‘And have their men massacred?’
‘Oh… they weren’t in on that part of the deal, Henry: the so-called
“Major Sadowski” wasn’t a Fifth Bureau man—he was pure KGB, with a Polish accent. . a bear in eagle’s feathers. All he was doing was killing Poles, which is an all-the-year-round sport for Russians. And for Panin it was merely making sure that there wouldn’t be any inconvenient witnesses around, just in case we had the place staked out after all—’ Once again Harvey caught a shrug just in time ‘—I mean, he wasn’t keeping his promise… so why should he expect us to keep ours?’
‘Hmm…’ Jaggard was still captivated by the Viking bonus. Until this moment he hadn’t given the man more than another month, before he’d have to be extricated. But now, if he was run cautiously… or even allowed to lie fallow for a few months… his working life might be greatly extended, and perhaps even all the way back to Moscow. ‘So the Americans have lost their man, then?
A pity…’
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘Oh, they got him out in time. I rather think they guessed he was already on borrowed time in there. But they have lost him, in effect
—yes.’
Jaggard felt generous. ‘Well, it wasn’t any of their business. But we owe them one now, nevertheless.’ Then a thought struck him.
‘They weren’t the originators of the Polish joke by any chance, maybe?’
Garrod Harvey shook his head and winced. ‘I think not, actually.’
‘No?’ Jaggard saw that Harvey’s ‘thinking not’ was only the brown wrapping covering certain knowledge. But then he also saw that if this ingenious and circumstantial account of the Exmoor Massacre was neither Audley’s nor the CIA’s work… then maybe Viking wasn’t so safe after all, damn it to hell! ‘You’re not about to suggest that this is all KGB disinformation I hope, Garry?’ He heard his disappointment roughen the question. ‘Yet still substantially true?’
Garrod Harvey held his head steady. ‘It does rather look that way, I’m afraid.’
‘Why—’ Jaggard controlled his voice ‘—why should they want to give us so much?’
‘It’s a very good question—I agree.’ Garrod Harvey was genuinely uncertain now. ‘But what I think is… everything didn’t quite go the way they planned it, you see…’ He trailed off.
But Henry Jaggard saw once again, and all too well. Because no plan, however good, ever survived the cold plunge into reality still warm and dry.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Harvey met his scrutiny. ‘It’s possible that the shot we took at Audley unsettled them—’ He held up his hand.
‘It had to be clone, Henry. Because we had to concentrate his mind… for our purposes. But they didn’t know about that—just as we didn’t know about Basil Cole. And the Americans turning up must have unsettled them even more.’
Jaggard waited.
‘But the real balls-up was when Audley ordered Tom Arkenshaw to go after Major Sadowski—and Tom obeyed his order. Because it seems that Panin was going to put a stop to that, only Audley threatened to shoot him on the spot, himself.’ Harvey drew a breath. ‘So Tom saw Sadowski giving the sniper a friendly “hullo”
when they should have been shooting it out.’ Harvey almost smiled. ‘The irony of which is that Sadowski was probably only trying to get close enough to make sure his bullet went in the right place. Whereas the sniper had a rifle, and didn’t need to do that—
so Tom knew at once how the land lay: that they were in it together. And, of course, they both went after him then. And finally, to clinch it, when they had him at their mercy Sadowski obligingly shot his sniper-friend first.’
‘Why did he do that?’
‘Ah… well, Sadowski was a real pro, whatever else—or whoever else—he was. He hardly said a word in front of Tom, so it’s possible that he recognized him from somewhere, and didn’t want to risk his Russian-accented Polish in front of him. But if he was a slow talker he was a fast thinker, Tom reckons. So he wanted the sniper’s bullet in Tom, and his bullet in the sniper, for the autopsy.’
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State
‘He could have told the sniper to kill Tom, surely.’
This time Garrod Harvey forgot not to shrug, and paid the price for shrugging. ‘If you want a thing done properly… And what Tom Arkenshaw also thinks is that the Major liked his work. And in his own line of work he’s met one or two of the breed, I shouldn’t wonder.’
Jaggard remembered his duty belatedly. ‘He’s all right, is he—
Tom?’
‘All right?’ A shadow crossed Garrod Harvey’s face. ‘Sir Thomas Arkenshaw has a badly-broken ankle and a heavy cold—for both of which David Audley is more or less responsible. But he thinks Audley’s quite a man, nevertheless.’
‘Yes?’ That had always been a danger, on the debit side of the special connection Arkenshaw had with Audley which had made him the man for the job. ‘But you haven’t any doubts about his report, Garry?’
‘Oh, no.’ Harvey managed a carefully-controlled nod. ‘It’ll be as full and honest as you could wish for, Henry—right down to Audley’s continued insistence on going it alone whenever Tom advised him against it.’ Another controlled nod. ‘Audley behaved exactly as I predicted, in fact.’
‘Well, that’s all right, then—’ But Jaggard saw that it wasn’t ‘—
isn’t it?’
‘He also told Audley everything that happened, after he’d gone after Major Sadowski.’ Garrod Harvey’s lips compressed. ‘And he admits that he also told Audley that he was reporting back to you, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Henry.’
‘He—?’ In that instant Sir Thomas Arkenshaw’s name moved from the black to the red side of the tablet in Henry Jaggard’s mind, marked now for No further promotion. But then he knew that he wanted to know more about the fatal admission. ‘How did he come to admit that? You pressed him—?’
‘He volunteered it of his own accord.’ Something close to approval was in Garrod Harvey’s voice. ‘Sir Thomas Arkenshaw is a medievalist, like David Audley. And I may be wrong, but… it was almost like a formal act of defiance—or whatever the old medieval Arkenshaws did, when they renounced their feudal allegiance, and moved from one side to the other, in the old days.’ Garrod Harvey didn’t shrug, but rather twisted himself uncomfortably for a moment. ‘You also have to remember that he’s half-Polish, Henry.
They’re an unpredictable lot, in my experience.’ Harvey raised an eyebrow. ‘Eh?’
There was something damnably not right with Garrod Harvey this afternoon. And, as Jaggard trusted Harvey more than he trusted most men, that was much more worrying than Sir Thomas Arkenshaw’s medieval Polish practices. ‘What are you trying to tell me, Garry?’
The eyebrow came down. ‘Tom Arkenshaw isn’t very pleased with us, for having done what we did to him. And he’s also deeply humiliated—professionally humiliated—by what happened… “I ran like a rabbit” , is how he put it.’ Another controlled nod, ‘And he has been trying to protect people like Audley—and Zarubin—
from people like Panin and Sadowski… maybe for too long.’
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Another nod. ‘We worry about all the killers there are loose in the world, who can pick and choose their killing-grounds at leisure.
But we don’t give much thought for the poor bastards who are expected to out-think the killers—or put themselves in the way of the bullet when they don’t.’