'She was crossing the street,' he'd told me, 'down by the bus station, and the militia stopped her and checked her papers — '

'A patrol on foot?'

'Yes. Then he used his walkie and called a car and they put her inside and that was it. 11:51. I got to a phone by 12:03 but the DIF didn't answer.'

Because he'd been with me in that stinking shed.

Ten rings, twenty, they were taking their bloody time.

This was so very risky.

'Military Barracks.'

'I want to speak,' I said, 'to Captain Vadim Rusakov.'

'Wait.'

So very risky because I couldn't get an introduction to Rusakov now from his sister; I'd be talking to him cold, and when I told him what had happened he could duck out and run for cover in case she broke and talked and exposed him. I wouldn't expect much chivalry from a man who'd talked a woman into spotting the target for him, bringing her right onto the scene of the shooting. Anything could have happened and he must have known that.

The wind gusted through the gap in the door, flapping at an official notice that said vandals would be arrested for damaging the property of the Intercity and International Telephone Service of Novosibirsk, that did not say that accomplices in the assassination of former Red Army generals would also be arrested and would face imprisonment for life, were they going to answer this bloody telephone or weren't they?

Steady there.

Yea, verily, but time was of the essence: once they put Tanya Rusakova under the five-hundred-watt lamp in Militia Headquarters it wouldn't be long before she told them what they wanted to know, before she blew her brother and the safe-house and Meridian.

I had to make contact with Rusakov before that happened.

'Ordnance Unit Three.'

I asked again for Captain Vadim Rusakov.

'Wait.'

It was going to be like this until at some hour in the future I would secure Meridian and keep it running and find the means of bringing it home, or leave its ashes here in this dark and frozen city and make my way out, with luck, with luck and nothing more, nothing to show them in London.

'Captain Vadim Rusakov is not present.'

I cut in fast before she could ring off — 'When will he be there? This is a matter of urgency.'

'I cannot say.'

'Do you know where he is? Is there another number I can try?'

'He is not here.'

The line went dead.

I dug another ten-kopek piece out of my pocket, dropping a glove and bending to pick it up, caught my temple on the corner of the metal shelf and felt the freezing draught against my face from the gap in the door, straightened up and pushed the coin into the slot and dialled. It was the last one I could use in a telephone; I'd have to get change as soon as I could.

'Hotel Karasevo.'

I asked for Gospodin T. K. Trencher.

'Yes?'

Ferris.

'You heard the news?' I asked him.

A brief silence, then: 'Tell me.'

He would have gone straight back to the hotel after leaving me because he was the signals centre for the field, but it could have taken him longer than I'd taken to reach the safe-house, and the peep hadn't yet made his second call.

I told Ferris what had happened.

Silence again. Then he asked questions, but all I could tell him was what the peep had told me.

A militia patrol car had turned out of the intersection half a mile away and I watched it.

'What are your plans?' Ferris asked me at last.

'I'm trying to contact her brother.'

'He could be at risk, yes, before long.'

'I'm going to use him, if I can. He's in the military. He might know where the other two generals are.'

It sounded thin, a last desperate chance. It was.

'The safe-house could also become hot,' Ferris said. He wasn't impressed with what I'd said about using Rusakov.

'Yes,'

The militia patrol car was heading in this direction, going slowly. But then all the traffic was going slowly because of the snow and the ice.

'I'll find you a new safe-house,' Ferris said. 'You'll need somewhere to stay while I make plans to fly you out under a new cover.' He was speaking in a monotone. Tanya Rusakova had been the key to the mission, and he didn't expect me to rope in her brother as an ally without her introduction. His hands were still red and he'd startle easily.

There was a man walking alone past the dock-workers' meeting rooms, head down and hurrying, and when the car was alongside it dipped on its springs and slid to a stop and a militiaman got out.

'I'm not ready,' I told Ferris, 'to fly out yet.'

'It'll take time,' he said. 'Your new papers will have to come in through the consulate. We haven't anyone here who can do that kind of thing for us.'

The militiaman was asking the civilian to show his identity. Novosibirsk was a big city but the militia had thrown a net right across it in the past twelve hours because Zymyanin had been shot dead on the train and then the train had been blown up and the man who'd been charged with Zymyanin's death had escaped custody and General Velichko had been gunned down, and a red alert had gone out to all forces: militia, police, investigative and the army. It was understandable.

'They're stopping everyone,' I told Ferris, 'on the-' and broke off because of the click on the line.

'Don't worry,' Ferris said. 'I've got sniffers out.' Line detector, bug detector.

'They're stopping everyone on the street,' I said. 'Checking identities.'

'I know. Where are you?'

'In a phone booth.'

In a moment Ferris said, 'I've already ordered your new papers. I told Control it was fully urgent.'

The civilian was walking on again, tucking his wallet away, and the patrol car had started off, was rolling nearer the phone booth.

The glass hadn't misted since I'd come in here, because of the freezing draught. I had my back turned to the street, all I could do.

'Tell London,' I said,' that I'm working on Rusakov.'

In a moment Ferris said, 'If you had the freedom of the streets I'd let you keep things running. But you haven't. You'd have to trap that man before he'd even listen to you.'

I could hear the tyres of the patrol car, the ice crackling as it broke the frozen ruts; the smell of the exhaust came into the booth through the gap in the door. The nape of my neck was flushed; I stood as if expecting a bullet there. But of course there was no danger of that. They'd simply heave the door open and ask for my papers and all I'd have time to do would be to whisper Mayday into the phone and hang up. Ferris would know what had happened: I'd just told him they were stopping everyone on the street.

Ice crackling outside.

'If I can manage to contact Rusakov,' I said into the phone, 'I'll tell him his sister's been arrested, and that I'm going to get her out. If he's got any feelings for her, that should make him listen to me.'

Ice crackling and the tyres slipping on the walls of the ruts. A shadow was moving across the scarred aluminium panel behind the telephone, not actually a shadow, the soft reflection of the patrol car as it came past the booth. I stood breathing in the exhaust gas.

'Give that to me again,' I heard Ferris on the line.

'What?'

'You said something about getting Rusakov's sister out.'

'Yes.'

The shadow moved across the aluminium panel. The reflection.

'They'll have taken her,' Ferris said, 'to Militia Headquarters.'

'Yes.'

Exhaust gas, stronger now, and sickening. 'You're going to get her out of Militia Headquarters?'

'Yes.'

Then the shadow moved on and the panel was clear again, and the crackling of the ice grew faint.

The line was quiet. He would tell me, Ferris, that he was pulling me out of the mission. He would instruct me to signal him again at thirty-minute intervals until he'd got anew safe-house for me, then he'd tell me to go there and stay there until he had my new papers and a plane lined up. He would make quite sure that I didn't go through with what he would call the death-or-glory thing and finish up chained to the wall in Militia Headquarters, a blown executive of the Bureau in London today, a prisoner facing trial in the months ahead and after five years, ten years, fifteen, a remnant of humanity breaking stones and hauling timber in the far reaches of Siberia, a creature of the permafrost living out its token life until that too was gone.