For the Good of the State dda-16, page 32
part #16 of Dr David Audley Series
Audley reappeared triumphantly from the car, brandishing the umbrella. ‘I knew it was there… But I am ready, dear boy. And never more so than now.’ He stepped away from the car. ‘Come on, then.’
Tom watched him sniff the wind, and despaired. “That’s only one reason.‘
‘No, it isn’t.’ As it wasn’t actually raining the old man busied himself with furling the umbrella neatly, as though for a stroll up Whitehall. That is the other reason, exactly: if I let the bastards frighten me now, I’ll never walk free again—don’t you see?‘ He stabbed the umbrella decisively into the mud at his feet, looking at Tom with a quite uncharacteristically pleading look. ’Don’t you see?‘
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Tom saw—and saw suddenly to the uttermost part, which he had never glimpsed so clearly before. But he couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘If they want me dead, then I am dead,’ said Audley disarmingly.
‘But if they don’t… and I don’t go and find out what they do want now… then I shall have to move house, and take all sorts of quite demoralizing precautions—at least, until Jack Butler can read the riot act to them… And I’m damned if I’m going to put Jack to that sort of trouble.’ Another grin. ‘And I’m also damned if I’m going to let them make me a coward-dying-many-times-before-his-death, too! I’m damned if I’m going to let Panin do that to me, in fact.’
The grin vanished utterly. ‘So let’s go and find out what the old devil’s really got up to then, Tom—right?’
So they walked.
Their walking was unreal, but on one level of experience its unreality was no new experience for Tom: the routine precautions he had superintended in the past, even in nominally peaceful parts of the Middle East, had always been fraught with similar tension; and in the Lebanon, where each side was against itself, as well as the middle and the mirror-image extremes, unreality was the only reality within the killing-zone.
But what was different here, and more unnerving, was the far greater unreality of a landscape in which only nature and the elements were violent, with no eyeless ruins and twisted wreckage, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State but only a coastline beaten by the fierce winter gales and the unconquerable sea itself the same natural path along which Major-General Gennadiy Zarubin’s father just might have walked, from Brentiscombe Point to Lynmouth long ago, before he had walked all the way from the Caspian Sea to Moscow long ago, long ago, long ago!
‘It’s amazing how the wind hits you, and then misses you, isn’t it!’
Audley puffed slightly, from the steepness of the path, as they completed the first zig-zag up the hillside. ‘I wonder whether he really did.’
‘Who—’ Puffed or not, the old man was always difficult to keep up with ‘ — who did? And did what?’
‘But it’s quite blown my cold away.’ Audley stopped for a moment, and drew the salt-sea wind into his lungs.
‘The wind?’ And, as always, Audley was hard to keep up with on another level. ‘Who did what?’
‘Zarubin pere.’ Audley nodded at the wrinkled, white-waved water, which was already far below them. ‘God help sailors on a day like this! Whether he was a simple sailor-lad, o’ertaken by great events—a great war and a great revolution, to name but two—
and cast ashore in a far foreign land… And you can’t get much further or more foreign than the Caspian, at the mouth of the Volga.’ He cocked an eye at Tom. ‘What a story—if it’s true!’
‘Yes.’ This time he managed to start walking alongside the old man, trying to match stride for stride. ‘I was thinking the same Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State thing. If it’s true.’
‘Uh-huh. It would be nice to think it was, somehow.’ Audley nodded as he walked. ‘Pity that we’ll never know now.’
‘We’ll never know?’ Tom cocked his own eye at the skyline above them. The steep hillside wore a combat jacket of browns and greens, the russet of last year’s bracken mixed with the winter-worn dark gorse and lighter grass and broken by rocky outcrops.
‘Won’t we?’
‘Panin’s a careful man. If it wasn’t true he’d make it so, for our benefit, just in case. He’s a man who likes to mix certainty with risk, I think—or the other way round.’
