It seemed hugely unfair that Major Sadowski had made the same descent somehow intact: the Major should have fallen too, and lost his gun, and even broken his bloody neck, thought Tom angrily.
But Sadowski hadn’t. And neither had the man in the combat jacket, who swam into view—unfocused and then focused—with the white eyes in the blackened face and the rifle in his hands. And that was unfair, too.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State In fact, everything was unfair—even being killed on his hands and knees on a muddy path was unfair. And his ankle hurt like hell, too
—
He wiped his sweaty face with one hand, hypnotized by the muzzle of the gun in Sadowski’s fist, which was pointing at him. But then, inexplicably, it wasn’t pointing at him as the man in the combat jacket said something—or started to say something as Sadowski shot him at close quarters, spinning him clear off the path.
Tom frowned uncomprehending at Sadowski, watching him replace the gun methodically in its holster. Then the Major took three steps and started to reach down for the rifle, which his murdered comrade had so suddenly relinquished.
‘ Leave it!’ shouted a shrill voice from far behind Tom.
The Major froze for a second, his hand halfway to the rifle. Then his head moved slightly, so that he was staring past Tom, up the path towards the sea.
The urge to turn himself in the direction of Sadowski’s stare and towards that weird far-off imperious voice, yet at the same time keep his eyes on the Major himself, was too much for flesh-and-blood: wishing to do both taxed Tom’s enfeebled powers of decision so that he attempted to do both, and ended up by doing neither as he exerted pressure again on his smashed bones and was facing uselessly into space across half an empty mile, towards the zig-zag path on the hillside on the other side of the combe, as the blinding pain and the explosive chatter of a machine-pistol confused his senses.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State The distant hillside blurred and the treacherous wind took the noise and spread it into infinity, so that the echo was only inside his head instead of reverberating up and down the combe and far and wide over the high empty Devon coastline. But it froze him nevertheless, just as the strange shrill voice had held Major Sadowski for that lost moment in the past, before he had come to what Tom knew— knew without needing to understand—had been his final and inevitable decision, because that had always been the Major’s game—
Kill, or be killed!
The far hillside became crystal-clear, so that Tom could observe with detached interest that it was steeper than his own, with less vegetation and with avalanches of rocky scree; and thought (light-headedly) that if Major-General Gennadiy Zarubin (who was dead) had climbed that way, then maybe Major Sadowski (and maybe the man-in-the-combat-jacket, with the black-face-but-white-eyes) wouldn’t be dead; but he hadn’t, and they were—he was, and they were… so now Tom Arkenshaw—so Tom Arkenshaw, against all the odds—
He lifted his bad ankle again. And, though it still screamed out at him, he was almost grateful for the pain’s reassurance that he was still in his own world, the world of the living, as he contrived to look over his shoulder at last—
He saw the child’s push-chair first, on the bend in the patch where it turned to follow the coastline a dozen yards away, almost on the very spot where he said ‘I shall resign’ to Audley, five hundred feet above the great grey angry sea, so very recently—so very Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State recently and so long ago for Zarubin and Sadowski and the camouflaged man… for them, in fact, it had been the rest of their whole lifetimes—
The head-scarfed mother detached herself from the overhang, still holding the machine-pistol stiffly at the ready, ignoring him and her empty push-chair equally as she sidled step-by-careful-step across the path—the old professionally well-balanced step, ready for anything: he had seen that before, the fluid careful body, the steady gun and the watchful eyes! But he had never really been in that class, in which preservation was not a sequence of precautions, but a violent pre-emptive action against the terrorists—
She reached the edge of the path, and took one quick up-and-down glance over it, only to confirm what she already knew while hardly taking her eye off the path over Tom and beyond him, just in case (and just in case was another hallmark of the pro)—
But now, at last, she looked at him, and advanced towards him.
And, just as he was testing the idea that maybe she wasn’t a woman after all, she smiled at him, and he knew that she was, of course: it wasn’t just that remembered voice, and certainly not the smile, it was everything about her which made her a woman.
‘Hi there, Sir Thomas.’ She was late-thirties at close quarters, but not noticeably hard-as-nails. ‘I’m Shirley.’
Tom felt at a disadvantage. ‘Hullo… Shirley.’ Part of the disadvantage was a feeling of intense gratitude. Which, because she had only been doing her job, made him also feel foolish. But there was also the fact that he couldn’t stand up: as she moved cautiously past him and he tried to keep her in sight his broken Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State bones reminded him painfully of his fall. ‘I’m afraid I’ve broken my ankle.’
‘Is that a fact?’ The path was empty except for the rifle which Sadowski had reached for in vain. But she wasn’t interested in that.
‘Is there anyone else up there, Sir Thomas?’ She watched the hillside as she spoke.
‘No.’ The pain made him catch his breath. ‘There were just the two of them.’
Two?‘ She shifted her attention to the outside edge of the path.
’Hmm… well that surely makes two.‘ She studied what he couldn’t see for a moment, then she peered further back. ’You can come on up, Wilhemina.‘
Tom’s disadvantaged feeling expanded into embarrassment. He should have known, of course—children, clogs or kites, none of them were Willy’s scene. But chiefly it was obstinate disobedience which came naturally to her.
‘Wilhemina!’ This time Shirley shouted the name. ‘Come on up!’
‘I’m coming—I’m coming!’ Willy sounded angry, rather than scared, in the distance. ‘I fell halfway down the hill, darn it, Shirl!’
Tom sat up with difficulty, holding his injured leg with both hands unsuccessfully. Not that he was about to regain much dignity, with his knuckles skinned and bloodied by his fall through the gorse, and his face not much better, by the feel of it.
‘Hmm…’ Shirley stared down at him. But there was a surprising lack of disdain in her expression. ‘You got the other one, huh?’
Tom hid his surprise beneath his pain. But then he realized that she Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State must have been round the point of the path when Sadowski had killed his comrade: she must have been covering Audley when the freak wind had carried the sound of Sadowski’s shot—or one of the shots—back to her; and Willy had been behind her, and therefore been closer to this point; so Willy had arrived here first—
was that it?
Quite deliberately, he let the bones grate again, and cried out in genuine agony.
Tom honey! For God’s sake—! ‘ Willy’s anguished cry also came to his rescue.
‘He’s okay.’ Shirl’s voice was coldly matter-of-fact. ‘He’s just hurt his ankle—that’s all.’
‘Tom honey!’ With the hood of her anorak down and her hair out she was Willy. ‘I thought you were shot!’
‘I’m all right.’ She was going to fuss over him, and he liked the idea of that because it gave him time to think. ‘Honestly I am, Willy,’