For the Good of the State (28 page)

Panin stared at Tom interrogatively.

‘I think it’s a good place.’ Audley continued before either of them could speak. ‘An appropriate place, anyway.’

That got Panin back. ‘Appropriate?’

‘Yes.’ This time Audley quartered Gilbert of Merville’s long-forgotten work. ‘The mid-twelfth century in England happens to be Sir Thomas’s hobby, and that was when this pile of dirt was thrown together. But I take it you don’t know about the mid-twelfth century in England, Professor?’ Audley smiled at the Russian. ‘In the great days of Kiev, that would be, I suppose—when Moscow was a muddy frontier settlement?’ The smile broadened. ‘But, of course, you’re safe in the days long before that! Ancient Scythian archaeology—I remember, from the old days … ’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘I’m afraid this isn’t sufficiently archaeological, in your meaning of the word, old friend. But not inappropriate, no.’

‘No?’ Panin studied his surroundings for a moment before continuing; and (thought Tom) he didn’t need to be a genius either to understand its function or to guess that Audley was somehow lying in wait for him back in history. ‘But it would also be
your
period, my dear David—would it not? Those essays of yours which I so assiduously read before we last met, in those same old days—on the crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem … That was the twelfth century, wasn’t it?’ Having finished with the
bailey
rampart, he scrutinized the
motte
itself. They were … if I may say so without giving offence … not altogether unscholarly.‘ Now he was relating the position of the
motte
to the
bailey
. ’In fact, if those crusader castles had not conveniently crossed every frontier from Egypt to Turkey I might almost have thought that you were following Lawrence’s footsteps, and not misusing your scholarship in the service of your country’s needs.‘ He completed his survey, but did so facing Major Stan Laurel Sadowski, not Audley. ’Major … I do not like either of these ridges, as I have already said. But that across the valley is masked by the mound if we take but a few steps. So I would have you upon the ridge above us, while we transact our business?‘ He pointed up the hillside.

Major Sadowski indicated that he understood the English language not with a nod, let alone a word or any variation in his permanent expression of surprise-verging-on-tears, but simply by moving to obey Panin’s request without question or delay.

Panin watched him depart through Gilbert of Merville’s
bailey
gateway. “The advantage of having a Pole is that he does what he is told,‘ said Panin to the Major’s back. Then he came again to Audley. ’And, of course, my dear David, the poor creature has been overawed by your presence. And by our medieval crusaders of the twelfth century. And I’m sure he doesn’t know your T. E. Lawrence from D. H. Lawrence—do you think
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
has ever been translated into Polish? I would think not, eh?‘ He continued to stare at Audley, but so fixedly that Tom felt he himself was very deliberately
not
being looked at, even though his reciprocal dismissal was now presumably what the Russian required.

‘Oh … do you think so?’ Audley cocked his head, frowning slightly, as if the question was of importance. ‘
Lady Chatterley
must have been … mid-1920s? And it must have been one of Lawrence’s last books, because he died in 1930. So Poland was still a free country then.’ Then he nodded, still frowning. ‘But the Catholics might have banned it, I agree.’ He drew a sudden breath and then sneezed explosively, and began to search for his handkerchief. ‘So you may well be right, at that.’ He buried his face in the handkerchief. ‘I do beg your pardon, Nikolai.’

‘You have a cold?’ inquired Panin sympathetically.

‘I have a cold.’ Audley nodded. ‘And Sir Thomas stays, Nikolai.’

Now Panin glanced at Tom, but then quickly returned to Audley. They do not trust you even now, David? Even less than they trust me?‘

Sniff. ‘Nobody trusts me.’ The thought seemed to brighten Audley. ‘Not even my dear wife.’

The two old men considered each other in silence, and Tom decided it was time to hear his own voice again. ‘I think what Dr Audley means is that I’m not so good at doing what I’m told, Professor—unlike Major Sadowski—’ He realized too late, as he pronounced the name, that he had made the mistake of inflecting it correctly ‘—even though I am equally overawed by meeting the celebrated Professor Panin, naturally.’

‘Hah! And so you’d better be, Tom,’ agreed Audley. ‘Not every day do you get to meet an old Central Committee man who was dandled on the knee of Vladimir Il’ich Lenin as a baby, and given a revolutionary blessing! Or is that just a story, Nikolai?’

‘It is just a story.’ Panin was giving his whole speculative attention to Tom now. ‘Vladimir Il’ich did not dandle babies on his knee.’

