Liz threw a white-faced glance over her shoulder. 'Shit, he had two kids-'

'He's not dead.'

The car lurched as the wheels lost traction across a patch of ice and the headlight beams swung across the stern of a fishing boat tied up at the quayside. A lot of militia patrol cars were coming past us from the shore road with their code lights flashing and their sirens on, one of them clipping our rear wing as it slewed across the ruts.

'Hit that window, Clive. I don't want anyone seeing in.'

I wound it shut and took a look at the sergeant. He was slumped over across his knees and I dragged him upright because I didn't want him to get the blood back into his brain too soon.

'What about my courier?' I asked Liz. 'The one in the blue van.'

She talked across her shoulder. 'I told him to get the hell out of here on foot if he could. I didn't want him along.'

'How did it happen,' I asked her, 'did they get Fane?' It was difficult to think logically with this amount of action going on but I needed to know things because I didn't want to go into this kind of situation without a rough idea of the score. And that was all that could have happened: somehow they must have got hold of Fane. He'd set up this rendezvous and handed the briefing to Ferris.

'Right.' Liz swung the car at ninety degrees onto the shore road, sending a white bow-wave up from a snow drift. 'They got your courier in the freight-yards in Kandalaksha and grilled him and he blew Fane.' She had to choke something out of her voice. 'It took four days.'

'When did they pick up Fane?'

'Last night when he was getting on a plane for Berlin in Leningrad. They started work on him right away. Jesus Christ-' she was slapping the wheel with the flat of her hands-'I didn't know it was going to be like this when I-'

Someone else hit us and she swung the wheel and straightened up along the shore road. There weren't so many code lights flashing now and I jerked a look through the rear window and saw a whole line of patrol cars jockeying along the quay towards the barge. Fane must have held out until only minutes ago.

'Can we make the airport?' I asked Liz. There was some torn metal whining on a rear tyre where we'd just been hit.

'I'm going to try. There was no way you could've got there in that van — we're stopping everything that moves.' She tugged the radiophone off the clip and began talking in fluent Russian. 'This is Major Benedixsen. I have Captain Zhigalin under arrest and I'm proceeding straight to headquarters with him. There is no need for further action. I repeat: I have Captain Zhigalin with me now under close arrest.'

Zhigalin jerked a look at me across the seat-back.

'Everything's under control,' I told him. 'Don't do anything stupid.' I looked at the nervy green eyes in the driving mirror. 'Liz, how long have you been doubling for the CIA?'

Her eyes flicked upwards to watch mine, and she gave a strange little laugh. 'I've been doubling three years, but not for the CIA. I'm KGB. A defector from the militarist West. I'm working for peace, Clive, and right now the only chance of getting it is the Vienna summit. We've got to make it happen, and this man is the key. You've got to take him across.'

The front wheels hit something in the snow and sent us into a wild slide against a lamp standard before Liz got traction again. The KGB sergeant started moaning and I flicked his earlobe and got his eyes open and said, 'If you make any kind of move I'm going to blow your head off.' I looked back at the mirror but Liz was concentrating on the road again. Only if we are seen as a fellow nation, with worth to offer the world, with goods to trade, with ideas to exchange and with the future to share on an equal footing, can it also be seen that we are ready to go to the conference tables and join with others in drawing the world back from the abyss of war and mutual annihilation that lies in our path.

I had seen, in that hotel room, that she'd believed hi this, but I didn't realize till now that she'd actually written that pamphlet and slipped it under my door.

'Did Fane give your people the whole set-up?' I asked her.

'No. Just the rendezvous. I got it over the radio twenty minutes back when I was still trying to locate you and get you out.'

And then — oh God, this is going to sound so corny — after two pointless marriages I realized I wanted to spend my life with something much more than a man. I wanted to marry a cause.

She switched on her code lights and got the siren going through the next intersection because a work gang had got half the street closed off. 'Which runway is it, Clive?'

'Runway Two, north end.' I could see the airport tower lights through the haze; then they swung out of sight as we turned into a side street and accelerated past a checkpoint with our codes still flashing. 'Clive,' she called over her shoulder, 'we're still not through yet. They're still working on Fane and if he blows the airport set-up that's going to be it, you know that?'

'Yes.'

'If that happens I'll hear it over the radio but they'll close in right away and from that time on you'll be on your own, okay? There won't be anything more I can do.'

'Understood.' The torn wing was screaming on the tyre again and if it burned through the wall we'd have a blow-out. 'If you can pull up for a minute I'll see to that noise.'

'I can't stop, Clive, we've got to chance it.'

We swung into the airport boulevard and the tyre stopped screaming as the weight shifted on the turn. The sergeant half-fell against me and I pushed him back. 'Remember, you'll get your brains blown out if you try anything.' The gun was under the seat and if he tried to reach it he wouldn't make any progress.

Voices were coming through faintly on the radio and Liz turned the volume up as headlights swung across our bows as we went through the airport gates with the figure of a guard jumping out of the way. Another siren had started up somewhere.

We have a report that Captain Zhigalin has been seized and is under arrest… a lot of static as we passed a stationary diesel outside a hangar… confirm the order to call off further action… Then another voice cut in. Major Benedixsen, will you repeat your signal that you have… under arrest and are proceeding… headquarters.

She picked up the mike and responded. The windscreen was misting up and she wound her window down; the freezing night air cut against our faces as we gunned up along a taxiway road that had just been cleared of snow.

The radio came in again.

We have a report that an aircraft waiting for permission to take off on runway number two will attempt to cross the frontier into Norway. Patrols in this area will converge immediately… The static got very bad and we lost him for five or six seconds… Twin-engined Beriev civilian machine and the pilot is alone on board. He is to be seized immediately.

Fane had broken.

The airport authorities are to ensure that this aircraft does not take off.

Somewhere, under a bright light and with the tang of fresh blood on the air, Fane had broken.

The night was filled with sound as sirens began fading in and merged with the whine of jet engines as an aircraft turned into the north end of the runway and a red lamp began flashing from the control tower.

'Clive, I'm going for it.'

But the pilot was already listening to the tower's instructions not to take off and he'd know he was blown. We were late for the rendezvous and he wouldn't wait any longer: this side of the frontier he'd be for the firing squad and the frontier was only thirty minutes' flight. And he'd been briefed to expect a dark blue van.

I leaned forward. 'Liz, do you know Morse?'

'Sure.'

'Switch off your codes and use your headlights. Spell out Potemkin.'

'Like the battleship?'