For the Good of the State

Although “crenellate” is a bit later, I suppose—like, to put up battlements and loopholes; so this was probably no more than a stout palisade, like an old US cavalry stockade, to keep the native English-Indians out, eh?’ Because he didn’t want to be interrupted he didn’t wait to be understood. ‘What I meant was the timing of it, not really the placing… do you see?’

Tom didn’t see. But, nevertheless and loyally, he looked towards the Russian as though he did.

‘The timing?’ Under their combined scrutiny Panin had to ask the question, even though he must know he was walking into some prepared ambush. But then, instead, he gestured towards the motte.

‘Shall we walk a little way? I feel… a little overlooked here, is the truth—?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Quite suddenly Tom remembered Audley’s terrace, and the flesh up his backbone crawled at the memory, so that his feet moved before his brain stamped their movement order, taking him towards the protection of Gilbert’s earth mound.

Panin moved with him. And Tom felt a breath of wind on his cheeks, and the topmost growth of gorse and bracken and old winter bramble shivered on the mound ahead of him, in the same breath of moving air, which had a decided hint of rain-to-come in it, sweeping up the Bristol Channel between Lundy Island and the Gower Peninsula from the distant Atlantic Ocean.

‘Timing—?’ Panin reached relative safety, but turned to find Audley still rooted to his spot behind them in the entrance, snuffling into his handkerchief again. ‘David—?’

‘Coming…’ Audley took his time, even adding to it with a scrutiny of the nearer hillside, on which Major Sadowski was now presumably doing his invisible guard-duty. ‘Coming’

Willy! thought Tom, staring into the junction of the bailey ditch with that of the motte. At this point on the Mountsorrel spur the topsoil had been thin, but Gilbert’s forced-labourers hadn’t been allowed to skimp their ditching: the outer edge was still an eight- foot vertical rock-wall, overhung with trailing brambles growing over it from the top, and he would have liked Willy to have seen that ruthless Norman attention to essential detail —

‘I’m sorry!’ Audley strode up, with that long, purposeful stride of his. ‘I was busy sneezing again. And then I was thinking.’ He looked around, up at the mound, then again at the Major’s ridge, and finally back to Panin. ‘Is this safe enough for you, then?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Panin sighed, but seemed to accept that Audley had taken the lead again. ‘What were you thinking?’

‘I was thinking of my dear wife again, actually.’ Audley peered at the rock cut ditch. ‘That’s a good piece of work there, Tom—do you see—?’

‘Yes.’ A bit of Tom was irritated at being taught to suck eggs. But he also admired the old man’s powers of observation and his determination at least to pretend that the shared memory of the terrace didn’t frighten him.

‘Yes.’ Panin watched Audley peering into Gilbert’s good work. ‘I trust that Mrs Audley is well?’

‘Uh-huh. She’s very well… Are you sure this is “adulterine”, Tom? This ditch must have taken a hell of a lot of digging.’

Suddenly he turned back to Panin. ‘She’s well. But she’s not happy, Nikolai. And neither am I.’

‘Yes.’ Panin nodded. ‘That I can understand.’

‘You can?’ Audley waited for more.

Another nod. ‘I too am not happy, David.’

This time Audley nodded. ‘Yes. That I can understand, also.’

The lines in the Russian’s face were like dry wadis in a stony desert, in an enlarged satellite photo. ‘Someone made an attempt on your life yesterday, I have been informed.’

‘You have been informed?’ Audley repeated the words mildly. ‘It wasn’t you, then?’ he raised his hand quickly. ‘No—of course I didn’t mean that, old comrade. I never thought for a moment that it Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State was you. And Tom will bear me out there—eh, Tom?’

‘I am most relieved to hear that, David.’ The Russian gave Tom no time to bear true witness. ‘But—’

‘Because if it had been you—’ Audley cut him off ‘—then I wouldn’t be here now, would I?’ He gave Panin his Beast-smile.

‘And you, old comrade… you would have been looking for a very deep hole, somewhere east of Nizhni Novgorod. Although you would know, because Jack Butler is a stickler for etiquette—and the son of a good trade unionist too, who knows his Rule Book backwards, and his “Custom and Practice”, which covers what isn’t actually written into the book… and what maybe can’t be written into it—’ He switched to Tom, with a glint of mischief in his eye ‘—old Jack’s dad was a printer, so Jack was brought up on

“old Spanish customs”—’ The mocking eye returned to Panin ‘ —

so you would know, Nikolai, that there wouldn’t be a hole deep enough, not even in Holy Mother Russia—not even in the little monks’ cells in Zagorsk Monastery—where Jack wouldn’t find you in the end, if he thought it was your finger on the trigger, eh?’

The slow Beast-smile became almost loving. ‘Right?’

Panin’s immobility impressed Tom. ‘About Colonel Butler… I bow to your superior knowledge, David.’ Then the dry wadis twisted. ‘But about me… of course, you are also quite right: if I judged you better dead, then you would be dead. But the rest…

that is irrelevant, because we both know that we are concerned with the perceived welfare of our respective mother-countries. And we are both on “borrowed time” now, I think.’

‘For God’s sake!’ Audley interjected the blasphemy hotly. ‘Are Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State you trying to frighten me?’