For the Good of the State (21 page)

Grasping at a straw of comfort, he started to read sadness and regret into her expression. But that was a luxury he could no longer afford: he had to reject the past, as resolutely as that last log on the fire had refused to burn in the fireplace below. Henceforth he must lie on the ashes of their relationship, charred and scorched, but still substantially unburnt. ‘Well, maybe not pleasant, Miss Groot.’ Certainly not pleasant; because there were still things he couldn’t work out, in that relationship, now that her cover was off. But they would have to wait until he had better and sharper weapons to hand. ‘But a surprise—I must admit that—’ Simultaneously, he felt the weight of the weapon in his hand and saw her eyes fix on it. ‘I was expecting someone else … I’m not quite sure who, to be honest … But not
you
, Miss Groot.’ He slid the .38 back into its holster, settling it comfortably with elaborate unconcern under his own breast as though to emphasize that he could see very clearly that she carried no such weapon under hers. ‘Not
you
, Miss Groot.’

Then he looked round the room. Its three other doors were all ajar, but he somehow felt that they concealed no back-up, either CIA or KGB. And there was really very little point in confirming his instinct, anyway.

So he came back to her, with the best smile he could manage. ‘Or, as you would say, Miss Groot … “I sure as hell took him—you should have seen his face when he came in”.’ As he looked at her, and saw a muscle twitch on her cheek, he had to force himself to believe that the smile wasn’t hurting her. Because, whatever else she was, she was damn good at her job, he must believe. ‘Okay. So you took me, Miss Groot. So what next?’

She reached across herself to adjust the too-revealing lace. ‘It’s no good my saying that you’re one-hundred-per-cent wrong, I guess—?’

No!

‘Not the slightest good, my dear.’ What made it worse—or
worst—
was that he had never been taken like this before. ‘You take me once … that’s because you’re good at your job. But you take me
twice
…
then that’s because I’m stupid. So please don’t insult me by pulling the other one—okay?’

She considered that for all of half a minute before replying. Then she felt under her pillow and threw a little automatic pistol on the green brocade. ‘Okay, Tom. So you put that somewhere on your side, and come to bed—okay?’

It was one of the new .22s he’d heard about, but had never seen. ‘I get a freebie, do I? For old times’ sake?’

Now she was beginning to hate him. And he liked that more than anything since he had caught that treacherous fragrance. ‘Okay. You get a freebie. Just this once.’

He wanted her to hate him, he realized. ‘I’m not sure I’m in the mood. Crawling round Ranulf of Caen’s ditches … and trying to look after David Audley … and driving all the way down here.’ A weird thought struck him suddenly. ‘You didn’t come down in a big black Cadillac, by any chance—? With CD plates?’

The dead look behind her eyes flickered questioningly for an instant, enabling him to turn away victoriously towards the hanging cupboard. With his back to her, he took off his coat, and then the harness of the .38, and then his tie, hanging each up in turn. Then he began to unbutton his shirt.

‘Did you?’ The quite appalling truth was that he was in the mood, in spite of everything: he wanted her with an anger and a self-loathing which ought to have revolted him but didn’t. ‘A black Cadillac?’ He moved slightly so that he could see her in one of the dressing-table mirrors. She was still on that same elbow, but was busy adjusting one shoulder-strap as though to make herself hallways decent, as she had never thought to do before. ‘Was that yours?’

She looked up suddenly, straight into the mirror. ‘Uh-huh.’

Strangers in the mirror
, thought Tom.
Last night we were lovers, but now we’re worse than enemies, we’re strangers
. He moved again, staring at himself.
And here’s another stranger, too
!

He sat down on the dressing-table stool and began to take off his shoes, half-fearful that he might find cloven-hooves in them, with the toe-caps filled with devil’s oakum, as in the old Polish fairy-tale Mamusia had told him years ago. ‘But it isn’t in the hotel car park, is it?’

‘They gave me a Metro, Tom.’

They
? ‘Yes. I suppose a Caddy would have been a bit obvious, at that.’ Now he was down to his trousers. But, very strangely, the brutal stranger inside him was embarrassed, as the old Tom had never been—just as the stranger on the bed had been embarrassed about her slipped shoulder-strap.

‘You’ve been checking out the place, then?’

