For the Good of the State

He should have expected this. ‘It relates to why Zarubin is coming here, sir.’ He had thought to enjoy this tall story, but Jaggard had ruined his enjoyment.

‘Ah… yes…’ Jaggard temporized, as though he’d been untimely switched back to another outstanding question, which had already occurred to him but which he’d decided was relatively unimportant in his scale of priority questions. ‘What the blazes is he doing down there, where you are? Apart from risking his neck—?’

It would have been better to have reached this point earlier on, when Audley wasn’t making faces at him from the car. ‘What do our records say about him—about Zarubin?’

‘About Zarubin?’ Jaggard had been expecting an answer, not a question—and particularly not after his express order to the contrary. So, for a moment, he was close to answering. ‘What the hell are you playing at, Arkenshaw?’

‘I’m not playing at anything. What have we got on Zarubin?’

‘What—? Man, we’ve got what you’d expect: he’s officially a senior officer of the Red Army, ex-Warsaw Pact headquarters secretariat, seconded to the Foreign Ministry with effect from January 1985. With a list of decorations to match.’ Jaggard’s cool bent, but didn’t crack. ‘He’s career KGB, Second Directorate, with Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State the rank of general, dated December 1984.’

‘We don’t have the name of his father?’

Pause. ‘We don’t have the name of his father. Or his wife. Or his wife’s father. Or his wife’s uncle’s second cousin. Or his mother’s aunt—’ Caution suddenly ‘—what’s his father got to do with him coming to Exmoor?’

That was an unlooked-for gift. ‘Just about everything, according to Panin. Because Zarubin’s father was born in a fisherman’s cottage on Brentiscombe Head. On the day Mafeking was relieved.

Mafeking Day—May 17, 1900.’ Tom resisted the temptation to add that Audley himself had supplied the exact date after Panin had supplied the event. ‘Brentiscombe Head is up the coast from Lynmouth, towards Ilfracombe. Zarubin’s father’s name was Roberts… Or maybe his Christian name was Robert— Panin’s not too sure about that… at least, not as sure as he is about the cottage on Brentiscombe Head, anyway. Because Zarubin took his grandfather’s name—’ He could allow himself this satisfaction, anyway ‘—that’s to say, his mother’s father’s name… Do you understand?’

No hint of understanding came down the line. Which would have been gratifying if Audley hadn’t wound down his car-window to draw his attention to time’s winged chariot. So he nodded at Audley and re-applied himself to the telephone. ‘What he says is that Zarubin’s father was an Englishman—that he joined the Royal Navy straight from school, in 1914. And he served in HMS

Goliath, in the Dardanelles in 1915. And then, finally, he fell overboard, from HMS President Kruger, in the Caspian Sea in Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State 1920 —’

‘ Where— ?’ Jaggard gagged on the Caspian Sea, without ever reaching HMS President Kruger, as well he might, thought Tom; even Audley had done a second take on that—as well he might, too: a child born in 1964 could have been sunk by the Argentinians in the South Atlantic in 1982, but it took too big a stretch of the imagination to have him fall off HMS Adolf Hitler the year after, in any conceivable war, never mind in the landlocked Caspian Sea where the Royal Navy had no obvious business.

‘Yes, sir. In the Caspian Sea… serving with the Royal Navy Caspian Squadron, in support of Dunsterforce.’ He couldn’t resist playing Dunsterforce for all it was undoubtedly worth. ‘We had a combined operation in Iran—in Persia— after the First World War, to keep the Turks first… and then the Bolsheviks… away from India, sir. And it was commanded by a man named Dunsterville—

Major-General Lionel Dunsterville. But it all came pretty-much unstuck, because of lack of support. Typical Foreign Office foul-up, probably.’

An indeterminate sound came down the line. ‘What the hell are you talking about, Arkenshaw?’

You may well ask, sir! ‘Zarubin’s father was taken prisoner by the Bolsheviks… somewhere off Astrakhan, at the mouth of the Volga in 1920, after he fell overboard. Or, Audley says he may have deserted… because there were some mutinies in the navy, about that time. That would account for the Bolsheviks not shooting him, anyway. Or maybe he was just a fast talker.’ He couldn’t repeat Audley’s theory that Able Seaman Roberts had developed an upper-Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State class taste for caviare which only membership of the Communist Party could satisfy.

Another strangled growl reached him. ‘This sounds like Audley talking. Is this what he’s saying?’

‘No, sir.’ The lie came quickly, because he was half-ready for it.

But there was also half-truth in it. ‘He’s extremely suspicious of the whole story: he says it could be all true, but he doesn’t like it.

That’s what I’ve been trying to say, sir.’

‘Why doesn’t he like it?’ Jaggard couldn’t avoid the obvious question.

‘He says it’s just the sort of damned cock-and-bull story Panin would dream up for him.’

‘It’s all hogwash, is it?’

‘Some of it’s true, apparently—about “Dunsterforce”, and HMS

President Kruger, anyway.’ He had to avoid even looking towards Audley now. ‘But he says Panin would expect him to know about it. Because everyone knows he’s dotty about Rudyard Kipling—

Panin included.’

‘Rudyard Kipling?’ The sudden growl in Jaggard’s voice, which overlaid its incredulity, suggested that everyone included him.

‘What the blazes has he got to do with Zarubin—or his father?’

‘Just about everything, sir. “Dunsterforce” was commanded by Lionel Dunsterville. And Dunsterville was Kipling’s best friend at the United Services College at Westward Ho!—just down the coast from here, outside Bideford—Dunsterville was Kipling’s actual model for Stalky in Stalky &Co-