‘But why?’ Far down below, on the green floor of the combe, he could see two tiny figures in red anoraks—children at this height, but they might easily be adults—circling two toy black-and-white cows in the meadow; while above him the skyline and the whole landscape was empty. But in this well-camouflaged country the only certainty was risk, was all he knew. ‘Why, David?’
Audley said nothing for a dozen yards or more, as they followed the path across the hillside, over a stone culvert through which a stream splashed, noisy but invisible under the bracken. ‘Who knows? If this is really Zarubin’s country, then Panin must have thanked his lucky stars, because he’d know I couldn’t resist such a tale, never mind the bait. And if it isn’t… well, the same pretty much applies, whichever way the game’s played: I did the dirty on him, once upon a time. So it’s only history repeating itself, with a few cosmetic variations. He knows — and he also knows that I know. And so on, ad infinitum— it’s no use trying to make sense of Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State it: it’s only like peeling a large Spanish onion, which makes me weep, but never makes me sad.’ He half-turned towards Tom in mid-stride, and patted himself vaguely in the midriff. ‘All we can do is keep our powder dry, like Jack Butler always says… and hope for the best, eh?’
Tom remembered two uncomfortable things almost simultaneously, and was further reminded of both of them by the additional burn-marks which Audley’s flapping raincoat revealed during the half-turn: the dead Pole’s little pistol, which Audley had palmed as ‘evidence’, would be about as much use in these conditions as a peashooter (even supposing the old man could still point it in the right direction, and not shoot himself in the foot); and, in these same conditions, his own Police Smith and Wesson, in his own hand and with five rounds remaining, provided only marginally more protection, if that.
‘Yes.’ He grinned foolishly at Audley. There was no point in voicing his professional doubts now. All he could do was hope for that best of Audley’s, while the stretch of path ahead of them was still empty. (Only Mad Dogs and Englishmen, and Visiting KGB
Generals, went out in such wind-and-rain.) And the gorse-broken skyline was still equally empty above them. ‘You’re right, David.’
All the same, he scanned their surroundings even more carefully—
only to discover instantly that the zag of the zig-zag behind them was no longer empty, however innocent: there was a head-scarfed woman there, with a child hidden in a push-chair, accompanied by a youth encased in a green anorak carrying an enormous red-and-yellow kite—clutching it with evident care, and obvious difficulty, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State since it was doing its best to hang-glide him into space already from the less-windy stretch of the path below.
‘What’s the matter, Tom?’ inquired Audley.
‘Nothing.’ If the bloody child soared into the skyline under his bloody kite, then that would have to be a problem for his idiot mother. All Sir Thomas Arkenshaw and Dr David Audley needed to do was to get round this last bit of pathway, in order not to be able to witness the tragedy, with the wind taking care of the mother’s anguished cries.
‘What?’ Audley was oblivious of women and children and kites.
‘Nothing.’ Tom erased them too. ‘I was going to say… you don’t really think Panin’s up to more violence, surely?’
‘Hah!’ Audley breathed in gratefully. ‘No, I don’t, Tom.’ He supported this pronouncement with another huge breath, cold-free, taken into the teeth of the wind. ‘Instinct tells me not. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here, to be honest.’ Another huge breath. ‘Because age has made a coward of me.’
‘What?’ Partly it was because the wind made the old man almost inaudible. But also Tom couldn’t resist taking another look at the Mad Englishwoman and her family. (And she was trying to button up the protective hood of the baby’s push-chair now, while the Awful Child was wrestling with his kite.)
‘What I’m depending on—’ Audley almost shouted the words ‘—
is that Panin will know that Jack Butler will hold him responsible if anything unpleasant happens to me, no matter how it seems. Just as
—’ The wind gusted strongly, carrying away the rest of his words.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State And if anything unpleasant happens to us? Tom wondered momentarily, although he already knew the answer to his own fate: the doom of bodyguards down the ages, long before King Harold’s household thegns had died to a man round his body, was part of the contract of service. Even if Willy Groot shed a tear for him she would still reckon he’d only got what he asked for in his line of work.
