For the Good of the State Read online

‘Steady on, Tom! We’ll check on Cole—’

  ‘The hell you will! Audley’s in a pub across the road from here doing just that, for a guess. If your people run into his people he’ll know I’ve blown the whistle on him.‘ Tom stared uneasily across the road towards the lights of the pub. ’I want back-up on Exmoor. Because I can’t guarantee satisfaction on my own, not now.‘

  There was a fractional pause. ‘Does Audley want help? Has he asked for it?’

  The welcoming lights of the pub mocked him. Audley might just be asking for just that now. But somehow he doubted it, after the way the old man had dismissed his police escort—and, for that matter, after he’d been so outraged that anyone should dare to take a shot at him. ‘I don’t know what Audley wants. But I want back-up, I’m telling you. Give me back Harvey, at the very least.’

  ‘No. Harvey was only marked to take you to Audley—and he’s busy now. But in any case … this is strictly a Research and Development matter now.’

  ‘Is it?’ Steady on Arkenshaw! Tom admonished himself. ‘Then what am I doing in the middle of it?’

  Jaggard made a snuffling sound. Or maybe it was the line. ‘You’ve been seconded, Tom. Didn’t I tell you? Just temporarily, anyway—Frobisher’s agreement. And Colonel Butler’s … So if Audley wants help, or you want back-up, the request must go to Butler through Audley. I’m sorry, but that’s the protocol. Is that clearly understood?’

  Tom didn’t think it had been the line. ‘So I don’t have to report to you any more?’ Clearly understood. ‘Yes.’ Or maybe, on second thoughts, not so clearly understood! ‘Just order me who I have to protect: Audley or his old comrade—if it comes to the crunch, and they start throwing punches at each other? Just give me that order.’

  ‘Panin isn’t after him. He wants to talk to him.’ Jaggard’s tone softened. ‘Look—’

  ‘Someone’s after him.’ Then Tom came to a much greater fear. ‘And someone already knows too much about what we’re doing.’

  The third pause turned him back towards the pub: he had to be on borrowed time now.

  ‘Who knew you were going to see Basil Cole?’

  Jaggard was taking him seriously at last. But now he had only a useless answer. ‘No one. Or … no one except Audley.’

  ‘Right. Then Cole may actually have had an accident. Because drunks do have accidents But we’ll check up on that—and don’t worry, because we’ll check very circumspectly. Right?’ But again Jaggard didn’t wait for an answer. ‘And as for that bullet of Audley’s … don’t you worry about that.’

  Oh, great! Tom opened his mouth to swear. But then he knew that he was too late.

  ‘Listen, Tom: Audley’s made a fair few enemies in his time. So we don’t think it came from the Other Side. There are lots of other candidates—’

  It was a million years too late: Audley was outside the pub, peering into the car. And in another half-second he would be looking across the road.

  ‘Are you listening, Tom?’

  He turned his back towards Audley. ‘I’m putting the phone down now—I’ll call you again when I get the chance.’ He cut the line, while still holding the receiver to his ear, and stared at the dialling instructions. Then he saw the spare coins he had piled up, which he had told Audley he hadn’t got. But then, that was a minor lie compared with the phone-call itself: he could always have said he’d reversed the charges—

  Reversed the charges—!

  As the memory came back to him he knew he hadn’t time for arguments. All he could remember, as he fed the coins into the box, was all those reversed charges he had made in his student youth.

  The ringing note sounded in his ear. It was a long shot, but he hadn’t had any luck today, so he was in line for some now. And at least Audley hadn’t seen him put the phone down and then pick it up again.

  The ringing sound stopped as the phone at the other end was lifted: now he had time only for two quick questions, and two quick answers, and then one quick tapestry of falsehoods which he must hope would be believed—

  He opened the door of the phone-box and beckoned across the road. ‘David! Come over here!’ Audley looked up and down the darkened village street, in which the main illumination was from the pub itself. Which was fair enough, since he’d been warned off the phone-box once already.

  ‘Over here, David!’ Audley’s caution gave him time for a few more words. And then—‘Hold on—here he is now—’ The look of naked and unashamed suspicion on the old man’s face (which his face was well-battered to demonstrate) encouraged him to shout for both of them ‘—my mother would like a word with you, David—’ He thrust the receiver at Audley ‘—here she is now—’

  He withdrew a few yards from the call-box, out of pretended tact, but actually because there was nothing he could do now. It all depended on her wits—

  (‘Yes?’ She had addressed the phone peremptorily, as she always did, as though it was an inadequately-trained servant who had disturbed her rest.)

