I looked up into the face of the witness, saw no expression, a nondescript face, the eyes giving nothing away, as I would have expected of a former Red Army general's bodyguard, possibly a former member of the GRU, trained to keep his thoughts out of his eyes.

'He's lying,' I told Gromov.

The large head tilted a degree. 'He also claims that shortly before midnight last night he heard what he thought was a shot coming from somewhere in Car No. 9, and that he saw you in the corridor there, hurrying away from the lavatory. What have you to say?'

I looked down at Gromov. 'He's lying. You should check his story, Chief Investigator. You should check it very carefully.'

Gromov dropped the red ballpoint onto his notepad and swung his heavy head up to look at Galina.' this provodnik has also stated that she saw you in Car No. 9 — which is not where your compartment is — immediately after she heard what sounded like a shot.' He looked down at me. 'What have you to say?'

I felt a vibration on the air, created by the nerves I suppose, as I heard in my mind the bang of the trap shutting.

'She's lying,' I told Gromov. 'they're both lying.'

'Perhaps,' he said. 'Perhaps. But until I have satisfied myself of that, I am placing you under arrest, Viktor Sergei Shokin, on a charge of suspected homicide.'

The officer beside me nudged my arm and I made a token of protest as would be expected of me and then let him put the handcuffs on and snap them shut.

Chapter 7: PRIDE

'What was the town back there? Where the train stopped?'

'If you talk,' the officer said, 'you may incriminate yourself.' His name was Konarev: that was what Chief lnvestigator Gromov had called him. He was my guard, and he had the key to my handcuffs; it was on the bunch dangling from his polished black belt. His gun was in its holster; I couldn't see whether it had a safety-catch. He was in his thirties, his leathery face still pocked with the ancient scars of adolescent acne; he'd sliced his chin this morning, or perhaps yesterday morning, with his razor. His eyes were hard, so hard that they had surely never softened even when he'd met his first love, or his last love, or his wife, whatever. If the question ever arose of his having to shoot, he would shoot to kill.

There were two other officers in here; they were sitting on one of the benches going through sheafs of paper, the first statements made by the passengers, conceivably. Two security guards were in the corridor, both wearing bolstered guns. The train was moving at optimum cruising speed, or close, by the feel of things.

It was 4:17 by my wristwatch, the Kanovia watch that Jane had bought for me, a Russian model. Everywhere else on the Rossiya the clocks would be showing seventeen minutes past noon, Moscow time. They would be showing Moscow time when the train rolled into Beijing.

The time wasn't critical but I noted it, because it could become critical later in the day, in the night. Everything, in this situation, could be considered critical in the extreme. If there were going to be a chance of regaining my liberty, it would probably be the result of my having noticed something, perhaps something very small. Officer Konarev had a slight cold, for instance, and his reaction time would be a few degrees slower if he had to move quickly.

'Do you live in the town where we stopped,' I asked him, 'or in Novosibirsk?'

'If you talk, you may incriminate yourself.'. He blew his nose again. I appreciated his official consideration, couldn't fault it.

We were in a compartment not far from the locomotive. The bunks had been ripped out and the bulkheads were partially repainted. I think there'd been a fire in here: there were areas of discoloured and bubbling paintwork, and the lingering smell of burning. There was no heating; either it was broken down or the cleaning staff had turned it off, wanting to cool down after their labours in the rest of the train, where the heating was tropical. This was a staff carriage, and the banging of buckets and the light cries of the women's voices above the rumbling of the train were a constant background.

I'd put on my padded jacket over the track suit. The gloves were in the pockets. There'd been a penknife in one of the track suit pockets but they'd taken it away, also the cheap plastic-handled knife that Jane had packed for me in the food bag. The rest of my baggage was in here with me: two officers — one of them Gromov's thin and pale-eyed assistant — had searched it in front of me. A man in a blue coat and trilby hat had come in with a small attache-case and opened it up and taken my fingerprints, giving me a small sealed alcohol swab to clean my fingers with afterwards.

I had no alibi.

The sky out there must have some light left in it to the west, in the track of the train; perhaps the sun had found a hole in the overcast on its way to the horizon; it was leaving a pale unnatural light across the snows that I could see to the north through the window, making them seem like frosted glass faintly lit from beneath. Above it the sky was just as unreal, not quite dark but with no light in it, an awesome shroud across the evening, thrown by the coming of night. It looked inhospitable out there, not a place where one would think of going, of setting out alone, not in the ordinary way; but then of course one must on occasion leave room for the extraordinary, mustn't one, when the devil drives.

No alibi at all.

Slavsky had gazed wide-eyed at Chief Investigator Gromov, a dry nervous hand adjusting his glasses, and said no, he didn't hear me leave our compartment after 10:30 last night when he'd gone to sleep, leave it or come back to it or leave it again, nothing, he'd heard nothing, he slept soundly, always, and was used to the noise of the train. It wouldn't have mattered much what he'd said, because the general's bodyguard and Galina Ludmila Makovetskaya had both sworn to having seen me near the scene of the homicide and having heard a shot.

I had been outbid. She hadn't had much time for the generals, Galina. They had power, once. Now they have no power. But they think they have. Their ways are devious. But they still possessed the power of money, and it had talked, it had said that she'd seen me there last night where the dead passenger was found.

With the generals' bodyguard there'd been no money involved. The underground faction, the Podpolia, had put Hornby out of the way in Bucharest and they had put Zymyanin out of the way on this train and they had driven me into a trap that I wouldn't get out of. and whatever I said against them, whatever I knew about them couldn't do them injury: it would be taken as an attempt to clear myself. They'd needed a scapegoat, someone for hanging, to draw attention away from themselves over the shooting of Zymyanin. and one of them had seen me talking to him in the corridor within hours of their killing him, and I had become a suitable candidate And Galina was dead wrong. The generals, the clandestine and omnipresent Podpolia, had power besides money, immense power in the land. This had been the thrust of Zymyanin's mission, itself clandestine: to attack that power. I'm also here because there's a cell in Moscow, a completely unacknowledged, unofficial cell whose purpose is to seek, find and expose the active members of the Podpolia wherever they may be.

'Are you married?' I asked Konarev, my guard. 'Have you got children?'

He told me I could incriminate myself.

But they'll usually start talking about their children, give them long enough. Of course he might not have any, or even a wife, could well be devoted exclusively to his police work. I watched the other two for a moment, at work on their papers, and then the noise started, a distant but enormous whoomph like a heavy-calibre shell bursting, and then just the rumbling of the train for a second, two seconds, before the big steel couplings began banging and the carriages started shunting and the iron buckets in the cleaners' quarters went wild and I saw Konarev do a half-turn, caught off his balance, and hit the wall with his hands going up to save himself as I pitched sideways and crashed into him and he got his gun out very fast and pushed me away while the other two policemen hit the long plate-glass window and bounced off it with their papers whirling upwards and then drifting like leaves as the red came, the huge red glare spreading across the snows through the windows of the corridor outside.