For the Good of the State (12 page)

It was always hard to tell for sure on the phone, a practised liar always had the edge on the phone—he could deceive any
one except Mamusia on the phone—

The whole room was full of books: books shelved from floor to ceiling of every wall, books crammed between the shelves laterally where there was room, books in ranks and piles on the floor; there was only that one little dark gap behind the high-backed oak chair, to the right of the door, where that tall grandfather clock ticked away now in the silence like a monstrous death watch beetle, which had no books, apart from the leaded windows with their fringes of wisteria.

So … because he had already decided that Jaggard had not told him everything, or even half of it … that was a subjective conclusion—

He turned back to the desk. There were books on it which didn’t fit among their fellows—or, even more, among the pink-stained names in the topmost cuttings from a wide range of Soviet and American specialist publications:
Chebrikov
from the Politburo, and
Aliev
, from the KGB … and the geriatric
Lomako
, who was (wasn’t he?) a survivor from the prehistoric 1940s … and …
Shevardnadze—
who the hell was he? But there was that bastard
Shkiriatov
, anyway, from his own recent Syrian experience—

So this was what Audley was doing right now: trying to pick this year’s Kremlin Grand National winners—or at least fix the odds!

But then … where did Kennedy’s
Revised Latin Primer
, and Cassell’s
Little Gem Latin Dictionary
(the former old and ink-stained, the latter brand new) fit into this field? Or, right in front of him, on top of a pristine copy of yesterday’s
Izvestia
, this antique little blue Volume IV of Caesar’s
Gallic Wars
, open at that point where ‘
Caesar’s arrival encourages his men—acting on the defensive he retires—stormy weather prevents further action—large forces swell the enemy’s camp, confident of victory
.’

There still wasn’t a sound from that interesting little book-free gap, behind the chair, where there were four framed sets of campaign medals on the wall beside the grandfather clock, and darkness below.

Quibus rebus perturbatis nostris novitate pugnae tempore opportunissimo Caesar auxilium tulit—
God! He couldn’t make sense out of that! But instead he addressed the shadows behind the chair. ‘So what do you know about baronets then, Miss Audley?’

No sound.
But Jaggard had not been surprised
, and Tom was ultimately convinced by his own instinct. ‘King James I —1611?’

Infinitesimal sound, less than the scuffle of an October field-mouse refugeeing in the house. For the defence of Ulster—?‘

‘That’s right.’ Tom was torn between his memories of Caesar, and more recent ones of Arkadi Shkiriatov, and the presence of Miss Audley, never mind Jaggard and King James I. ‘To raise money for the defence of Ulster in 1611—go on!’

‘People who had enough money had to become baronets. And they had to pay for thirty soldiers, at eight pence a day, for three years.’ The voice strengthened. ‘But Scottish baronets were different. They paid their money for the colonization of Nova Scotia. You aren’t Scottish, though.’

‘No.’ So Jaggard must have a damn good idea what Panin wanted, even if he didn’t know for sure. ‘Tell me more?’

‘Do people often shoot at you?’

That
was the point: if it wasn’t Panin (and, even apart from that MAD sanction of Audley’s, Panin would hardly have the man he wanted to meet shot before the meeting) then someone else knew about it, and had done it. ‘Does your father often do your Latin prep for you?’ He turned towards the chair.

‘No.’ The pale little face barely topped the chair-back. ‘Only when I’m really stuck.’ She blinked behind her glasses. ‘Do you shoot people?’

That was also a point, thought Tom. Terrorist groups the world over, from his own Mediterranean to that same Ulster which had forced a title on the original Sir Thomas Arkenshaw … terrorist groups shot people without a second thought. But the agencies of the First Division players, the sovereign states, only resorted to violence when they were really stuck—that was also very much the point.

‘No.’ It wasn’t funny, but he must smile at her. ‘Only when I’m really stuck, anyway.’ But Audley would have worked all this out much more quickly. ‘I think you ought to go and get your toothbrush too, oughtn’t you?’

‘Mother will do that. What I want to know is—’ She stopped as he raised his hand ‘—what—?’

