For the Good of the State

face to her last statement. ‘Yes, Willy?’

She plucked ineffectually for a moment at her revealing neckline, then let go of it. ‘I haven’t been on your back, these last few weeks

—can you believe that, Tom?’

It would be an agreeable belief, Tom realized: it would take the metallic taste of betrayal out of his mouth for a start. And it wouldn’t make him feel quite such a simpleton. But agreeable beliefs were always unwise and often dangerous. ‘Does it matter—

now?’

She nodded. To me it does.‘ Another sigh. ’But I don’t blame you.‘

Either she was very sad or she was very good. But it was just remotely possible that she could be both. And, anyway, he owed these last few happy weeks a gesture. ‘It matters to me also, Willy.’ He shied away from the truth of his gesture. ‘Where will I Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State ever find another girl to join me in muddy ditches?’

She looked as though she was about to burst into tears. ‘With stinging nettles and brambles? Don’t forget the stinging nettles and brambles.’

Or… not just very good. Better than that, even? ‘Stinging nettles and brambles—okay.’ It didn’t really matter what he believed or disbelieved. But this way he could at least apply mutual regret like a soothing ointment to his wounded self-esteem, half believing its efficacy. ‘But now you are on my back as well as your own—okay also?’

‘Not on your back, Tom.’ She shook her head. ‘They’re very worried for your Dr David Audley—that’s why I’m here.’

“They” again? ‘Colonel Sheldon, you mean?’ He accepted her nod. ‘Well, that makes two of us, my love. And I bet I’m more worried than he is!’

‘Don’t joke, Tom honey—’

‘I’m not bloody-joking. Someone took a shot at him this afternoon.

And I’m supposed to be looking after him. And that isn’t a joke, by God!’ He stared at her. ‘You know about the shot?’

She plucked the sheet again. ‘Half London knows about it. The Russians have been quizzing all the Warsaw Pact embassies, like the wrath of God—’

‘The Russians—?’ It was no surprise to him that the Americans had picked up such panic-signals: it was common knowledge that they had contacts inside those unwilling allies’ intelligence-gathering operations. But… if this turn-up for the book wasn’t Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State deliberate disinformation… then it complicated everything quite appallingly.

‘And they’ve been reading the riot act to their IRA liaison group—

the Provisional and the INLA—’ Willy stopped suddenly. ‘What’s

“the riot act”, Tom? Because that’s what Mosby Sheldon said: “the Riot Act”—?’

So Sheldon knew his nineteenth-century English history. ‘It means they’ve got to stop whatever they’re doing, and pack up their bags and go home. It’s… it’s what used to happen in the old days before plastic bullets and petrol bombs and policemen with riot shields and face-masks: after the Riot Act was read the military took over, with drawn swords and fixed bayonets.’ He frowned at her.

Because, if Sheldon had it right, that meant the Russians really were on Audley’s side, even if somebody else wasn’t. But where did Basil Cole come into it?

‘Uh-huh?’ His frown stopped her for a second. ‘Well, they all say they’ve got nothing to do with it, the word is. And that’s the very latest information, of about an hour ago—not long after you’d arrived, Tom honey.’ She regarded him questioningly for an instant. ‘But you said… you said someone was dead— dead?’

So the Americans didn’t know about Basil Cole. And maybe the Russians didn’t either… Or maybe one or other of them did know… or both knew? But the possibilities were infinite, so to hell with that, then! ‘So David Audley’s in trouble.’ He sank down along the foot of the bed. ‘If that’s all you’ve got to tell me, Willy darling, then it’s right neighbourly of Colonel Sheldon to want to tell him—“right neighbourly”?’ The damn bed was as soft as a Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State wedding bed ought to be, but it only served to remind him of how tired he was, and of how quickly the remains of the night were draining away beneath him. ‘But we do already know that—all too well, we know that, actually.’

She pulled herself upright. ‘Who’s dead, Tom?’

He shook his head. ‘You ask Colonel Sheldon, my love—not me.

I’m just a bodyguard—’ Quite dreadfully soft, the damn bed ‘—a

“high-class minder”, as I have been reminded myself, more than once, today: mine “not to reason why” , in fact… Ask Colonel Sheldon, Willy love.’ The bed invited him backwards, and he found himself staring at the beamed ceiling suddenly, waiting for her to react to his refusal to tell all.

It was a beautifully beamed ceiling, with its eight radius-beams converging on a boss in the form of a carved wooden face in its centre.

God! It was The Green Man himself! He would have known that even without the knowledge in the back of his mind: the acanthus leaves grew out of the face quite naturally, from brow and nose, eyebrows and upper-lip and chin—acanthus leaves, not the vine-leaves he might have expected.

He felt her stir in the bed, under the covers beneath him.

The Green Man himself, indeed! And, although the face wasn’t quite directly above him, the deep-carved black holes of the Green Man’s eyes were not looking straight down, at nothing, but slightly obliquely, into his own eyes, and perhaps into his own soul, with ancient wisdom.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State