'Yes.'

She began working the switch. Sand was flying up from the tyres and crackling under the wings. A siren was coming in strongly now and a wash of headlights was filling the car from behind us; then the tyre burst and Liz brought the wheel hard over to counteract the shift in balance, one hand still hitting the headlight switch in a series of jabs. There was no answering light from the aircraft.

'Clive, are you ready?'

'Yes.'

She used the brakes and we went into a full-circle spin as the burst tyre was wrenched off the wheel and we finished broadside on to the aircraft with the doors wrenching open as Zhigalin dropped on to the snow and began running.

'Go for it, dive. Go for it.'

There was ice and I slipped and went down and got up again and went after the Russian as the door of the Beriev came open and a man stood there with a gun raised in the aiming position and it was then that I began yelling the one word, the one name, Potemkin… Potemkin… until the pilot holstered his gun and crouched at the top of the ladder to grab Zhigalin and haul him inside as I got there and started climbing. The aircraft was lit with the dazzle of the militia and KGB cars as they came crowding in from the perimeter track with their code lights flashing and their sirens wailing and the first shot sounding, a thin crack in the medley of louder sounds as the pilot gunned up and let the brakes off with the red lamp still flashing from the tower.

Another shot came as we started rolling but when I looked out of a window I saw it wasn't for us: the leading patrol cars were sliding to a halt with the doors swinging open and I saw Liz fire again at the KGB sergeant as he tried to go for her. Even as he went down she was turning her gun on the uniformed figures spilling out of the cars and running for the plane with their hands at their holsters until one of them turned and took aim and fired and Liz was rocked back, a small doll-like figure in her grey belted uniform and sable hat with one arm flung into the air before she crumpled and went down onto the snow.

The twin jets screamed on full power for takeoff and drowned out the radio as the pilot put the Beriev down the runway with the red lights still flashing him from the tower. All I could see of him in the glow from the instrument panel was a dark hook-nosed face under a balaclava and one hand steady on the control column. Zhigalin was slumped against the pilot's locker with his head back and his eyes shut.

Were you hit?'

He answered but I couldn't hear what he said in the screaming of the jets so I went to him and asked him again and he opened his eyes. 'No. I was not hit.' I suppose he was pining for his bloody motherland again.

'You're doing the right thing,' I told him.

'I'm doing the only thing.'

Then the runway lights went out and the pilot cursed the tower and I didn't see how he was going to get this thing off the ground because all the headlights showed was a waste of snow with the runway lost in a kaleidoscopic pattern of ruts and drifts and sand without enough definition to keep a straight course and I waited for him to take the power off and slow under the brakes but he wasn't doing that — he was still accelerating because either we were already past the point of rotation and couldn't stay on the ground without smashing into the solid snow-banks south of the airport or all he could see through the windscreen was a firing squad and the only alternative to that was to get airborne if he could.

We were already off the runway because we hit something and the whole plane shuddered and the pilot cursed again and brought the control column back and put a hand out to the undercarriage switch as we nosed up and the rumbling of the wheels died away.

'What happened?' Zhigalin had been flung forward against the pilot's seat and tried to get up but he had his foot caught in some harness.

'We lost the nose-wheel,' I told him. It had sounded like that. Then the pilot began yelling obscenities as a red flock of tracer bullets came curving up at us and he banked sharply and brought a box of flares off its wall-bracket and scattered them all over Zhigalin.

'Then we won't be able to land,' he told me, 'if the nose-wheel is gone.'

'We'll flop down on the belly.'

'Not if the nose-wheel is damaged. He won't be able to retract it.'

Perfectly right but he wasn't thinking terribly straight because if these tracers found their target we wouldn't need to worry about how to make a landing. Something hit the rear end of the fuselage and I lurched my way back there but couldn't see what had happened unless a bullet had gone clean through. I went back to the cockpit and Zhigalin caught my arm, staring into my face.

'I regret, of course, the death of the submariners. But I had no choice. They were the enemy and they were in our waters.'

Oh Jesus Christ. I like a man to have a conscience but not if he spends the entire time sitting on the pot with it.

I leaned over the pilot.

'Where are you heading?'

He glanced up. 'Why were you so fucking late?'

'The alarm clock didn't go off.' Some people can't take a little disappointment but I knew what he felt like because this was Our last ride by the look of things and I'd got beyond the point of worrying whether we had any hope of getting the objective across and saving the Vienna summit because we were going to finish up like roast pig if one of those tracers hit a fuel tank. 'Are you still going to make the frontier?'

'I'm going to try.'

'What are the chances?'

'We have to get through whatever flak they send up, and they'll be sending up a lot, but we could make it with some luck. But we have to fly close to Pechenga and if they up a pursuit plane they'll just blow us out of the sky.'

We were heading north-west on the compass and if we turned south even by ten degrees we'd be increasing the distance to the frontier and if we turned north there'd just be ice-floes.

The radio was now audible again with the jets running at altitude but there was a lot of static and we couldn't pick much out and the pilot wasn't answering… Warned that in the… will be attacked and brought…

The aircraft shuddered again as a brace of tracers made a hit somewhere amidships in close succession and Zhigalin got to his feet and went aft to see what the damage was, dropping something on the floor. I picked it up: it was some kind of ikon he'd been fussing with, that's all very well and you can carry a rabbit's foot with you but don't forget it didn't do the rabbit any good.

Smoke was clouding forward and I saw Zhigalin unclip a fire extinguisher and start pumping it. There was another one on the bulkhead and I broke it out of the clip and went aft with it. It looked as if a tracer had lodged into one of the seats and all we had to deal with was a slow-burn fire. Zhigalin was doing well enough and I went forward again and told the pilot what was happening, but he didn't answer because his head was angled to listen to the radio. … Repeat that two military machines are now airborne… forced… are waiting your response… a lot of static again… airborne and moving into an interception course…

'They're up from Pechenga,' the pilot said. 'What's that fire back there?'

'It's under control. So what are our chances now?'

'We don't have any if they attack with an air-to-air missile or even cannon-fire. I'm going north — there's nowhere else.'

'To the sea?' "There is nowhere else.' He hit a ventilator open to clear the smoke. 'If we make the coast there's a chance of turning west again across Norwegian waters.' … And upon interception the order will… we urge you to respond to this signal. The order mil be to attack you without further warning…

I could hear Zhigalin coughing his heart up in the rear of the cabin but there was no flamelight through the smoke. I went into the lavatory and soaked my handkerchief and held it over my face and went back to the cockpit as the pilot put the Beriev into a tight turn for the north.