Tom put his foot down. ‘They have someone with him. We have someone with you. Those are the agreed terms.’
‘Ah! That’s what Fred Clinton termed “Mutual Agreed Internal Distrust”. Which he used to codename “Orleans” , because Joan of Arc was the “Maid of Orleans”—M-A-I-D, you see—?’ He waved again. ‘Keep going.’
The houses fell away, the headlights catching on the canopy of trees above. ‘But I was told you were the expert on Panin—’
‘ An expert—but not the expert. Keep going.’
‘But you are old—acquaintances?’ Tom conjured up the material on the desk in the study, and added it to what Audley had just said
—‘ My own Sheila Ellis has S to Z—she feeds me directly every Wednesday’. ‘So you’re not researching him, then?’
‘I am not,’ agreed Audley. ‘And, to be exact, I am doubly not researching my… “old acquaintance”, as you put it so diplomatically, Tom.’
‘Not far’ was stretching itself. But then, if he had learnt anything Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State this afternoon and evening, it was that Audley seldom meant exactly what he said. ‘“Doubly not”? Is that some sort of algebraic lie, David? “Minus times minus equals plus”?’
‘No.’ Audley thought his own thoughts for a moment. ‘Actually…
it just means that we’re studying the possible new men in the Kremlin… and in the KGB, which amounts to much the same thing…’ Suddenly he raised himself again. ‘On the left, about three hundred yards—you’ll see a big copper beech… And a rather chi-chi carved house-name-plate attached to it… No—we’re into the new men, not the geriatrics—the has-beens, whom Comrade Gorbachev is busy kicking upstairs… or downstairs into the cellars, as the case may be.’
Now he could slow down legitimately. But then he began to remember the pink-stained names in Audley’s cuttings, which had included Chebrikov and Aliev and Lomako, as well as Shevardnadze and his own Shkiriatov. ‘And you’re just studying S
to Z, anyway… not Panin?’
‘Well… yes, you might say—’ Audley sat up ‘—just there! Do you see it?’
Tom applied the brake. ‘Not Panin?’ What those cuttings told him was that Audley had never learnt to obey orders exactly: and that was also what Jaggard and Harvey had both said. And now he believed what Harvey had said.
Audley twisted round to look behind him. ‘Aren’t you going in?
Go on—there’s nothing behind, so far as I can see.’
The driver’s privilege was to drive, or not to drive, as he chose.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘Not Panin?’
‘Not Panin?’ Audley echoed the question as he untwisted himself.
‘You see where I mean?’ He pointed towards the great beech tree illuminated in the headlights. Then he looked at Tom. ‘No, not Panin, as it happens.’
Tom met the look. ‘Because he’s a geriatric? A has-been?’ He folded his arms deliberately. ‘He must be as old as your Basil Cole.’
‘Yes. So he is.’ A freak reflection from the dashboard glinted redly in Audley’s spectacles, as though hinting at fire behind them. ‘But I wasn’t referring to him. He’s a very different kettle of fish, is Nikolai Panin.’ He moved slightly, and the red fire vanished. ‘Basil Cole will tell you.’
It was the moment to confirm Audley’s perhaps erroneous suspicion that he was more than a superior bodyguard. ‘But I want you to tell me, David.’
‘Now you’re being difficult.’
‘Not difficult—’
‘Obstinate, then—’
‘Not obstinate, either.’ Tom switched off the lights. ‘Say… I want to hear what you have to say about him first—’ He lifted one hand from the other to cut Audley’s reply off ‘—because someone shot at you, David. Not at Basil Cole. Okay?’
‘Well… if that’s what you want…’ There was just enough half-light to convey the shrug of resignation, no more than that. ‘Panin is not about to defect, if that’s what you’re thinking, my lad—not Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State in this age of the world!’
It would have worried him if he’d thought of it, Tom realized belatedly. Because defection was always a killing matter on the Other Side. But neither Jaggard nor Harvey had even hinted at it; and to be allowed to go so far outside the London radius by his own side laughed that suspicion out of court, in any case.
‘He’s an old Communist—an old Red… from when “Red” meant something more than buying privilege in the Party’s duty-free shops.’ Audley’s voice was scornful out of the shadows of his face.
“There aren’t many of them left now—thank God!‘ The half-grunt, half-chuckle came from deep down inside the man again. ’Do you know what an ”Ironside“ is— was, anyway—?‘
Out of nowhere, in the gathering dusk, Tom realized that he was learning about something from the past at first hand, which was out of his more recent experience. ‘An Ironside?’
‘Cromwell’s Ironsides: they fought for what they loved, and loved what they fought for. Or maybe it was the other way round.’ The dark outline of the head, not close-cropped but just short of hair, nodded. ‘Or maybe old Nikolai didn’t love what he knew—I don’t know… But he fought for it all the way from Stalingrad, or whatever they call it now—“Volgograd”, or something? But I’ll lay you even money it’ll be Stalingrad again, one of these days…
But from there, anyway, all the bloody way to Berlin, in ’45—and bloody is right; across twenty-five million Russian dead. And I wouldn’t defect after that—not even if I was commanding the Devil’s Armed Forces, with the Hounds of Hell ready to slip!‘ The dark head shook again. ’I remember first checking him in ‘69—
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State staff officer in Khalturin’s division, in Chuikov’s army, all the way to Khrushchev’s Twentieth Congress, and afterwards… It took us one hell of a long time to pin down Nikolai Panin—in fact, I’m not sure that we ever did… But I only studied him because he happened to cross my path, anyway. It was purely accidental—or incidental, if you like. He’s never really been our meat. And we haven’t been his either, so far as I’m aware.’
The slaughterhouse image reminded Tom too vividly of Beirut realities, the blood and entrails of which were far removed from metaphor. But also it hardly fitted what Jaggard had said. ‘Not your… meat?’
‘He’s not a bloody First Directorate man, is what I mean. He doesn’t run networks—doesn’t control illegals, or recruit traitors, or anything like that…’ Audley trailed off. But then his face came round again. ‘What’s the biggest thing the KGB does—you tell me, Tom? What is it?’
Answering trick questions was a mug’s game. ‘You tell me, David.
I’m just a promoted minder.’
‘It’s internal security first.’ Audley hadn’t even wanted an answer.
“Then it’s disinformation—fucking up our foreign policy—when we have one… And now it’s also probably pinching our higher technology.‘ The old man sniffed in the darkness. ’I’ve got a cold coming on, damn it!‘ He sniffed again. ’Panin has always been disinformation or internal security—none of your vulgar spying for him!‘ Another sniff. ’The first time I met him, he wasn’t trying to screw us— he was quietly and murderously engaged in making sure that the great Red Army didn’t step out of line. We weren’t worth a Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State damn—we were just there to be deceived and used… Or bribed and used —huh!‘ Grunt-chuckle. ’I did him a favour. So, a few years later, he did me a favour. Which makes us quits, in his book.‘