Somehow Audley had got ahead of him again. ‘What—?’
The old man stopped, and stared around for a second, and then turned. ‘I said “Just as Jack will hold me responsible for whatever happens otherwise”, Tom.’ He gave Tom a hard look. ‘And Henry Jaggard will hold you responsible also, eh?’
The wind dropped, suddenly and freakishly, so that Audley’s final shout came out unnaturally loudly, us though to emphasize what had been in the back of Tom’s mind ever since he had come to his decision. Then, even more suddenly, its full force hit him again at the corner of the path where it reached the coast at last, almost stopping him in his tracks.
‘Yes—’ Not so much the wind as the whole glorious panorama of the North Devon coastline took his breath away, with headland after headland plunging uncompromisingly into the sea, with the promise of deepwater directly beneath them: an indomitable coast against which the wind and the waves beat endlessly but in vain.
But Audley was still staring at him, partly blocking his view of the path along this coast and finally concentrating his mind at the same time. ‘I shall resign, of course,’ he said.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘Yes?’ Disappointingly, the big man accepted this shock-horror revelation with only mild interest. ‘Why?’
It was on the tip of Tom’s tongue to tell the truth, that he was fed up with the accumulated risk of being an accidental and secondary target while trying unsuccessfully to make obstinate old buggers like Audley himself take the most basic precautions. But then he saw that it wasn’t quite the real truth.
‘I can’t work for a man I’ve betrayed.’ He liked the harshness in his own voice. ‘I should have quit an hour ago, and left you to get on with your damn “Nikolai” by yourself. But I promised your daughter, in a moment of weakness, that I’d watch over you, David.’ Looking at Audley now was like looking at a coin with hate on one side, and love on the other, when the coin was balanced so that he could see neither side. ‘I’m keeping faith with her now—against my better judgement.’
‘Ah!’ Still only mild interest. ‘The old thankless task! Believe me, boy—I do understand. Because I’ve been there too, myself.’ The old Beast-smile returned, moistened now by the fine mist of rain which was stinging Tom’s own cheek, hard-driven by the wind.
‘So just answer me this one question, then: who would you betray—
your country or your friend?’
As well as irritation bordering on anger, Tom felt the rain driving cold into his exposed eye. ‘That’s a ridiculous question, David. It’s bad enough to have to risk my neck for you. But I don’t have to put up with humbug as well.’
‘No.’ The smile twisted downwards. ‘But just this once—just this last time… can’t you humour your dear mother’s old friend?’ The Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State smile vanished. ‘And then no more questions.’
That Mamusia’s old flame played dirty right to the last question was absurdly comforting, somehow: it made the outcome of that old, long-resolved contest between Audley and Father, in which Father would always have played a straight bat (just like William Marshall in Ranulf of Chester’s day) quite astonishing. But it also confirmed every loving thing he had ever thought about Father in that same instant.
‘All right.’ He wished Audley would get out of the way, so that he could see the path ahead; but this answer must clear that obstacle too, anyway. ‘Since this is my country it’s no question. But if it was Poland… that might be more difficult. But in this country… if my so called “friend” was British, then he would have already betrayed me, and all my other friends, so he’d be a traitor, and
“betrayal” doesn’t describe my reaction to that, when I blow the whistle on him. Or, if he’s a foreigner… then he’s a false friend and an enemy—I might still honour him then, but “betrayal” still doesn ’t apply, just the same, when I get him in my sights—‘ In spite of all the wind (or perhaps because of it), a sudden tingle in his nose made him sneeze. ’Is that what you want? “My country”—
right… before my “friend”— wrong? ‘
Audley shook his head. ‘It was just a question.’ He stepped aside, leaning into the wind, which flapped his bullet-ridden raincoat around his knees, to reveal the path behind him as well as the bullet-holes. ‘I already had my money on the answer. And there’s a place for you in R & D when you want it, is my answer to that, Tom.’
