That was too close.

The Bureau should do everything to keep them under surveillance.

Noted. But the pilot was giving the generals their papers back and pointing to one of the helicopters with the Air Force insignia on its side, then cupping his hands and shouting to one of the crew. Then he turned back and nodded and the generals began moving towards the helicopter, their bodyguards closing in.

There's an edict taught at Norfolk, and even repeated to senior and experienced shadow executives during refresher courses, on the subject of risk-taking in the field. At a crucial phase of any given mission when the executive is tempted to take a risk that would seem likely to place that mission in hazard, he is expected to bear in mind that his life is to be counted more than the mission itself, on the premise that he may well survive to bring future missions to successful completion and recoup the loss.

To strip this edict of its bureaucratic terminology, we are asked to sink our pride and not to act the bloody fool but to get out with a whole skin if we can, and leave the mission to founder. But it's extraordinarily difficult to put into practice, and we argue the toss about it in the Caff and the briefing rooms, quoting from the records, which show that the executives have so far got away with something like fifty per cent of the decisions made in hot blood and carried the mission with them, sometimes with a bullet in them somewhere but not where it could incapacitate, sometimes with a flesh wound and blood loss but nothing critical. And the reason why this kind of decision-making is so difficult is nothing to do with the risk itself, nothing to do with its technical configuration or the balance of its calculated profit-and-loss. It's to do with personal pride.

I watched the generals.

They were picking their way across the snow, their bodies leaning forward, their shadows thrown by the floodlights as they neared the Air Force helicopter. Other passengers, some of the walking wounded, were following them as the pilot beckoned them on.

Chief lnvestigator Gromov was still working in the vicinity of the train, his officers with him. The man had stopped screaming some time ago: either they'd got him clear of the wreckage or he was unconscious or dead. I watched the injured passengers — one of them Boris Slavsky, blood soaking into the bandage round his head. When eight or nine of them had reached the helicopter I saw the generals and their bodyguards go aboard; then the pilot helped the injured to climb the short iron ladder.

So it wasn't Konarev's gun that was the danger here: it was personal pride.

Above the cabin of the military helicopter the rotor had started naming, and a puff of dark smoke clouded from the exhaust.

The Bureau must do everything…

But the Bureau could do nothing. I, the appointed agent of the Bureau in the field, could do nothing. Perhaps I had ten seconds left to deal with Konarev and get across to the helicopter and go aboard if the pilot would take me, but the risk of this man's gun going off and sounding the alarm was too high, and even if I could reach the chopper the bodyguard who'd given false evidence to the police would recognize me and I'd be back in a trap, finito.

The rotor was spinning now and the whole machine vanished in a vortex of flying snow and then its strobes lifted and traced an arc across the night sky before they were slowly blotted out by the storm as I stood there watching with my life vouchsafed and my pride in rags as Meridian died its death.

Chapter 8: EXECUTION

'Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini… Qui fecit caelum et erram…'

The priest made the sign of the cross again and moved on to the next body, a nun following him, a thick woollen robe over her habit. A voice sounded faintly from nearby, and she went over there. He's coming, she told them, the father is coming: Other priests were working here, other nuns.

They had arrived in the police vans and the ambulances and on the fire trucks, finding what transport they could. The snow-ploughs had got here first, an hour ago, clearing the cinder roadway alongside the track for the other vehicles to follow. Two bulldozers were working at the wreckage aft of Car No. 12, and a crane was lifting debris from the rails. Someone had cried out as one of the carriages was rolled back onto its wheels, and a doctor went over there, taking a nurse with him: there were still people buried under the wreckage.

The snow was heavy now, driving from the east and covering the length of the Rossiya and the passengers still huddled in the compound waiting for transport into Novosibirsk. There were no more helicopters airborne now: two of them had collided soon after takeoff, and one of the snow-ploughs had swung in a half-circle and begun clearing a path for an ambulance.

'Dominus vobiscum, et cum spiritu tuo…'

The priest and the nun moved on.

I was looking for Tanya.

She'd been working on the wreckage of the train with the rescue crews until half an hour ago, and then I'd lost her. But I must find her again, and stay close. Tanya Rusakova had become important, could perhaps offer me a chance in a thousand. That was my thinking.

I went across to the head of the transport line where the trucks were still coming in to evacuate the able-bodied passengers. She hadn't left here yet, Tanya: I'd watched every truck as the people had piled onto them. I'd watched from a distance, because Chief Investigator Gromov was there with a cadre of his officers, checking the people too as they clambered across the tailboards, looking for me.

I had a scarf across the lower half of my face; many of us did, it was quite the fashion, because of the bitter cold.

'Where's my mummy?'

'What?' I looked down.

'I can't find my mummy!'

A small pinched face with the tears frozen on it, a look in his eyes beyond desperation. I picked him up. 'Don't worry, she's here somewhere.' I carried him across to one of the nuns and left him with her and went back to the head of the transport line, watching from a distance.

I had not been gentle, my good friend, with Konarev. He had got my goat, if you remember. I had needed a diversion of some kind, had been waiting for it, waiting with great patience, and then the helicopters had collided and people had started screaming and the snow-plough had swung round and throttled up with a roar and I brought the handcuffs down across Konarev's wrist and the gun fired once and missed the target and I smashed my head into his face and fell across him when he went down into the snow and used a sword-hand to the carotid artery with enough force to stun and felt for the keys on his belt and tried five of them before I found the right one.

No one was looking in this direction; the only people I could see were half-lost behind the dazzling curtain of snow in the floodlights, so I bent over Konarev and brought down a measured hammer-fist to the frontal lobes to produce concussion and got him across my shoulders and took him to the ambulance station where they were putting the injured on board, told them it was a head trauma case.

That had been thirty minutes ago and it was then that I'd started to watch the pickup trucks, looking for Tanya, and by now I was beginning to think I'd missed her, but that idea was unthinkable, because of the last possible chance.

Drowning man.

Shuddup.

Clutching at a straw.

Shuddup and leave me alone.

Then I saw Tanya: she must have gone back to the train to find her suitcase; they were helping her swing it aboard the next truck in line. I turned and walked across the area ahead of it where the snow had been packed down by the vehicles coming in, had to watch my step, it was like a bloody ice rink now, they'd have to start breaking it up with a bulldozer. I went fifty yards and saw the truck coming at a crawl, slewing all over the place, and when it was close enough I clambered over the side and they made room for me. I still had the scarf across my face and I don't think Tanya recognized me, didn't want her to; she was at the rear and I faced forward, getting down behind the cab to keep out of the wind as the truck found better terrain and gunned up with the headlights dazzling against the curtain of snow. They hadn't seen me, Gromov and his men, but they'd go on looking for me and when they finally gave up and made for the city they'd fill the streets with militia patrols to help them. And there was the other thing — I didn't know how long it'd be before Konarev regained consciousness but when he did he'd let out a big squeal and that wouldn't help, I'd have to be very careful, go to ground if I could, find some kind of a bolt-hole.