For the Good of the State Page 3

  ‘Tom!’

  Tom experienced momentary irritation—he had never really thought about the incidence of stinging nettles before—but then he realized too late that what was expected of him was regret and guilt, and tried to contort his features appropriately. ‘Willy-love, I am sorry —’

  ‘Bastard!’ Her voice fell from self-pity to cold anger: she might well be remembering her experiences at Sulhampstead.

  ‘I said I was sorry—’

  ‘I’ll give you “sorry”!’ She picked up the measuring pole with both hands and jabbed it at him like a spear. ‘I’ll make you sorry—’

  ‘Now, Willy—don’t be like that.’ Tom skipped sideways as she jabbed at him again. He was just out of range, but she had risen to one knee and was aiming dangerously low, towards parts of him which he would undoubtedly be sorry to have injured. ‘Willy!’

  ‘Don’t you “Willy” me—’ Just as she was rising from the other mud-caked knee, pivoting on it at the same time to reach his new location, she saw the policeman on the edge of the ditch above and behind him.

  The policeman cleared his throat nervously, otherwise evidently struck dumb by the intended act of Grievous Bodily Harm he had been witnessing. Or it might be just the sight of Willy herself, thought Tom with proprietorial admiration.

  ‘Gee!’ In the instant of recognition the wide snarl had turned to jaw-dropped surprise, but in the next instant she had rearranged her expression so that now it merely registered interest. ‘Well, hi there, officer!’

  Tom’s admiration increased, and he felt that same curious twinge of an emotion he had experienced several times just recently, but hadn’t taken the trouble to explore. Or maybe didn’t want to risk exploring—was that it? he wondered, shying away from the traffic light in his mind which shone red and green at the same time.

  ‘Good morning … madam.’ For a moment the policeman seemed undecided as to how to address her. But that would be as much because of the rich mid-western American accent—foreigners were always tricky—as because of the contradiction between her dishevelled appearance and her abundant self-confidence, Tom estimated.

  ‘He’s looking for a gentleman, Willy,’ he advised her.

  ‘Uh-huh?’ She didn’t even look at him as she stood up, using her ex-deadly-weapon to help her. ‘Well, I guess he better go look somewhere else—’ she smiled her sweetest smile at the policeman ‘—because there’s no gentleman here.’

  Tom knew then what he knew he had known from the moment the young policeman had materialized out of nowhere, which he had only been resisting because he didn’t want to know it; because, when a man was more nearly happy and carefree than he had any right to be, he also had the right to resist the inevitability of a 99-percent certainty, just in case that last one-per-cent was on his side. But he turned back towards the policeman, hating himself because he was suddenly even happier —no longer carefree, but excited now, and utterly consumed by that old addictive drug—because they wanted him this badly. And it still fed his happiness, as their eyes met, that the policeman knew too … although with nothing like that 99-per-cent certainty even now … that this unlikely gipsy-looking non-gentleman was nonetheless his gentleman—just his gentleman being awkward, no more.

  The policeman struggled for five seconds against his remaining doubts, but then surrendered to the slightly higher odds. ‘Sir Thomas Arkenshaw?’

  Tom sympathized with him. Half his stock-in-trade was derived from the wild accidents of twentieth-century history, which had crossed unlikely genes with a different environment; and also he knew that it was always painful for such a good solid Englishman as this to throw a 350-year-old baronetcy on such a questionable product.

  ‘I am Sir Thomas Arkenshaw.’ As always, the foreign half of him threw down the Anglo-Norman half contemptuously: the Dzieliwskis had ridden in a hundred battles before the low-bred merchant Arkenshaws had made enough money to interest any parvenu Stuart King of England. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you, sir—Sir Thomas.’ The policeman stumbled slightly over Debrett’s Correct Form of Address, one part of him obviously still unwilling to accept the identification. But then he squared his shoulders and gave Tom the full benefit of the doubt. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Sir Thomas—’ with an effort he didn’t glance at Willy ‘—but there’s … there’s another gentleman who wishes to see you … urgently. He’s waiting for you back in the lane, by the gate.’

  Now it was Tom’s turn for disbelief. ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes, sir—Sir Thomas. By the gate.’

