'God knows,' I told him, 'why I got you all the way from Tokyo.'

'Perversity. Any questions?'

'Only one. The objective's likely to be in an unpredictable state of mind. What do I do if he changes it suddenly and decides he ought to stay here in Mother Russia and face the music and all that?'

'Get him out.'

'Regardless?'

'Yes. Get him out.'

'Understood.'

'I shall be here at this number the whole time, until I get the signal that you're down safely in Norway.'

'Fair enough. See you in the Caff.'

I put the receiver on the hook and pushed the glass door open and nearly knocked the silly bastard over.

'I thought you were going to be in there all bloody night!'

'Bollocks.'

I reached the North Harbour soon after four o'clock, an hour and a half later. There were still checkpoints all over the place and I had to make a lot of detours through streets under deep snow, keeping away from the floodlit areas. No one followed me. A dark blue Volga saloon with the KGB insignia on the number plate had passed me twice when I'd had to leave cover and go through a main street but it looked like a routine patrol and I didn't let it worry me. The bout of eleventh-hour nerves was over, and as I walked through the ruts of the harbour road towards the final rendezvous I believed that whatever happened now, Ferris would get me out with the objective.

It was a black-painted hulk with snow thick on its decks and the mooring cables pulling at the rings to the movement of a swell rolling in from the sea. The dark blue Zhiguli van was standing against the wall of a wharf just north of the barge, and I went up to it and exchanged parole and countersign with the driver.

In the distance the headlights of the traffic swept the snow drifts and picked out the dark figures of the work gangs; I couldn't identify individual vehicles from here but some of them would be militia and KGB patrols. None of them turned along the quay in this direction.

It was 04:34 hours when I checked my watch and broke cover and walked across the packed snow to the barge and went aboard. The snow had been packed down between the landing-plank and the open hatch amidships by the passage of feet, and the outlines of boots had frozen into hard grey ice. I didn't call out because there was no need: the briefing had been perfectly clear and there should be only one man on board — the objective.

I went down the companion ladder into the pitch darkness and the acrid stench of coal, and when I reached solid planks I turned and looked for signs of life.

'Freeze.'

Light struck across my eyes and I put a hand up to shield them but all I could see in the glare was the blued steel of a gun.

'Potemkin,' I said.

'You are the Englishman?'

'Yes.'

The torch-beam was lowered and the gloved hand reversed the gun and handed it to me barrel-first. 'Captain Kirill Alekseyevich Zhigalin, Soviet Navy. I am at your command.'

'Clive Gage.'

I put the gun into my coat. It would have offended him if I'd thrown it into the scuppers.

'Can you understand my humiliation?' He gripped my arm, moving the torch higher to watch my face. 'The dishonour?'

'What? Yes of course, but we-'

'Did I fail them in my duty? Did I neglect-'

'Come on Zhigalin, get moving.' I took the torch from him and pushed him towards the companion ladder. 'There's an aircraft waiting for takeoff and the fog's closing in, do you understand?'

His boots clanged their way up the metal rungs. Bloody ideologists, all they could think about was their bloody honour. I switched off the torch and climbed after him to the deck. He was standing there looking across at the shore lights in the distance, a short man in a duffle coat with his hands by his sides as if he'd lost something.

'Here I was born,' he said softly, 'in this land.'

I had to jerk him into motion again and he went on telling me about the "primordial necessity" of mutual loyalty between a man and his country — Christ knows where he was educated but it sounded like a mail-order course. I got him to shut up because he had a voice that carried.

'Get into that van, Zhigalin, and don't talk. This town's crawling with KGB patrols and we're going to be lucky if we get through.' I slammed the rear door after him. 'If anything happens, leave it to me, is that clear?'

'I am at your command, comrade Gage.' An odd kind of whimpering started as I got into the front and shut the door. I think he was actually weeping.

'Airport?' the driver asked me.

'Yes. Have you been over the route?'

'Of course.' He sounded hurt. 'We're running late, do you know that?'

'Best I could do. What's your name?'

'Antonov.' That's what we all said.

'Are you carrying arms?'

He looked at me as we got into second gear along the frozen ruts. 'I have a gun. Why?'

'If there's any trouble. I don't want you to use it. If you get clear on your own that's your own business but all the time you're with me you don't even show your gun, now is that understood?'

'Whatever you say, Colonel.'

Ferris had given him my executive's operational ranking. 'All right, but don't call me that if we meet anyone.' I watched a pair of blue-tinted headlights turning along the quay from the shore road. 'How long will it take us to reach the aircraft?'

'Not long. Fifteen minutes.' He was staying in second gear; the ruts were sending the front wheels all over the place. The blue-tinted headlights swept across our windscreen and didn't dip. 'Whoreson,' the driver said and lowered the visor.

'Have you a military escort for me?' Zhigalin-had stopped crying and was leaning with one hand on the seat-back.

'A what?'

'A military escort. That would be correct, and I have no objection.'

'All you've got as an escort to the West, old son, is a shagged-out ferret. Sorry about that.' I didn't expect him to understand but that wouldn't matter because the other vehicle was pulling across the quay right in front of us with its headlights still blazing and we slid to a stop to avoid hitting it.

Two uniformed figures got out and came up to the van with their — guns drawn, one on each side and dragging the doors open.

'KGB! Out! Out! Hands on your heads! Out!'

29 DOLL

Liz threw the KGB patrol car into reverse across the ruts and then sent it forward in a tight sliding turn to miss the van and straightened up, driving on dipped headlights now.

I could hear a siren somewhere.

Zhigalin had been forced into the front of the car and I was in the rear with the KGB sergeant. He was holding his gun at my head.

Liz got into third gear, sending the car in a series of zigzags across the treacherous surface. She was in KGB uniform with major's insignia on the shoulders.

'Clive, can you deal with that man?' She said it in English.

Zhigalin sat in the front with his head turned to watch her, not understanding what she'd said.

There were more sirens now from the shore road, and headlights were swinging onto the quay towards us.

I had to take her on trust. There was no other way.

'Clive, you've got to see to that man. It's no good if you-'

There was only a marginal vector available because if I tried dragging the gun-hand downwards I risked taking the shot in the pelvis and if I knocked it aside it would send it in an arc across Liz and Zhigalin so I used a rising wedge-hand to send it straight upwards but there wasn't enough leverage and the first shot ploughed through my scalp and I had to work very fast and connect my left hand with his neck and even then I wasn't in time to stop a second shot smashing into the door pillar before I could impact with the baroreceptors in the carotid artery and shut down his nervous system. The gun dropped across my leg and I kicked it under the front seat and got the window down to clear the air before we started choking on the cordite fumes.