For the Good of the State (29 page)

‘Of that I know nothing, my friend.’

Audley winced visibly at what he clearly took to be another incorrect word—so visibly and so clearly that not even Panin could ignore the reaction.

‘You do not believe me?’ The Russian countered that banked-up rage with an asbestos-covered curiosity.

Audley sniffed. ‘I tell you what, old
comrade—
’ he sniffed again, and began to search for his handkerchief ‘—old
comrade—
’ he found the handkerchief, but waved it at Gilbert de Merville’s overgrown strongpoint above them before applying it to his nose ‘—I said this place was appropriate … you remember?’ He buried his face in the handkerchief.

Panin studied the
motte
for a moment, then waited until Audley had completed his noisy ‘having-a-cold’ ritual. ‘Yes. And you also said “timing”, equally mysteriously —I do remember, David.’

‘Good!’ Audley spread a hand round the
bailey
, proprietorially. ‘
Place
: Gilbert de Merville’s cosy hideaway, Mountsorrel Castle. And I suppose you could say Gilbert had the instincts of a Lebanese war-lord plus the military know-how of an Israeli tank-commander …
Timing
: mid-twelfth-century England, give or take a few years—mid-Civil War, anyway. King Stephen: played 20, won 5, lost 5, drew 10; the Empress Matilda: played 20, won 5, lost 5, drew 10.’ He shook his head. ‘Not so easy to assess Gilbert’s score, because he probably changed sides half-a-dozen times. The only side he was on was Gilbert de Merville’s side—’

‘David—’

‘Uh-huh! Haven’t finished yet.’ Audley wagged a finger. ‘You may have diplomatic privilege, old comrade. But you’re on my patch now, so I get to do the talking when it suits me—right?’

Panin closed his mouth and battened down his face, reducing his vision to reptilian eye-slits. Or …
feline
, if not
reptilian
, Tom amended the image, recalling the look in the eyes of Mamusia’s vile old neutered tom
(‘My other darling Tom!’)
, which always gazed at him with a thwarted malevolence hinting at a very different relationship if their sizes had been reversed. But then he sensed the eyes catch his own scrutiny, and the hungry glint behind them was extinguished, and the terrifying old man was giving Audley a slow, almost stately, nod.

‘Right!’ If Audley had received the same frightening signal he showed no sign of it: he seemed to be enjoying himself again. ‘Very interesting century, the twelfth, Nikolai. The Gothic cathedrals were on their launch-pads—from Chartres and St Denis, and Sens, all the way across Europe, even to the Middle East—the ideas, and the style, and the geometry … Well, as far as Poland, anyway, if not Russia … And nothing like that has lifted off into the heavens until you and the Americans lifted off, but much more disagreeably, back in the fifties.’ Sniff. ‘More technology, but less spirit—?’

Panin held his peace, without difficulty, even though Audley paused very deliberately, as though to allow him the Right of Reply, knowing quite well that he would not exercise it. And Tom’s mixture of fascinated fear and curiosity moved further up the gauge, even though it was already well into the red in the knowledge that these two veterans of an on-going war, which had started long before he was born, were consumed with old men’s hatred for each other, in spite of their elaborate politeness.

‘Marvellously good things.’ Audley agreed with Panin’s silence. ‘And marvellously
bad
ones too. And Gilbert de Merville was almost certainly one of those … like, there was this Peterborough monk, who wrote up the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
for those times, which I learnt by heart as a young lad come up to Cambridge fresh from laying waste Normandy, and sacking Germany, and buying the
Fräuleins
for a few packets of Lucky Strikes: “
Every strong man made his castles
…
And when the castles were made they filled them with devils and evil men
…
And then they seized those who they supposed had any riches
—”—and I don’t need to tell
you
, of all people, the sort of riches we were after in ’45, because you were after the same bloody things, pretty much—“—
and they tortured them with unspeakable tortures, so that I neither can nor may tell all the horrors and all the tortures that they did to the wretched men of this land, but it was said that ‘Christ and His angels were asleep’.”
‘ Audley gave the Russian his purest and sweetest Beast-smile. ’And you may not be able to recall the Monk of Peterborough on the “Anarchy” of Stephen and Matilda, but you were in Khalturin’s Guards Division, so you surely remember what you did in Germany. And afterwards, eh?‘

‘Yes.’ Panin couldn’t duck so direct a challenge. ‘And I remember the Ukraine also, before I was transferred to the Berlin front at the last—’

‘And Poland?’ Audley didn’t look at Tom. ‘You remember the Warsaw Rising? Did you hear the sound of our planes trying to drop supplies to them, when you were just across the river there—? When you bastards wouldn’t give us landing rights, so we had to make the round trip—do you remember that sound, too?’

