What twisted his heart now, as the silk slid up his legs, was that of all the possibles, Willy Groot (the former occupant of the stranger on the rugger pitch) would have resisted Mamusia best, both as a wife and a mother. But that was water under the bridge, now and for ever. ’As a matter of fact, I wondered whether it was your Cadillac which had piled up.‘ The memory of Mamusia’s ambitions and his own was swallowed up in the more recent and far more horrific image of obscenely mangled metal, and the false fairyland of flashing blue and red lights, as the fluorescent-coated policemen had at last flagged him from one clogged motorway lane to another with angry urgency on the edge of the disaster area.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
’Because you came by me like a bat out of hell.‘ The coincidence of the Cadillac vanished as he thought about it: there was only one road westwards, so they had both taken it, quite naturally; the only questionable unresolved coincidence was Willy Groot’s relationship with Tom Arkenshaw, which now must be questioned and resolved. ’If that was your Cadillac, Miss Groot, I take it?‘
No answer. So he surveyed himself in the full-length Princess Diana bridal mirror in the emptiness of her silence—
Yes… well, in Mamusia’s custom-built pyjamas, at least he looked like he was taking the bridegroom’s role, if not Hamlet’s father’s—
‘Such was the very armour he put on—’
It was like Peter Beckett had said in Lebanon, that last time: everyone knew the big Hamlet speeches, but the part most people knew, and the lines, were those of Horatio—
‘So frown’d he once, when, in angry parle, He smote the sledded Polack on the ice—’
‘It probably was.’ Her voice came to him almost in a whisper from the bedroom. ‘We had a Marine captain driving us, from the embassy guards, who said he’d driven in the Indianapolis race.’
At least it hadn’t been that bloody USN fellow! thought Tom. Not Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State that this poor frowning Anglo-Polack needed to worry about that now.
‘He did drive rather fast,’ the small voice concluded.
Tom dismissed himself from the mirror. Whichever self that was, it didn’t matter—it didn’t matter any more than who had got her here, Navy man or Marine, one jump or two ahead of him. Why she was here, and to what CIA end, was all that mattered. And it wasn’t one of Mamusia’s ‘moments of delicacy’ now, either.
He switched off the dressing-room light and re-entered the bedroom, squaring his shoulders in preparation for what had to be done.
She had moved, but only slightly, to face him from her pillows.
The glossy magazine had disappeared, but the disgusting little pistol still lay where she’d thrown it. And now she was biting her lip, as though readying herself mentally for that freebie, with which they’d each insulted the other. And she also looked much smaller, and heart-rendingly less confident, than the tough Wilhemina Groot he’d left this morning on Ranulf’s defences.
‘Okay, then.’ The old Tom would have been into that inviting bed faster than light. But Tom the Stranger had other fish to fry first, and merely sat on the end of it. ‘So why was I one-hundred-percent wrong, Willy?’ Almost to his surprise, he discovered that Tom the Stranger wasn’t stupid.
She stopped biting her lip, but he could see that she hadn’t expected him to go back to an answer he’d already scornfully rejected: she looked as though she’d expected to get raped while Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State thinking of America, and George Washington, and the Statue of Liberty, and whatever else good little patriotic American girls thought of when Queen Victoria had been thinking of England in the same missionary position. So now it required one hell of an effort to adjust her thoughts to a more demanding intellectual challenge, as opposed to the less demanding physical one for which she’d arranged herself.
Or, alternatively, she was damn good, he reminded himself quickly.
Finally (or maybe craftily), she seemed to come to a decision.
‘David Audley, Tom—’
‘David Audley—yes?’ Better to assume that she was damn good.
‘David Longsdon Audley, CBE, Ph.D, MA—’ He parroted Harvey’s snide encapsulation of the old man’s official career ‘—
sometime Second Lieutenant, temporary Captain, 2nd West Sussex Dragoons, latterly attached Intelligence Corps… Rylands College, Cambridge… the King’s College, Oxford… Civil Servant, Department of General Research and Development, 1957 to date.’
The rest had been out of Who’s Who, Harvey had admitted, including parentage, and publications and hobbies; but he couldn’t remember it all now. ‘David Audley—right?’
‘He’s here, with you, Tom—’
‘You’re damn right he’s here!’ Need and desire coincided: he had hit back and he wanted to. ‘But how, as a matter of academic interest, did you get here—into my bed?’
She squirmed slightly against her pillows, and that shoulder-strap slipped again. ‘I had help, Tom—’
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘ Had—?’ It was hard to keep his mind on the job: the former Willy had been a wonderful companion, naked and unashamed; but this one, in courtesan’s frills and ashamed, was something else. ‘Or have?’
She swallowed. ‘He’s in big trouble, Tom.’
‘ He’s in big trouble?’ Tom tore himself away from that alabaster curve. Tor Christ’s sake, Miss Groot—I think we’re all in big trouble, aren’t we?‘ The whole unacceptable truth opened up before him. ’Someone took a shot at David this afternoon—or yesterday afternoon, as it is now… And there’s a man dead now—
have you heard about him, Miss Groot, eh?‘
‘Tom—’ She tried to sit up, with what would have been delectable consequences in another world, but not now.
‘So I’m in trouble too, Miss Groot.’ He hated her and himself equally. ‘And you are in trouble, right now… And, I shouldn’t wonder, Comrade Professor Nikolai Andrievich Panin, in Room Five in the annexe at the back— he’s also in trouble, I shouldn’t wonder, eh?’ On balance, even while trying to allow that she was a two-faced bitch, he felt himself weaken. So he hardened himself against his weakness. ‘But I’m sure you know all about that. So what’s new, then?’
She ran her hand nervously over the flowered sheet. And he had seen that same hand, mud-encrusted, hold his measuring rod only this morning. But now it was clean and treacherous, with pearly nails on long fingers. And he still had his freebie to come.
The thought of that brutalized him. ‘Just who the hell are you Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State working for—tell me that’?‘
The hand grasped the sheet. ‘Who the hell do you think I’m working for—damn it! And damn you, Tom Arkenshaw!’
That was more like her! ‘You were an embassy secretary in Grosvenor Square when I last knew you, Miss Groot.’
She drew a deep breath, and drew herself up as she did so, regardless of what all that did to what was on view. ‘Tom… you call me Miss Groot just once more—just one more time… and you can all go screw yourselves—you, and Dr Audley, and Professor Panin— and Colonel Sheldon, too! ’
Well, that was nailing the Old Glory to her mast, and no mistake, thought Tom. There had been a routine flimsy waiting for him on the subject of that certain Colonel Sheldon— Sheldon, Mosby Robert, Colonel USAF (ret)— just a few weeks back. So as befitted a blue-blooded All-American CIA girl, Miss Wilhemina Groot was starting her name-dropping at the top.