For the Good of the State

few tourists… But, if old Nikolai isn’t romancing us, this is where Major-General Zarubin’s paternal ancestors scratched a risky and uncertain living, fishing for the fickle shoals of herring in olden times.‘ He came back to Tom. ’Herring, wouldn’t it have been? Didn’t they catch herring hereabouts, off Lynmouth, before they caught tourists in season?‘

‘Did they?’ Tom noted the cars (an elderly Land Rover, scarred from the bridge; a decrepit Austin 1100, resting on its collapsed Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State springs; a vintage Volkswagen Beetle, waiting for a collector to find it; and the same spanking-new Montego he had noted outside the Green Man last night, in which Professor Panin and his hit-man had kept their last rendezvous); while, at the same time, he expanded Zarubin’s role: not so much an expert, rather a removal man— a remover of turbulent and inconvenient priests from the scenes of KGB action?

‘Of course they did!’ Audley sniffed, but in derision and not because of his cold. ‘Herring was the fish, in the old days: it fed the poor and it manned the Royal Navy—they ploughed it into the fields, even… But I don’t expect you’ve ever eaten a herring, eh?

No “herrings-in-tomato-sauce” for you, even! Fish fingers, more like—eh?’ But now he had also taken in the cars, as he freed himself from his safety-belt, as Tom parked on the end of them, beside the Montego. ‘But at least we’re in the right place, anyway.’

Tom released his own belt. ‘But where’s Zarubin, then?’

‘Huh! He’ll be walking his father’s old path, along the cliffs—like old Nikolai said he would.’ Audley gave him an old-fashioned grin, and shook his head in agreement. ‘I know, I know! The idea of Major-General Gennadiy Zarubin cherishing a sentimental conceit for any-bloody-thing… let alone for his ancestral past…

that’s not likely, I do agree, Tom. But, then, most of the things people do, when they can indulge the luxury of doing those things for their own gratification…’ He shook his head again ‘… The truth is that Panin’s got us by the short hairs, and he knows it.

Because even producing Zarubin for our inspection—producing him privately, face-to-face like this, away from the official Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State embassy circuit… I could never resist the opportunity, just in case it offered us a dividend.’ He pushed open the door, and swung one leg out of it. ‘But offering us a name, into the bargain—you tell me, Tom: what would you do?’ He fixed Tom irrevocably. ‘After what’s already happened back there, in that damned abattoir of his?’

Tom saw the ultimate conflict of interests clearly, between himself and Audley—between the minder and the minded, whose interests were more often than not fatally opposed when it came to risk-taking. But to that he also had a standard answer. ‘If I were you, David—that is, if I were as pig-headed as you, but perhaps a bit more sensible… if I were you, I’d send someone else instead of me

—’ He raised his hand quickly ‘—because it might be safer for all concerned, is why: not cowardice, but plain common sense.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not a target. At least, not on my own I’m not.

But if you are… then we both are at risk. So let me go instead of you.’

‘Mmm…’ Audley looked down the mouth of the combe, towards its U-shaped opening to the sea. Then he smiled at Tom across the bonnet of the car. ‘I must admit that I did toy with that convenient get-out myself, not so very long ago. And… not so much because I really believe in its logic, as because I have an absurd hankering to see my unborn grandchildren one day.’ Only then he shook his head back at Tom. ‘But it won’t do, I’m afraid… and I’m afraid that “afraid” is right. But for two reasons, I’m afraid, anyway.’ He stopped abruptly, and pointed down the combe again. ‘Do you see where the path goes up the hillside, beyond the cottages—on the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State right there? That’ll be what they call the “Somerset and North Devon Coast Path” on the map, I shouldn’t wonder—eh?’

Tom had already noted the map and observed the zigzag line.

‘What two reasons?’ It was useless to argue, but he must make the attempt.

“The odds are that he won’t talk to you—Zarubin won’t.‘ Audley started to climb into his raincoat. ’I brought an umbrella, didn’t I? I put it in the back somewhere—?‘

‘Then he can talk to you some other time. On our terms.’ There was a huge ugly burn-mark on the big man’s sleeve—on both sides of the sleeve, in fact; with a puncture mark in its centre—and there must be several other such marks elsewhere on the coat, for a guess. ‘On our terms, when you’re good and ready, David.’

Audley reappeared triumphantly from the car, brandishing the umbrella. ‘I knew it was there… But I am ready, dear boy. And never more so than now.’ He stepped away from the car. ‘Come on, then.’

Tom watched him sniff the wind, and despaired. “That’s only one reason.‘

‘No, it isn’t.’ As it wasn’t actually raining the old man busied himself with furling the umbrella neatly, as though for a stroll up Whitehall. That is the other reason, exactly: if I let the bastards frighten me now, I’ll never walk free again—don’t you see?‘ He stabbed the umbrella decisively into the mud at his feet, looking at Tom with a quite uncharacteristically pleading look. ’Don’t you see?‘

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Tom saw—and saw suddenly to the uttermost part, which he had never glimpsed so clearly before. But he couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘If they want me dead, then I am dead,’ said Audley disarmingly.

‘But if they don’t… and I don’t go and find out what they do want now… then I shall have to move house, and take all sorts of quite demoralizing precautions—at least, until Jack Butler can read the riot act to them… And I’m damned if I’m going to put Jack to that sort of trouble.’ Another grin. ‘And I’m also damned if I’m going to let them make me a coward-dying-many- times-before-his-death, too! I’m damned if I’m going to let Panin do that to me, in fact.’

The grin vanished utterly. ‘So let’s go and find out what the old devil’s really got up to then, Tom— right?’

So they walked.

Their walking was unreal, but on one level of experience its unreality was no new experience for Tom: the routine precautions he had superintended in the past, even in nominally peaceful parts of the Middle East, had always been fraught with similar tension; and in the Lebanon, where each side was against itself, as well as the middle and the mirror-image extremes, unreality was the only reality within the killing-zone.

But what was different here, and more unnerving, was the far greater unreality of a landscape in which only nature and the elements were violent, with no eyeless ruins and twisted wreckage, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State but only a coastline beaten by the fierce winter gales and the unconquerable sea itself the same natural path along which Major-General Gennadiy Zarubin’s father just might have walked, from Brentiscombe Point to