For the Good of the State

Panin ignored Audley’s pleasure. ‘You are clever, David. But you are an amateur.’

‘No.’ Audley had forgotten the ‘Don’t interrupt’ admonition while it still echoed in the still air between them. ‘You’ve still got it bloody-wrong, Nikolai—the word is “Gentleman” not “Amateur”!

And, what you mean, is that… I don’t have to give a damn, if I screw up—but you, poor old comrade… you have been scared half out of your wits every time you’ve farted without permission these last thirty-forty years, if you haven’t got written authorization…

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Unless, of course, you’ve turned up on the hundred per cent winning side—like after Mironov had that unfortunate accident in Yugoslavia, after Khrushchev was outvoted? And you were deep in a trench in the Altai mountains—?’ He turned as though for support to Tom. ‘It was an archaeological trench, I hasten to add!

Because when in doubt the Comrade Professor always goes to ground in Ancient Scythia, never in Dzerzhinsky Square. It’s a sort of return-to-the-womb thing he has. Even this latest cover he’s got

—the Scythian Exhibition at the BM next year… that’s a subconscious going-to- ground instinct, I shouldn’t wonder—’

‘But we are not talking about me, David.’ Panin wasn’t interested in Tom now: he had accepted Sir Thomas Arkenshaw as a hypothetical Audley offspring apparently, and that was enough.

‘Over the last twenty-five years you have been going too far—not all the time, but too often… Over the last fifteen years, to my certain knowledge—how many times? How many times?’

Audley shrugged. ‘I’m still here. That makes no times, to my reckoning.’

‘But Colonel Butler has not Sir Frederick Clinton’s influence.’

‘Maybe not. But Jack is very well-regarded in high places, Nikolai.

In fact, in the extremely unlikely event of any change of government, centre-right or centre-left, Jack’s the lad who’ll get the majority vote.’ Audley’s voice was smug. ‘You’re on a loser if you think otherwise.’

‘Indeed?’ The eye-slits opened again fractionally; which was probably as close to a registration of surprise as Panin allowed himself, Tom decided. ‘A man for all parties? You make him Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State sound truly remarkable.’

‘He is remarkable.’ Audley warmed to his subject. ‘There’s no one like our Jack—not in this black age, anyway.’ He glanced at Gilbert de Merville’s mound thoughtfully for a moment. ‘You can’t lay a finger on him.’

‘I’m impressed.’ The eyes slitted again. ‘Perhaps I should have studied him more carefully, and not you.’

‘Wouldn’t have done you any good. You wouldn’t begin to understand him.’ Audley shook his head. ‘He’ll always catch you by the heel. You’ll never fathom him out.’

‘You think not?’ Even Panin couldn’t resist that challenge.

‘Not a chance. I’ve been trying for years.’ This time the sniff, unlike all its predecessors, was cheerful. ‘Got nowhere—like the Raj trying to fathom Gandhi… Except that Jack’s not what you’d call non-violent.’ Shrug—happy shrug, like the sniff. That’s the trouble with men who are instinctively and logically good: the rest of us, who are ordinarily, and instinctively, and logically bad—and in your case, old comrade, worse— can never get inside their minds. At least, not the way we can sometimes get inside each other’s—do you see? Like now, for instance, eh?‘

Panin considered Audley’s insults without any sign of offence.

‘You surprise me more and more, David—’

‘Not half as much as Jack would, if you’d invited him here instead of me.’ Audley frowned suddenly. ‘And, come to think of it… why the blue blazes did you invite me here—?’ Somehow he caught Tom’s eye in the middle of the question. ‘By which I mean not Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State here, much as I approve of Sir Thomas’s quaint choice of rendezvous—I mean down here—up here, out here? The West Country, Nikolai?’ He shook his head. ‘Not your country, Nikolai.

Definitely not your country. Not since John Ridd put down the Doones hereabout, anyway.’

‘No, not my country.’ The latest insult went the way of all its predecessors. ‘There is something you don’t know, then?’

‘Ah!’ Audley refused to be mocked. ‘You got the Thomas Becket analogy! I was beginning to fear it had all gone to waste. Jolly good!’ He gave Tom a ‘So there!’ nod. ‘But… yes, in answer to your question. Only I’m a quick learner, and I can hardly wait to be taught.’ Sniff. ‘Teach me, Nikolai, teach me.’

Tom was drawn back to Audley suddenly, as all the banter and facetiousness went out of the old man’s voice in that instant. And he saw that the face matched the voice, with no hint of Beast-bonhomie any more; and that that was the tme face and the true voice of the man who had been blinding and bluffing them both with the twelfth century only to get himself where he wanted to be in the twentieth.

‘Gennadiy Zarubin, David,’ said Panin, pronouncing the name with something of Audley’s unconcealed harshness.

‘Major-General Gennadiy Zarubin.’ For that lack of surprise Audley owed Tom, and Tom owed Willy and Colonel Sheldon.

But, considering how very recently Gennadiy Zarubin had been added to the mixture, Audley handled the name well. ‘It had to be him, of course.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Of course.’ Panin agreed readily enough, but then looked sidelong at Audley. ‘Of course?’

‘Simple arithmetic.’ Audley shrugged. The poor bloody priest himself—whose memory I won’t insult by trying to pronounce his name— he’s safe in heaven. And Marchuk’s doing a long stretch in hell. And your four obedient Poles… who were just about as incompetent as Henry Plantagenet’s obedient knights… they’re doing time in some holiday-camp, is our latest guess. Although hell will get them