Every Pole knew that story, thought Tom. And not a few Poles still remembered the names of the Polish Lancaster bomber crews who had died on those abortive mercy trips, delivering half their loads to the Germans. But if that was designed for his benefit it was a crude and unnecessary reminder of unsettled scores, of which he needed no reminding … But then, at times, Audley
was
crude—

‘What are you saying, David?’ Audley’s sudden obsession with Polish history seemed to confuse the Russian. ‘I was a staff officer with the Guards—’

‘Huh!’ Audley tossed his head like a two-year-old.

‘A
staff
officer—’ Unbelievably Audley had drawn blood from Panin, the momentary emphasis suggested ‘—and I thought we were in the twelfth century—? Or … the mid-twelfth century?’

‘So we were!’ All Audley wanted was that tell-tale stain through those very old bandages, apparently. ‘And … what I mean is that they built their marvellous cathedrals, which took them closer to heaven than anyone’s ever been since … but then, the other half of their time the Normans were
beasts—
just like the little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead:

When she was good
She was very, very good,
But when she was bad she was horrid—

and, in fact, if you want a really good example of that, then who better than King Henry II Plantagenet himself, who came after Matilda-and-Stephen, eh?‘ Audley shook his head sadly at the Russian. ’A great king, Henry—knew his Latin and his Law. Ruled half of Western Europe. Made short work of bastards like Gilbert de Merville, and his like … Loved the Fair Rosamund—married the fair Eleanor, and all that … “ He shook his head again, and trailed off with a sigh.

Panin waited, not patiently but nonetheless well-contained within himself again now and not to be drawn. And in that moment of silence Tom knew exactly what Audley was about, and what was coming now.

‘So there he was, keeping Christmas like a good Christian in his own private two-thirds of France—’ Audley flicked a glance at Tom ‘—in Chinon, would it have been, Tom—in 1170—? Somewhere like that, anyway—’ He transferred the glance back to Panin ‘—when this news arrived from England, about this damned inconvenient priest, who’d been shooting his mouth off again, because he reckoned the Church was above the State. Which drove Henry right up the wall, naturally. So he shouted—shouted supposedly to no one in particular, but to everyone in general—“Is there no one here among all you skunks, who owe me everything—your horses, your lands and your castles and your
droits de seigneur—
”—or, as it might be in your set-up today, Nikolai, “your Mercedes cars, and your
dachas
and Black Sea holidays, and your pretty ballet-dancers, and special shopping privileges”—“
Is there no one who’ll get rid of this priest for me, with no questions asked?”
’ He drew a quick breath which was only half a sniff. ‘So Fitz-Urse and a few of the lads jumped in their Mercedes—on their horses—and took the next cross-Channel ferry and chopped up the priest right in front of his own altar.’ This time he grimaced quickly at Panin. ‘A proper bungled job, it was—they didn’t even bother to silence the witnesses. So Henry had to throw them to the wolves officially, the murderers—’ He cocked a frown at Tom ‘—but what
did
happen to Fitz-Urse and the other three, Tom? I really ought to know, but for the life of me, I can’t recall at the moment—?’

‘I don’t know.’ Tom, for the life of Tom, couldn’t look at the Russian at that moment. ‘I expect they were excommunicated and banished.’

‘Ah … yes, I’m sure they were!’ Audley agreed readily. ‘But, of course, you probably know the story, Nikolai, old comrade—the martyrdom of Archbishop Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury? It’s all in Churchill’s
History of the English-Speaking Peoples
, which you’ve read—it’s just the sort of good story he revelled in.’ He grinned. ‘But, although he made the right noises about King Henry getting his comeuppance in the end, when those appalling sons of his made war on him—“
Such is the bitter taste of worldly power. Such are the correctives of glory”—
I’ve always thought he had a sneaking sympathy for Henry. I know I have—I think Thomas Becket was wrong, and got what he asked for … And, of course, after the 1945 Election, which corrected old Winston’s glory, no one knew the bitter taste of worldly power better than he did.’ Another grin. ‘And I was one of those who voted against him in ’45, too—I voted for Clem Attlee and Labour. Even though Attlee was an Oxford man.‘

By this time, although still for the life of him, Tom couldn’t
not
look at Nikolai Andrievich Panin, to see how he was handling Archbishop Saint Thomas Becket, and Henry II Plantagenet and Winston S. Churchill, not to mention Father Jerzy Popieluszko.