  That changed matters. Being sent for was one thing: by routine they knew where he was shacked up with Willy, and the hotel people knew where he was to be found this morning. So, despatching the nearest policeman to find him was the simplest and quickest way of effecting his recall. But this automatic assumption had been wrong, for the mountain had come to Mahomet. And that was another thing altogether.

  ‘Right. I’ll come at once—’ He had started to move before he remembered his manners, and turned back to Willy ‘—if you’ll excuse me for a moment, Miss Groot—?’

  ‘Be my guest, Sir Thomas.’ As a good servant of a great republic Willy accepted the call to duty without demur, only with a proper disrespect for the undeserved and unrepublican title he bore.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Groot.’ Tom threw the words over his shoulder as he scrambled up the side of the ditch towards the policeman.

  (Sending someone down to scoop him up, and presumably to brief him on the spot … that might mean a panic, minor or major —)

  His foot slipped, and he slid back half a yard—

  (How exactly did they build their ditches? Revetted with turf or with wood?)

  (Alternatively … whoever it was who’d pulled rank on the local police—another gentleman suggested rank, so it could even be Phillipson —)

  The policeman observed his problem, and extended a helping hand.

  (Did Norman ditches differ from Anglo-Saxon works? Or from Roman ones—had their expertise been passed on? That sounded unlikely—in England anyway, if not on the continent … But what about the pre-Roman ditches of the great hill-forts—?)

  The policeman hauled him up the last few feet, catching his sense of urgency as well as his hand.

  (There must be some specialist research on ditch-digging somewhere—just as there had to be something on the incidence of stinging nettles; that was always the way of it, simultaneously enlightening and frustrating: there was always someone who had got there, or been there, before, asking the same questions—)

  ‘Thank you.’ He made his peace with the policeman with a smile. He must stop thinking about old Ranulf‘’s adulterine castle now. It might not be a panic at all, but just Phillipson (or whoever) pulling rank unnecessarily, for any one of a thousand footling reasons, to pick someone else’s brains. Or even to take a look at Willy, maybe—

  No, it could hardly be that. Willy was a known quantity, and he had registered his friendship with her, as the rules required. So they couldn’t read the riot act over her.

  He lengthened his stride. Only another few yards and he would be able to look down on the lane which had once briefly been the busy road to Ranulf’s illegal strongpoint, but which must just as quickly have degenerated back to the mere farm track it had become for ever after, under Henry Plantagenet’s iron-fisted rule. Poor old Ranulf—

  Poor old Tom! He amended the thought instantly as he looked down on the gateway, and saw Henry Jaggard. Poor old Tom!

  Jaggard? Christ! When he’d thought of the mountain coming to Mahomet, he’d only thought of Snowdon or Ben Nevis, not Mont Blanc or the North Face of the bloody Eiger!

  ‘Sir?’ At least he didn’t need to pretend not to be astonished. Even if he’d been wrong about Willy—even if Willy had been a KGB major in drag—that wouldn’t justify the presence of Henry Jaggard here in Ranulf’s lane, just by the opening in Ranulf’s bailey ditch.

  ‘Tom, dear boy!’ Henry Jaggard surveyed him
with fleeting distaste. ‘I am sorry to come upon you like this—’ He looked around ‘—in the middle of nowhere.’ He came back to Tom with a basilisk smile. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  The middle of nowhere was right thought Tom with sudden insight: Jaggard knew exactly what he was doing, and why he was here—and who he was with, down to the room number in the hotel. Because it was Jaggard’s right and business to know that. But it was still the middle of nowhere.

  ‘I’m just doing another motte-and-bailey, sir.’ Tom accepted the fiction, and played up to it deliberately. ‘I think it’s one of the illegal castles Ranulf of Caen built during the reign of King Stephen—mid-twelfth century. But no one’s ever done precise measurements on it.’ Time for a disarming grin. ‘It’s down as a late-13th-century fortified manor in Herrick’s Medieval Earthworks, actually. But I don’t think Herrick ever took the trouble to look at it.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Polite lack-of-interest in exchange for disarming grin. No one was fooling anyone. “That’s rather interesting, I should think.‘ Jaggard took another survey of the middle of nowhere. ’But I can perhaps understand why he didn’t—Herrick, was it?‘ Jaggard had plainly no more heard of Professor Albert Herrick than he had of—of, say, Ranulf himself … or of Ranulf’s contemporary, King Boleslas III of Poland, whom Tom’s Dzieliwski ancestors had served. ’It is rather inaccessible isn’t it!’

