of academic interest, did you get here—into my bed?’

She squirmed slightly against her pillows, and that shoulder-strap slipped again. ‘I had help, Tom —’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘ Had—?’ It was hard to keep his mind on the job: the former Willy had been a wonderful companion, naked and unashamed; but this one, in courtesan’s frills and ashamed, was something else. ‘Or have?’

She swallowed. ‘He’s in big trouble, Tom.’

‘ He’s in big trouble?’ Tom tore himself away from that alabaster curve. Tor Christ’s sake, Miss Groot—I think we’re all in big trouble, aren’t we?‘ The whole unacceptable truth opened up before him. ’Someone took a shot at David this afternoon—or yesterday afternoon, as it is now… And there’s a man dead now—

have you heard about him, Miss Groot, eh?‘

‘Tom—’ She tried to sit up, with what would have been delectable consequences in another world, but not now.

‘So I’m in trouble too, Miss Groot.’ He hated her and himself equally. ‘And you are in trouble, right now… And, I shouldn’t wonder, Comrade Professor Nikolai Andrievich Panin, in Room Five in the annexe at the back— he’s also in trouble, I shouldn’t wonder, eh?’ On balance, even while trying to allow that she was a two-faced bitch, he felt himself weaken. So he hardened himself against his weakness. ‘But I’m sure you know all about that. So what’s new, then?’

She ran her hand nervously over the flowered sheet. And he had seen that same hand, mud-encrusted, hold his measuring rod only this morning. But now it was clean and treacherous, with pearly nails on long fingers. And he still had his freebie to come.

The thought of that brutalized him. ‘Just who the hell are you Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State working for—tell me that’?‘

The hand grasped the sheet. ‘Who the hell do you think I’m working for—damn it! And damn you, Tom Arkenshaw!’

That was more like her! ‘You were an embassy secretary in Grosvenor Square when I last knew you, Miss Groot.’

She drew a deep breath, and drew herself up as she did so, regardless of what all that did to what was on view. ‘Tom… you call me Miss Groot just once more—just one more time… and you can all go screw yourselves—you, and Dr Audley, and Professor Panin— and Colonel Sheldon, too! ’

Well, that was nailing the Old Glory to her mast, and no mistake, thought Tom. There had been a routine flimsy waiting for him on the subject of that certain Colonel Sheldon— Sheldon, Mosby Robert, Colonel USAF (ret)— just a few weeks back. So as befitted a blue-blooded All- American CIA girl, Miss Wilhemina Groot was starting her name-dropping at the top.

But now she was staring at him defiantly as the name dropped, and it was maybe time for a different approach to his problems.

‘I’m sorry, Willy darling.’ Perhaps, in fact, this was how he should have started. ‘The truth is… I’ve had one hell of a day since this morning.’ That was so much a genuine understatement of the truth, that it made him grin sadly at her. ‘And you did rather catch me by surprise.’

She continued to stare at him, but the defiance had been drained by his apology, it seemed. ‘I’m sorry too, Tom. And I haven’t had such a good day either—that’s the truth, too.’ She sighed. ‘Not that Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State you’re ever going to believe it… oh— shit! ’

He wished he could remember more about Sheldon, Mosby Robert, from the flimsy. But all he could recall was his thought that the personnel and hierarchy of the CIA’s London Station had had little relevance to his own line of business then. But Audley would know, anyway: Audley had always been very thick and buddy-buddy with the Americans, Harvey had said. And… and, come to that, maybe that just might account for the presence of Groot, Wilhemina Maryanne at Holcombe Bridge, if not in his bed.

‘Tom…’ she trailed off uncertainly.

He realized belatedly that he’d been frowning at her, thinking of Sheldon and Audley. But she had related his