  (‘Mamusia?’ That hadn’t been the first question, but it came out automatically, from his enormous relief, now that he had a chance. ‘Do you remember an old boyfriend of yours named David Audley? A big chap—?’)

  (‘Darling boy—! How lovely! Who did you say?’)

  (If there was anything he hated but about which he could do nothing, it was being addressed as ‘Darling boy!’, like a character out of a play written even before her time. But this wasn’t a moment for recrimination: it was the moment for Question One, repeated.)

  (‘Mamusia — do you remember David Audley? Answer me quickly!’)

  (‘David—David!’ At the first ‘David’ Tom hung on a thread. But at the second one he was on a ship’s cable. ‘Darling—of course I do! From long before you were born, darling boy! From Cambridge—before I met your father … Or … perhaps not quite before—’)

  (Audley was moving now—)

  (I once went to a ball with him—David Audley. Question Two started to become redundant before it was asked. ‘Darling—I went as “Beauty” … and he went as “The Beast”—how could I forget him! Where did you meet him?’)

  (Scratch Question Two!)

  (‘Mamusia, he’s here now, waiting to talk to you. And he’s my boss. So just tell him I’ve been talking to you for the last five minutes—don’t argue just tell him that—okay?’ No more time. ‘Hold on—here he is now—’)

  In the end he dawdled back to the car, plagued by the same old mixture of love and exasperation and admiration and doubt which he had always—or, not always, but at least latterly—shared about her with Dad: she was gorgeous undoubtedly (and what she must have been like in Audley’s youth, and in the full flush of her own, taxed his imagination beyond its furthest limits); but she had always—no, not always, but sometimes—seemed to him the best and worst of mothers, by turns affectionate and uncaring, tactful and tactless, and intellectually brilliant and embarrassingly feckless: all he had ever known was that he could never be sure of what he knew about her—that he could never be sure of anything. And that had often been good fun, but not always. And now was one of those not-always times, although now he had only himself to blame—But Audley was coming back now—

  Audley got into the car, breathing heavily. ‘That was an exceptionally low-down action.’ The old man fumbled for his safety-belt, and fumbled even more before he snapped it home. ‘ “Darling Boy”—“Darling Boy”?’ He looked at Tom in the darkness. ‘But I thought the phone-box was out-of-bounds—?’

  But he didn’t sound angry, thought Tom. In fact, he sounded foolishly at ease, even happy, after that ‘low-down action’. So perhaps, just this important once, she had been not only at her most affectionate, but also tactful and brilliant—not (as she always had been with Willy’s predecessors) the other way round.

  ‘Yes—I’m sorry, David.’ That was true, and even doubly true: he had said that, but more than that he was vestigially sorry that he had played so very dirty; because, if calling her had been a fe
arful risk, using her against the old man hadn’t been cricket in Dad’s Cambridge definition of the game; but, then again, in his own definition—and in Mamusia’s—and, for that matter, in Audley’s—in all of those, Dad’s definition didn’t apply: none of them had played Dad’s Cambridge game for a long time, if ever.

  ‘Sorry?’ Audley wasn’t so happy now. ‘I thought you Diplomatic Protection people were more into “safe” than “sorry”?’

  ‘Yes.’ Now he really was sorry, as he realized he must be more careful with Audley. ‘But I didn’t call her until I was sufficiently sure the road was clear. And I really don’t think my mother’s London line is insecure—not unless your old comrade is much better informed than he has any right to be, David.’

  ‘No?’ Audley was even unhappier. But at least he had been safely diverted from the true truth. ‘No, I might grant you that, Darling Boy. Or … I might, if you can tell me who is better informed—eh?’

  They were far from the truth, safely. But they were right into the middle of a much more worrying truth.

  Tom backed the car out, and started to drive. ‘Yes.’ He needed the fastest road to the M4 now, to the West Country, when Audley would be taking the M3 to London as his objective. But he wanted a lot more out of the man before the deviation became apparent; so Audley’s attention to road-signs and sign-posts must be diverted for the time being.