  Yes, thought Tom. And as good a place as Henry Jaggard could hope for, to meet poor Tom Arkenshaw unobserved and off-the-record!

  Jaggard cocked a knowing eye at him. ‘And Miss Wilhemina Groot doesn’t mind braving the wilds of the English countryside with you, then?’

  ‘No, sir.’ The bugger didn’t need to throw Willy into the conversation so crudely. ‘Her ancestors built forts like this in Iowa and Minnesota, against the Sioux in the 1860s, so she tells me—’ Tom gestured towards Ranulf’s ramparts ‘—not the same design, of course … but the same general defensive idea, more or less—just earth and timber-work and man-hours—plus ça change, and all that.

  ‘Is that so?’ Henry Jaggard opened his mouth to continue, but Tom owed him one for Willy.

  ‘If you’ve got the time I can show you how it works. Motte-and-bailey is pretty much a standard Norman design, with minor variations. It’s a bit muddy and overgrown on the other side, but—’

  ‘Thank you, Tom! But … in the circumstances … no, I’m afraid.’ The very slightest edge of Henry Jaggard’s dislike broke through the surface of his confidence, like a shark’s fin in a smooth sea, warning Tom that whatever he had in store wasn’t going to be one of those plum diplomatic sinecures in safe East European communist countries where the food might be bad, but the scope for terrorism was limited to the point of boredom. Besides which, of course, with Tom’s well-known maternal background he knew himself to be automatically persona non grata in most of them, anyway.

  And, also besides which, he had already pushed his luck as far as it was safe to do. So a bit of proper departmental enthusiasm was in order now. So … although this particular son-of-a-bitch will never promote you, Thomas Arkenshaw-Dzieliwski … show proper dutiful-enthusiastic-interest, damn your eyes!

  Although, Henry Jaggard was a shrewd operator, who didn’t generally let his prejudices interfere with his duties, to be fair. So maybe he’d been a bit naughty, thought Tom, half-repentantly. ‘Yes, sir?’

  Jaggard estimated him for a moment. ‘We have a little bit of a flap, Tom. And … I’m genuinely sorry for descending on you, believe me … but you’ve got the exact profile for it, you see. So your leave’s cancelled, as of this date.’

  That’s all right, sir.‘ Tom waved his own olive branch back. ’This earthwork isn’t going to go away.’

  ‘And Miss Groot?’ In victory Jaggard was suddenly generous. ‘Senator Groot’s daughter, would that be? Or grand-daughter?’

  ‘Niece, actually.’ No, not generous at all. Merely politic— politic with Miss Groot, not Sir Thomas, whose true measurements were precisely known, and who was plain Tom in consequence. But he shrugged dismissively, nevertheless. ‘But I don’t think she’ll go away either. Not that it matters.’ Oddly enough, it was beginning to matter; though this was hardly the moment to admit it to himself, never mind to Jaggard. ‘A flap, you said?’ And it was even less the moment to pretend that he wasn’t surprised to see Jaggard in a flap in the middle of nowhere: with Jaggard he not only had no need to play stupid—he positively couldn’t afford to do so. ‘What sort of a flap?’

  Jaggard looked past him, to make sure Senator Groot’s niece was not materializing inconveniently on the horizon. But the young policeman appeared to be doing his duty in detaining her where she was, for that one glance was enough. ‘Tom … when did you last have dealings with Research and Development?’

  Tom was just about ready for any question but that. It could have related to anything from Beirut to Managua, by way of Belfast; or from Black September to the Red Brigade (as recently reconstituted), by way of the IRA. But … it was one hell of a sight closer to home than that. ‘R & D?’ But Jaggard would know bloody well when he’d last consulted R & D: it was a suspiciously unnecessary question. ‘Not for ages … apart from their routine briefings—the ones I’m cleared to receive, anyway— ?’ He was entitled to end the statement on a question. ‘I mean face to face. Not the briefings.’

  ‘Hell!’ Tom concentrated his memory. ‘One of them chipped in his piece at that seminar … He’d been over in Dublin—Field Research, he called it.’ Memory etched the face and the facts. ‘Mitchell was his name—“Source PLM” in the briefings … He was into the IRA and the KGB, by way of ancient history. We got the Irish foreign connection from the Fenians in America backwards, all the way through Napoleon and Louis XIV to Philip of Spain. He’s a historian—a published historian, too—’ The etching included the man’s recommendations on the best Irish whiskies into the bargain; but that wouldn’t do for a teetotaller like Jaggard, by God! ‘—a military historian—?’

