He might as well feed her something, to take back to her boss.
And, after he’d let it slip, the CIA would pick up Basil Cole’s accident soon enough, anyway. ‘He’s also lost an old colleague, from yesterday morning.’ The memory of Audley’s anger came back to him. ‘So it’s personal, as well as professional. I think he wants blood for blood now.’
The words seemed to push her back into the pillows of the great bed, making her look smaller and, for the first time, a little frightened. For an instant, in spite of himself, he almost believed what he wanted to believe, even though he knew she wanted him to believe it too: that she wasn’t really Company talent, but just a cypher clerk whose private life had come in useful to her bosses.
But then his credulity snapped, and he grinned at her. ‘So… you see, I wasn’t altogether guessing when I said that Professor Nikolai Andrievich Panin was in trouble, Willy darling. Because your boss, Colonel Sheldon—he’s damn right about David Audley: he may be an old man, but he’s a tough old bastard. And he’s in a nasty frame of mind right now, I rather think—a nasty revengeful frame of mind. And not just because some foolish fellow took the liberty of shooting at him in his own home. And he doesn’t regard that as cricket… But some other foolish fellow has terminated someone he values.’ He couldn’t hold the grin. ‘So if this was your home-state, back in the old days, you’d be watching the smoke-signals in the hills, and hearing the war-drums in the distance. Because these are his ancestral hunting-grounds, Willy. So maybe you should be giving Colonel Sheldon’s advice to Comrade Professor Panin, not Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State to me.’
‘Uh-huh?’ She had got her cool back, and she was almost his old lost Willy again. ‘But you haven’t talked to him yet—?’ She busied herself suddenly with plumping up the pillows alongside her, shifting from her almost-central position.
‘The Comrade-Professor?’ In another moment she was going to invite him in beside her. But he wasn’t ready for that: from beside her, he wouldn’t be able to see her full face—her beautiful, golden-freckled, treacherous face. And the rest of her would play hell with his concentration, too. ‘Hell—you know we haven’t!’ (An incongruous recollection of the motorway accident scene returned, when he had wanted to pull rank over the police, to get ahead, and Audley had rejected the idea out-of-hand: ‘ But we’ll be here an hour, David!’—‘So I get another hour’s sleep, then. Let the bugger sweat, wondering what we’re up to. I’m not at his beck-and-call, keeping unilateral engagements, anyway, damn it all!’) ‘I’ll phone ahead, to say we’ll be late.’ (That had been when Audley had animated himself for a moment: ‘Tell them I want two rounds of smoked salmon sandwiches, cut thin but with the crusts included…
and a bottle of good White Burgundy (they won’t have a decent Graves, they never do) … And I shall want a pudding—something with chocolate—milk chocolate… and their best Sauternes or Barsac, on ice—on ice, mind you, not in the bloody fridge: tell them that, Tom.’)
‘But he left a note—?’
And I’ll bet you’ve read it, too! ‘Yes.’ (That neat, meticulous, grammatical note, traced by a hand accustomed to Cyrillic, if not Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State classical Greek, he had thought.) ‘He said that he’d had a long day, with the flight and all the boring formalities, and the long drive.’ (And meticulously formal, too: ‘My dear Doctor Audley…“
and ’this long journey which we share…‘ down to ’With respect and sincerity‘—huh!—before that elaborate signature.) ’He wants to meet us tomorrow, somewhere in the open, but somewhere safe, Willy.‘
She pretended to chew on that, as though it was news to her.
Jezebel! She wanted to ask him where, but that was too obvious even for her.
But, instead of answering straight away, she reached across and twitched open the covers on what had to be his team’s side of the rugger pitch. ‘Come inside, Tom.’
He mustn’t be that easy. ‘You said he was in trouble—“big trouble”. What sort of trouble?’ He ignored the unbeatable offer, as though he hadn’t heard it. ‘Bigger trouble than Audley is—?’
‘Yes.’ This time she pretended that she was recalling what had been said to her—a mere cypher clerk suddenly briefed beyond her competence, on matters which she’d never deciphered or enciphered. “They say he’s out of favour, in Moscow. They said he was almost ready for the scrap-heap, Tom. They were surprised he’d even been let out, to talk to your Dr Audley.‘
Was that what his Dr Audley had hinted at? But he had said more than that. And she was fishing now—and she was bloody good at it.
So he could fish back, equally innocently. ‘Do they think he’s open to offers?’
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘No.’ She shook her head so quickly that a golden tendril flopped down, across the rise of one breast. ‘Colonel Sheldon said that was why he was let out—because he never would defect, he said.’
So Colonel Sheldon agreed with his old pal, David Audley. ‘So what exactly does he want with David Audley, Willy?’
‘We don’t know, exactly.’ She smoothed down his half of the pitch. ‘But they gave me three names, to tell you—to tell Dr Audley.’
Maybe not-so-good. Because, if they’d discussed the possibility of Panin’s defection in front of her, they would have talked about a lot more than that. But he must let that pass, for the time being.
‘What names, Willy?’
She took a remembering breath. ‘Zarubin, Gennadiy Ivanovich—’
She might just as,well have said Smith, Peter John, with a couple of hundred million to choose from. But maybe Audley would know better. ‘Yes?’
‘Marchuk, Leonid—Leonid—’ The rest of Marchuk, Leonid got away from her for a moment ‘—Leonid Nikitich Marchuk.’
Another bloody Peter John Smith. ‘Marchuk. Yes—?’
‘Pietruszka. Adam Pietruszka—’ she breathed out her relief at remembering the alien name ‘—Adam Pietruszka.’
Tom got up, and set himself to walk round the end of the bed. The curtains in the big window overlooking the road, through which he had seen that tell-tale sliver of light, were properly drawn now, he noted.
‘Marchuk?’ Pietruszka! ‘Pietruszka? Zarubin?’
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘Colonel Sheldon said he’d know the names.’ She spoke in a small voice, diffidently, as though she knew that her Anglo-Saxon-American accent left something to be desired when she tried to wrap it round Slavonic names.
He came back to her at last, round the last right-turn. Pietruszka!
Big smile. ‘Then I’m sure he will.’ Pietruszka, for Christ’s sake!
Pietruszka—Piotrowski—Wolski—Chmielewski—Pekala!
But if she was expecting him to react to that last name, then she was going to be disappointed. Because instead he sank into the bed, and took her into his arms, enfolding her softness even as that treacherous fragrance also enfolded him, mixed with her own unique Willy-smell, unforgettable and unforgotten, warm-and-female; and hated her and himself as he did so, in a mutual betrayal.