  ‘Yes.’ The trouble was that Audley was quite right, whatever convenient possibilities Jaggard chose to imagine: someone had got to Basil Cole, and very efficiently, even before someone had got to David Audley, even though their cruder solution to that assignment had failed disgracefully. ‘Maybe you should talk to Colonel Butler.’ The road was dark ahead, and dark behind: it was the hour when the early evening drinkers were drinking, and the rest of the world was settling down for its night’s television, or putting its children to bed, or having its supper. ‘You might even ask him for some more protection, while you’re about it. In fact, that’s what I’d advise now, professionally.’

  ‘Even though we’re not being followed?’ Audley sat back comfortably, more relaxed again. ‘Darling Boy?’

  ‘Yes.’ If Audley thought he was going to rise to Mamusia’s dreadful term of endearment he was much mistaken. ‘But if they already know exactly how you think, they hardly need to follow us, do they?’

  ‘Very true. And rather disconcerting, I agree.’ Audley fumbled down beside his seat. ‘How does one put oneself into the reclining position, Darling Boy?’

  ‘You’re not going to go to sleep on me, are you?’ The thought of Audley snoring beside him during the long drive to the West Country was off-putting.

  ‘I thought I might shut my eyes for an hour.’ Audley found the seat-adjuster and sank out of sight. ‘We elderly persons … we don’t need so much sleep, but the occasional cat-nap works wonders … Just wake me up on the edge of London. Then I’ll make a phone-call.’

  ‘To Colonel Butler?’ In return for getting his own way Tom was prepared to put up with the old man’s snoring. ‘For back-up?’

  ‘No. He can’t spare anyone … Research and Development doesn’t carry assorted minders on its payroll, we all work for our living … And I don’t want anyone. Especially not any of the unemployed hoodlums Jack would have to hire.’ Audley sneezed explosively. ‘You will make the phone-call actually, Tom—to inform Nikolai Panin that we are changing the rendezvous, wherever it may be that has been agreed. Okay?’

  ‘What?’ The A34 advance warning sign flashed up ahead.

  ‘You’re quite right … somebody is too damn-better informed.’ Audley’s voice was starting to get sleepy. ‘So we’ll start out by meeting him on my chosen ground, where you won’t have to have eyes in the back of your head … Then we won’t need any of your “back-up” … And too many people already seem to know too much, that I do know. So then we can start putting a stop to that. So … just wake me up between Chertsey and Sunbury, there’s a good fellow, eh?’

  Audley thought he was heading for the M3 to London, to the east, not the M4 to Bristol, in the west, and the M5 and distant Exmoor after that. And there was a lot more also that the poor old devil thought which was just as much in the opposite direction, most of all regarding his Danny’s Darling Boy, who had somehow become one of Henry Jaggard’s hoodlums —

  ‘In Research and Development our job is to think, not to risk our probably over-valued necks protecting even less-valuable necks in foreign hell-holes … like you, Tom … “poor Tom” … ’ murmured Audley. ‘Thinking’s much more agreeable than worrying … You tend to enjoy a better class of life that way … ’he trailed off into what was more likely oblivion than thought.

  Tom realized that he had just begun to fall into the error of being slightly sorry for Audley, even while he had at the same time been beginning to savour the thought of the old man waking up on the other side of England from suburban London and whatever ground he’d chosen for his rendezvous with the Russian. But suddenly he became aware of a greater error—or not so much an error as a hideous mistake: he might no longer be sure where his duty lay in relation to Audley and Jaggard, but nagging regrets and minor gratifications paled into nothing beside the need to keep this man alive. And, after that bullet and Basil Cole’s untimely death, his duty was inescapable.

  ‘We’re not going to London, David. We’re going to Exmoor.’

  ‘What?’ Audley swallowed the word.

  ‘I said “We’re not going to London”—’

  Tom hit the foot-brake to jerk Audley into wakefulness.

  ‘What?’ The old man tried to sit up, but couldn’t. ‘To … where?’

  ‘To Exmoor, David. Panin’s meeting us at Holcombe Bridge—the Green Man Hotel, Holcombe Bridge, on Exmoor.’ He glanced at the digital clock. ‘Actually, we should be meeting him about now. So I will have to stop before long, because it’s going to take me all of three hours to get there. Apart from warning Panin that we’re going to be late I need to make sure they don’t let our rooms to someone else.’