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State The cleared path had a foreground, and a middleground, and a background, snaking round the next headland. But there was only the middleground, really. Because there, where the path cut into a cascade of dead bracken and heather and gorse which fell from the skyline above down into the invisible sea far below, three men were waiting for them.
Three—?
Instantly, he sorted them out: saw, but didn’t count, Nikolai Andrievich Panin, muffled against the wind and dark-overcoated still; saw, but dismissed, his little Major, who was better-protected in a short rainproof jacket like the Barbour which Willy had been wearing, wherever Willy might be, but somewhere mercifully safe now; and saw, and only saw, the third and last and first figure most of all, raincoated like Audley.
‘You watch Sadowski, Tom.’ Audley shouted his whisper at close quarters. ‘I don’t trust Panin… But Sadowski is a bloody hit-man!
Remember?’ He touched Tom’s arm, propelling him forward.
‘Remember?’
‘Yes.’ Tom let himself be propelled on to the foreground of the path, where a trickle of water from the hillside above had reduced the path to a morass churned up by footprints and hoofprints; although all he could really concentrate on as he squelched forward was that first figure.
The mud gave way and slid treacherously underfoot, but he could still only see Major-General Gennadiy Zarubin standing four-square on the path, in what might have been his father’s country, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State and his grandfather’s, before the two world wars had demoted and promoted his line: another tall, raincoated figure, almost as broad-shouldered as Audley himself, waiting now to make them that offer which Audley had chosen not to refuse, with the headlands behind him already fading into the rain-squall which was sweeping into them, and over them, out of the infinite greyness of sea-and-sky which filled half their world.
He lifted his hand, to keep the driving rain off his cheek and out of his ear, and also so that he might hear what Audley might say, as the gap between them decreased step by step; and, at the same time, reached across his chest and felt the weight and shape of the Smith and Wesson; and finally glanced up to scan the gorse-broken skyline above them.
Odd that there was still a scatter of yellow flowers on this sea-blown wuzzy, when there hadn’t been a single flower on the gorse at Mountsorrel: and some of these were winter-browned at the edges (he saw each complex flower with a photographic clarity which surprised him); but others were blooming freshly, defying wind, and winter equally, against all the odds, while all the lower ground-hugging heather flowers were long-dead and colourless—
‘He’s a big bugger, isn’t he!’ Audley’s words, when they came, were utterly inconsequential. ‘I wouldn’t like to meet him in a dark alley in Berlin—either side of the Wall!’
Almost as big as you are—or maybe even bigger! The thought twisted through Tom’s brain, challenging him to wonder what Audley himself had been like in his own dark alleys, years ago, in the dark ages.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘He doesn’t even look like a Russian.’ Audley hissed his final useless judgement into Tom’s protected landward ear in the instant that he quickened and lengthened his stride across the last few yards, to the man himself, thrusting out his hand in a classic gesture of false friendship. ‘ General Zarubin! Good morning to you. ’
A shaft of light—it wasn’t true sunlight, but it was something more than the murk which had shrouded them so far—lightened the two big men as they met, as Zarubin matched Audley with his own hand: it was a strange unnatural light, like the light of Limbo, between Heaven and Hell—
‘ Dr Audley—’
Time accelerated and slowed down, spiked on now and on for ever afterwards simultaneously, as the two meat-plate hands reached out towards each other, with an empty yard separating them which would never be bridged as the Major-General seemed to throw himself forward, on to hands and knees, to stare through Audley with blank astonishment in the same now-and-never instant that the bright red blossomed from his white shirt on each side of his tartan tie, and the blood gushed out of his mouth like vomit—
Tom hit Audley with his shoulder, every ounce of his weight spinning the big man sideways against the overhang of the hillside, above the path, even before General Zarubin’s dead body finally subsided into the mud.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
