The cold air hit my face and I squeezed my eyes half-shut as I looked out. The speed of the train was somewhere in the region of sixty kph and the terrain alongside the track was black rock under a light snow covering: we'd been running due south and the wind was easterly and the drifts had formed on the other side where I couldn't jump without being seen At this speed and with those rocks below me it was going be sudden death but I couldn't see any choice because they could hold off until I got out at Kandalaksha but from that point they'd expect me to lead them straight to the objective and I started trying to lose them they'd close in right away: they couldn't afford that, and they wouldn't give me more than an hour or two before they shut the trap and took me to their safehouse and went to work. If I didn't lead them to Karasov they'd have to force me to tell them where he was. I didn't know, but the rendezvous was in my mind and they might salvage that.

I put my head half out of the window and looked south, the way we were running, but the wind was so cold that my eyes blurred at once and I was blinded. Looking below and behind I could still see nothing but rocks: there was no embankment to roll down, no deep snow to break my fall. But we'd passed through Olenegorsk and there'd be no other stop until Kandalaksha in forty minutes' time and if I didn't get out now I'd be moving into a strictly shut-ended situation.

Rocks, and light snow, and rocks, and now a stretch of flat ground with scrubland beyond it and immediately below me the dizzying comb-tooth sequence of the sleepers. There'd be some kind of chance to make a rolling aikido fall with my coat on but without it I didn't expect much hope of getting away with less than a smashed skull.

But there was a compromise between staying in the trap and doing a suicide drop and I pushed my shoulders through the window and twisted round and got a hand-hold on the half-inch gutter valance and hung on with my left hand and reached inside for my coat. I'd left it in a bundle across the tiny marbled handbasin and it caught on one of the taps but I freed it by whip action and pulled it through the window. The running board was three feet below me and I felt for it, swinging in the slipstream with the cold hitting my body and going through to the bone before I found the board and put my weight on one foot and dropped and grabbed for the windowsill and steadied, getting my balance.

The idea was to hang on like this until we were running across better ground but there was no guarantee: these rocks were lethal but in this terrain I couldn't hope for more than flat ground frozen iron-hard under the snow and if I jumped wrong and landed badly I could pitch under the wheels.

It was difficult even to see what was below me because at this speed the ground was blurred, and in any case it was no go because a sound came and I looked upwards into the barrel of his gun.

They were really very good.

But he was nervous. He hadn't left me in the toilet for more than a couple of minutes before he checked on me from the next window along.

It was the next window forward of the toilet and he'd chosen it so that he could look back without the slipstream in his face. His gun was perfectly steady and his eyes were narrowed, sighting along the barrel. He was the Lithuanian with the shapeless leather bag.

'Come back,' he said in Russian. His voice carried well above the roaring of the wheels.

I looked down and away from him to clear my eyes. I didn't need time to think; there was no decision-making to be done. We were both professionals and we understood that, and the situation was simple enough. He'd taken away the only chance I'd had — the hope of dropping and rolling on flat ground and getting away with it. If I dropped now the last sound I would hear would be the shot. He'd only need one: it was a magnum he was holding, a man-stopper.

His chances of saving his own mission weren't very good now because he couldn't afford to let me get away: if I got away I might survive and reach Karasov and take him to a frontier. The Rinker cell could no longer use me as a tracker dog to lead them to Karasov: I was blown. But if this man had to shoot me dead there would still be a small chance for him and for his mission. He would expect my network to replace me, just as his own had replaced Rinker. He would then hope to pick up the tracks of my replacement and follow him to the objective.

So there was nothing to stop him putting a shot through my spine if I let go and dropped.

'Come back into the train,'

He'd got the bloody thing cocked.

The acrid stink of the locomotive up there ahead was in my lungs and I began shallow breathing. The valance was sharp under my fingers and I didn't know how long I could hold on: the whole of my body was numbed by the blast of the slipstream and I began wondering if it would have been any good trying to squeeze through the window with my coat still on, and when you begin wondering things like that when you should be planning your next move it's time you 'Three,' he said, and held up three fingers.

His voice brought me back to full consciousness: I'd been slipping into alpha waves because the cold was clamped round my skull and shrinking the carotid arteries below the jawline. I would have to do something, or You've got to do something.

Yes, bloody little organism starting to panic.

If you don't do something we 'II get killed and I don't want to the.

For Christ's sake shuddup.

Panic. Panic's the real killer when all's said and done.

'One,' I heard the Lithuanian calling out.

A rush of clear thought came and I realized he wouldn't be joking because he didn't have a lot of time to spare: if those KGB people came past the compartment he'd have to shoot them if he could before they got to their guns because dial would be professional: he still had a mission running and his instructions would be to do anything necessary to protect it and see it through, and even though the major Western services try not to do the kind of thing I did to that KGB colonel in Moscow when the car was being smashed up they sometimes have to take things to a conclusion if there's no other way, just as the KGB sometimes knock some spook off his perch in Paris or London or Bonn if they're running a tricky operation and he's making things difficult.

This man would take on the KGB but he'd much rather not: he'd rather get me back in the train and pistol-whip me or use a syringe and shove me under the seat until he could get me off at Kandalaksha.

"Two."

I was worried about my coat. It was still draped half across the windowsill of the toilet and I was so cold now that it was the only thing I could think of by simple association, thirst, drink, so forth. I thought of something terribly funny to say — Do you mind if I fetch my coat?

Not funny, no. You've got to do something, I don't want to the.

Shuddup you snivelling little bastard.

Then a spark came flying back from the engine and stung my face and I came out of the alpha waves and thought oh Jesus Christ this is going to be it.

'Three.'

I squinted upwards and saw the gun and remembered what was happening and moved my feet along the running board and brought my hands level and then moved my feet again and saw from the corner of my eye the coat fall from the window but there was nothing I could do about that.

'Faster,' the Lithuanian called.

The whole thing was rocking badly now — the train felt as if it were running across the bare sleepers instead of the rails because I wasn't much more than a frozen carcass and normal consciousness kept slipping into zen as the mind tried to save the organism by relaxing and going blank and letting the body fight its way out of trouble if it could.

'Faster!'