But with a sleeper it's different. He's like a mole, deep underground, and when he surfaces he finds the light too bright and it frightens him and he's liable to go back and stay low for a while. In the case of Karasov the temptation to do this was greater than usual: from the moment he was reported missing, the KGB would have started a massive search — they'd already been looking for the man who'd copied the tape of the submarine kill and he was the obvious target.

The thing that worried me most was that he hadn't contacted Tanya, simply to reassure her: it was the first thing he'd be expected to do. But the answer to that could be that he hadn't gone back underground: he could still be on the surface somewhere, running, and running too hard to stop.

'Very well. Thank you, comrade.'

Demichev put the phone down and dropped my papers onto the desk for me to pick up and said carefully, 'I have talked to the officer who would have been in charge of any search made in your room at the hotel. He assures me that no search was in fact made. I can only assume that it was a thief, or one of the staff, or that you were perhaps mistaken after all. I wish you a pleasant stay.'

He didn't get up. I put the papers into my coat.

'All right.' I turned back, halfway to the door. 'What's your opinion, Captain? Do you think this submarine thing is going to stop the summit?'

He laughed nicely. 'You people never miss an opportunity, do you?'

'We can't stop anyone in the street and ask them, without getting them into trouble.'

He let that go. 'I think it depends a great deal on whether you go back and vilify us as usual in your popular press. We are looking for mutual understanding, you see, and without it there's very little chance of a summit meeting.'

His smile had died away and as I left the office he was simply staring at me through narrowed lids, and as I touched the door handle a frisson passed through my nerves because I was suddenly sure it wouldn't turn, that the door was locked. But that feeling is quite normal, when you walk out of a KGB building.

On the way to the hotel through the unearthly night glow from the sky it occurred to me that I'd missed something. I'd fallen into the occupational hazard of identifying too closely with my function: I was an intelligence agent, and expected to be caught — or at least suspected — at any given time. But I carried a journalist's papers and there was absolutely nothing to connect me with any kind of deception. If the KGB had thought there were any cause for suspicion they wouldn't just have searched my room: they would have taken me along to their headquarters and put me under a light and yelled and gone on yelling until they found something. The only reason they'd have for making a room search would be to turn something up and confront me with it later; but they didn't normally work like that: they didn't need to.

If they'd made that search they'd found nothing: my Boris Antonov papers were in the door panel of the car. But that wasn't so important. Why would they have made it at all?

There was no reason.

I didn't like that. The only possible answer was that they'd found something wrong with my cover, and that frisson I'd felt along the nerves was justified. The door handle had turned and the door had opened and I'd gone into the street by virtue of one thing alone.

They were giving me rope.

'But you can't do that!'

Her Russian was atrocious.

'I'm sorry. It's the curfew.'

'But listen, I'm an American citizen!'

'We know.'

He was in plain clothes, with the slight regulation bulge above the left hip.

'Look, if I want to go out to get some fresh air, that's what I'm going to do. Okay?'

She tried to push her way past him.

'We'd prefer you not to make trouble.'

'If you don't let me past I'm going to make so much goddamned trouble you won't even know what's happening!'

It didn't sound exactly like that, because she was using only the present tense and the Russian for goddamned isn't translated as accursed, so forth.

'It won't do any good,' I told her in English and she turned to face me with her eyes bright.

'What the hell do you know about it?'

'That it won't do any good.' I said to the KGB man in Russian: 'It's her first time here.'

'Americans,' he said with a shrug. 'Are you American too?'

'No. English.'

'There's no difference. You cause trouble. You are in Russia now, do you understand? You are on the soil of the Soviet Union, and are expected to behave according to our laws.'

'What kind of bullshit is he giving you?' the girl asked.

'There's a curfew. The only thing you can do about it is calm down and come and have a drink.'

'D'you always let these bastards have their own way?'

'It's more comfortable.'

'Whose side are you on, for Christ's sake?'

'Come and have a drink.'

She stared at me with her head flung back and her eyes still hot. 'Did you know about this curfew?'

'No.'

'Then why are you taking it lying down?'

'Because this isn't my first time out here.'

'How d'you know it's mine?'

'It shows.'

'Christ, I don't know which one of you bastards I hate most.'

'You'd better choose, because I'm the one who's going to buy you a drink.'

'Shit.' She turned and walked off, then swung back to look at me. 'I guess that's not very polite.'

'It'll do.' I nodded to the KGB man and put an arm around the girl and took her into the bar. It was almost deserted. 'What would you like?'

'A iManhattan.'

She was young, though I couldn't tell which side of thirty: I'm no good at people's ages. In her blue parka and gloves she looked more like one of the jet set just off the ski slopes.

'But why are they suddenly having a curfew?'

I'd chosen a corner table with a view of the doorway. The three men at the bar were speaking English, but one was French; I could hear the accent.

'The whole place is jumpy. You should know that.'

'Why should I?'

'You're a journalist.'

'Jesus, I wish-' then she took her drink and looked down and said, 'I guess I need this.'

'Cheers.'

'What? Cheers.'

The other two were German. The Frenchman was getting tight.

'Where are you from?' I asked her. It was going to be fifteen minutes of small talk and then I was going up to my room because I wanted to do some thinking: I wanted to find out why they were giving me rope. It was like being on a pond in winter: I could hear the ice cracking.

'Boston. What about you?'

'London. My name's Clive Gage.'

'Hi. I'm Liz Benedixsen.' She put out a cold hand. 'I don't normally blow my top that way. I just got fired.'

'From your paper?'

'Right. They called me home, but I'm not going.'

'You like Murmansk in winter?'

'You mean the cold? I don't mind that. Why did you order tomato-juice?'

'I like it.'

'Oh. Ex-boozer?'

That's right.'

'You don't look like a journalist, Clive.'

'This is a disguise.'

She had an interesting smile, it was private, confiding.

'What's your paper?'

'The Monitor.'

'Class.'

'A little conservative. Though not in your meaning of the word.'

'Redneck?'

'Quite. More blue-blooded.'

She laughed again.

A man had come in and was sitting at the far end of the bar and I watched him now and then but he was all right: he could have used the gold-framed mirrors to cover this corner of the room but he was sitting too far at an angle.

'Your editor hasn't called you back?' the girl asked me.

'No.'

'Most of them have gone. Didn't you notice?'

'Yes.' I hadn't. I'd thought they were out with a guide trying to rake up some local colour.

'You know why they've gone?'

'No.'

She looked around at the three men sitting at the bar and the man at the end, then back to me, her eyes concentrating, weighing me up. 'I haven't seen you around much.'