For the Good of the State Read Free

I agree that there’ll be trouble when they meet.’ The thought of the tape concentrated Garrod Harvey’s mind. ‘Only my bet is on Audley—like last time.’ There was one more important thing to put on the record. ‘Old Fred Clinton must have made the same bet back in ’70.‘ Not that the tape mattered, really. Tapes could be edited, but editing tapes wasn’t Henry Jaggard’s style any more than throwing his subordinates to the wolves was Jack Butler’s. ’You’re quite sure that Audley doesn’t know about Viking, I take it?’
    Jaggard shook his head slowly, without bothering to answer what wasn’t even a question.
    ‘What I mean, Henry, is that he doesn’t know— and we can’t tell him, not even if we wanted to, can we ?’ Harvey paused deliberately. ‘Not even if he asked us about Panin. Which he won’t in any case, because that isn’t his way of going about things, you see.’
    Jaggard leaned forward. ‘Just what exactly are you proposing, Garry? To let Audley go in blind?’
    ‘David Audley never went into anything blind in all his life.’ All Jaggard wanted was a little reassurance. ‘One of our problems with him in the past has been that he knows too damn much, not too little. So he’ll know Zarubin’s in London for sure—you can bet on that. And he’ll know who Zarubin is, too.’
    ‘But Poland isn’t his field.’
    ‘ Everything is his field. He’s a Clinton-vintage R & D man born and bred, Henry.’ Harvey briefly considered the possibility that he might have been wrong about Jaggard’s intention, but rejected it. ‘He’s an interesting man. ’
    ‘ “A distinguished scholar”—so you said.’ Jaggard knew there was more to come. ‘ “A medievalist”. But I would have thought the sixteenth century was more his period. The treachery was more three-dimensional then, if I remember correctly.’
    ‘Yes.’ That was Henry Jaggard’s period, of course. And, as a devout Calholic, Jaggard had equivocal views on it which were well known. ‘But did you know that he’s also a recognized authority on Rudyard Kipling?’
    Jaggard nodded cautiously. ‘Kipling is down as one of his hobbies, in his file.’
    ‘It’s more than a hobby.’ Harvey silently blessed the young Garrod Harvey Junior’s stuffiest godfather, who had given his birthday presents with such old-fashioned seriousness. ‘He’s just written a series of articles in the Literary Journal . Which are going to be turned into a book, I believe. He believes that Kipling is our most underrated author—and our most misunderstood one.’
    ‘Indeed?’ Jaggard’s politeness was strained to breaking-point, like the window of the de Havilland Comet which Garrod Harvey’s own godfather had trawled up from the sea-bottom off Elba thirty years before. ‘So what?’
    ‘The most recent one was on Kipling’s children’s stories.’ Harvey gauged the moment when Jaggard would explode, as the Comet window had exploded. ‘You know, my wife tells me that “We are what we eat”. But it seems to me that, more accurately, “We are what we read”. Or … in the present generation what we don’t read—I suppose it’s what we see now, on the television. Which is a truly dreadful prospect—’
    ‘ Garry— ’ Jaggard controlled himself with difficulty. ‘I have to see the Minister’s Special Adviser in about two minutes. And I don’t think I’m in a position to stretch his patience—do you?’
    It was time to lower the pressure. ‘I think we might have something to offer the Minister. At least … if he’s prepared to cover our flanks, if anything truly unpleasant occurs.’ Garrod Harvey couldn’t bring himself to recall ‘the good of the state’ as an ally, even though it had to be their only true good, for what he envisaged; because the Minister’s Special Adviser would only be concerned with the good of his Minister. ‘Because Audley’s most recent article was on Kipling’s children’s stories, as I