And in yours, thought Tom. ‘But he wants to talk to you now.’
No reply. Which made Tom glance at the dashboard. But he had switched off the lights, so he could only guess how far they were falling behind schedule.
‘And he’s an expert on you, David.’
No reply again, for a moment. ‘Yes. And that’s another thing that worries me.’ Another grunt-chuckle—but this time more grunt than chuckle. “The first time, I studied him and he repaid the compliment. Which is fair enough.‘ Another long breath. ’And we also have some reason to believe that he’s taken a certain non-specialist extra-mural interest in Research and Development ever afterwards. Which is really none of his business.‘
‘Yes?’ Audley hadn’t really stopped there, Tom sensed.
‘Oh… I rather thought he tried to damage me last year.’ Audley shrugged.
Tom waited. ‘Yes?’
‘Oh… we lost a man…’ Audley bridled ‘… here in England, too.’
‘Yes?’ Tom remembered what Jaggard had hinted at.
‘Actually, it wasn’t my fault.’
He would have given good money to see the old man’s face. ‘No?’
‘No. Not that it matters whose fault it was.’ Audley was silent for another brief moment. ‘But we did a bit of research afterwards, just Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State to find out who we owed one to, for the future.’
‘It wasn’t a suitable case for… reciprocal action?’
‘No.’ Audley took up his moment of silence again. ‘He didn’t have red tabs on his lapels. He was just a poor bloody field officer.’ He looked at Tom in the darkness again. ‘If you catch a bullet in the line of duty they won’t avenge you, Tom. If I do… then they will.
You better bear that in mind for the next few hours.’
‘There’s no justice in this world.’ But it did make horrible sense, thought Tom sadly: in Lebanon, the biblical eye-for-an-eye payment had reduced local life to a murderous all-comers chaos.
‘Never was, and never will be,’ agreed Audley. ‘But we’ve got long memories in Research and Development—like old Fred Clinton used to say, “the baked meats of revenge are best eaten cold”. So… we’ve got a name: or two on the red side of our tablet now, anyway. And we’ll dish the buggers one day, you can depend on it.’ He sniffed. ‘Killing isn’t our style, we don’t have the resources for it, never mind the permission. But there are others we can use who think quite differently—the French, for example—’
He stopped abruptly. ‘But you’re making me digress. Because, the point is that I got Old King Cole to check up on Panin then, because he’s the resident Panin-watcher—right?’
‘“M to R”, you mean?’
‘Just so—M to R, right!’ Audley nodded in the darkness. ‘And he said that so far old Nikolai was still busy keeping an eye on his own side… That he might have given the First Directorate a bit of advice, as a consultant, but nothing more.’ He sniffed. ‘Actually, to Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State be heart-breakingly honest, he rather put me in my place, did Basil Cole. Huh!’
‘Oh?’ It took an effort to imagine such an occurrence. But the lightly self-mocking admission both established Cole as someone to be reckoned with and accounted for Audley’s present action satisfactorily. ‘How?’
‘He said that Panin had bigger fish to fry than me, in his own home frying-pan. And he also said that I wasn’t part of the man’s job—
just his hobby.’ Another sniff.
‘Somehow I find that neither flattering nor reassuring, you know.’
Then he sat up suddenly. ‘But now I’ll make the old swine eat his words: he can tell us why Nikolai Andrievich is poaching in my coverts again after all these years. Right?’ He rapped the dashboard sharply. ‘So not another word, not another question— in with you.’
Tom engaged the gear, and turned the big car cautiously past the huge beech tree into an overgrown rhododendron drive, still thick with unswept winter leaves.
They were still a long way from Panin, but he felt better now. Or, anyway, he understood why Audley was doing what he was doing, even if it also suggested that Jaggard was unaware of a real Panin-expert in their midst, who knew more about the Russian than Audley did. But then (to be fair to Jaggard) Cole might have acquired his expertise in retirement service for Research and Development, not in his previous existence.
The headlights picked up the red reflectors of a parked car, and then Tudor black-and-white half-timbering.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘Pull round to the left,’ said Audley.
More piles of decaying leaves; and the house wasn’t genuine Tudor, but minor stockbroker’s mock-Tudor, with only just enough room for him to squeeze the Ministry Rover past the elderly Ford which was jammed against its garage doors beside the darkened house. (And he had learnt something about the arcane workings of R & D, too; about which Harvey had been half-scornful, yet oddly envious: that killing wasn’t their style, but that they had long memories when there was a name to enter in the ledger of unpaid accounts.)
‘It doesn’t look as though anyone’s home, David.’ He scanned the unimpressive house again: its most notable attribute was the circle of huge beech trees which surrounded it, embracing it with their enormous limbs and cutting out what was left of the last faint remnants of daylight above them.
‘It wouldn’t—the sitting room’s at the back.’ Audley opened his door. ‘He’ll be in, don’t worry—he never goes out.’ He started to get out, but then stopped. ‘He’s somewhere inside a five-year drink-driving disqualification… not that I’ve ever noticed any difference in him, drunk or sober.’ He started to move again, and then stopped again. ‘Don’t kid yourself, Tom—drunk or sober, he’s good, believe you me. Fawcett was a fool for retiring him, and old Fred Clinton was nobody’s fool—I wish I’d known the game he was playing, years back, in fact—’ Then he grunted, and did at last lever himself out of the car.
Tom switched off the lights, and for an instant it was prematurely night. Then the half-light seeped back through the beech trees, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State slightly reassuring him, with Beirut as well as this afternoon in mind: this was close country, with no high-rise buildings or distant ridges allowing long shots; and neither the Russian nor the American-Israeli night-sight image intensifiers were much use in these conditions, if he had not been quite as clever and careful in shaking off any pursuit as he thought he had been.
All the same, he was uneasy: in full daylight one could expect the worst, and plan accordingly. But after that it was a case of negotium perambidans in tenebris. ‘Let’s go and meet your Basil Cole then, David.’
‘Okay.’ Audley stretched himself, oblivious of any danger, and then took three steps to the mock-Tudor door, and thumped it with his fist. ‘Open up there!’
Tom cringed from the battering-ram challenge: Stephen of Blois hadn’t hammered on the gates of Ranulf of Caen’s motte at Theckham more noisily than that, but half of England had heard him. Or Baldwin de Redvers certainly had—and the Bishop of Salisbury too… and probably Robert fitz Herbert, and Henry fitz Tracy, and William fitz Odo… and probably the unspeakable Earl of Chester too—
‘Open up there!’ Audley hammered on the door again. ‘Basil Cole, you drunken old bugger!’
The porch light flashed on, dousing them both in a sudden pool of yellow light which made Tom skip back out of it instinctively.