‘I was thinking of my dear wife again, actually.’ Audley peered at the rock cut ditch. ‘That’s a good piece of work there, Tom—do you see—?’
‘Yes.’ A bit of Tom was irritated at being taught to suck eggs. But he also admired the old man’s powers of observation and his determination at least to pretend that the shared memory of the terrace didn’t frighten him.
‘Yes.’ Panin watched Audley peering into Gilbert’s good work. ‘I trust that Mrs Audley is well?’
‘Uh-huh. She’s very well… Are you sure this is “adulterine”, Tom? This ditch must have taken a hell of a lot of digging.’
Suddenly he turned back to Panin. ‘She’s well. But she’s not happy, Nikolai. And neither am I.’
‘Yes.’ Panin nodded. ‘That I can understand.’
‘You can?’ Audley waited for more.
Another nod. ‘I too am not happy, David.’
This time Audley nodded. ‘Yes. That I can understand, also.’
The lines in the Russian’s face were like dry wadis in a stony desert, in an enlarged satellite photo. ‘Someone made an attempt on your life yesterday, I have been informed.’
‘You have been informed?’ Audley repeated the words mildly. ‘It wasn’t you, then?’ he raised his hand quickly. ‘No—of course I didn’t mean that, old comrade. I never thought for a moment that it Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State was you. And Tom will bear me out there—eh, Tom?’
‘I am most relieved to hear that, David.’ The Russian gave Tom no time to bear true witness. ‘But—’
‘Because if it had been you—’ Audley cut him off ‘—then I wouldn’t be here now, would I?’ He gave Panin his Beast-smile.
‘And you, old comrade… you would have been looking for a very deep hole, somewhere east of Nizhni Novgorod. Although you would know, because Jack Butler is a stickler for etiquette—and the son of a good trade unionist too, who knows his Rule Book backwards, and his “Custom and Practice”, which covers what isn’t actually written into the book… and what maybe can’t be written into it—’ He switched to Tom, with a glint of mischief in his eye ‘—old Jack’s dad was a printer, so Jack was brought up on
“old Spanish customs”—’ The mocking eye returned to Panin ‘ —
so you would know, Nikolai, that there wouldn’t be a hole deep enough, not even in Holy Mother Russia—not even in the little monks’ cells in Zagorsk Monastery—where Jack wouldn’t find you in the end, if he thought it was your finger on the trigger, eh?’
The slow Beast-smile became almost loving. ‘Right?’
Panin’s immobility impressed Tom. ‘About Colonel Butler… I bow to your superior knowledge, David.’ Then the dry wadis twisted. ‘But about me… of course, you are also quite right: if I judged you better dead, then you would be dead. But the rest…
that is irrelevant, because we both know that we are concerned with the perceived welfare of our respective mother-countries. And we are both on “borrowed time” now, I think.’
‘For God’s sake!’ Audley interjected the blasphemy hotly. ‘Are Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State you trying to frighten me?’
‘I am stating a truth, David—’ Panin cut back at Audley. But then he inclined his head stiffly, as though uncharacteristically. ‘It’s forty years now—fortyone, for you… more than forty for me—
since we both saw too many better men killed in a good cause—
dead, and rotten, and forgotten… But we are both still here: that is all I mean.’
‘Okay!’ Audley raised his hand again. ‘Okay, okay, okay! ’ The hand came down. ‘So it wasn’t you, Nikolai! But it was someone
—’ The last vestige of the Beast-smile was long-gone ‘—and it was also someone with Basil Cole yesterday. So let’s start with him. Or not at all.’
‘As you wish.’ Panin studied Major Sadowski’s ridge again.
‘About your… experience, of yesterday… I have been told, of course, David.’
‘I should hope so!’ Audley followed the Russian’s gaze. ‘And that’s why the loquacious Major is on guard-duty, is it? Or did you just want to get his little pocket tape-recorder out of range?’
‘About Basil Cole I do not know.’ Panin came back to them. ‘That is to say… of him I know. But that was in former times. And he never worked for you—for either Colonel Butler, or for Sir Frederick before him, to my knowledge.’ The mournful sheep-face expression betrayed nothing. Only the pale brown eyes hinted at life behind the mask. ‘Also he is retired. Or would “dismissed” be the correct word?’
‘No. “Murdered” is the correct word.’ The cold matter-of-fact tone Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State of Audley’s correction somehow emphasized the anger it concealed.
‘Of that I know nothing, my friend.’
Audley winced visibly at what he clearly took to be another incorrect word—so visibly and so clearly that not even Panin could ignore the reaction.
‘You do not believe me?’ The Russian countered that banked-up rage with an asbestos-covered curiosity.
Audley sniffed. ‘I tell you what, old comrade—’ he sniffed again, and began to search for his handkerchief ‘—old comrade—’ he found the handkerchief, but waved it at Gilbert de Merville’s overgrown strongpoint above them before applying it to his nose
‘—I said this place was appropriate… you remember?’ He buried his face in the handkerchief.
Panin studied the motte for a moment, then waited until Audley had completed his noisy ‘having-a-cold’ ritual. ‘Yes. And you also said “timing”, equally mysteriously —I do remember, David.’
‘Good!’ Audley spread a hand round the bailey, proprietorially.
‘ Place: Gilbert de Merville’s cosy hideaway, Mountsorrel Castle.
And I suppose you could say Gilbert had the instincts of a Lebanese war-lord plus the military know-how of an Israeli tank-commander… Timing: mid-twelfth-century England, give or take a few years—mid-Civil War, anyway. King Stephen: played 20, won 5, lost 5, drew 10; the Empress Matilda: played 20, won 5, lost 5, drew 10.’ He shook his head. ‘Not so easy to assess Gilbert’s score, because he probably changed sides half-a-dozen times. The Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State only side he was on was Gilbert de Merville’s side—’
‘David—’
‘Uh-huh! Haven’t finished yet.’ Audley wagged a finger. ‘You may have diplomatic privilege, old comrade. But you’re on my patch now, so I get to do the talking when it suits me—right?’
Panin closed his mouth and battened down his face, reducing his vision to reptilian eye-slits. Or… feline, if not reptilian, Tom amended the image, recalling the look in the eyes of Mamusia’s vile old neutered tom (‘My other darling Tom!’), which always gazed at him with a thwarted malevolence hinting at a very different relationship if their sizes had been reversed. But then he sensed the eyes catch his own scrutiny, and the hungry glint behind them was extinguished, and the terrifying old man was giving Audley a slow, almost stately, nod.
‘Right!’ If Audley had received the same frightening signal he showed no sign of it: he seemed to be enjoying himself again.
‘Very interesting century, the twelfth, Nikolai. The Gothic cathedrals were on their launch-pads—from Chartres and St Denis, and Sens, all the way across Europe, even to the Middle East—the ideas, and the style, and the geometry… Well, as far as Poland, anyway, if not Russia… And nothing like that has lifted off into the heavens until you and the Americans lifted off, but much more disagreeably, back in the fifties.’ Sniff. ‘More technology, but less spirit—?’