‘I also think she’ll be looking for you, Miss Audley.’
What I want to know
, thought Tom,
is what you meant by ‘Tripoli’. But I don’t think this is the moment for asking
! ‘And then she may remember where she last saw you—?’

The little hand, with its long thin fingers, covered the braced teeth in sudden consternation. At this stage, thought Tom professionally, it was a toss-up whether she’d flower into the slender beauty of her mother or merely end up thin and plain. But either way she would be an interesting young woman one day, for the young man who could match her spirit.

‘Golly—you’re right!’ She ducked out from behind the chair, but then halted in the doorway, just as her father had done, but with her chin up, like her mother. ‘You will look after Father, won’t you?’

What Jaggard had ordered, and what he had almost unthinkingly volunteered to obey in order to get rid of this child’s mother, came home to him again. ‘I’ll do my best. But I rather think he’s quite capable of looking after himself, you know.’ He grinned at her reassuringly.

But she was totally unreassured. ‘No, he’s not,’ She shook her head almost angrily. ‘That’s what everyone thinks—they think he’s
so
clever, and so does he. But he isn’t at all—he really isn’t.’

‘He isn’t—?’ Tom was totally taken aback.

‘Oh—he
knows
a lot—’ She caught his thought in midair ‘—he knows everything about everything—’ She had to be quoting someone, thought Tom; and most likely it was her mother ‘—but when he wires up a plug he fuses everything, and when he cuts anything he usually cuts himself too—honestly, he does.’

Definitely, this was Faith Audley overheard; and this child had already proved she was good at overhearing; and yet … in a curious way all this echoed what Harvey had said about Research and Development, too: its unmatched intellectual performance was seldom matched by its performance in the field, whenever it strayed out of its back room.

‘He does need looking after, Sir Thomas.’ The little serious face matched her earnestness. ‘So you
will
look after him, won’t you?
Won’t you
?’

He had to get rid of her, for his own peace of mind. But only one answer could do that. ‘Yes. I will look after him.’

She gave him one dreadful signed-and-sealed nod, and then vanished. But then, just as he was starting to heave a sigh of something less than pure relief, her face appeared again, suspended halfway up the edge of the door.

‘I bet you don’t miss!’

Mm? ‘Miss … ? Miss Audley—?’

‘When
you
shoot at anyone—you don’t miss!’

Nothing less than a categorical answer was again required. So he turned his hand into a pistol. ‘Never, Miss Audley.’ He pointed the pistol-finger at her, knowing that he mustn’t smile. But that wasn’t difficult because it wasn’t a smiling matter—indeed, it was doubly not so, he thought grimly, because he would need to carry a real gun now, just like in Beirut. And there had been nothing remotely funny about that. ‘Never. So off you go then.’ This time he wanted to smile, but couldn’t. The Special Branch unit would have a couple of revolvers, most likely those ‘safe’ Smith and Wessons they favoured but he didn’t like: he could certainly pull enough rank to get one of those. But meanwhile she was still staring at him fixedly through her pebble spectacles. ‘Otherwise your mother
will
miss you, Miss Audley. And I don’t think that would be healthy for either of us.’

As he sighted his finger on her she vanished, and a moment later he heard her whistling in the passage with all the preparatory innocence of an old lady who knew just how to answer the question ‘Where have you been?’ with a calculated half-truth. And that would be a Greek-meets-Greek situation, if ever there was one—

But he mustn’t waste his thoughts on women and children—even
Audley
women and children (who both agreed that their man couldn’t look after himself!)—

He was looking at his pistol-hand, which was still pointing at the half-open door, out of which that shrill, tuneless whistling still issued, far off now—

He turned back to the desk, to the red phone among the cuttings from
Soviet Review
and
Izvestia
and É
tudes Russes
, and
Caesar’s Gallic War
.

What was that tune? It ought to be from
Anna and the King of Siam—

He needed a hand-gun. And with all the havering that request would occasion he ought to go and ask for it now. But—

What it ought to be was ‘
Whenever I feel afraid/I hold my head erect—And whistle a happy tune/So no one will suspect/I’m afraid—
’ But it wasn’t—

But he wanted to phone Jaggard again, and ask him what the bloody hell was actually happening.

