For the Good of the State Page 21

  ‘No. Zarubin’s none of my business.’ Audley continued to study Mountsorrel. ‘But … that would be prudent to get him out, if Marchuk’s accident wasn’t accidental. Which, I suppose, we can now assume it wasn’t … So—?’

  ‘The word is that he’s gone “diplomatic”.’ He wanted to study Mountsorrel too. But there would be time for that later. ‘At the time of the murder he was officially a cultural attaché in Warsaw. Although his main links were actually with the church affairs section of the Ministry of the Interior— Pietruszka’s department.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’ Audley nodded at Mountsorrel. ‘This is one of your pristine mottes and baileys, I take it, Tom? “Adulterine”, would it be?’

  ‘Very likely.’ Tom decided to drop Pietruszka and play the game. Because, if Audley wasn’t worried about Panin, why should he be? ‘Professor Fraser thinks it’s Gilbert de Merville’s “Mountsorrel Castle”, which surrendered after Stephen took Exeter from Baldwin de Redvers in 1136. Gilbert certainly was one of Baldwin’s men, and he held land in these parts.’

  ‘Mmm … ’ Audley nodded again. ‘And Gilbert was a bad bastard, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he the one who hanged his hostages—including the children? Which good old Stephen never had the heart to do?’ Another nod. ‘So what’s Zarubin doing now, then?’

  He had been right to play the game. ‘The word is that he may be coming to England very shortly. Like … any day now, David. Or he may even be here already.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Audley shifted his gaze slightly, to consider their own approach line to Mountsorrel, along the deeply tractor-furrowed track. ‘You know, I rather think this must be the original road to your castle, Tom—’ He pointed ahead ‘—see how the ridge is deeply cut there? That’s not some old Devon farmer’s spade-work: that’s peasant sweated-labour, that is, or I’m a monkey’s uncle!’ Satisfied nod. ‘So why is he coming? Because it’s safer here, between Exmoor and London, than it is between Czestochowa and Warsaw … at least for him, if not for me? Or has he got work to do?’

  Tom listened to Willy’s whisper, editing out the added endearments and the warmth and softness of her in the crook of his arm. ‘It all depends on the progress they make, to get Reagan and Gorbachev together in the autumn, Sheldon thinks.’

  ‘Ah!’ Audley looked up and down the track again. ‘If there isn’t a road on the other side of that ridge ahead, where the castle is … then this just has to be the one … if that’s the main entrance there—’ He pointed ‘—in that gap in the gorse, right?’ He lowered his hand. ‘If they don’t meet, he’s certainly not going to be able to detach our revered Iron Lady from her favourite film star, not even after her happy meeting with Tsar Mikhail … Not with our commitment to Cruise and Trident—’ The hand came up again ‘—do you see that gap? Is that the main bailey entrance, Tom?’

  The higher motte was diagonally on the far side, away from them; and it would be interesting to find out how deep the ditch was on that far side, and whether it cut down into the beginning of bed-rock there. ‘I think it probably is, David.’ That would fix the motte high above its river valley too, where he would expect it to be; because, when they had half a chance, the Normans never made a mistake, with their eye for ground.

  ‘Yes. I think you’re right.’ Audley gave him the undeserved credit for the insight. ‘So you just keep your eye on that—right?’ Pause. ‘So his brief could be … if Mr President and the Tsar don’t meet … to give aid and comfort to poor old CND, surreptitiously, contributing generously to the collections, like my darling wife does.’ Sniff. “That’s what I’d do, anyway, if I was calling the shots.‘ He gestured forwards. ’Shall we go then—where glory waits, Tom?‘

  Something held Tom back on the crest, beside Audley, all his certainties and half-certainties suddenly hedged by doubt and half-uncertainty as he stared at the gap in the ring of prickly gorse which encircled and overran both the outer rampart and the motte itself. Because there were suddenly too many imponderables—too many conflicting bloody-minded interests, like the brackets and incomprehensible symbols of some mathematical equation which he lacked both the skill and the intelligence to unravel: Jaggard was playing his own game against Audley, as well as Panin; and Audley and Panin were each playing their own games too, probably against someone else as well as each other. And he was in the middle of all their games, hog-tied not only by his vengeful thoughts about Father Jerzy’s murderers, but also by his last-night memories of Willy, which broke every rule in the book because sexual encounters of the closest sort were still the commonest form of betrayal, still outperforming cash and ideology across the world.

