Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘He doesn’t even look like a Russian.’ Audley hissed his final useless judgement into Tom’s protected landward ear in the instant that he quickened and lengthened his stride across the last few yards, to the man himself, thrusting out his hand in a classic gesture of false friendship. ‘ General Zarubin! Good morning to you. ’
A shaft of light—it wasn’t true sunlight, but it was something more than the murk which had shrouded them so far—lightened the two big men as they met, as Zarubin matched Audley with his own hand: it was a strange unnatural light, like the light of Limbo, between Heaven and Hell—
‘ Dr Audley—’
Time accelerated and slowed down, spiked on now and on for ever afterwards simultaneously, as the two meat-plate hands reached out towards each other, with an empty yard separating them which would never be bridged as the Major-General seemed to throw himself forward, on to hands and knees, to stare through Audley with blank astonishment in the same now-and-never instant that the bright red blossomed from his white shirt on each side of his tartan tie, and the blood gushed out of his mouth like vomit—
Tom hit Audley with his shoulder, every ounce of his weight spinning the big man sideways against the overhang of the hillside, above the path, even before General Zarubin’s dead body finally subsided into the mud.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘ Oooff! ’ The sound of Audley’s breath and his own mingled as they both fell, binding them together into oak-tree-and-ivy flailing together in their fall, with no thought for afterwards. But then Tom’s training (never before exercised like that), and Audley’s lack-of-training (still uninformed from yesterday’s bullet, and still unbelieving), turned them both into a confusion of threshing legs and arms, all trying to re-establish their independence.
‘For Christ’s sake—!’ Audley mouthed the words into his ear.
‘Shut up!’ Tom pushed him down as he tried to sit up, pressing his face into the stony bank below the yellow-flowered gorse. ‘God—!’
God was not an appeaclass="underline" God was the sight of Nikolai Panin still standing up in the open, above the still-twitching body of Major-General Gennadiy Zarubin, as though the rest of his life had minutes to spare, not seconds. ‘Get down, man! For God’s sake—!’
Panin threw away another precious second in shifting his surprised look from the hillside above to Tom. Then he hunched himself ludicrously, as though to make a smaller target, and sank to his knees beside Zarubin.
To hell with him! thought Tom, as Audley pushed and heaved beneath him. He could take his bloody chances!
‘Damn you, Tom! Let me up, damn you!’ Audley swore at him.
‘You stay right where you are.’ Tom kept his elbow on Audley’s neck as he watched Panin raise his comrade’s body slightly, and simultaneously tried to remember the instant of the bullet’s impact.
Because there was a dark mark no bigger than a shilling high up on the broad expanse of Zarubin’s back, just above the shoulder-Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State blade: so the high-velocity bullet had come downwards steeply, shattering flesh and bone, to blossom that huge exit-wound where the shirt had reddened—had come downwards from not far away, and not more laterally from some distance greater ahead of them—
He couldn’t hold the big man down much longer—
That was right! Because the three men had been hugging this same overhang above the path, where the wind hadn’t been so fierce, when he had first glimpsed them.
So the killer hadn’t killed before because he hadn’t had a clear shot until Zarubin stepped out to greet Audley—
Christ! The next thought rolled Audley away from him, even as he cleared the Smith and Wesson from its holster. ‘Get down, David!’
‘What the devil—?’ Even in the instant of his release Audley picked up his panic signal, and shrank into the overhang obediently.
‘Where’s Sadowski?’ Tom snarled at Panin.
‘Sadowski?’ The Russian let go of Zarubin’s shoulder, and the body dropped back into the mud as though gravity finally had a stronger claim on death than on life. ‘Major Sadowski is doing his duty, Sir Thomas.’ He looked down at the blood on his hand with evident distaste. But then calmly wiped it off on the dead man’s raincoat before looking up again at Tom. ‘Just as you are doing now.’
The freak wind suddenly howled around them, swirling the sharp raindrops into Tom’s face from a new direction, half-blinding him.
Tom—‘ Audley’s voice came from behind and below him ’— go!‘
‘No!’ Panin straightened up, still on his knees but fumbling into his Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State raincoat. ‘Your duty is to protect us, Sir Thomas. Let Sadowski—’
‘Shut up!’ Audley’s voice was level with Tom now, and it was deep-frozen with pure hate. ‘And if you find what you’ve got inside there, I’ll shoot you in the guts, I swear to God—as God is my witness!’ The old man’s voice modulated, as though he was surprised by his own passion. ‘I’ll shoot you in the guts, Nikolai…
because after all these years the only thing I can remember is to shoot low—so I may actually shoot your balls off instead— go, Tom! ’
Panin froze. Then swayed, as another gust shook him; but swayed like a frozen dummy nevertheless, unmoving even though moving.
‘That’s right.’ Thick velvet suddenly coveted the steel. ‘Now the hand comes out— slowly… ever-so slowly… that’s right! ’ Audley drew a deep breath. ‘God! You were bloody close then, I tell you!
Because it’s been forty years… well, maybe thirty years, give or take… But I never was very good with small guns. Okay with 75-millimetres, but no good with 9-millimetres… Go, Tom—for God’s sake, while this old devil and I frighten each other equally—go on, Tom! Go!’
Standing up on the path, even for an instant, also frightened Tom.
But then the beginning of returning logic steeled him to take a full look at the skyline above him, with the loss of precious time already also spurring calculation as he did so: Sadowski had gone straight up into the wuzzy, somewhere behind them — but why?
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘Go on, Tom—go find out what he’s up to, there’s a good chap.’
Audley had his voice almost back to the conversational level. Yet somehow that sounded louder than a shout inside Tom’s head as he moved obediently to the order.
Sadowski wasn’t protecting Panin, as he ought to be doing—
The overhang, where the cliff-path had been cut from the living rock of the hillside, soon petered out. But then the gorse-wuzzy was still old and impenetrable as he searched for an opening further along as he followed the path round the headland, its sharp spikes and brown-frosted yellow flowers mocking him—
Like Sadowski, he wasn’t protecting his man now, so what the hell was he doing?
There was a gap just ahead, at last—
There was something very wrong here: he had promised Henry Jaggard implicitly, and Cathy Audley explicitly, not to do what he was doing; and he was risking his own life in breaking those promises. But, in the midst of what was now a huge disaster, David Audley had given an order, because his instinct was to fight disaster, to the last gasp and the last bullet—and—and by sweet Jesus Christ!—that was his own Polish instinct, too!