For the Good of the State

State

‘Hmmm…’ Audley considered the proposition, or pretended to do so. ‘Well now… be that as it may… and you don’t know, and I’m not about to tell you… there are two things that you do know—and one more that I am willing to tell you. That is, if you haven’t listened properly so far, anyway.’

‘Two things?’ Panin accepted the test. ‘You have been shot at—’

‘And missed. So I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt there, for reasons of Mutual Assured Destruction.’ Audley accepted Panin’s first answer. ‘And I’ve also come across a friend of mine who has been put down like an inconvenient dog… for which I have agreed temporarily to give you the benefit of the doubt.’

‘ “Temporarily” will do.’ Panin nodded. ‘In the circumstances I can ask no more than that, I agree. But… this third thing, which I have missed—’

Audley raised his chin and sighted Panin down his big broken nose. ‘This is my patch, Nikolai. Shooting me in my own house isn’t cricket, to say the least. But Basil Cole…’ Nose, chin and face became Complete Beast ‘—I draw my wages to make sure that sort of thing doesn’t happen here. You can do what you bloody-well please in your own backyard—you can murder the important ones, or exile them, or put them in psychiatric hospitals, if that’s what turns you on… And you can make the little ones disappear, and Amnesty International won’t even know their names when you put the muzzle of the gun to the back of their necks. Because that’s your “Anarchy”, and Christ and his saints haven’t gone to sleep in your benighted Socialist heaven—because they’ve never even woken up there, by God! But that’s your patch, and there’s nothing Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State I can do about it—not even if it was my job. Which it isn’t.’ Sniff.

‘But this is my patch. So when you try to extend your Anarchy here it has to cross my dead body in the ditch first—’ The old man pointed to Gilbert de Merville’s ‘good work’—‘do I make myself clear?’

Panin had been listening intently from behind his mask. But now he was looking directly at Tom. And what chilled Tom to the bone was that he seemed to have accepted everything Audley had said—

every last ounce of capitalist insult, and scorn, and slight regard—

without offence.

Audley picked up the look. ‘You’re worried about him, are you?’

Panin took the direct look back to Audley.

‘Can you trust him?’

Sniff. ‘Can I trust him?’ Another sniff, followed by a sickening swallow. ‘With the family silver, I can. And with my wife I can…

because younger men don’t turn her on.’ Another swallow. ‘And with rny own daughter, for the time being, I suppose.’ Audley joined the Russian’s scrutiny with his own at last. ‘And my ox, and my ass, and my life, and such minor impedimenta… yes, undoubtedly I can trust him.’ He nodded, and then turned the nod into a half-amused shake. ‘Don’t look so outraged, Tom—the Comrade Professor hasn’t lived to see old age here by trusting his own people, never mind us! He had no Jack Butler at his back—

no, nor a Fred Clinton either, in the old days—to take the rap when things don’t go quite according to plan.’ He transferred the shake to Panin. ‘And things aren’t so easy on the other side just at the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State moment, are they, old comrade—under the New Management? A lot of redundancy and retirement, would there be?’ He waited for a moment. ‘Perhaps that’s what Basil Cole would have told me.

Among other things.’

This time Panin almost spoke, but again controlled himself behind his defensive silence, as though waiting for Audley to exhaust his armoured cavalryman’s instinct for probing tactics.

‘Well, anyway—’ Audley gestured dismissively towards Tom ‘—

Sir Thomas Arkenshaw just happens to be the son of my very oldest girlfriend. Or second oldest, actually; although the other wench is dead, and in a foreign country… My second oldest girlfriend: once a great girl, now a great lady.’ The brutal face lifted, and Audley used all his inches to look down on his ‘old comrade’. ‘Indeed, one might say that, but for certain juvenile miscalculations on my part, mediated by a mischance on the rugger field perhaps, this Thomas Arkenshaw junior might have been David Audley junior— will that do for you?’

As though to avoid being looked-down on, Panin himself had found something quite absorbing among the muddy hoofprints at the bottom of Gilbert de Merville’s ditch. But now he came out of his absorption. ‘Things are not so good for you, either.’

‘What?’ The statement took Audley aback.

‘You are not in good smell—no, that should be “odour”, for some reason, I think… good odour—? ’ Panin paused, but only for half-a-second now that he was clear of his trenches at last. ‘You have offended too many of your politicians, and now one too many, I think—with your games. So that not even the so- very-good Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Colonel Butler can protect you. Because there is a point where even the so-very-good-and-noble Colonel must protect himself, I think—yes?’

‘Yes?’ Audley frowned. ‘No! Stuff and nonsense!’

‘No— not nonsense.’ Panin shook his head slowly. ‘You are right to say that our circumstances are different. But this time do not interrupt, if you please!’ But, to Tom’s surprise, the Russian did not instantly continue himself, but waited for Audley to bite him.

But Audley didn’t bite.

‘Very good!’ Panin savoured Audley’s silence, sniffing at it approvingly. ‘When I first encountered you I thought you were much more… much more in rank—a colonel, but almost a general

—than you really were. I did not understand what you were. And that confused me.’

‘Is that a fact?’ Audley brightened. ‘Well, actually, you confused me a bit too. So that was when we both started doing our homework, eh?’