  But then, mercifully—mercifully, while he was still havering—Audley reached towards him, to grasp his arm above the elbow.

  ‘There, Tom—’ The grip tightened painfully ‘—do you see—?’

  He had already been told where he had to look, in that gap in the rampart out of which Gilbert de Merville had ridden for the last time in 1136, when he’d surrendered Mountsorrel to King Stephen’s man, who might have ridden past Bodger’s Farm to this very point, to make sure of Baldwin de Redvers’ castellan’s surrender.

  There was someone in the gap —

  Audley’s fingers squeezed his arm. ‘I told you—I should have known!’ After that final squeeze, the hand released his arm. “To get ahead of Nikolai Andrievich you have to get up very early in the morning—I should have known better!‘

  Now there was another figure, beside the first one. ‘That’s Panin, is it?’

  ‘Huh!’ Audley grunted. ‘At this distance, with my eyes, it might be Jack Butler … or Henry Jaggard … or the Archdeacon of Truro, for all I know, Tom. But I’ll give you ten-to-one—or a hundred-to-one, if you want to put your money down — that that’s Nikolai Andrievich … and that that little one—the one that’s twitching around, like he’s got ants in his pants … that that one is his minder … his own Thomas Arkenshaw, all the way from Dzerzhinsky Square?’

  Dzerzhinsky Square cut deep, as it always did: the historical truth that Dzerzhinsky had been a Polish aristocrat, who had founded Lenin’s secret intelligence and simultaneously betrayed his class and his country, was a wound which never healed—which certainly didn’t heal now, above Gilbert of Merville’s motte!

  Audley waited, but again mercifully. ‘Okay, Tom?’ The merciful pause extended. ‘So let’s go and zap the bugger, eh? Let’s go and do it—eh?’

  8

  AUDLEY HAD BEEN right about Professor Andrievich Panin, and quite cruelly right: he looked like nothing so much as an elderly sheep, with his queerly bent nose and an inadequate lower jaw at the bottom of his elongated face; or, anyway, he didn’t look like what he was, and so much so that Tom had to look at Audley himself to accept his ‘I-told-you-so’.

  But Audley himself was no comfort, for he didn’t look the part either, quite disconcertingly; and then, just as he was type-casting Audley once again, the little Russian minder whom he’d met so briefly before breakfast ducked out from the bushes again, with what was obviously his habitual expression of mild bewilderment, but also buttoning up the old-fashioned fly-buttons on his trousers quite openly.

  So here we are! thought Tom: The Elderly Sheep, who must have seen a hecatomb of human lambs go to the slaughter, so that blood couldn’t worry him now, innocent or otherwise; and the one-time Fairground English Pugilist, who looked as though he had let the young hopefuls hit his face while he delivered the killing body-blows (and who looked so beamishly happy now, at the prospect of slugging it out with an old friend); and this little KGB Stan Laurel, from a hundred tragi-comedies, minus only his bowler hat; and, not least incongruous, Sir Thomas Arkenshaw, the dead ringer of Count Waldemar Osinski, Mamusias mother’s brother, who had led his lancers to victory against Trotsky’s machine-gunners against all military reason and elementary commonsense: altogether a most incongruous quartet, to meet in the entrance of Gilbert de Merville’s forgotten castle!

  ‘See that—?’ The Pugil
ist touched his elbow. ‘You don’t often see those now, Tom.’

  ‘What?’ This was the main entrance to the Mountsorrel bailey—he could see that now, at a glance. ‘What?’

  ‘Fly-buttons. There must have been a shortage of zip-fasteners when that suit came off the peg in the good old USS of R, Tom lad—’ Audley hissed his opinion from the corner of his mouth ‘—Professor Panin—Nikolai! It’s been a long time … in fact, more years than I care to remember, eh?’ But he advanced through the gap in the ramparts with all the confidence of King Stephen’s favourite baron accepting the surrender of Gilbert de Merville’s castellan in 1136 anno domini. ‘But … good to see you, anyway, Nikolai.’

  ‘Dr Audley—David!’ The Sheep’s accent was classless and stateless, and all the more curious for its lack of origin. ‘A long time is true.’ The Sheep stopped on his full stop, and took Audley’s hand and gave it one formal shake. Only then did he look at Tom officially, although Tom had been conscious of a long preceding scrutiny as they had approached Mountsorrel’s entrance.