‘An Oxford man?’ Panin was handling them all well. ‘And you, of course, are a Cambridge man?’ The sheep-face was like a visor, worn and pitted with time on the outside, but betraying nothing of the man within. ‘A Cambridge man who remembers his quotations well!’

Audley shrugged modestly. ‘Oh … that’s just what my old Latin master beat into me, to help me pass my exams. Examiners love quotations. The trick is to throw the Latin ones into the History answers, and the History ones into the English ones, and the English ones into the bloody Latin, he said. Because that way they all think you know more than you’re telling. Or … even if they aren’t so stupid, at least they know that you’ve been well-taught, at any rate.’

Panin nodded. ‘I see.’ He stopped the nod with his sheep-face at an angle. ‘So you have been well-taught. But do you know less than you are telling now … or more?’

‘Hmmm … ’ Audley considered the proposition, or pretended to do so. ‘Well now … be that as it may … and you don’t know, and I’m not about to tell you … there are
two
things that you do know—and one more that I am willing to tell you. That is, if you haven’t listened properly so far, anyway.’

‘Two things?’ Panin accepted the test. ‘You have been shot at—’

‘And missed. So I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt there, for reasons of Mutual Assured Destruction.’ Audley accepted Panin’s first answer. ‘And I’ve also come across a friend of mine who has been put down like an inconvenient dog … for which I have agreed
temporarily
to give you the benefit of the doubt.’

‘ “Temporarily” will do.’ Panin nodded. ‘In the circumstances I can ask no more than that, I agree. But … this third thing, which I have missed—’

Audley raised his chin and sighted Panin down his big broken nose. ‘This is my patch, Nikolai. Shooting me in my own house isn’t cricket, to say the least. But Basil Cole … ’ Nose, chin and face became Complete Beast ‘—I draw my wages to make sure that sort of thing doesn’t happen here. You can do what you bloody-well please in your own backyard—you can murder the important ones, or exile them, or put them in psychiatric hospitals, if that’s what turns you on … And you can make the little ones disappear, and Amnesty International won’t even know their names when you put the muzzle of the gun to the back of their necks. Because that’s
your
“Anarchy”, and Christ and his saints haven’t gone to sleep in your benighted Socialist heaven—because they’ve never even woken up there, by God! But that’s
your
patch, and there’s nothing I can do about it—not even if it was my job. Which it isn’t.’ Sniff. ‘But this is
my
patch. So when you try to extend your Anarchy here it has to cross my dead body in the ditch first—’ The old man pointed to Gilbert de Merville’s ‘good work’—‘do I make myself clear?’

Panin had been listening intently from behind his mask. But now he was looking directly at Tom. And what chilled Tom to the bone was that he seemed to have accepted everything Audley had said—every last ounce of capitalist insult, and scorn, and slight regard—without offence.

Audley picked up the look. ‘You’re worried about him, are you?’

Panin took the direct look back to Audley.

‘Can you trust him?’

Sniff. ‘Can
I
trust him?’ Another sniff, followed by a sickening swallow. ‘With the family silver, I can. And with my wife I can … because younger men don’t turn her on.’ Another swallow. ‘And with rny own daughter, for the time being, I suppose.’ Audley joined the Russian’s scrutiny with his own at last. ‘And my ox, and my ass, and my life, and such minor impedimenta … yes, undoubtedly I can trust him.’ He nodded, and then turned the nod into a half-amused shake. ‘Don’t look so outraged, Tom—the Comrade Professor hasn’t lived to see old age here by trusting his own people, never mind us! He had no Jack Butler at his back—no, nor a Fred Clinton either, in the old days—to take the rap when things don’t go quite according to plan.’ He transferred the shake to Panin. ‘And things aren’t so easy on the other side just at the moment, are they, old comrade—under the New Management? A lot of redundancy and retirement, would there be?’ He waited for a moment. ‘Perhaps that’s what Basil Cole would have told me. Among other things.’