It was a curiously innocent question, delivered in a voice which had suddenly become curiously shaky, ‘Not well enough, apparently.’ There had been a Metro in the car park: a silver MG Metro, B-registered. But there had been no
Wilhemina Groot
in the hotel register to match it, of course.

‘W-what took you … so long?’

He remembered his pyjamas—the pyjamas he hadn’t worn last night. Mamusia’s Christmas-tree present from last year, still in their festive wrapper: Christian Dior, Midnight Blue, finest silk. They were the natural partners of the thing the blonde stranger on the rugger pitch was wearing. And they were in his case in the dressing-room. ‘I was checking the place out—not well enough—’ He threw the words over his shoulder as he found Mamusia’s unopened present ‘ —I just told you.’

They
? he thought again. The odds said CIA, but he couldn’t take that for granted. All he knew was what Audley had already concluded, that too many people already knew too much.

‘I mean—’ She threw the words back at him, out of the bedroom ‘—what took you so long to the hotel, Tom honey?’

He ripped the wrapper savagely—ridiculous things—

(‘They’re lovely, Mamusia dear. But you know I don’t wear pyjamas.’)

(‘But you should have them nevertheless, my darling. Whenever you go away
…
if there is a fire. Or a husband knocking on your door. Or
…
on your wedding night, my darling
…
there is a moment of delicacy—’)

‘There was a pile-up on the motorway, just before the Taunton intersection, Miss Groot.‘ Mamusia cherished a long love-hate relationship with the idea of her only son’s hypothetical marriage: she didn’t want to be a mother-in-law, but she wanted a daughter-in-law to dress and dominate; and she didn’t want to be a grandmother, but she dearly wanted a grandchild to mould, having failed with Tom himself. ’We were held up for an hour or more.‘ What twisted his heart now, as the silk slid up his legs, was that of all the possibles, Willy Groot (the former occupant of the stranger on the rugger pitch) would have resisted Mamusia best, both as a wife and a mother. But that was water under the bridge, now and for ever. ’As a matter of fact, I wondered whether it was your Cadillac which had piled up.‘ The memory of Mamusia’s ambitions and his own was swallowed up in the more recent and far more horrific image of obscenely mangled metal, and the false fairyland of flashing blue and red lights, as the fluorescent-coated policemen had at last flagged him from one clogged motorway lane to another with angry urgency on the edge of the disaster area. ’Because you came by me like a bat out of hell.‘ The coincidence of the Cadillac vanished as he thought about it: there was only one road westwards, so they had both taken it, quite naturally; the only questionable unresolved coincidence was Willy Groot’s relationship with Tom Arkenshaw, which now must be questioned and resolved. ’If that was your Cadillac, Miss Groot, I take it?‘

No answer. So he surveyed himself in the full-length Princess Diana bridal mirror in the emptiness of her silence—

Yes
…
well, in Mamusia’s custom-built pyjamas, at least he looked like he was taking the bridegroom’s role, if not Hamlet’s father’s—

‘Such was the very armour he put on—’

It was like Peter Beckett had said in Lebanon, that last time: everyone knew the big Hamlet speeches, but the part most people knew, and the lines, were those of Horatio—

‘So frown’d he once, when, in angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polack on the ice—’

‘It probably was.’ Her voice came to him almost in a whisper from the bedroom. ‘We had a Marine captain driving us, from the embassy guards, who said he’d driven in the Indianapolis race.’

At least it hadn’t been that bloody USN fellow! thought Tom. Not that this poor frowning Anglo-Polack needed to worry about that now.

‘He did drive rather fast,’ the small voice concluded.

Tom dismissed himself from the mirror. Whichever self that was, it didn’t matter—it didn’t matter any more than who had got her here, Navy man or Marine, one jump or two ahead of him. Why she was here, and to what CIA end, was all that mattered. And it wasn’t one of Mamusia’s ‘moments of delicacy’ now, either.

He switched off the dressing-room light and re-entered the bedroom, squaring his shoulders in preparation for what had to be done.

She had moved, but only slightly, to face him from her pillows. The glossy magazine had disappeared, but the disgusting little pistol still lay where she’d thrown it. And now she was biting her lip, as though readying herself mentally for that
freebie
, with which they’d each insulted the other. And she also looked much smaller, and heart-rendingly less confident, than the tough Wilhemina Groot he’d left this morning on Ranulf’s defences.

