They were a quarter of a mile away now, the flashing lights, and the driver began slowing. I leaned forward again and spoke into his ear. 'What's your name, my friend?'

'Nikki.'

'Listen, Nikki. She's not my wife, as a matter of fact. This is a pickup, and I could get into a lot of trouble, you know what I mean?' He was holding his head turned to listen, and gave a nod. 'So what about just keeping mum, Nikki, if those buggers ask you any questions? I mean forget about our car breaking down and everything — all you know is that we got into this cab and I just asked you to drive us around a little, how does that sound?'

He began slapping the rim of the wheel softly with his gloved hand, and said in a moment, 'Nothing about going to the airport?'

'Nothing about that.' He was still slowing, his head turned a little but his eyes on the street and the flashing lights. I told him again: 'We just got in and I asked you to drive us around a little. Nothing else.' He gave it some more thought, but there wasn't time for that. 'And you keep the change, Nikki, all right?'

He jerked his head round another inch and then nodded.

'Fair enough.'

There were things he still didn't understand, but those were the ones I'd paid for.

'You're a good friend, Nikki,' I told him, and sat back again and looked at Tanya, gave her the briefing:' this is the story — yours, mine and the driver's.' I went through it twice and she said she understood.

Then I saw the flashing baton ahead of us and we began sliding across the packed snow as the militiaman directed Nikki into a side street, shouting something about a detour, and I saw a whole mess of telephone posts and wires blocking the street behind him with the snow piled in a massive drift after the storm, and when I looked at Tanya she was sitting with her head back against the upholstery and her eyes closed and tears of relief streaming on her face as we throttled up again and the flickering light from the patrol cars faded against the buildings.

'Can I look at your phone book?'

He was still half-asleep, a boy in a rumpled uniform, the collar unbuttoned. I'd woken him when we'd come into the hotel. It was a mile from the airport, as far as it was safe to go.

I found the number and gave the boy some money and asked him to let me use the phone on his desk. Tanya was sitting in the corner of the foyer watching me, and I wondered what would happen if I turned my back for a moment, whether she'd slip out of the hotel and go her own way even though I'd told her that she was in danger, that I wanted to help her, that she had to stay with me for her brother's sake. She hadn't asked me what I'd meant by that, but she would. The number wasn't ringing: there was just a click, then silence.

I dialled for an operator.

'This number is private?' she asked me.

'No. It's the Hotel Karasevo.'

He's at the Hotel Karasevo, Matthews had told me when I'd phoned London this evening. Ask for T. K. Trencher.

Ferris.

There are times when you can get through half a mission, more than that, even the whole thing, without needing to call on your director in the field for help. This wasn't one of them. There was a meter running, like my good friend Nikki's out there in the cab, ticking away the time: it couldn't be long before we opened the wrong door, Tanya and I, turned the wrong comer and ran straight into the militia. We had to get off the streets. 'Did you say the Hotel Karasevo?'

The woman sounded as if I'd woken her up at the switchboard, as I'd woken the boy here: it was past midnight now.

'Yes.'

I watched the street through the windows, saw Nikki sitting there in his cab with his head back and his mouth moving, presumably in song. If I could pick up another taxi I'd tell him he was free, that we'd decided to put up here for the night. Fresh horses, break the scent.

'The lines are down,' the operator said. 'You cannot call the Hotel Karasevo.' she sounded pleased.

'Try again,' I told her.

Shocked silence, and then,'The lines are down, didn't you hear me? The snow has brought down the lines in that area.'

'How long has the hotel been cut off? This is Colonel Mashakov, Novosibirsk Militia Headquarters.'

There was another silence.' there has been no communication by telephone, Colonel, since seven o'clock this evening. I regret that the Novosibirsk Telecommunications Utility was unable to disperse the snowstorm, Colonel, before it could damage our system. But we shall try harder in future, in the name of the new demokratizatsiya!'

The boy behind the desk had buttoned the collar of his uniform and pushed his fingers through his hair, was watching Tanya from the corner of his eye, seeing a plaything for his manly lusts.

'To your knowledge,' I said to the woman on the telephone, 'are there men working on the lines?'

She used her silences with skill, measuring them for their effect.' But you may be assured, Colonel, that we have men working on the lines. We do not expect, at the Novosibirsk Telecommunications Utility, the lines to restore themselves unaided to their former efficiency.'

I put the phone down and spoke to the boy in uniform, tearing him from his licentious dreams. 'Can I get a taxi from here?'

It took him a moment to work up interest in anything so mundane.

'It's late,' he said, 'but I can try.'

I put a twenty-rouble note onto the desk and went over to Tanya. I couldn't tell what it was she had in her eyes as she looked up at me from the black vinyl settee: nothing I could read as trust. Those tears in the taxi had been of more than relief, I thought now; a few might even have been for the general: from the little I'd learned about her I didn't think she'd been involved in an assassination before, or even seen a man killed. She'd stopped trembling, but mentally she could still be in shock.

'There are militia patrols out in strength tonight,' I told her quietly, 'as you know. If they come in here, and there's time, you simply leave the foyer, take that passage over there. If there's no time to do that, don't come near me: I'm a total stranger.' I heard the boy talking on the phone behind me; it sounded as if he'd managed to find a taxi.' that goes,' I told Tanya, 'for whenever we're in an open space like this. Keep your distance from me if you see any militia. How are you feeling?'

She didn't seem to know what I meant. It hadn't been a stupid question: she was feeling terrible, of course, but I wanted an answer of some kind, whatever kind, to find out at least something of what was going on in her mind.

In a moment she asked me in a dead tone,'Do you ever have nightmares?'

'All the time.'

'That is how I am feeling.'

The boy called from the desk, 'I can get you a taxi. You want one?'

'When can he get here?'

'Five minutes.'

'Yes, I want him.'

The boy was watching the cab outside, Nikki's, as he spoke on the phone, the obvious question in his mind: we already had a taxi, so why did we want another one? It was the sort of thing he'd remember, but there was nothing I could do about it: we were going to leave a trail, Tanya and I, wherever we went tonight until I could raise Ferris and tell him we needed shelter.

It was tempting of course to go there, to the Hotel Karasevo, and call him from the foyer and tell him to get us off the streets. But unless your director in the field actually asks you to visit him at his base you can't go there, because you can never be certain you' re not being surveilled, that you might not be leading the opposition or the host country's police or intelligence agents to your director's base, and that base is sacrosanct. The DIF can only run you from a position of total impregnability: he is the anchorman, the signals centre, your only link with London and with the support in the field. Expose your DIF to the opposition and you'll cut your lifeline, and even if you can manage to limp home from the wreckage of a crashed mission you'd be advised not to do that, because if you've blown your DIF they'll flay you alive at the Bureau before they throw you into the street.