‘No—of course!’ Audley nodded agreement. ‘Only poor devils who have to win the proletariat vote have to dandle babies—of course! And your old dad fought with the White Army in any case, didn’t he? In the Semenovski Guards, was it?’

Panin continued to stare at Tom. ‘And I am no longer on the Central Committee.’ He ignored Audley’s flippancies. This place was a fortress, Sir Thomas. Correct?‘

Tom had just registered the
Semenovski Guards
: they had been among the Imperial guards regiments of the Tsar himself. So Audley was playing dirty, as was his custom. ‘Yes, Professor.’ He was tempted to leave it at that, but found that he couldn’t. ‘It was probably built by a man named Gilbert de Merville in the mid-1130s, who was a supporter of a great baron named Baldwin de Redvers. If it is, then it’s Mountsorrel Castle.’

Panin turned away for a moment, to the gorse-and-bracken-covered line of
bailey
ditch-and-rampart again, and then to the higher
motte
across the few yards of cow-hoofprinted and cowpatted expanse of coarse pasture which separated the
bailey
gate from the ditched
motte
overlooking the river crossing below. But when he came back to Tom there was something in his face, or behind his eyes, which betrayed an insight into what it had once been, before it had been trodden down and demilitarized by eight-and-a-half centuries of time and cows.

‘So how is Mountsorrel Castle appropriate to us now, Sir Thomas?’

‘
Ah
!’ Audley burst back into the conversation like a Cromwell finding its gap in the
bocage
at last. ‘Now … now what I
meant
, Nikolai … was not so much related to
place
, you see … Although this particular place is also
not
inappropriate—’ He gave Tom a quick sidelong glance ‘—it is an adulterine construction, is it, Tom?’

The question caught Tom off-balance. ‘I’m not sure, David—’

‘ “Adulterine”?’ The word unbalanced Panin too—quite understandably, thought Tom.

‘ “Illegal”, Nikolai.’ Audley didn’t want to be interrupted. ‘In the days of our strong kings, you couldn’t just put up a castle when you felt like it—you had to have a licence to build and crenellate … Although “crenellate” is a bit later, I suppose—like, to put up battlements and loopholes; so this was probably no more than a stout palisade, like an old US cavalry stockade, to keep the native English-Indians out, eh?’ Because he didn’t want to be interrupted he didn’t wait to be understood. ‘What I meant was the
timing
of it, not really
the placing
… do you see?’

Tom didn’t see. But, nevertheless and loyally, he looked towards the Russian as though he did.

‘The timing?’ Under their combined scrutiny Panin had to ask the question, even though he must know he was walking into some prepared ambush. But then, instead, he gestured towards the
motte
. ‘Shall we walk a little way? I feel … a little overlooked here, is the truth—?’

Quite suddenly Tom remembered Audley’s terrace, and the flesh up his backbone crawled at the memory, so that his feet moved before his brain stamped their movement order, taking him towards the protection of Gilbert’s earth mound.

Panin moved with him. And Tom felt a breath of wind on his cheeks, and the topmost growth of gorse and bracken and old winter bramble shivered on the mound ahead of him, in the same breath of moving air, which had a decided hint of rain-to-come in it, sweeping up the Bristol Channel between Lundy Island and the Gower Peninsula from the distant Atlantic Ocean.

‘Timing—?’ Panin reached relative safety, but turned to find Audley still rooted to his spot behind them in the entrance, snuffling into his handkerchief again. ‘David—?’

‘Coming … ’ Audley took his time, even adding to it with a scrutiny of the nearer hillside, on which Major Sadowski was now presumably doing his invisible guard-duty. ‘Coming’

Willy
! thought Tom, staring into the junction of the
bailey
ditch with that of the
motte
. At this point on the Mountsorrel spur the topsoil had been thin, but Gilbert’s forced-labourers hadn’t been allowed to skimp their ditching: the outer edge was still an eight-foot vertical rock-wall, overhung with trailing brambles growing over it from the top,
and he would have liked Willy to have seen that ruthless Norman attention to essential detail —

‘I’m sorry!’ Audley strode up, with that long, purposeful stride of his. ‘I was busy sneezing again. And then I was thinking.’ He looked around, up at the mound, then again at the Major’s ridge, and finally back to Panin. ‘Is this safe enough for you, then?’

Panin sighed, but seemed to accept that Audley had taken the lead again. ‘What were you thinking?’