But it sounded curiously like the proud battle hymn of the United States Marines—

But Jaggard already hadn’t admitted that he had any idea what Panin wanted, so he was unlikely to admit more than that now. And, for that matter, Audley hadn’t even bothered to ask that same obvious question. So … either he had guessed correctly that Sir Thomas Arkenshaw was not privy to its answer … or he already knew that answer, and therefore didn’t need to ask the question—?

The sound faded into the otherwise-silence of the crazy old house, with its newly-broken window. But it surely had been that old US marine threat: ‘
From the halls of Montezuma/To the shores of Tripoli/We will fight our country’s battles/By the land or by the sea—
’

The whole Audley family was getting its toothbrushes, and Tom Arkenshaw needed a gun—that was the long-and-short of it, he thought.

But …
Tripoli
, again?

He didn’t like guns. The theory with guns was that they settled all arguments finally, of kings and cowboys as well as terrorists. But that was as facile as ‘
the best things in life are free
’, when Willy (and his best suit, which had not been tailored to suit a Smith and Wesson five-shot hammerless) certainly didn’t come without a credit-card or a cheque-book—
guns
, experience warned him, were never the end of things, but only the beginning of other things, more complicated and embarrassing first, and more unending afterwards.

But, in spite of all of that, he still needed a gun—

Finally, he got the show on the road, more or less.

There were cases in the hall, with Mrs Audley and Miss Audley beside them, and a plainclothes man beside them.

The front door was open, and he could see Audley himself in the porch, talking to one of the drivers, who had an Ordnance Survey map in his hand.

‘Not outside, sir—if you don’t mind,’ said the plain-clothes man as Tom gestured to Mrs Audley, after he had just failed to stop her husband.

Tom dearly wanted to hear what Audley was saying, but there were limits to what he could achieve, with another Special Branch man — the sergeant, no less — striding towards him now.

‘Mrs Audley—’ He had promised her to keep his eye on her husband, and he couldn’t escape her now.

‘Sir Thomas.’ Unlike her daughter, she wasn’t whistling. But she was still chin-up. ‘I thank you, for all your help.’

The sergeant coughed politely, and offered him a completely-holstered Smith and Wesson, with the good grace to be embarrassed in front of Audley’s family.

‘Thank you, Sergeant.’ What made it worse was that he would have to put the damn thing on here and now—
what the devil was Audley doing, pointing to the map, when he didn’t even know where he was going? —
because the other SB certainly wouldn’t let him outside carrying it like a pound of sausages.

‘Let me hold your coat, Sir Thomas,’ said Faith Audley.

‘And I’ll hold the other—’ Cathy Audley seized the weapon and its harness before anyone could stop her while Tom himself was trying to catch what Audley was saying. So all he could do was to give his coat to the wife and recover ‘the other’ as quickly as he could, but much too late for his peace of mind.

‘Ah!’ Audley returned to them, eyeing him critically as he put his coat on again. ‘ “Arma virumque cano”—“forced by fate, and haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate” … But I fear it would break your tailor’s heart—it doesn’t sit at all well under that good worsted, Tom. Makes you look like a soldier from Chicago, rather than a soldier of the Queen—what d’you think, love?’

‘I think you’re being your usual self, David,’

‘There now!’ Audley plainly couldn’t see that his attempt to lighten the occasion was only making it worse. ‘All the sympathy she can spare from herself, she freely gives to you, Tom. Which is probably not a lot.’

The sergeant coughed again. ‘If you would care to sign for the … equipment, Sir Thomas. And we would like it back when you’ve finished with it, if you don’t mind.’

‘Well, love … ’ Audley drew a deep breath ‘ … after we’ve made ourselves scarce the sergeant here will take you both to your mother’s. And he’ll leave a man with you, just for form’s sake … And he’ll also leave someone here too, just to mind the silver—you do know how the burglar alarm works, don’t you, Sergeant?’

‘Yes, Dr Audley.’ The sergeant recovered his requisition form.

‘Thank you.’ The weight of The Thing reminded Tom how much he hated guns. But it would never do to admit that he didn’t want to start with it, never mind finish. But what he wanted to do most of all was to get at the police driver whom Audley had briefed. ‘Mrs Audley—’