  ‘Who else?’ Jaggard crossed out Mitchell. ‘In R & D?’

  Caution engulfed Tom. But he mustn’t show it. ‘Well—Colonel Butler runs their show, of course—’ But that was mere banality, insulting to both of them ‘—who else what?’

  ‘Who do you know in R & D?’

  The caution became murkier. ‘Who do I know? No one, really.’ It wasn’t that he had any particular loyalty to Colonel Butler’s band of brothers, who seemed to live in a world of their own, pursuing their own ends (but which ends had so far mercifully been different from his, as it happened); but, in any case, before he admitted that he wanted to know why Jaggard was quizzing him now. ‘I’ve met Mitchell, And I know of Colonel Butler—who goes way back, of course—’ He couldn’t leave that of course to be questioned, because although Colonel Butler must go way back to be Director of R & D no one knew anything about him— any more than they knew anything much about anyone in R & D; so he must throw in some more names as ground-bait, and quickly ‘—and Macready, the economist … and they’ve got a Special Branch man, who’s an expert on trade union leaders—or rather, the young fliers who dropped out of circulation to learn their business over there, like—’

  ‘Andrew.’ Jaggard nodded, rising to Tom’s desperate indiscretion quickly ‘Ex-Superintendent Andrew.’ He nodded again. ‘And I think you must know Commander Cable—socially, perhaps?’

  Now he must be close, thought Tom: to throw in James Cable as a dyed-in-the-wool R & D man, and not just a temporary attachment—

  ‘James, of course,’ agreed Tom. So James really was Research and Development’s Society contact, not just a Royal Navy man waiting for his Trident appointment, in succession to his father’s original nuclear command.

  ‘And Audley?’ Jaggard relaxed enough to check that Miss Groot had not yet broken through their defences.

  ‘I’ve heard of him, of course.’ Who was it going to be? wondered Tom. The genuine 100-per-cent truth was that he didn’t kno
w much at all about R & D: they were reputedly a bunch of weirdos who produced good material by questionable means known only unto themselves, but who seldom issued out of their ivory Tower into the real world; which (rumour added, he thought uneasily) was just as well, because they only took jobs which no one else wanted, which ended in tears for someone.

  But Jaggard was watching him very narrowly now, and that jogged his memory disturbingly, after the thought of Willy somewhere out there, behind Ranulf’s earth ramparts: R & D always liked to have an obligatory woman or two on their strength, someone had said. And once they had had a little beauty, whom they had lost in particularly harrowing and incompetent circumstances; so now they had another one, whose intelligence was said to be only surpassed by her ugliness, which was altogether exceptional.

  ‘Yes?’ An old fox watching a young rabbit sitting just inside its briar patch, that was what Jaggard reminded him of, thought Tom.

  ‘I don’t really know anyone else.’ Oh no, Brer Fox! Whatever Jaggard might know about Willy, or any of Willy’s predecessors, she and they were strictly extramural activity. So if the man had any ideas about the Sycorax of R & D, he had another thought coming. ‘I really don’t know any of them —I told you.’

  ‘You don’t know David Audley?’ Jaggard sketched mild bewilderment. ‘Now … that does surprise me, rather.’

  Audley? Tom frowned. ‘Why does it surprise you?’

  ‘I thought he was an old family friend. In fact, I’m sure he is, Tom.’ Jaggard exchanged suspicious disbelief for mild bewilderment. ‘Of your mother’s, as well as your late father’s—eh?’

  ‘My—?’ Tom floundered for a moment, unable to bring up the shield of truth quickly enough ‘—my mother? Well, if that’s so, it’s news to me—’ The sudden doubt in his voice only made matters worse. Audley?

  ‘Not to say an old admirer, indeed.’ Jaggard agreed with himself smugly. Then he caught the look on Tom’s face. ‘Failed admirer, of course—proxime accessit, but failed—also ran, but unplaced, that is to say … and a long way back—’ Now he was actually attempting to extricate himself ‘—your late father and he were both rugby players at Cambridge, Tom.’