‘I was thinking of my dear wife again, actually.’ Audley peered at the rock cut ditch. ‘That’s a good piece of work there, Tom—do you see—?’

‘Yes.’ A bit of Tom was irritated at being taught to suck eggs. But he also admired the old man’s powers of observation and his determination at least to pretend that the shared memory of the terrace didn’t frighten him.

‘Yes.’ Panin watched Audley peering into Gilbert’s good work. ‘I trust that Mrs Audley is well?’

‘Uh-huh. She’s very well … Are you sure this is “adulterine”, Tom? This ditch must have taken a hell of a lot of digging.’ Suddenly he turned back to Panin. ‘She’s well. But she’s not happy, Nikolai. And neither am I.’

‘Yes.’ Panin nodded. ‘That I can understand.’

‘You can?’ Audley waited for more.

Another nod. ‘I too am not happy, David.’

This time Audley nodded. ‘Yes. That
I
can understand, also.’

The lines in the Russian’s face were like dry wadis in a stony desert, in an enlarged satellite photo. ‘Someone made an attempt on your life yesterday, I have been informed.’

‘You have been informed?’ Audley repeated the words mildly. ‘It wasn’t you, then?’ he raised his hand quickly. ‘No—of course I didn’t mean that, old comrade. I never thought for a moment that it was you. And Tom will bear me out there—eh, Tom?’

‘I am most relieved to hear that, David.’ The Russian gave Tom no time to bear true witness. ‘But—’

‘Because if it had been you—’ Audley cut him off ‘—then I wouldn’t be here now, would I?’ He gave Panin his Beast-smile. ‘And you, old comrade …
you
would have been looking for a very deep hole, somewhere east of Nizhni Novgorod. Although you would know, because Jack Butler is a stickler for etiquette—and the son of a good trade unionist too, who knows his Rule Book backwards, and his “Custom and Practice”, which covers what isn’t actually written into the book … and what maybe
can’t
be written into it—’ He switched to Tom, with a glint of mischief in his eye ‘—old Jack’s dad was a printer, so Jack was brought up on “old Spanish customs”—’ The mocking eye returned to Panin ‘ — so
you
would know, Nikolai, that there wouldn’t be a hole deep enough, not even in Holy Mother Russia—not even in the little monks’ cells in Zagorsk Monastery—where Jack wouldn’t find you in the end, if he thought it was your finger on the trigger, eh?’ The slow Beast-smile became almost loving. ‘Right?’

Panin’s immobility impressed Tom. ‘About Colonel Butler … I bow to your superior knowledge, David.’ Then the dry wadis twisted. ‘But about me … of course, you are also quite right: if I judged you better dead, then you would be dead. But the rest … that is irrelevant, because we both know that we are concerned with the perceived welfare of our respective mother-countries. And we are both on “borrowed time” now, I think.’

‘For God’s sake!’ Audley interjected the blasphemy hotly. ‘Are you trying to frighten me?’

‘I am stating a truth, David—’ Panin cut back at Audley. But then he inclined his head stiffly, as though uncharacteristically. ‘It’s forty years now—fortyone, for you … more than forty for me—since we both saw too many better men killed in a good cause—dead, and rotten, and forgotten … But we are both still here: that is all I mean.’

‘Okay!’ Audley raised his hand again. ‘Okay, okay,
okay!
’ The hand came down. ‘So it wasn’t
you
, Nikolai! But it was
someone—
’ The last vestige of the Beast-smile was long-gone ‘—and it was also
someone
with Basil Cole yesterday. So let’s start with him. Or not at all.’

‘As you wish.’ Panin studied Major Sadowski’s ridge again. ‘About your … experience, of yesterday … I have been told, of course, David.’

‘I should hope so!’ Audley followed the Russian’s gaze. ‘And that’s why the loquacious Major is on guard-duty, is it? Or did you just want to get his little pocket tape-recorder out of range?’

‘About Basil Cole I do
not
know.’ Panin came back to them. ‘That is to say …
of
him I know. But that was in former times. And he never worked for you—for either Colonel Butler, or for Sir Frederick before him, to my knowledge.’ The mournful sheep-face expression betrayed nothing. Only the pale brown eyes hinted at life behind the mask. ‘Also he is retired. Or would “dismissed” be the correct word?’

‘No. “Murdered” is the correct word.’ The cold matter-of-fact tone of Audley’s correction somehow emphasized the anger it concealed.