For the Good of the State

Unlike Audley, Tom didn’t have his back completely to the thing that had been a surprised human being a few minutes before, but which was even now surrendering its body-heat for the last time.

And that thought ran cold up and down his spine as he heard the two of them bargaining in the presence of the poor damned thing…

Not that the poor damned thing was objecting.

Once again Panin seemed off-put to the point of almost-frowning.

‘You cannot be threatening me, surely?’

‘Threatening you?’ Audley paid the Russian back in his own coin.

‘Would I do that—?’ But as he cut himself off he caught the look of distaste on Tom’s face. ‘What is it, Tom?’

There was no way of expressing the truth of what he felt. So he had to lie. ‘I was thinking that I ought to make a phone-call.’ Must do better than that. ‘In case someone heard those shots.’

Audley made a derisive sound. ‘No one hears anything these days.

Or, if they do, they turn up the television, so as they won’t hear anything else — ’ Then he focused on Tom. ‘But if you want to phone—’

Tom remembered his duty suddenly. ‘No.’ He looked at the Russian. ‘I couldn’t bear to leave you when you have Professor Panin by the balls, David. Do please swing on them—and take not the slightest notice of me. I’m just a fly on the wall.’ He smiled at the Russian as sweetly as his duty-remembered face allowed.

Panin regarded him curiously. ‘He has me… by the balls, Sir Thomas?’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Duty beckoned. ‘Oh yes—so it seems to me, Professor.

Undoubtedly.’

‘But… how?’ If the curiosity wasn’t genuine, it was well simulated.

‘This is England, sir.’ Stiffen it up: make like ‘Sir Thomas Arkenshaw’. ‘Or… the Exmoor Division of the West of England Police Authority?’ He put a cutting edge into his voice. ‘We don’t just lose inconvenient bodies to order, Professor Panin. We have to have good and sufficient reason for doing anything like that.’

‘I see.’ But Panin had had time to rally. ‘And General Zarubin is not good and sufficient reason?’

‘General Zarubin?’ Audley fielded the name quickly, before Tom could react to it. But then he stopped, to stare past them both.

Tom turned from them both, to find Major Sadowski in the doorway again—and armed again, too. But this time it was with a very different sort of weapon.

‘ Ah. ’ Panin gave the long rifle only half a glance before nodding at Audley. ‘Now perhaps you will believe me, David—eh?’

Audley reached out and grasped the rifle, but for a moment the Pole wouldn’t let go of it, so that they seemed on the edge of an undignified tug-of-war. Then, either because of the bigger man’s main force or because of some tiny signal from his Russian master, Sadowski let go.

‘See this, Tom?’ Audley thrust the weapon towards him for closer inspection. But it was not something he’d ever seen before, although he recognized it all too well: the long slender barrel, and the chunky rectangular butt (with elliptical cut-out providing a Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State pistol-grip behind the trigger)—and, above all, the telescopic sight above—identified its purpose beyond all doubt.

‘They call it “the Green Machine”, so I’m told.’ Audley hefted the rifle in his big hands, as though estimating its weight. ‘It’ll be the army’s new standard sniper-issue, starting in ’87. They haven’t had anything new for donkeys’ years—nothing even as good as the Argies had, even. In fact, what they had was based on the 1914

Lee-Enfield, I rather think. But this’ll do a lot better—‘ He canted the weapon sideways ’—Schmidt and Bender sight, to correct cross-winds at longer ranges.‘

Tom goggled slightly, not so much at the weapon itself as at Audley ‘s unlikely expertise.

‘I only know because of accident—I hate firearms.’ Audley picked up his astonishment. ‘But there was a bit of a scandal late last year, during the testing, when they had a break-in and lost a couple of these little beauties… Minus the sights, of course. But Schmidt and Bender must have sold a few of those elsewhere, I shouldn’t wonder. Only… anyway, someone thought it was the IRA. And someone else thought we might look into it, just for old times’

sake. But Jack Butler wisely said that we were too busy with other things—’ Audley gave Panin a sidelong look, just as he simultaneously threw the rifle back at Sadowski; who caught it, but with a fumble and only just; and rewarded the big man with a millisecond’s glare of red hate before his eyes went dull again ‘—

but I always thought it was a GRU job . . I’m told they’re very hot on new weaponry—is that so?’ He pretended to relax. ‘But then you’ve never liked the GRU, have you, Nikolai? They’re basically Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State just brutal and licentious soldiery, aren’t they? Spetsnaz cannon-fodder?’

Panin gave the Pole a curt dismissive nod. ‘See what else you can find—’

‘No!’ Audley recollected himself. ‘Better give it to Sir Thomas here

— if you please? He reached out again, and the same tug-of-war restarted.

Panin gave the Pole another nod. ‘Evidence, David? Very well!’

Audley took possession of the rifle again. ‘Stolen property.’ He presented it to Tom. ‘At least I shall be able to give Jack Butler something.’

Tom felt the weight in his hands. But, even more than that, he felt its dreadful life-and-death power: at 500 yards, or even a thousand, with wind-drift allowed for, if this was what Audley must have been thinking of all the time since yesterday, in those throw-away lines of Kipling, then no wonder that he had been scared.