‘Panin hasn’t left us any time, David. I’m not sure that I like that.’
‘Hmm… But then he wants to keep everything low key and strictly non-violent…’ Audley moved his head in a curious circular motion, which was neither a shake nor a nod. ‘And in his state of professional health that has a certain logic to it. Because he can no more afford a scandal than I can… not to put too fine a point on the situation.’ Audley wiped his nose thoughtfully.
‘Yes.’ Tom hid behind unwilling acceptance of the old man’s own logic while actually noting that for the first time Audley had conceded the truth of what everyone else had been saying: that he himself was no longer invulnerable. But then he also saw the flaw in the logic. ‘But yesterday wasn’t non-violent, was it?’ And…
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State better to be brutally explicit. ‘Your bullet and Basil Cole weren’t low key, David.’
‘Hmm… My bullet certainly wasn’t.’ Audley sniffed. ‘And I wish to God I had Old King Cole at the end of a phone now—we’d know what we were about then—you’re damn right there, Tom!
Topping Basil was just too-damn neat… it smells of Panin, no matter how many times he swears to the contrary.’ Nod. Then a succession of small nods. ‘Yes… in the Great Patriotic War he might have been an NKVD hood, but he was also a working staff-officer. So he’d know how blind the front-line is when they can’t get any intelligence briefings about what’s ahead and on the flanks… So I’ll bet he knows I’m running blind as well as scared now, in spite of all the bull-shit I’ve fed him to the contrary. Huh!
But we still go on, eh?’
Once again, in spite of all the other bull-shit which he’d received, Tom warmed to Mamusia’s ancient Beast. Because, for all his pride and bloody-mindedness and plain awkwardness, the old Beast was scared underneath, as he had every right to be. But, in spite of all that, the old Beast intended to go ahead—that was obvious. And in that the old Beast wasn’t disappointing; even, he could see how Colonel Butler might be tempted to return the trust and loyalty which he had received this day—even if it was Audley’s own peculiar variety of trust and loyalty—in exchange for such cavalryman’s courage.
‘ Huh. ’ The old man had completed his logic-versus-flawed-logic process. ‘But we don’t have any choice in the matter, young Tom: there’s always a risk, but we’re in the risk-taking business—we’re Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State the poor-bloody Hotspur nettle-pluckers—
“Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety”
Are you game for that, boy?‘
Tom didn’t like being called ‘boy’, any more than ‘Darling boy’.
But one half of him (and maybe Mamusia’s half, too) shrugged off the diminutive. ‘Yes.’ Only there was still the other half (which was Father’s cautious English half, but in which Jaggard also still had the controlling interest). ‘But I’d like to make a phone-call first, David.’
‘A phone-call?’ Audley frowned at him, then at the car, then back at him. ‘To whom?’
‘I want to know what they’ve got on your bullet, from yesterday.’
It was reasonable, but there was no harm in making it more so, so he grinned at Audley, and knew to his shame that it was a boyish grin. ‘Besides which… they’ll be expecting me to phone in. But don’t worry: I won’t tell them that we’re about to behave stupidly
—I agree that we don’t have any choice.’ Instinct and inclination suddenly combined. ‘You would have done okay in my grandfather’s regiment, David—in… my mother’s father’s regiment, the Ulyani Lancers: they never could resist charging the machine-guns, when it came to the crunch.’
‘Hah!’ Audley was plainly delighted with the insult. ‘And you would have done well enough in the old Wesdragons, Tom: The West Sussex Dragoons… Because they were thick as two planks, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State too!’ Nod. ‘In fact, my old CO… “Kit” Sykes—or Bill Sykes to his friends, of whom I was never one— he used to say… rather like Marshal Foch, of whom he’d certainly never heard, because he boasted that he’d never opened a book in his life, and he hated all Frenchmen as a matter of principle… he used to say, “Don’t worry about the flanks—God only knows where they are, and they aren’t your business anyway. And don’t worry about the rear, because I shall be breathing down the back of your unwashed neck, and there’s nothing behind us except cooks and bottle-washers, anyway. Just go and find out whether there’s anything up ahead between us and the cocktail bar in the Adlon Hotel in Berlin, there’s a good fellow! And if there isn’t, then order six bottles of their best Champagne on my account—understood?” ’ The old man’s pleasure in his old soldier’s memory was like a hot bottle in a cold bed in mid-winter. ‘Understood, Tom?’
‘Understood, David.’ Only he needed to take his speculator’s profit on a favourable market. ‘But I still need to make my phone-call —I want to know what the cooks and the bottle-washers have been doing—okay?’
Audley shrugged, and started to move again. ‘No harm in that, I suppose… just so you don’t tell ’em anything. No point in worrying ‘em—old Jack particularly. He worries about me a lot when I’m out of his reach, you know—’ The rest was lost, half-mumbled at an increasing distance, leaving Tom momentarily rooted to his spot by an onrush of sympathy for Colonel Butler, who must surely be as long-suffering as he was remarkable in other respects.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Then he remembered Dunsterforce, which he would need very soon to explain to Jaggard. The trouble was… getting any sort of straight answer out of the old man in his present elliptical mood (or probably in any mood, come to that) didn’t lend itself to speed; and the last thing he wanted was a lecture on post-World War One Anglo-American policy in the Near and Middle East—he’d had enough of the 1985 results of that old impossible tangle, for Christ’s sake!
Besides which—
‘Wait for me, David!’ But Audley took not a blind bit of notice.
Besides which what was he going to tell Jaggard? (Audley was already halfway to the car, his raincoat flapping around him like a pair of pale wings; and that reminded him of his original job, and also that he was getting careless: because that almost-white raincoat stood out too much for safety against the faded green of the landscape; and because Henry Jaggard hadn’t told him the half of it—because Henry Jaggard was up to something, and Henry Jaggard couldn’t be trusted!)
He had no time to tell Jaggard about Willy. And could he tell Jaggard what Audley was doing, when Audley himself still didn’t really know what Panin was up to?
Bloody Dunsterforce! First things first. (Audley, large and white, had reached the car—and the sooner he was safe inside it, the better. That ought to have been ahead of first: that was more carelessness!)
He broke into a run, forgetting everything for a moment—
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Audley gave up trying to wrench the car door open and stood waiting for him, getting larger and whiter by the second.
He reached the car himself finally, breathless and careless, and happily ridiculous. ‘Sorry, David. I locked it.’ The gun under his arm felt huge.
‘I know you locked it. But do you really think anyone would steal a heap like this—from a muddy farmyard?’ The-old man regarded him pityingly.