I don't know how I manage to like a man who keeps a blueprint of my soul hung on his wall.

'It was far better,' he said, 'to let you go into Northlight with your talent for survival uncompromised. Don't ever say I haven't got your best interests at heart.'

'You really are a bastard, Ferris.'

'You shouldn't ask stupid questions.'

Absolutely right, yes. That's why I'd asked London for him. Ferris has been more absolutely right about everything to do with controlling the executive in the field than any local director I've ever worked with.

'A long way to bring you,' I said.

'From Tokyo?'

'Yes.'

'It was a bit important. Have you seen any news lately?'

'I've been rather busy.'

He watched me steadily for a moment. 'Don't underestimate things, Quiller. They've got far beyond the level of normal international diplomacy: that broke down, days ago. It's always the last thing that happens, isn't it, before a war? The talking stops, and they get out the guns.'

Cold crept along my spine.

'Jesus Christ… It's as bad as that?'

'It's as bad as that. And you know I wouldn't try to give you any bullshit, especially at this late stage. It's your life on the line, I understand that.' He turned his head and watched the window for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was quieter. 'It's all our lives, actually.'

I pulled in a slow breath.

'Unless I can take him across. Zhigalin.'

'Precisely.' He looked back at me in the strange half-light.

'What are the chances, Ferris?'

'I'm not sure there are any.'

Ferris has never deceived me.

'Then we'll have to make some.'

'Yes.'

'The snow's blocked the roads, from here to the frontier. I assume you know that.'

He looked through the small grimed window again. 'Yes. We shan't try to get you out by road. Even if we could get you both to the frontier, it wouldn't work. That snow's a killer.'

He was thinking of the rifles. Snow is the perfect background for a running target: they wouldn't miss.

'How much briefing did you get, Ferris?'

'I've been in signals for hours, but you'd better fill me in on the local scene. It's not good, I imagine.'

'No. They're looking for Zhigalin.'

'Of course. Checkpoints everywhere?'

'Yes. I had to go through one on the way here: I was on a truck and they stopped it.'

He became very still. 'You showed your papers?'

'Yes.'

'Well that's good news.'

'It can't last. I had to kill a man on a train and they'll have found him by now. Then there was the bang in Kandalaksha — did Fane tell you?'

'Yes. He met my plane.'

'So they'll connect me with the man who was taken to the hospital, as soon as the computers have spewed out the coincidences, I daren't go through another checkpoint.'

He thought about that. 'Did they match your papers with any kind of all-points bulletin?'

'No. They were using tape recorders, to speed things up.'

'Pretty intensive.'

'Yes. In the last two days I've seen fifty checkpoints putting half the population of Murmansk through the sieve. If they don't get me next time they'll get Zhigalin.'

'Oh,' Ferris said, 'he's safe for the moment.'

'He's made contact again?'

'Yes.'

'Where is he?'

'Not far. We're looking after him.'

'That was fast.'

'There isn't a lot of time.'

A diesel engine gunned up outside as a bulldozer started reversing. Ferris turned to the window again.

'Pretty bells,' he said. 'Rather like Christmas, with the snow and everything.' He was half in profile, his glasses no longer hiding his eyes. They were watchful.

'Are we all right?' I asked him.

He gave a sigh and turned back to me. 'Tell me about the Chinese. The Rinker cell as you call it.'

'They've lost me.'

'Are you sure?'

'They didn't show up in Kandalaksha after I'd killed one of them on the train.'

'But we're not expecting them to "show up" until we bring Zhigalin to the surface. Are we?'

I didn't like this.

'You think they're still active?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'For one thing, I would say that the Chinese would go to very great lengths to secure Zhigalin. Once they'd persuaded. him to give a press conference they could wreck the last of our chances for a summit meeting in Vienna, and that would give them a priceless advantage.' He looked through the window again. 'For another thing, and rather more immediately, I think they're watching us now.'

The whole of the fuselage began drumming and I felt the vibration through the metal seat. Light swept across Ferris as the plane lifted from the runway, leaving the sound of its jets echoing across the airport like the booming of a thunderstorm. A loose chip of glass in one of the smashed instruments set up a tinkling vibrato.

'Where?'

'Among the trees.'

'Which trees? Which direction?'

'Forward of the plane-'

'This plane?'

'Yes.'

'How far away?'

'A couple of hundred yards. I-'

'One man?'

'I'm not sure. All I could see were the field-glasses.'

'Two lenses? Are you sure there were two?'

In a moment he said: 'Good question.'

'You're not sure?'

'I could have been mistaken.'

'It could have been just one lens.'

'Yes.'

'A telescopic lens.'

'Yes.'

The drumming eased off, and the chip of glass stopped tinkling. It seemed quieter because of it, quieter than before, and colder, even colder than before, the kind of cold that shrinks the scalp and crawls on the skin.

'I was opening the door,' Ferris said, 'when I saw him. The only way to warn you was to come aboard, as if I hadn't seen anything.'

'Civil of you.'

He could have turned back and left me here waiting. The director in the field is almost never at risk: he's too valuable to the opposition as a human constant; his job is to keep in contact with the executive, to keep the lifeline intact, to be instantly available if something goes wrong. Half the time when the executive goes to ground and the opposition lose track of him they can find him again by throwing a surveillance net across the local director's environment, physically and electronically, and there's nothing we can do about that because the alternative is to send the shadow in alone and he wouldn't last more than a couple of days in the field without support and communications: it'd be like throwing a man off a ship in mid-ocean.

'Does he know you saw him?'

Assume one man. One sniper with a long-distance rifle. It would be dangerous to assume anything else.

'I don't think so.'

'Why not? You were looking straight at him.'

'At a distance of a couple of hundred yards. And I didn't stop moving.'

'It looked as if you were just making a last check before you came in here.'

'Yes.'

He was slowly pulling off his gloves.

'It can't be the KGB,' I told him.

'No.'

They wouldn't work like that. This was their territory, what London so graciously calls the host country. The KGB don't need to set up a sniper to pick off a spook: they'll just send a van in and drag him on board and if he gets clear then they'll send in a hundred men, cover a whole city with checkpoints as they were doing now. You don't in any case get very rapid promotion in the KGB for hauling a dead spook into headquarters without giving anyone a chance to put him under the light and pick everything out of his head.

'Then it can only be the Rinker cell.'

'As far as my briefing tells me,' Ferris said, 'they're the only active people in the field.'

Three lights, red, green and white, crossed the oblong of the window as the plane climbed into the circuit. They vanished quite suddenly into the fog layer. It was getting worse, creeping in from the sea.

'I couldn't be absolutely sure,' I said, 'when I came here.'