‘I am stating a truth, David—’ Panin cut back at Audley. But then he inclined his head stiffly, as though uncharacteristically. ‘It’s forty years now—fortyone, for you… more than forty for me—
since we both saw too many better men killed in a good cause—
dead, and rotten, and forgotten… But we are both still here: that is all I mean.’
‘Okay!’ Audley raised his hand again. ‘Okay, okay, okay! ’ The hand came down. ‘So it wasn’t you, Nikolai! But it was someone
—’ The last vestige of the Beast-smile was long-gone ‘—and it was also someone with Basil Cole yesterday. So let’s start with him. Or not at all.’
‘As you wish.’ Panin studied Major Sadowski’s ridge again.
‘About your… experience, of yesterday… I have been told, of course, David.’
‘I should hope so!’ Audley followed the Russian’s gaze. ‘And that’s why the loquacious Major is on guard-duty, is it? Or did you just want to get his little pocket tape-recorder out of range?’
‘About Basil Cole I do not know.’ Panin came back to them. ‘That is to say… of him I know. But that was in former times. And he never worked for you—for either Colonel Butler, or for Sir Frederick before him, to my knowledge.’ The mournful sheep-face expression betrayed nothing. Only the pale brown eyes hinted at life behind the mask. ‘Also he is retired. Or would “dismissed” be the correct word?’
‘No. “Murdered” is the correct word.’ The cold matter-of-fact tone Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State of Audley’s correction somehow emphasized the anger it concealed.
‘Of that I know nothing, my friend.’
Audley winced visibly at what he clearly took to be another incorrect word—so visibly and so clearly that not even Panin could ignore the reaction.
‘You do not believe me?’ The Russian countered that banked-up rage with an asbestos-covered curiosity.
Audley sniffed. ‘I tell you what, old comrade—’ he sniffed again, and began to search for his handkerchief ‘—old comrade—’ he found the handkerchief, but waved it at Gilbert de Merville’s overgrown strongpoint above them before applying it to his nose
‘—I said this place was appropriate… you remember?’ He buried his face in the handkerchief.
Panin studied the motte for a moment, then waited until Audley had completed his noisy ‘having-a-cold’ ritual. ‘Yes. And you also said “timing”, equally mysteriously —I do remember, David.’
‘Good!’ Audley spread a hand round the bailey, proprietorially.
‘ Place: Gilbert de Merville’s cosy hideaway, Mountsorrel Castle.
And I suppose you could say Gilbert had the instincts of a Lebanese war-lord plus the military know-how of an Israeli tank-commander… Timing: mid-twelfth-century England, give or take a few years—mid-Civil War, anyway. King Stephen: played 20, won 5, lost 5, drew 10; the Empress Matilda: played 20, won 5, lost 5, drew 10.’ He shook his head. ‘Not so easy to assess Gilbert’s score, because he probably changed sides half-a-dozen times. The Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State only side he was on was Gilbert de Merville’s side—’
‘David—’
‘Uh-huh! Haven’t finished yet.’ Audley wagged a finger. ‘You may have diplomatic privilege, old comrade. But you’re on my patch now, so I get to do the talking when it suits me—right?’
Panin closed his mouth and battened down his face, reducing his vision to reptilian eye-slits. Or… feline, if not reptilian, Tom amended the image, recalling the look in the eyes of Mamusia’s vile old neutered tom (‘My other darling Tom!’), which always gazed at him with a thwarted malevolence hinting at a very different relationship if their sizes had been reversed. But then he sensed the eyes catch his own scrutiny, and the hungry glint behind them was extinguished, and the terrifying old man was giving Audley a slow, almost stately, nod.
‘Right!’ If Audley had received the same frightening signal he showed no sign of it: he seemed to be enjoying himself again.
‘Very interesting century, the twelfth, Nikolai. The Gothic cathedrals were on their launch-pads—from Chartres and St Denis, and Sens, all the way across Europe, even to the Middle East—the ideas, and the style, and the geometry… Well, as far as Poland, anyway, if not Russia… And nothing like that has lifted off into the heavens until you and the Americans lifted off, but much more disagreeably, back in the fifties.’ Sniff. ‘More technology, but less spirit—?’
Panin held his peace, without difficulty, even though Audley paused very deliberately, as though to allow him the Right of Reply, knowing quite well that he would not exercise it. And Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Tom’s mixture of fascinated fear and curiosity moved further up the gauge, even though it was already well into the red in the knowledge that these two veterans of an on-going war, which had started long before he was born, were consumed with old men’s hatred for each other, in spite of their elaborate politeness.
‘Marvellously good things.’ Audley agreed with Panin’s silence.
‘And marvellously bad ones too. And Gilbert de Merville was almost certainly one of those… like, there was this Peterborough monk, who wrote up the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for those times, which I learnt by heart as a young lad come up to Cambridge fresh from laying waste Normandy, and sacking Germany, and buying the Frauleins for a few packets of Lucky Strikes: “Every strong man made his castles… And when the castles were made they filled them with devils and evil men… And then they seized those who they supposed had any riches—”—and I don’t need to tell you, of all people, the sort of riches we were after in ’45, because you were after the same bloody things, pretty much —“— and they tortured them with unspeakable tortures, so that I neither can nor may tell all the horrors and all the tortures that they did to the wretched men of this land, but it was said that ‘Christ and His angels were asleep’.” ‘ Audley gave the Russian his purest and sweetest Beast-smile. ’And you may not be able to recall the Monk of Peterborough on the “Anarchy” of Stephen and Matilda, but you were in Khalturin’s Guards Division, so you surely remember what you did in Germany. And afterwards, eh?‘
