Tanya was saying something, too quietly for me to make it out.

'What?'

'I am not leaving Novosibirsk.'

'Don't worry,' I said, 'we're not flying anywhere.'

With our voices at this pitch the driver couldn't hear anything; in any case I thought I heard him singing to himself, just below the noise of the chains, not a care in the world, I'd caught a whiff of his breath when we'd got in.

There were no lights in the mirror, not yet. Two more patrol cars had passed us going the other way, flying their colours. I didn't want to know what our chances were of getting clear tonight: Chief Investigator Gromov would have heard by now that I'd made it as far as the city and he would have concentrated the hunt with the Vladekino Hotel as its epicentre. A second hunt would have been mounted with its focus on the rendezvous point where General Velichko had lain slumped against the wall only three or four blocks away. I'd told our driver the airport simply because it was a good hour's run on a night like this and we needed distance, as much as we could get. I also needed a telephone.

She had run into an alley, Tanya, and I'd intercepted her at the other end; she'd just been running blindly, not away from the militia, I thought, but away from the man lying back there with his face on the ruddled snow, away from what had suddenly happened in her life; this was my impression. She'd struggled when I'd held her and tried to make her understand that she was in the most appalling danger and that I wanted to help her, help get her away.

She hadn't listened, until I'd told her she had to go with me for her brother's sake.

She had listened then.

Once, when we were slipping and lurching across the snow, we'd passed the end of the street where the hotel was, the Vladekino, and seen three or four militia patrol cars outside with their lights flashing. So one of the crews had gone into the hotel earlier to look at the register, and seen the name Shokin, Viktor Sergei there on the page, and got on his radio.

The taxi had been outside another hotel, the first in the rank, and Tanya had got in without protest.

The traffic was light at this hour, 11:14 by the clock on the dashboard, but there were snow-ploughs still churning through the streets, and produce trucks running late because of the storm.

Tanya was saying something, and I leaned closer. 'I'm sorry?'

'How did you know I have a brother in Novosibirsk?'

'A provodnik told me.'

'How would a provodnik know?'

'They know everything.' Galina had telephoned Moscow from the train.

She still hadn't opened her eyes. She was trembling: I'd heard it in her voice. I pushed myself forward on the seat and spoke to the driver.

'Have you got a drop or two of vodka on board?'

He swung his head round with a look of great surprise. 'I'd get arrested!'

'Look, we've been freezing to death out there trying to find a taxi, and my wife's starting a cold. Come on, be a hero, ten roubles a shot.'

He reached for the glove compartment and fished out a plastic flask from among all the camouflage and passed it to me. I got the cap off and wiped the neck on the end of my scarf, best I could do, and nudged Tanya to get her eyes open.

'No,' she said, 'I don't want any.'

'This is medicinal — you're in shock.'

She took the flask in her gloved hands and tossed some of the stuff back and choked on it but I made her have another go; then I gave the flask back to the driver and he put it away.

'There's no more flights tonight,' he said. 'I suppose you realize that'

'Yes. We work at the airport. We thought we'd have a night on the town and then the car broke down.'

In a moment Tanya spoke again. 'You said I was in danger. Why?'

The lights changed and we slid to a stop halfway across the intersection, and when we got the green and the chains started thrashing again I moved my head close to Tanya's.

'You're in danger because that militia patrol back there caught you in its headlights and when they found that man lying there they would have started looking for a woman walking alone in the streets, walking or running or trying to hide. Your name is in the registration book at the Vladekino Hotel, where you saw those other militia patrols crowding around outside, and the concierge would have told them you'd left there fifteen minutes before — because they'd have asked her a lot of questions and that would have been one of the answers, and by this time they'll have made the connection between the young woman leaving the hotel on foot and the young woman seen running from the scene of a shooting only a few blocks away. You also made a statement to the investigators on the train, and that too will be on record. Did you tell them you've got a brother in Novosibirsk?'

'Yes.' then she saw the problem and said defensively,' I had to.

They asked me if I had any relatives, so what else could I say? If you lie to those people they can find out and then you're in trouble.'

I didn't say anything.

The driver was singing again, and the sound of his voice against the demented percussion of the snow chains lent eeriness to the night.

'Why are you helping me like this?' Tanya asked me. She hadn't closed her eyes again after drinking the vodka; she was sitting straighter now. watching me, the green shimmer dulled by the shock that was still going through her. But a bit of colour had come into her cheeks, and the trembling had stopped.

'Because I need information.' there were lights flashing ahead of us and I watched them. 'I need information about General Velichko and the other two.'

In a moment she said, 'Is this for a story?'

'A what? No.'

'You told me you're a journalist.'

A whole circus of militia patrols along there, half a mile away, some kind of road block. I didn't tell the driver to take a side street because he'd wonder why, and if anyone along there saw us running for cover they'd send out a patrol to cut us off and ask questions and the only papers I had on me were in the name of Shokin, Viktor Sergei.

'Yes,' I told Tanya, 'I'm an investigative journalist with political interests.'

'I don't know very much,' she said, 'about the generals.'

But enough to want one of them killed. 'What was Velichko talking about,' I asked her, 'when you had dinner with him on the train?'

'He was telling me,' she said with contempt, 'about his heroic deeds in the war with Afghanistan.'

'Nothing else?'

'No.' I heard something in her voice, and when I looked at her I saw she was frightened because of the lights up there.

'Don't worry,' I told her,' there's probably been an accident.' there were still three stationary patrol cars ahead of us and I leaned forward and got a hundred-rouble note from my wallet and held it out to the driver. 'I should have asked you before — this is the smallest I've got, do you have enough change?'

He broke off his singing and turned his head. 'Not for a hundred, no.'

'Well look, hang on to this and we'll work something out later.'

He hesitated, then took the note. 'If you say so.'

I sat back again. It had been simple routine: we might need him as a friend. 'Is that a road block up there?'

'Looks like it. They're always cluttering up the streets one way or another, don't give us no peace, we're fair game, see, taxi drivers, when they want to pick on someone.'

I felt Tanya's hand on me. 'Can't we turn off somewhere?'

'No. It's too late for that.'

Her eyes were still frightened, and there was something I'd been trying not to think about: this woman had exposed herself to tremendous risk when she'd set up the general for assassination, but she might have got away with it if my name hadn't been next to hers in the hotel registry. The militia would still be on the watch for the woman they'd seen in the headlights but she might have been able to get back to the hotel and go quietly to bed: the concierge wouldn't have faced a barrage of questions if Viktor Shokin, wanted for murder, hadn't followed Tanya Rusakova to the Vladekino.