'Yes. Yes, I understand.'

'What are the names of your children?'

'Yuri, Irina and Tania.' His head swung to look at me because the question had surprised him.

'You want to see them again,' I said and pulled his door shut and drove up the ramp into the street. 'You must take care of yourself.'

'Yes,' he said, and I heard emotion in his voice, 'I understand.'

I turned into the street without slowing down too much and he rolled against the door with a thump and rolled back: I wanted him to know how extraordinarily helpless the human body can be without the use of hands or feet.

The evening rush hour was nearly over and the first set of lights was green. 'He's at the Pavilion,' I said to Ignatov, 'is that right?'

'Yes.'

I drove north-west along Soldatskaja ulica, feeling the onset of depression. Of all the questions in my head I thought I had the answer to one, and I didn't like it. Ignatov was a professional driver and would have been trained to watch his mirror when he was at the wheel of those big black shiny Zils because the members of the elite Politburo must not be followed about. But he hadn't discovered my tag on the way from Spassky Gate this evening: he had seen the Pobeda several times but hadn't realized it was following him specifically. Certainly I'd taken pains to do the job efficiently, but then I'd taken similar pains two days ago, and he'd known I was there behind him, and there on purpose. It had been daylight then, and this evening it had been dark; but this city was bright by night and visibility was good. So there was an additional factor involved, which had led him to discover the first tag and not the second.

I thought I knew what it was. I had probably known for a long time, right at the back of the mind where we put things we don't want to look at. But it would have to be brought into the light, and looked at; and that was going to be painful. I would almost rather be going to Lubyanka again, in good heart and filled with the fierce animal instinct to fight and survive, than to this place filled with depression and unable to do anything about it. Depression is unreachable, the slow death of the spirit.

'What's your wife's name?' I asked Ignatov. The lights changed to red at an intersection and I put out a hand as he swayed forward again: I'd had to do it several times to stop him hitting his face on the windscreen.

'Galya,' he said, and looked at me, wondering why I had asked, and perhaps hearing something in my voice: the depression.

'What does she do?'

'She teaches the ballet, at the Centre for the Arts.'

The lights went green and he swayed back on his seat.

'Does she teach your children?'

We were almost there, but I wanted this journey to last a long time, and I wanted to talk to this man about his wife and his children and the ballet lessons.

'She teaches our two girls,' he said, his voice wary, suspecting some kind of trap.

'Irina and Tania.'

'Yes,' he said, surprised that I'd remembered. But like most people, I remember most things, and especially those things I'd rather forget.

'I suppose Yuri thinks it'd be sissy for him to learn, does he?'

'Yes, that's perfectly right!' As if I'd discovered a profound truth. But the wariness was still in his voice, the fear that I was building up this little edifice of human intimacy only so that I could knock it down. He didn't have the trust in innocence those children had had in the park.

He was silent, but I saw he was watching my reflection in the windscreen. I think he was beyond trying to do anything to help himself now, or to stop my going to see Zubarev. I'd found his weakness, or his strength, whichever you want to call it. But this didn't mean he wouldn't kill me if I gave him the chance and if he believed he had to, for his children's sake. Or of course for his own.

The lights were green for us at the turning into Baumanskaja and I didn't have to stop, though I would have liked to stop, and turn back, and never meet Zubarev.

The Pavillon block was on our left now and I turned past it and found the car park at the rear, where I'd explored the environment on foot two days ago. The snow was thick here, with the tracks of vehicles making ruts that tugged at the wheel as I drove through the entrance. The building was quite large, with a blank wall facing us and the headlights throwing the shadows of the parked cars against it. A man was walking towards us from the building, going across to his car, and our headlights held him frozen for an instant before I switched them off. He looked transfixed, like a wild creature caught in the dazzle of lights along a country road, and his shadow was enormous on the wall behind him, grotesque and distorted, with one thin shoulder held low like a broken wing and his body twisted to one side.

'Is that Zubarev?' I asked the man beside me.

'Yes.'

I watched as the figure moved on again, hobbling towards the car.

14: DEADLOCK

He looked up at me from the driving-seat.

'Oh,' he said, 'it's you.'

I'd gone across to his car quite quickly, to stop him driving away.

He watched me steadily for a moment, his pale eyes narrowed and his small gnome's head slightly on one side. Even sitting down his body was twisted, with the left shoulder held low and noticeably still. He was trying to think what it would be best to do, and I couldn't have helped him even if I'd wanted to. I'd only just got here in time: I think he'd panicked suddenly while he was waiting for us to arrive, and decided to get out in case Ignatov brought someone with him: an example of the type of intuition we develop in the field as a natural aid to survival.

But he couldn't just drive off, now that he'd seen me. There was a question of pride involved. The most he could do would be to pretend he was just popping out for some cigarettes; but he didn't bother. We both knew the position.

'What about a little drinkie?' he said with a sudden lopsided smile.

'All right.'

I stepped back to let him get out of the car. He did it clumsily, though he tried not to let anything show, and I looked away in time to save him embarrassment. Perhaps this was why Ignatov had been impressed by my talk of a wheelchair: he'd seen what it looked like to be half crippled.

Dr Steinberg hadn't told me his patient was as bad as this: he'd just said he 'tended to hobble'.

He slammed the door of his car. 'Is that Ignatov you've got over there?'

'Yes. I'll go and get him.'

Schrenk peered across at the humped shape in the Syrena. 'Got him trussed up, have you?' He gave a dry snigger. 'Leave him there, he'll be all right.'

Oh no you don't.

'He'll get bored out here,' I said, 'with no one to talk to.' I went back to the Syrena and got out my pocket knife and cut through the scarf: the knots were there for life. I said quietly to Ignatov: 'Don't do anything silly, will you? Remember you want to see the children again, and Galya.'

'Yes. I understand.' He shook the stiffness out of his legs and came with me towards the building.

'Evening, Pyotr,' Schrenk said in Russian. 'Where did you find our friend?' Another dry little laugh, totally without humour.

Ignatov said nothing, but stared at the ground as the three of us walked across the rutted snow. Schrenk slipped a couple of times and I remembered I mustn't help him, even if he actually fell. I knew him that well.

Other things were coming back to me in flashes of memory: a plastic chess set on the corner table of the Caff, where he used to challenge people, waiting there like a spider; a girl with black hair and smoky eyes and an intimate way of laughing, seaweed draped over one naked shoulder on the beach at Brighton; a black Jensen Interceptor with an anti-radar unit, deafening jazz records, an ashtray made out of a piston and stuffed with butts, and the way his fingers moved over the bomb that time, stroking it like a baby rabbit. Shapiro. Schrenk.