For the Good of the State

war… Bryce—Lord Bryce—put it to Cabot Lodge, and Cabot Lodge swung the Senate. But Wilson wouldn’t play. So poor old General Dunsterville was left out on a limb down in the back of beyond, on the Caspian Sea. Which, of course, he’d always expected to be—lovely man, Lionel Dunsterville! Spoke even more languages than you do, Tom… But I suppose I can hardly expect you to know anything about his romantic little fiasco—not while your Polish ancestors were beating the daylights out of Trotsky outside Warsaw, anyway.’

Tom’s confusion increased. Panin’s parting aside about

‘Dunsterforce’ had gone over his head, and now Audley’s

‘Dunsterville’ merely followed it.

And he was falling behind again—

‘David—’

‘It’s all true, though—“Dunsterforce”—’ It was as though the old man had five-league boots ‘—however unlikely it sounds. In fact, that’s almost certainly where the Navy story comes from, which sounds apocryphal but is probably just as true—about the fish jam… long before my time, or yours… Long before my father’s time—more like my grandfather’s time!’

Tom had just managed to reach his shoulder, but breathlessness and fish jam left him speechless.

‘The trouble is… yes, the only trouble is—’ A growling note entered Audley’s voice ‘—that that bastard son-of-a-bitch back there knows all too damn well that I, of all people, am most likely Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State to swallow any Dunsterforce story—fish jam and all—’ He pointed ahead. ‘But there’s the car, anyway.’ Once again he stopped without warning and faced Tom. ‘So what do we do, then? No time for your beloved back-up now, not even if I agreed to it. Which I don’t.’ He grinned unhelpfully.

A memory came to Tom, but equally unhelpfully, of Willy’s golden head on the pillow next to his. Willy had ‘had help’, she had said, in getting into his room last night. And the Company would never have sent her so far from home alone, that wasn’t their way—that way, at least, they were careful. So Willy and her Help were maybe ten miles away, and maybe half-an-hour, from Farmer Bodger’s farmyard at this moment; and that was the nearest thing he had to any sort of back-up. But neither Audley nor Jaggard would thank him for calling the 7th Cavalry out on Exmoor.

‘Panin hasn’t left us any time, David. I’m not sure that I like that.’

‘Hmm… But then he wants to keep everything low key and strictly non-violent…’ Audley moved his head in a curious circular motion, which was neither a shake nor a nod. ‘And in his state of professional health that has a certain logic to it. Because he can no more afford a scandal than I can… not to put too fine a point on the situation.’ Audley wiped his nose thoughtfully.

‘Yes.’ Tom hid behind unwilling acceptance of the old man’s own logic while actually noting that for the first time Audley had conceded the truth of what everyone else had been saying: that he himself was no longer invulnerable. But then he also saw the flaw in the logic. ‘But yesterday wasn’t non-violent, was it?’ And…

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State better to be brutally explicit. ‘Your bullet and Basil Cole weren’t low key, David.’

‘Hmm… My bullet certainly wasn’t.’ Audley sniffed. ‘And I wish to God I had Old King Cole at the end of a phone now—we’d know what we were about then—you’re damn right there, Tom!

Topping Basil was just too-damn neat… it smells of Panin, no matter how many times he swears to the contrary.’ Nod. Then a succession of small nods. ‘Yes… in the Great Patriotic War he might have been an NKVD hood, but he was also a working staff-officer. So he’d know how blind the front-line is when they can’t get any intelligence briefings about what’s ahead and on the flanks… So I’ll bet he knows I’m running blind as well as scared now, in spite of all the bull-shit I’ve fed him to the contrary. Huh!

But we still go on, eh?’

Once again, in spite of all the other bull-shit which he’d received, Tom warmed to Mamusia’s ancient Beast. Because, for all his pride and bloody-mindedness and plain awkwardness, the old Beast was scared underneath, as he had every right to be. But, in spite of all that, the old Beast intended to go ahead—that was obvious. And in that the old Beast wasn’t disappointing; even, he could see how Colonel Butler might be tempted to return the trust and loyalty which he had received this day—even if it was Audley’s own peculiar variety of trust and loyalty—in exchange for such cavalryman’s courage.

‘ Huh. ’ The old man had completed his logic-versus-flawed-logic process. ‘But we don’t have any choice in the matter, young Tom: there’s always a risk, but we’re in the risk-taking business—we’re Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State the poor-bloody Hotspur nettle-pluckers—

“Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety”

Are you game for that, boy?‘

Tom didn’t like being called ‘boy’, any more than ‘Darling boy’.

But one half of him (and maybe Mamusia’s half, too) shrugged off the diminutive. ‘Yes.’ Only there was still the other half (which was Father’s cautious English half, but in which Jaggard also still had the controlling interest). ‘But I’d like to make a phone-call first, David.’

‘A phone-call?’ Audley frowned at him, then at the car, then back at him. ‘To whom?’

‘I want to know what they’ve got on your bullet, from yesterday.’

It was reasonable, but there was no harm in making it more so, so he grinned at Audley, and knew to his shame that it was a boyish grin. ‘Besides which… they’ll be expecting me to phone in. But don’t worry: I won’t tell them that we’re about to behave stupidly

—I agree that we don’t have any choice.’ Instinct and inclination suddenly combined. ‘You would have done okay in my grandfather’s regiment, David—in… my mother’s father’s regiment, the Ulyani Lancers: they never could resist charging the machine-guns, when it came to the crunch.’

‘Hah!’ Audley was plainly delighted with the insult. ‘And you would have done well enough in the old Wesdragons, Tom: The West Sussex Dragoons… Because they were thick as two planks, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State too!’ Nod. ‘In fact, my old CO… “Kit” Sykes—or Bill Sykes to his friends, of whom I was never one— he used to say… rather like Marshal Foch, of whom he’d certainly never heard, because he boasted that he’d never opened a book in his life, and he hated all Frenchmen as a matter of principle… he used to say, “Don’t worry about the flanks—God only knows where they are, and they aren’t your business anyway. And don’t worry about the rear, because I shall be breathing down the back of your unwashed neck, and there’s nothing behind us except cooks and bottle-