  ‘May I present Sir Thomas Arkenshaw, late of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who is here to see that I don’t make a perfect fool of myself?’ Audley rose to the occasion. ‘At least, in so far as I am ever capable of perfection, anyway.’

  The Sheep’s hand was small and dry and smooth and warm, but not soft: it was like shaking a skin-tight glove. But the Sheep also registered his own disadvantage, which Tom sensed from experience of those before him who couldn’t make the age and the Polish face fit the English title. ‘Sir … Thomas.’

  ‘Baronet, Nikolai.’ Audley sounded as though he was about to enjoy himself. ‘Tom hasn’t rendered Our Sovereign Lady—or either of my sovereign ladies—any signal service himself. Or not yet, anyway. Or not signal enough to be tapped on the shoulder with a sword, and told to “Rise, Sir Thomas!” He’s not “Sir Thomas, knight”—he’s a hereditary “Sir Thomas, Baronet”, with no damned merit attached to it, do you see?’

  ‘Ah!’ The Sheep stopped trying to reassemble Tom from his constituent parts. ‘A lord—’

  ‘No.’ Tom was tired of being mocked so early, before the pubs opened. ‘But one of ray ancestors made too much money, Professor. It was just a way of making him pay extra taxes, that’s all.’

  ‘Is that so, Sir Thomas?’ The Sheep’s deeply-lined and pock-marked face remained effortlessly inscrutable. ‘And that was long ago, truly?’

  ‘Yes.’ The Sheep was playing the Pugilist’s game, Tom decided. So maybe he’d better play too. ‘About midway between Tsar Ivan the Terrible and Tsar Peter the Great, actually.’

  ‘Which is to say, about three-hundred-and-fifty years before Tsar Mikhail Gorbachev, Nikolai,’ said Audley pleasantly. ‘Who is your problem at the moment, I take it?’

  ‘My problem?’ Panin hardly looked at Audley. ‘Sir Thomas—may I present Major Kazimierz Sadowski?’ He spread a hand towards Stan Laurel. ‘Dr Audley—Major Sadowski—Major, you have heard me tell of the unique Dr Audley? Well, this is he, in the substantial flesh,’ The face-lines cracked their customary grooves into a travesty of a smile. ‘The Major was formerly a tank officer, David. I have told him that you were also once the same, in the Great Patriotic War. So he is now probably trying to think of a British tank large enough for you in those far-off days—was it perhaps a “Churchill”?’

  ‘No.’ Audley didn’t offer his hand to the Major, only his deepest suspicion. For which Tom was truly grateful, since it at least partially covered his own surprise. ‘It was a “Cromwell”, actually. Which was probably a lot more comfortable than a T-34. But a bloody-sight less safe.’ As he spoke he frowned horribly at the Major, who also hadn’t attempted to take the hand which hadn’t been offered. ‘But that isn’t a good KGB name, is it—Kazimi-erz-Whatever—? It sounds decidedly … Polish, would that be?’ He stared belligerently at the Major for a moment, but then turned back to Panin as it became obvious that he was no more likely to get an answer than a hand. ‘Polish, Nikolai?’

  Panin managed to shrug without moving. ‘You once said to me, “In my father’s house there are many rooms”—?’

  ‘ “Mansions”—not “rooms”, Nikolai.’ Audley faced Panin squarely. “The Gospel According to St John, chapter fourteen. And John also said ”Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold“, I do agree! And he also said a few other things, which are perhaps even more apposite to this morning—like, ”Ye are of your father, the devil“, Nikolai, for a start!‘

  Panin turned to Tom. ‘I have made an error, Sir Thomas: I have quoted at him from his own Book!’

  ‘So you have.’ Suddenly Audley’s voice became cold and hard. ‘ “It is expedient to us, that one man should die for the people!”.’ He turned to Tom, just as the Russian had done. ‘Sorry for the blasphemy, Tom. But this bugger owes us a life, and I’m damned if I’m going to pretend that I don’t know that he knows that he does.’ He fixed Tom only for a half-second before returning to Panin. ‘Tell me about Basil Cole, Nikolai. Because, if we’re going to do any business at all, that’s one expediency I need to know about first.’