  Audley was struggling to readjust his seat, fumbling and mumbling at the same time.

  ‘It’s a good hotel, anyway,’ continued Tom with false cheerfulness as the old man’s mumble deepened to a thunderous growl. ‘It’s in Egon Ronay and Rubinstein, and the Good Food Guide.’ Harvey had been envious, indeed. ‘So we shall at least be comfortable, David.’

  ‘Bugger that!’ Just as he seemed about to resort to brute force Audley was jerked upright. But then, somewhat to Tom’s surprise, the thunder died away into a silence which made him more nervous. Because now at last he had somehow pressed the button, and he sensed the man’s thoughts rocketing up, silently because they had left sound behind. And once that rocket went up, no one knew where it would come down—Jaggard and Harvey were agreed on that. And that, of course, was why he was here.

  ‘I’m sorry, David—’

  ‘Don’t be sorry.’ Audley’s voice was in neutral now, neither angry nor friendly. ‘Let me get things straight: your job is to look after me, and get me to Nikolai Andrievich … and to learn, mark and inwardly digest whatever may pass between us—have I got that right?’

  The rocket was up, and in orbit. ‘Well … not quite. I only have to be present because they’ve got someone with Panin—because that’s the deal.’ Shrugging in the dark was useless. “They don’t trust his loyalty as much as you do … of course.‘

  ‘Of course. Whereas my loyalty is beyond suspicion … of course. Like yours?’

  ‘What?’ Just as he had shrugged unseen, so Audley must have nodded ironic agreement unseen.

  ‘So who are you working for, at this precise but nebulous moment, Tom Arkenshaw? To whom do you report back, at regular intervals?’

  At least he had an answer to that now. ‘I’m seconded to Research and Development—Mr Frobisher and Colonel Butler have both agreed to that.’ The half-truth of that chained him fast. ‘I have no instructions from Colonel Butler. But maybe I should have.
Next time you call him you might ask him if he’d like me to—what was it?—“learn, mark and inwardly digest”? But isn’t that a misquotation? Isn’t it “read”, not “learn”—?’ But maybe it was a mistake to be clever. ‘But I am sorry, David: I should have told you about Exmoor before. Just … things got in the way, that’s all.’

  ‘Yes.’ The ensuing silence suggested that Audley had noted what he’d said, but without either agreeing with or accepting it. ‘So … they’ve let him run free. And so have we.’ Audley spoke to himself.

  ‘Panin?’ Tom decided to accept the question. ‘I gather he has some sort of diplomatic status. Cultural-dipIomatic status, anyway.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Audley perked up, as though his brutish minder had shown an unlooked-for vestige of intelligence. ‘Cultural—of course!’

  That had been another nod-in-the-dark. ‘Something to do with an exhibition there’s going to be in the BM next year, I think.’ Tom gave him a matching nod. ‘The Ancient Scythians, would it be? He is a genuine scholar, I believe. Or he was, in the dim and distant past, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Weren’t we all?’ Audley sniffed. ‘In the dim and distant past … ’He trailed off into silence again.

  ‘I never was.’ Tom had to break the silence.

  ‘No?’ The old man came back to him abruptly. ‘Don’t languages count as scholarship? Manchester University, wasn’t it? Russian and French there? And English and Polish before. And how many more now? Plus Latin at Waltham School, of course—they’d never let a linguist go without a dead language in his knapsack, would they! So how many is that then—seven? Eight?’

  With the question of his present allegiance unresolved, he was being reminded that the old man had done his homework on Arkeshhaw, Thomas Wladyslaw Archibald. ‘Give or take a couple.’ He remembered the Caesar on Audley’s desk. ‘But my Latin’s a bit rusty now, like yours, David. So if we meet one of the arcani, or the frumentarii, sniffing around Exmoor, just don’t rely on me as an interpreter.’

  ‘Don’t knock your talent, Darling Boy. “The gift of tongues” is more of a negotiable asset than a nodding acquaintance with medieval history—or Ancient Scythia. If you blot your copybook with Frobisher, someone will always give you a job.’ Sniff. ‘Come to that, Jack Butler certainly would! He’s always on the look-out for people who can read between the foreign lines, not just translate them. Especially if I put in a good word for you.’