But that had been one of the problems. ‘He would?’
‘Oh yes.’ Audley nodded through him. ‘He would have spotted me in the orchard. But I was moving around, and the trees wouldn’t have given him a clear shot.’ He drew a breath. ‘Only, after we had word of your impending arrival, and the sun came out… after that Faith got the chairs out and put them on the terrace. So then he would have known he’d get a clear shot.’ He focused on Tom again. ‘But then he missed—eh?’
‘Yes.’ That was one problem solved—which only left another in its place. ‘Yes?’
‘So it can’t have been the Other Side?’ Audley cocked his head.
‘But… they have been known to miss, Tom.’
‘Not often.’ It was time to push the old man. ‘And not when Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State someone of Panin’s seniority is involved, David. He wouldn’t have used Sous-Officier Cantillon for the job.’
‘No… no, that’s true.’ Audley drew another breath. ‘But this isn’t Nikolai Panin anyway.’ He shook his head. ‘No.’
They were back to Jack Butler’s ‘Rules of Engagement’. But, whatever Jack Butler and the Duke of Wellington might believe, there were no rules that couldn’t be stretched and broken outside the playing fields of Eton—the small print of military and political necessity legitimized every successful action retrospectively —
that was why the Belgrano was at the bottom of the South Atlantic.
‘He’s a gentleman, is he?’ But Audley had referred to two levels, he remembered. ‘Or is it that you’re old friends, and he’s sentimental?’
‘Huh!’ Audley didn’t mind being needled, Tom realized in that instant; or being Danny Dzieliwski’s boy maybe did confer an advantage, as Jaggard had calculated? ‘Old Nikolai’s no gentleman, that’s for sure! He’s a true-red child of the Revolution
— homo Sovieticus Stalinus— he may have been an old-time cool-head, hot-heart patriotic Russian during the war—the “Great Patriotic War”—and afterwards, for a time… But surviving the last thirty-five years has surely corrupted him into a cold-hearted bastard who knows exactly which side his fresh white bread is buttered, by God!’ He shook his head at Tom, almost sadly.
‘That’s the bugger of their system, young Tom—it corrupts ordinary decent men more efficiently and comprehensively and quickly than ours does… apart from bringing the absolute shits to the top even more quickly than we can manage—eh?’
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Interesting, Tom began to think, when a slight sound from outside broke the thought suddenly. ‘So Panin was an ordinary decent man once upon a time—?’ He turned towards the window casually.
‘Was he?’
‘I think he might have been. He was certainly a damn good archaeologist once upon a time, by all accounts. And he’s undoubtedly one of their best disinformation men.’
‘And you know him from way back?’ He was torn down the middle between what Audley was saying and what had just come into sight, down the track from the road.
‘Not from way back. I first met him fifteen years ago.’
Tom held his face rigid. The measure of Audley’s intelligence memory was that fifteen years wasn’t way back to him. And the measure of the difference between Nikolai Panin’s world and their own was what he was watching now, outside.
‘I did him a good turn… after a fashion—’ Audley was slightly thrown by his failure to turn back from the window this time. But, for the life of him, he couldn’t tear himself away from what he was seeing ‘—and he returned the compliment, a few years later… after a fashion.’
‘Yes?’ What that meant was that self-interest and cooperation had briefly coincided for David Audley and Nikolai Panin, no more.
But also that those two occasions had been the beginning of some sort of relationship between them over fifteen years, nevertheless.
If But he couldn’t go on watching. ‘Yes? What was his fashion, then?’
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘None of your business—’ Audley read his face. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Now he wants to meet you again, is what’s the matter, David.’
‘And now I want to see him.’ Audley frowned, dissatisfied with that explanation. ‘What were you looking at, Tom?’
‘The police have arrived, David,’ he admitted.
The old man relaxed slightly. ‘They have?’
‘Not “They”, David—it’s just one policeman.’ Tom turned back to the window, inclining suddenly towards cruelty. ‘He’s just taking his bicycle clips off his ankles now. And he doesn’t seem very scared, either—he’s just parking his bicycle alongside my car…
and he’s looking around as though he owns the place—six-foot-plus, slim build… about forty, forty-five… fair complexion—red weather-beaten, or a winter holiday on the Costa del Sol, or regular visits to your local pub—I don’t know which at this distance.’
‘Yes.’ Audley took one step, but then stopped. ‘That’ll be Alan—
Constable Grant… Does he have a carrier on the back of his cycle?’
‘Yes—’ Tom stared at the bicycle ‘—he’s got some vegetables in it
—or something green—?’
‘Bedding plants, most likely,’ agreed Audley. ‘Alan knows just where to go in the village, to fill his garden in the spring. That’ll be him, right enough. So… Faith will have to give him some of her plants, from the greenhouse—’
‘ David— for Christ’s sake!’
Audley stood where he was. ‘It’s all right. She planted far more than we need for bedding-out… And no bugger’s going to shoot a Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State village policeman, Tom—not at 600 yards, in default of me—or you.’ He shook his head. ‘Not even Bonaparte would pay him 10,000 francs for that.’
Harvey had said that Audley wasn’t popular in certain quarters, and Tom could see why that might be true. ‘So you’re not scared any more?’
Audley swayed, and then steadied himself. ‘Oh… I’m still scared
—’
A heavy front-door-knocker banging echoed in the distance, from somewhere in the depths of the house.
‘That’s Alan.’ Audley nodded. ‘There’s an electric bell, and a bell on a chain, out there. But Alan always uses the door-knocker. He doesn’t believe in gadgets.’
The echoes died away, but now there was another sound—of tyres scattering gravel, and then of a car coming up the drive from the road.
‘I’m about as scared as Nikolai Panin should be,’ said Audley.
‘Because Fred Clinton laid down a sanction—oh, about twenty years ago, after some rogue East German tried to do for him what Sous-Officier Cantillon tried to do for Wellington, without KGB
clearance… And Fred wasn’t going to have that game played with impunity by all and sundry, with apologies afterwards.’ He gave Tom one of his brutal expressions. ‘Fred was no more a gentleman than Bonaparte was—or Nikolai Panin is, you see, Tom.’
Tom heard the police car scatter gravel again, as it reached the forecourt. But that was no longer important.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘So he invented MAD— or his version of it—long before the Pentagon did… “Mutual Assured Destruction” , eh?’ Another nod.
‘Only his version wasn’t a general holocaust—it was much more precise… But not exactly precise, in case one particular KGB boss wanted us to take out one of his rivals—you understand, Tom?’
He had heard of this, although almost as a legend rather than the truth: the life-for-a-life consensus in the intelligence community, which constrained and inhibited them from killing each other at the higher levels.