‘Okay, then.’ The old Tom would have been into that inviting bed faster than light. But Tom the Stranger had other fish to fry first, and merely sat on the end of it. ‘So why was I one-hundred-per-cent wrong, Willy?’ Almost to his surprise, he discovered that Tom the Stranger wasn’t stupid.

She stopped biting her lip, but he could see that she hadn’t expected him to go back to an answer he’d already scornfully rejected: she looked as though she’d expected to get raped while thinking of America, and George Washington, and the Statue of Liberty, and whatever else good little patriotic American girls thought of when Queen Victoria had been thinking of England in the same missionary position. So now it required one hell of an effort to adjust her thoughts to a more demanding intellectual challenge, as opposed to the less demanding physical one for which she’d arranged herself.

Or, alternatively, she was damn good
, he reminded himself quickly.

Finally (or maybe craftily), she seemed to come to a decision. ‘David Audley, Tom—’

‘David Audley—yes?’ Better to assume that she was damn good. ‘David Longsdon Audley, CBE, Ph.D, MA—’ He parroted Harvey’s snide encapsulation of the old man’s official career ‘—sometime Second Lieutenant, temporary Captain, 2nd West Sussex Dragoons, latterly attached Intelligence Corps … Rylands College, Cambridge … the King’s College, Oxford … Civil Servant, Department of General Research and Development, 1957 to date.’ The rest had been out of
Who’s Who
, Harvey had admitted, including parentage, and publications and hobbies; but he couldn’t remember it all now. ‘David Audley—right?’

‘He’s here, with you, Tom—’

‘You’re damn right he’s here!’ Need and desire coincided: he had hit back and he wanted to. ‘But how, as a matter of academic interest, did
you
get here—into my bed?’

She squirmed slightly against her pillows, and that shoulder-strap slipped again. ‘I had help, Tom—’

‘
Had—
?’ It was hard to keep his mind on the job: the former Willy had been a wonderful companion, naked and unashamed; but this one, in courtesan’s frills and ashamed, was something else. ‘Or
have
?’

She swallowed. ‘He’s in big trouble, Tom.’

‘
He’s
in big trouble?’ Tom tore himself away from that alabaster curve. Tor Christ’s sake,
Miss
Groot—I think we’re
all
in big trouble, aren’t we?‘ The whole unacceptable truth opened up before him. ’Someone took a shot at David this afternoon—or yesterday afternoon, as it is now … And there’s a man dead now—have you heard about him, Miss Groot, eh?‘

‘Tom—’ She tried to sit up, with what would have been delectable consequences in another world, but not now.

‘So
I’m
in trouble too, Miss Groot.’ He hated her and himself equally. ‘And
you
are in trouble, right now … And, I shouldn’t wonder, Comrade Professor Nikolai Andrievich Panin, in Room Five in the annexe at the back—
he’s
also in trouble, I shouldn’t wonder, eh?’ On balance, even while trying to allow that she was a two-faced bitch, he felt himself weaken. So he hardened himself against his weakness. ‘But I’m sure you know all about that. So what’s new, then?’

She ran her hand nervously over the flowered sheet. And he had seen that same hand, mud-encrusted, hold his measuring rod only this morning. But now it was clean and treacherous, with pearly nails on long fingers. And he still had his freebie to come.

The thought of that brutalized him. ‘Just who the hell are you working for—tell me that’?‘

The hand grasped the sheet. ‘Who the hell do you think I’m working for—damn it! And damn
you
, Tom Arkenshaw!’

That was more like her! ‘You were an embassy secretary in Grosvenor Square when I last knew you, Miss Groot.’

She drew a deep breath, and drew herself up as she did so, regardless of what all that did to what was on view. ‘Tom … you call me
Miss Groot
just once more—just one more time … and you can all go screw yourselves—you, and Dr Audley, and Professor Panin—
and Colonel Sheldon, too!
’

Well, that was nailing the Old Glory to her mast, and no mistake, thought Tom. There had been a routine flimsy waiting for him on the subject of that certain Colonel Sheldon—
Sheldon, Mosby Robert, Colonel USAF (ret)—
just a few weeks back. So as befitted a blue-blooded All-American CIA girl, Miss Wilhemina Groot was starting her name-dropping at the top.