For the Good of the State

middle of it!

‘So he’s ready to throw Audley to the wolves—even to Russian wolves, maybe.’ She blinked at him. ‘Are you with me still, Tom honey?’

Nod. He was with her, all too well. Nod again.

‘Uh-huh?’ She looked at him as though surprised that he had nodded so readily. ‘Well… Colonel Sheldon likes this fellow Jaggard, but he doesn’t trust him—Commodore Jaggard, is it?’

‘Air Commodore.’ Jaggard had been so perfectly pinstriped civilian that it was hard to imagine him pioneering the P1127, which had transmogrified into the Harrier, more than twenty years ago. But at least it hinted why Colonel Sheldon USAF might be on his side, emotionally. ‘Royal Air Force, Willy. Once upon a time, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State anyway.’

‘You’ve met him—Commodore— Air Commodore—Jaggard?’

‘Briefly.’ That was strictly true: even that last time, when Henry Jaggard had blinked the rain out of his pale- blue eyes on the top of Ranulf’s ditch—that had been a brief meeting. ‘But Colonel Sheldon likes David Audley too? At least, enough to warn him?’

‘Oh yes—he surely does.’ She nodded back at him quickly. ‘He knows Audley from way back—he even calls him “David”… And he did a job with him, over here, once. He has a high regard for him, Tom. And the work Audley is doing is too important to be screwed up, he says.’

Here was a pretty tangle of Anglo-American loyalties! thought Tom. Because, if Jaggard needed his political allies, Sheldon also needed his British allies—and Audley too! So Sheldon was in trouble now, too.

‘But not important enough to come and talk to him now?’ He saw from her expression that she had thought the same question, even if she hadn’t asked it. ‘So what does he advise, anyway?’

She licked her upper lip. ‘He says you should both cut and run, Tom.’

That certainly sounded like good, friendly, special relationship advice, even if it was useless. ‘He won’t do that, Willy.’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘So I can’t—even though I’d like to.’

‘No.’ She nodded again. ‘He said Audley wouldn’t run.’ Nod. ‘Not even after what happened yesterday.’ This time, no nod; merely curiosity. ‘He said Audley wouldn’t run—and wouldn’t trust Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State anyone except himself.’

He might as well feed her something, to take back to her boss.

And, after he’d let it slip, the CIA would pick up Basil Cole’s accident soon enough, anyway. ‘He’s also lost an old colleague, from yesterday morning.’ The memory of Audley’s anger came back to him. ‘So it’s personal, as well as professional. I think he wants blood for blood now.’

The words seemed to push her back into the pillows of the great bed, making her look smaller and, for the first time, a little frightened. For an instant, in spite of himself, he almost believed what he wanted to believe, even though he knew she wanted him to believe it too: that she wasn’t really Company talent, but just a cypher clerk whose private life had come in useful to her bosses.

But then his credulity snapped, and he grinned at her. ‘So… you see, I wasn’t altogether guessing when I said that Professor Nikolai Andrievich Panin was in trouble, Willy darling. Because your boss, Colonel Sheldon—he’s damn right about David Audley: he may be an old man, but he’s a tough old bastard. And he’s in a nasty frame of mind right now, I rather think—a nasty revengeful frame of mind. And not just because some foolish fellow took the liberty of shooting at him in his own home. And he doesn’t regard that as cricket… But some other foolish fellow has terminated someone he values.’ He couldn’t hold the grin. ‘So if this was your home-state, back in the old days, you’d be watching the smoke-signals in the hills, and hearing the war- drums in the distance. Because these are his ancestral hunting-grounds, Willy. So maybe you should be giving Colonel Sheldon’s advice to Comrade Professor Panin, not Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State to me.’

‘Uh-huh?’ She had got her cool back, and she was almost his old lost Willy again. ‘But you haven’t talked to him yet—?’ She busied herself suddenly with plumping up the pillows alongside her, shifting from her almost-central position.

‘The Comrade-Professor?’ In another moment she was going to invite him in beside her. But he wasn’t ready for that: from beside her, he wouldn’t be able to see her full face—her beautiful, golden-freckled, treacherous face. And the rest of her would play hell with his concentration, too. ‘Hell—you know we haven’t!’ (An incongruous recollection of the motorway accident scene returned, when he had wanted to pull rank over the police, to get ahead, and Audley had rejected the idea out-of-hand: ‘ But we’ll be here an hour, David!’—‘So I get another hour’s sleep, then. Let the bugger sweat, wondering what we’re up to. I’m not at his beck-and-call, keeping unilateral engagements, anyway, damn it all!’) ‘I’ll phone ahead, to say we’ll be late.’ (That had been when Audley had animated himself for a moment: ‘Tell them I want two rounds of smoked salmon sandwiches, cut thin but with the crusts included…

and a bottle of good White Burgundy (they won’t have a decent Graves, they never do) … And I shall want a pudding—something with chocolate—milk chocolate… and their best Sauternes or Barsac, on ice—on ice, mind you, not in the bloody fridge: tell them that, Tom.’)

‘But he left a note—?’

And I’ll bet you’ve read it, too! ‘Yes.’ (That neat, meticulous, grammatical note, traced by a hand accustomed to Cyrillic, if not Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State classical Greek, he had thought.) ‘He said that he’d had a long day, with the flight and all the boring formalities, and the long drive.’ (And meticulously formal, too: ‘My dear Doctor Audley…“

and ’this long journey which we share…‘ down to ’With respect and sincerity‘—huh!—before that elaborate signature.) ’He wants to meet us tomorrow, somewhere in the open, but somewhere safe, Willy.‘

She pretended to chew on that, as though it was news to her.

Jezebel! She wanted to ask him where, but that was too obvious even for her.