He found it difficult to say but he got it right. 'If — if my sister is made to talk, I would be arrested.'

'Right, at the barracks or in the open street or anywhere you habituate, but you'll be safe enough at the bar. If it closes, book in at the rooming-house next door and use a false name, give them some money instead of your identity; there'll be drug traffic on that river and they'll be used to people wanting privacy.' then I told' him, 'If I haven't reached you by midnight either at the bar or the rooming-house it'll simply mean I can't, and you should then consider getting out of Novosibirsk by ship — they'll be watching the airport and the train stations and the roads.'

He thought about that but didn't take long. 'I shall remain here and give myself up and try to help my sister.'

I heard a warning note and thought of telling him to shift the deadline to beyond midnight, but left it. If I hadn't got Tanya free by then it'd be no go.

'When did you see her last?' Rusakov was asking.

'This morning. She was trying to contact you when the militia picked her up.' Bite the bullet: 'Rusakov… how do you think she'd stand up to interrogation?'

I heard him let out a breath again.' she — she had a bad time with the KGB, a few years ago. Since then she's been afraid of getting hurt again.' He should have thought of that before he got her involved in an assassination.' that is why I tried to keep her out of… what happened last night.'

'So why couldn't you?'

'She insisted. She's very obstinate. I'd seen his photograph many times but she said that wasn't good enough. She was afraid I would make a mistake.' A beat.' she was also very… determined that we should go through with this thing.'

I thought that was interesting. 'Rusakov, do you know why those three men came to Novosibirsk?'

Mikhail shut off the engine of his taxi and silence came in. A tug's klaxon sounded from down the river like a night-bird croaking.

'No,' Rusakov said, but he'd taken a long time to think about it.

'Do you know where the remaining two of them are?'

Mikhail got out of the Trabant, stood stamping his feet, looking towards the phone booth.

'I think,' Rusakov said, 'I could find out. There's a lot going on.'

I felt a booster kick in for Meridian.

'Be there at eight,' I told him, 'and remember — '

'There must be some way I can help you,' Rusakov said quickly. 'I'll go with you to Militia Headquarters.'

'That would blow up the whole thing.'

'You must realize how I feel. I love my sister. I'm not good at waiting, doing nothing, when — '

'Be at the rendezvous.'

'If I'm not there,' he said, 'it will mean I changed my mind,' and the line went dead.

'There's only one more,' Mikhail said, 'in this district. There's always a girl here and there in the bars, of course, if you — '

'Let's go to the last house.'

There was another street closed, telephone wires festooned like a spider-web across the snow-drifts and the small dark figures of men working on them, trapped like flies, warning flags hanging limp and a flare burning, black smoke standing in a thick column from the oil barrel; the wind had dropped and the night was quiet except for the rumbling of snow-ploughs across the city.

The frayed wool at the wrist of Mikhail's right mitten trembled to the vibration of the Trabant as it rocked across the ruts with the ice popping under the tyres.

'She's very obstinate,' Rusakov had said.' she was also very determined that we should go through with this thing.'

I'd thought that was interesting because all I'd known of Tanya Rusakova was that she was unskilled in subterfuge — had given General Velichko, for instance, the name of the hotel where she was staying. Her obstinacy had shown itself perhaps when she'd left the safe-house despite my warning, but the same trait, together with her determination, could help to save her now at Militia Headquarters by dragging out the interrogation process until I could move in.

You don't need to go there now. You 're wasting your time.

Bloody little organism, starting to panic.

Of course I'm not wasting my time.

You should meet Rusakov now, as soon as you can. He thinks he can find the generals. That's your objective.

Dead wrong: he won't do a thing for me until I can get Tanya out of there.

You 're rationalizing.

An icicle as long as a spear dropped from a guttering and crashed onto the roof of a parked car, scattering rainbows in the headlights.

First get Tanya out, then work on her brother.

You should be working on him now. You should have told him to meet you right away. He's the key now, not her.

If I don't get Tanya out he'll try to help her by giving himself up, then I'll lose him and the mission's gone.

You haven't got a chance of going in there and coming out again, you know that.

Scares you, doesn't it?

You're doing what Ferris said you might, it's the death-or-glory thing, go dashing in there like a white knight on horseback and carry the maiden off, you want your fucking head tested.

You're shit-scared, that's all, I know you of old.

Walking into a lion's den, you 'll get eaten alive.

Shit-scared.

Bloody little organism.

The tyre-chains dragged on the snow and the engine idled.

'Name's Marina,' Mikhail said, his rheumy eye in the mirror. 'Cunning old cow, you should watch it, keep your wallet in sight, know what I mean?'

She was sitting in a huge carved Ottoman chair, a woman with three chins and enormous breasts trapped in a rusty black satin decolletage and hips that bulged across the arms of the chair, four rings on her thick fingers, three dirty diamond solitaires and a black tourmaline, her feet squeezed into splitting court shoes on the stained Kazakhstan carpet.

'I have the best,' she said huskily,' the best in Novosibirsk. The youngest.'

The heat pressed against my face, sucking the moisture from my eyes and leaving them dry. The smell was the same here as it had been in the other places but with something added, sharp and indefinable, reaching from the lungs into the gut.

'I have Chinese girls,' Marina said.' thirteen, fourteen years old. You should see them. They are like porcelain. I'll show you.'

She picked up a brass bell engraved with dragons, and the sound seemed half-muted in the stifling air.

'You can have two in a bed,' Marina told me, her small eyes like sparks in the thick folds of her flesh. "Three in a bed, as many as you want. What about a boy? You like variety? Or I have whips here, chains. You like that?'

Perhaps it was stale blood, the sharp iron smell on the air.

I let her go on talking because I wanted to know what my chances were. Mikhail had said this house was the last one in the district and God knew how far we'd have to drive to find the next.

A whore came through the red velvet curtains and stood looking at me, her thick white body wrapped in a soiled nightdress and her coarse dyed hair lying across one shoulder, her lips parted to show the tip of her tongue, her eyes narrowed, fear in them, fear of the gross woman in the chair.

'She can go,' I told Marina. 'I'm not here for that.'

I told her what I was here for.

'You must think I 'm crazy,' she said.

I started at three hundred, implying I would go to five.

A drunk was in there somewhere and a girl was squealing, and the sound pierced the nerves like chalk on a blackboard.

'How do you expect me to do that?' the woman asked me.

'Say it's your birthday. Come on, you're smarter than I am.'

'I would lose my licence,' she said.

'You haven't got a licence. Not for the whips and chains.'

She offered me vodka.