For the Good of the State Read Free Page B

for appropriate final punishment, like in the old days.
    ‘I do agree, Henry.’ Garrod Harvey kept his face straight. Because what Henry Jaggard wanted was for Audley to win and lose at the same time; and that was exactly what he was now about to offer to Henry Jaggard, and the Minister’s Special Adviser, and the Minister, and the Prime Minister, and Her Gracious Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II! ‘But my money’s on David Audley—I think he’ll screw Panin into the ground, and General Zarubin with him. But I also think we have to give him a bodyguard, to watch over him—’
    ‘A bodyguard—’
    ‘That’s right: a bodyguard.’ Nod. ‘I’ve taken that for granted.’ Another nod, for good measure. ‘Not just to look after him, but also to keep us informed as to how he’s breaking all the rules in the book. Because that’s what he always does—he doesn’t even pay lip-service to the rules, Henry. So if he screws Zarubin—Zarubin and Panin … then, even then with a bit of luck, we can still make a scandal of it—if we have someone on the inside beside him, watching him—?’
    Jaggard frowned, as though some long-outdated moral scruples were attempting to skirmish with pragmatic experience, like bows-and-arrows against machine-guns, which was no fair contest.
    And yet (as though the longbowmen and crossbowmen were cheating, by capitalizing on the silence of their weapons), Jaggard was still frowning at him.
    ‘We have to have someone alongside him, Henry.’ He had to press home his technological advantage. ‘Otherwise he’ll weasel out of it somehow, like he always has before.’
    ‘He’ll never accept anyone.’ Jaggard left his moral scruple behind. ‘Or he’ll want someone he can trust, like Mitchell or Andrew from R & D, Garry.’
    Garrod Harvey shook his head. ‘They’re all too busy, with their own Gorbachev work. And they don’t fancy minding Audley, at the best of times.’ He made a face at Jaggard. ‘Minding David Audley is a thankless task. And in the past it’s also been rather dangerous. But, in any case, R & D hasn’t got the manpower for it. Or the womanpower.’ This time Henry Jaggard knew better, and merely waited for enlightenment.
    Garrod Harvey turned the shake into a nod. ‘I fed a few notional facts into the computer this morning—profile facts.’
    Henry Jaggard looked at him, trying to pretend that he knew ‘notional facts’ and ’profile facts’ from the double yellow lines on the road outside, far below them in Whitehall. ‘And—?’
    ‘I think we’ve got just the man for the job. At least … he’s a medievalist, of a sort. And he also speaks fluent Polish.’ Garrod Harvey smiled invitingly.
    Henry Jaggard was so relieved to have left the computer behind that he accepted the invitation. ‘And—?’
    They had passed the point where Jaggard might have said ‘What you’re proposing is monstrous, Garry,’ even though what he was now proposing was just that. ‘He isn’t Audley’s son, Henry. But he could have been. Audley will never be able to resist showing off in front of him.’

PART TWO
    THE MAN FOR THE JOB
1
    TOM MOISTENED the end of his stub of indelible pencil and wrote ‘1025’ beside the line of the bailey ditch on his sketch-map.
    If Willy’s measurement of the motte ditch was about 500 feet in circumference, then the whole motte-and-bailey was a dead ringer for the Topcliffe castle in size, if not in date—obviously not in date, because Topcliffe was an early post-Conquest castle, and this was as yet not anything at all except an anonymous ‘earthwork’ on the ordnance survey map. So it just could be Ranulf of Caen’s adulterine castle, which certainly should be somewhere hereabouts if his calculations were right.
    On the other hand, it was certainly not much of a motte , he thought doubtfully, looking up into the impenetrable undergrowth above him and trying to estimate the height of the mound. These were undoubtedly Ranulf’s lands,