For the Good of the State

up and threw it into the back of the car. And then looked aggressively at Tom. ‘Which it looks like doing any moment now. Is that all?’

Tom got into the car, And, of course, it started at the first twist of the ignition key, as he knew it would do. But what he needed, short of the protective back-up he had always wanted, was bloody Dunsterforce, before some bloody telephone.

He toyed for a moment with the idea of three-point-turning into the farmyard, and bogging down in it. But the thought was beneath him

—and it was par for this course that the Cortina wouldn’t bog down, anyway. When inanimate things were against one, it was useless to fight them.

‘Yes.’ He reversed savagely down the track towards the road, knowing that he would stop carefully at the junction, even though there wouldn’t be anything to delay him: if God intended David Audley to rendezvous again with his old comrade, then he would clear the road. Tell me about this fish jam of yours, David.‘

‘Ah…’ Audley was making a dog’s-breakfast of safety-belting himself up as always, oblivious of all nuances when it suited him.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Ah! Now what you really need to know, young Tom, is the story of Major-General Lionel Dunsterville, who was indirectly responsible—if not ultimately responsible—for serving up the jam… Which, of course, was good Beluga caviare, as the Comrade Professor well knows—and knows well that I know too, of course.

Which is the problem—’

The car bumped and lurched over the pot-holes. And even if it hadn’t it was going to be a bumpy ride, because the old bugger was already playing his games again, in spite of everything—

But it wasn’t, somehow. Not even though they came to a tatty, old-fashioned (but unvandalized) phone-box on an impossible blind corner on the ujpper edge of a hillside village only five or ten minutes away from Bodger’s Farm; which must therefore have been well within the range of Gilbert de Merville’s forced-labour net, when he’d been raising Mountsorrel.

And, even, it was Audley who broke first, trying to snap the thread of his own inconsequential tale, out of fish jam (which the sailors had hated), and the long-dead, far-flung past, from Devon to the high passes of the North- West Frontier, and back to Devon again, and on to the equally distant Caspian Sea, off Enzeli in Persia, and Baku in Transcaucasia, and Astrakhan on one of the mouths of the Volga.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be phoning?’ The old man found his wristwatch with difficulty, on the inside of his wrist. ‘They’ll be there by now, almost—?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State He had to find the number, and reverse the charges, with his imagination still ablaze.

And do the necessary: “This is an open line—‘ It had sounded like the dreadful Harvey on the other end, sweating out his Saturday as duty-creature to Jaggard ’—the number is—‘

But finally Jaggard came on, irascibly. ‘Arkenshaw! Where the hell have you been?’

Jaggard wasn’t to be trusted, he thought. But then— but neither am I now! ‘I’m in Devon, on Exmoor. I’m at—’ He squinted at the name and number again, where he was.

‘I know where you are, damn it! What the devil’s happening?’

So Audley’s bullet and Basil Cole had fully worked themselves through the system since yesterday, ‘We should abort this operation, sir, I think.’

Pause.

‘Just tell me what’s happening, Tom.’ Jaggard had his cool back now.

‘Do you know who the “Sons of the Eagle” are, sir?’

Another pause. But he could imagine what Jaggard was doing, out of his earshot; and then what Harvey would be doing. ‘No.’

Well—let’s see how good Harvey is! ‘They are a Polish dissident group. Panin says that they’re terrorists, subsidiary to Solidarity.’

‘You’ve talked to Panin?’

Keep to the truth while you can. ‘Audley has. I’ve just listened in.

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Panin’s down here with a Polish minder, by name Sadowski. Major Kasimierz Sadowski.’ Wait, and let him feed that also to Harvey.

‘Yes?’ The pause was just long enough to confirm Tom’s suspicion that Harvey wasn’t monitoring the call on an extension line: this was Jaggard’s privately-taped exchange. And, of course, he knew about Sadowski.

‘Panin says he’s here to stop the Sons of the Eagle from killing General Zarubin.’ Tom gave him only half a second. ‘You know about Zarubin?’

‘Go on.’

So Jaggard didn’t need to put that through either. ‘Zarubin masterminded the murder of Father Popieluszko.’ Tom gave; the dead priest’s name every last Polish inflection, to the point of incomprehensibility. And then waited.

‘Go on. Go on.’

‘Do you know where Zarubin is now?’

Fractional pause. ‘Don’t keep asking me questions. Just tell me what’s happening.’

‘Zarubin’s on the way here. At this very moment.’ Tom shivered helplessly at the meaning of his own words. ‘He’ll be here any time, in the next hour or two. Here on Exmoor, sir. And the Sons of the Eagle will be waiting for him.’

This time it wasn’t so much a pause as a silence while Jaggard digested this disquieting intelligence. But finally he came to life again. ‘Panin told you this?’