Not now. My only chance now was Ferris.

'We'd better assume,' Fane said evenly, 'that you'll decide to complete your mission and take Zhigalin across whatever the circumstances. In which case I need to brief you.'

'All right.' It made sense. If they sent Ferris out here I'd want to be ready for him.

'I suppose we can't get any heating in this place, can we?'

I think I remember laughing when he said that. It was so human, from such an inhuman man. He didn't think he'd said anything funny; he looked rather offended.

I said, 'In this hotel?' He should have tried hanging underneath that bloody train all night. 'The old man would bring us some tea if you like.'

He shook his head. 'I'd rather keep a low profile.' He lit another cigarette and studied the glowing tip, perhaps taking warmth from it in his mind. 'We have it from our contacts here in the Murmansk cell that Captain Zhigalin was put under close arrest in the naval barracks about an hour after the top brass learned that the Cetacea had been torpedoed and had gone down with all hands. It was probably a panic move. It was quite obvious that the summit conference was suddenly in grave jeopardy unless they could bind and gag the man responsible. From the reports I've received, Zhigalin was at first bewildered and then outraged. He told someone he expected a military honour for protecting the security of his country's most important naval base, not summary arrest and humiliation. This ties in with the dossier I was able to look at: Zhigalin is young for his rank and has received rapid promotion. He's said to be a staunch patriot, a fervent ideologist in terms of Marxist-Leninism and a dedicated officer.'

'The type to break.'

'Yes. We think he broke.'

'You think it's genuine.'

'From the reports. They're all we have to go on. I can't see any other reason for him to have escaped.'

'Unless it was arranged.'

He lifted an eyebrow. 'With what in mind?'

'So that they could've had an excuse to shoot him down on the run. The Soviet navy isn't a rag-tag pack of pirates — they can't simply drop a full captain into a hole and lose him. He'll I I have a family, he'll have friends. There'd be an enquiry, and they wouldn't want that. They want a total blackout on the sinking of the Cetacea.'

'There'd be an enquiry if he were shot dead.'

'Nothing like as big. His escape would imply guilt, and his family wouldn't want any questions asked.'

'I think he'd have been shot by now,' Fane said reflectively, 'if that's what they meant to do. He escaped soon after ten o'clock last night when they were transferring him from his cell to the medical block for a routine examination. If he were. dead by now, we would have heard. I'm in very close touch.'

He was standing outside the door with a tray in his hands when I jerked it open.

'Some tea, comrade.' He was bent almost double under the weight of the tray: it was solid brass and the teapot was copper, the real thing, none of your plastic pissware in romantic Russia. 'I thought you might like some tea.'

I'd heard a stair creak only ten or fifteen seconds before I'd pulled the door open; he hadn't been standing outside for very long but that didn't mean he hadn't been going to. We've got all kinds of exotic cover in this trade from hotshot international journalist to butterfly collector but in local situations you don't need more than a tea tray.

'Come in,' I told him.

His faded eyes were taking in the room and resting now on Fane, but Fane had turned his back and was looking out of the window. He wouldn't say anything: the less they see of your face the better, and the less they hear of your voice.

'Unfortunately, comrades, we have trouble with the boiler room. It is often so. Tea will warm you, however.' He lowered the tray onto the split mahogany dressing-table, the strain in his arms setting a tea-cup raiding.

'Good of you,' I said.

He straightened up, turning his weathered face to me. 'I try to be of service, comrade.' On his way to the door his head swung slightly but not enough to afford him a direct look at Fane's back. He knew the delicate intricacies of the situation; a fifty-ruble note gets you more than a tray of tea: it gets you privacy so inviolate that you can have a visitor in your room without any questions asked. But he couldn't resist turning his head just that fraction. Who was the man standing there at the window? A dealer in sables and gems? A magician who could move your name to the top of the waiting list for a little Volga saloon, an official with one life in the corridors of Party power and another in the dockside labyrinths of international crime? 'This is dangerous,' Fane said when the concierge had gone.

'Yes, but the risk is calculated. Milk and sugar?'

'No.'

The cord round the handle of the huge copper pot was coming unwound and I got one of the thin grey towels from the washstand. 'You'll be out of this soon,' I told Fane, 'don't worry.' It's easy for the directors: they keep their foreign cover.

'That will depend on Mr Croder.' He took his tea and sniffed the steam that rose thickly in the chill of the room. 'On whether he can get Ferris.'

'He'll have to.' I picked a strand of sacking out of the coarse brown sugar and put some into my tea, adding some milk. 'This is rather cosy. Quite Tunbridge Wells.'

'You really do have a weird sense of humour.'

'Takes all sorts. You worried?'

'That man.'

I sipped some tea; it was scalding, and half the chill went out of the room. 'A calculated risk is one that you have to forget you've taken, once you've taken it. If that man is going to bring the KGB here he'll have called them by now and there's nothing we can do about it.' The directors are never happy when they have to leave the security of their grand hotels and hobnob it with the ferrets out in the field. 'How did you get on to the Zhigalin escape?'

'He contacted the embassy.'

'The US embassy?'

'No. Ours.'

'Ours? Why?'

We were briefing again. Fane said: 'It seems he's ready to turn his back on the mother country and take his revenge by offering himself to the West. But he said he was afraid that if he put himself directly into the hands of the Americans they'd lynch him on sight.'

'Did he actually say that?'

'Not directly to me. I got the gist of this through the DI6 chief of station. But it's accurate thinking on his part: he'll need a lot of protection from the Company if he gets to America.'

'Does Zhigalin speak English?'

'Very little. A few naval phrases he's picked up on the ship's radio bands.'

'Where is he now?'

'He refused to say. He's to phone me as soon as he can find somewhere safe to hole up.'

'Then he'll ask for a rendezvous?'

'Yes.'

'Give me everything you've got, then.' If Zhigalin phoned the hotel and Fane wasn't there, we might lose him. The longer he stayed on the run the bigger the risk of his getting caught or shot.

Fane pulled a folded sheet of paper out and turned it to catch the light. 'Zhigalin is five foot nine, stocky, dark brown hair, brown eyes, clean-shaven, a scar below his left ear. He's wearing a merchant seaman's clothes — dark blue sweater and coat, dark blue trousers. That's his provisional cover, as-'

'He hasn't got new papers?'

'No.'

'Is he trying to get any?'

'No. He's leaving it all to us.' I poured him some more tea. 'That doesn't worry me,' he said. 'I wouldn't expect a dedicated naval officer to know what he's expected to do when he's suddenly the subject of a manhunt. I'd say his mind is in a state of some turmoil at the moment.'

'What are the chances of his thinking twice and giving himself up?'

'We don't know. But DI6 treated his call with extreme caution. They didn't promise him anything, except to respond to any further contact he might make.'