The old man stopped, and stared around for a second, and then turned. ‘I said “Just as Jack will hold me responsible for whatever happens otherwise”, Tom.’ He gave Tom a hard look. ‘And Henry Jaggard will hold you responsible also, eh?’
The wind dropped, suddenly and freakishly, so that Audley’s final shout came out unnaturally loudly, us though to emphasize what had been in the back of Tom’s mind ever since he had come to his decision. Then, even more suddenly, its full force hit him again at the corner of the path where it reached the coast at last, almost stopping him in his tracks.
‘Yes—’ Not so much the wind as the whole glorious panorama of the North Devon coastline took his breath away, with headland after headland plunging uncompromisingly into the sea, with the promise of deepwater directly beneath them: an indomitable coast against which the wind and the waves beat endlessly but in vain.
But Audley was still staring at him, partly blocking his view of the path along this coast and finally concentrating his mind at the same time. ‘I shall resign, of course,’ he said.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘Yes?’ Disappointingly, the big man accepted this shock-horror revelation with only mild interest. ‘Why?’
It was on the tip of Tom’s tongue to tell the truth, that he was fed up with the accumulated risk of being an accidental and secondary target while trying unsuccessfully to make obstinate old buggers like Audley himself take the most basic precautions. But then he saw that it wasn’t quite the real truth.
‘I can’t work for a man I’ve betrayed.’ He liked the harshness in his own voice. ‘I should have quit an hour ago, and left you to get on with your damn “Nikolai” by yourself. But I promised your daughter, in a moment of weakness, that I’d watch over you, David.’ Looking at Audley now was like looking at a coin with hate on one side, and love on the other, when the coin was balanced so that he could see neither side. ‘I’m keeping faith with her now—against my better judgement.’
‘Ah!’ Still only mild interest. ‘The old thankless task! Believe me, boy—I do understand. Because I’ve been there too, myself.’ The old Beast-smile returned, moistened now by the fine mist of rain which was stinging Tom’s own cheek, hard-driven by the wind.
‘So just answer me this one question, then: who would you betray—
your country or your friend?’
As well as irritation bordering on anger, Tom felt the rain driving cold into his exposed eye. ‘That’s a ridiculous question, David. It’s bad enough to have to risk my neck for you. But I don’t have to put up with humbug as well.’
‘No.’ The smile twisted downwards. ‘But just this once—just this last time… can’t you humour your dear mother’s old friend?’ The Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State smile vanished. ‘And then no more questions.’
That Mamusia’s old flame played dirty right to the last question was absurdly comforting, somehow: it made the outcome of that old, long-resolved contest between Audley and Father, in which Father would always have played a straight bat (just like William Marshall in Ranulf of Chester’s day) quite astonishing. But it also confirmed every loving thing he had ever thought about Father in that same instant.
‘All right.’ He wished Audley would get out of the way, so that he could see the path ahead; but this answer must clear that obstacle too, anyway. ‘Since this is my country it’s no question. But if it was Poland… that might be more difficult. But in this country… if my so called “friend” was British, then he would have already betrayed me, and all my other friends, so he’d be a traitor, and
“betrayal” doesn’t describe my reaction to that, when I blow the whistle on him. Or, if he’s a foreigner… then he’s a false friend and an enemy—I might still honour him then, but “betrayal” still doesn ’t apply, just the same, when I get him in my sights—‘ In spite of all the wind (or perhaps because of it), a sudden tingle in his nose made him sneeze. ’Is that what you want? “My country”—
right… before my “friend”— wrong? ‘
Audley shook his head. ‘It was just a question.’ He stepped aside, leaning into the wind, which flapped his bullet-ridden raincoat around his knees, to reveal the path behind him as well as the bullet-holes. ‘I already had my money on the answer. And there’s a place for you in R & D when you want it, is my answer to that, Tom.’
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State The cleared path had a foreground, and a middleground, and a background, snaking round the next headland. But there was only the middleground, really. Because there, where the path cut into a cascade of dead bracken and heather and gorse which fell from the skyline above down into the invisible sea far below, three men were waiting for them.
Three—?
Instantly, he sorted them out: saw, but didn’t count, Nikolai Andrievich Panin, muffled against the wind and dark-overcoated still; saw, but dismissed, his little Major, who was better-protected in a short rainproof jacket like the Barbour which Willy had been wearing, wherever Willy might be, but somewhere mercifully safe now; and saw, and only saw, the third and last and first figure most of all, raincoated like Audley.
‘You watch Sadowski, Tom.’ Audley shouted his whisper at close quarters. ‘I don’t trust Panin… But Sadowski is a bloody hit-man!
Remember?’ He touched Tom’s arm, propelling him forward.
‘Remember?’
‘Yes.’ Tom let himself be propelled on to the foreground of the path, where a trickle of water from the hillside above had reduced the path to a morass churned up by footprints and hoofprints; although all he could really concentrate on as he squelched forward was that first figure.
The mud gave way and slid treacherously underfoot, but he could still only see Major-General Gennadiy Zarubin standing four-square on the path, in what might have been his father’s country, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State and his grandfather’s, before the two world wars had demoted and promoted his line: another tall, raincoated figure, almost as broad-shouldered as Audley himself, waiting now to make them that offer which Audley had chosen not to refuse, with the headlands behind him already fading into the rain-squall which was sweeping into them, and over them, out of the infinite greyness of sea-and-sky which filled half their world.
He lifted his hand, to keep the driving rain off his cheek and out of his ear, and also so that he might hear what Audley might say, as the gap between them decreased step by step; and, at the same time, reached across his chest and felt the weight and shape of the Smith and Wesson; and finally glanced up to scan the gorse-broken skyline above them.
Odd that there was still a scatter of yellow flowers on this sea-blown wuzzy, when there hadn’t been a single flower on the gorse at Mountsorreclass="underline" and some of these were winter-browned at the edges (he saw each complex flower with a photographic clarity which surprised him); but others were blooming freshly, defying wind, and winter equally, against all the odds, while all the lower ground-hugging heather flowers were long-dead and colourless—
‘He’s a big bugger, isn’t he!’ Audley’s words, when they came, were utterly inconsequential. ‘I wouldn’t like to meet him in a dark alley in Berlin—either side of the Wall!’
Almost as big as you are—or maybe even bigger! The thought twisted through Tom’s brain, challenging him to wonder what Audley himself had been like in his own dark alleys, years ago, in the dark ages.