  Panin stared at Audley. ‘Basil Cole.’ Then he frowned. ‘Basil Cole?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of him.’ Sniff. ‘He cut his teeth on you, I shouldn’t wonder—the late Basil Cole, Professor.’

  Panin gave Audley three seconds, then he looked around, up and down Gilbert of Merville’s ditches, left and right. ‘I do not like this place. It was your idea—one of your historical ideas, David?’

  ‘It was your idea, Professor—outside, in the open?’ Audley nodded at Tom without looking at him. ‘Your idea in general. And Tom’s in particular.’ The old man looked down at Panin’s feet. ‘Too dirty for you, is it?’

  Panin stared at Tom interrogatively.

  ‘I think it’s a good place.’ Audley continued before either of them could speak. ‘An appropriate place, anyway.’

  That got Panin back. ‘Appropriate?’

  ‘Yes.’ This time Audley quartered Gilbert of Merville’s long-forgotten work. ‘The mid-twelfth century in England happens to be Sir Thomas’s hobby, and that was when this pile of dirt was thrown together. But I take it you don’t know about the mid-twelfth century in England, Professor?’ Audley smiled at the Russian. ‘In the great days of Kiev, that would be, I suppose—when Moscow was a muddy frontier settlement?’ The smile broadened. ‘But, of course, you’re safe in the days long before that! Ancient Scythian archaeology—I remember, from the old days … ’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘I’m afraid this isn’t sufficiently archaeological, in your meaning of the word, old friend. But not inappropriate, no.’

  ‘No?’ Panin studied his surroundings for a moment before continuing; and (thought Tom) he didn’t need to be a genius either to understand its function or to guess that Audley was somehow lying in wait for him back in history. ‘But it would also be your period, my dear David—would it not? Those essays of yours which I so assiduously read before we last met, in those same old days—on the crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem … That was the twelfth century, wasn’t it?’ Having finished with the bailey rampart, he scrutinized the motte itself. They were … if I may say so without giving offence … not altogether unscholarly.‘ Now he was relating the position of the motte to the bailey. ’In fact, if those crusader castles had not conveniently crossed every frontier from Egypt to Turkey I might almost have thought that you were following Lawrence’s footsteps, and not misusing your scholarship in the service of your country’s needs.‘ He completed his survey, but did so facing Major Stan Laurel Sadowski, not Audley. ’Major … I do not like either of these ridges, as I have already said. But that across the valley is masked by the mound if we take but a few steps. So I would have you upon the ridge above us, while we transact our business?‘ He pointed up the hillside.

  Major Sadowski indicated that he understood the English language not with a nod, let alone a word or any variation in his permanent expressio
n of surprise-verging-on-tears, but simply by moving to obey Panin’s request without question or delay.

  Panin watched him depart through Gilbert of Merville’s bailey gateway. “The advantage of having a Pole is that he does what he is told,‘ said Panin to the Major’s back. Then he came again to Audley. ’And, of course, my dear David, the poor creature has been overawed by your presence. And by our medieval crusaders of the twelfth century. And I’m sure he doesn’t know your T. E. Lawrence from D. H. Lawrence—do you think Lady Chatterley’s Lover has ever been translated into Polish? I would think not, eh?‘ He continued to stare at Audley, but so fixedly that Tom felt he himself was very deliberately not being looked at, even though his reciprocal dismissal was now presumably what the Russian required.

  ‘Oh … do you think so?’ Audley cocked his head, frowning slightly, as if the question was of importance. ‘Lady Chatterley must have been … mid-1920s? And it must have been one of Lawrence’s last books, because he died in 1930. So Poland was still a free country then.’ Then he nodded, still frowning. ‘But the Catholics might have banned it, I agree.’ He drew a sudden breath and then sneezed explosively, and began to search for his handkerchief. ‘So you may well be right, at that.’ He buried his face in the handkerchief. ‘I do beg your pardon, Nikolai.’

  ‘You have a cold?’ inquired Panin sympathetically.

  ‘I have a cold.’ Audley nodded. ‘And Sir Thomas stays, Nikolai.’

  Now Panin glanced at Tom, but then quickly returned to Audley. They do not trust you even now, David? Even less than they trust me?‘

  Sniff. ‘Nobody trusts me.’ The thought seemed to brighten Audley. ‘Not even my dear wife.’