'The Germans were four kilometres from the city on the south side. They covered the outskirts with machinc~gun fire and shelled the centre with artillery.' She handed him mats and knives and forks and followed him to the living room. 'Two hundred and fifty grams of bread for a labourer, others a hundred and twenty-five. Arc you really so fascinated by Matvcy, or are you pretending to be polite, as usual?'

'It's a mature, unselfish, absolute, thrilling love. I've never known anything approaching it. I thought you oug4t to be the first to know.'

Matvey was beaming at Barley in unalloyed adoration. His new English pipe gleamed from his top pocket. Katya held Barley's stare, started to laugh, shook her head, not in negation but in daze. The twins rushed in wearing their dressing-gowns and swung on Barley's hands. Katya ettled them to the table and put Matvey at the head. Barley at beside her while she poured the cabbage soup. With a prodigious show of power Sergey drew the cork from a wine bottle, but KatY2 would take no more than a half-glass and Matvey was permitted only vodka. Anna broke ranks to fetch a drawing she had made after a visit to the Timiryasev Academy: horses, a real wheatfield, plants that could survive the snow. M2tVCy was telling the story of the old man in the machine shop across the road, and once more Barley insisted on hearing every word.

'There was an old man Matvey knew, a friend of my father's,' Katya said. 'He had a machine shop. When he was too weak from starving, he strapped himself to the machinery so that he would not collapse. That was how Matvey and my father found him when he died. Strapped to the machinery. Frozen. Matvey also wishes you to know that he personally wore a luminous badge on his coat' – Matvey was proudly indicating the very spot on his pullover – 'so that he didn't knock into his friends in the dark when they took their buckets to fetch water from the Neva. So. That is enough of Leningrad,' she said firmly. 'You have been very generous, Barley, as usual. I hope you are sincere.'

'I have never been so sincere in my life.'

Barley was in the middle of toasting Matvey's health when. the telephone started ringing beside the sofa. Katya sprang up but Sergey was ahead of her. He put the receiver to his ear and listened, then replaced it on the cradle with a shake of his head.

'So many misconnections,'Katya said, and handed round Plates for the liver cakes.

There was only her room. There was only her bed.

The children had gone to their bed and Barley could hear them snuffling in their- sleep. Matvey lay on his ~rmy bedroll in the living room, already dreaming of Leningrad. Katya sat upright and Barley sat beside her, holding her hand while he watched her face against the.uncurtained window.

I love Matvcy too,' he said.

She nodded and gave a short laugh. He- put his knuckles against her check and discovered that she was weeping.

'Just not in the same way I love you,' he explained. 'I love children, uncles, dogs, cats and musicians. The entire Ark is, my personal responsibility. But I love you so profoundly that I am ashamed to be articulate. I Would be very grateful if we could find a way to silence me. I look at you, and I am absolutely sick of the sound of my own voice. Do you want that in writing?'

Then with both hands he turned her face to him and kissed her. Then he guided her towards the top of the bed and laid her head on the pillow and kissed her again, first her lips and then her closed wet eyelashes while her arms gathered round his back and drew him down on her. Then she pushed him away from her and sprang up and went to look at the twins before returning. Then she slid the bolt inside her bedroom door.

'If the children come, you must dress and we must be very serious,' she warned, kissing him.

'Can I tell them I love you?'

'If you do I shall not interpret.'

'Can I tell you?'

'If you are very quiet.'

'Will you interpret?'

She was no longer weeping. She was no longer smiling. Black, logical eyes, searching like his own. An embrace without reservation, no hidden codicils, no small print to the agreement.

I had never known Ned in such a mood. He had become the Jonah of his own operation and his rugged stoicism only made his forebodings harder to take. In the situation room he sat at his desk as if he were presiding at a court martial, while Sheriton lolled beside him like an intelligent Teddy bear. And when as a reckless throw I walked him down the road to the Connaught where I occasionally took Hannah and, to ease the waiting, fed him a magical dinner in the Grill, I still could not penetrate the mask of his forbearance.

For the troth was, his pessimism was seriously affecting my own spirits. I was on a see-saw. Clive-and Sheriton were up one end, Ned was the dead weight at the other. And since I am no great decision-taker, it was all the more disturbing to watch a man normally so incisive resign himself to ostracism.

'You're seeing ghosts, Ned,' I told him with little of Sheriton's conviction. 'You've gone far beyond whatever anybody else is thinking. All right, it's not your case any more. That doesn't mean it's a shipwreck. And your credibility is, well, ebbing.'

'A final and exhaustive list,' Ned said again, as if the phrase had been dinned into him by a hypnotist. 'Why final? Why exhaustive? Answer me that. When Barley saw him in Leningrad, he wouldn't even accept our preliminary questionnaire. He threw it back in Barley's face. Now he's asking for the whole shopping list in one go. Asking for it. The final list. The Grand Slam. We're to get it all together for the weekend. After that the Bluebird will answer no more questions from the grey men. "This is your last chance," he's saying. Why?'

'Look at it the other way round a minute,' I urged him in a desperate murmur, when the wine waiter had brought us a second decanter of priceless claret. 'All right. The Bluebird has been turned by the Sovs. He's bad. The Sovs are running him. So why do they close it down? Why not sit back and play us along? You wouldn't close it down if you were in their shoes. You wouldn't hand us an ultimatum, create deadlines. Would you?'

His reply put paid- to the best and most expensive meal I had ever given a fellow officer in my life.

'I might have to,' he said. 'If I were Russian.'

'Why?'

His words were the more chilling for being spoken with a leaden dispassion.

'Because he might not be presentable any more. He might not be able to speak. Or pick up his knife and fork. Or pour salt on his grouse. He might have made a couple of voluntary statements about his charming mistress in Moscow who had no idea, but really no idea, what she was doing. He might have – '

We walked back to Grosvenor Square. Barley had left Katya's apartment at midnight Moscow time and returned to the Mezh, where Henziger had sat up for him in the lobby, ostensibly reading a manuscript.

Barley was in high spirits but had nothing new to report, just a family evening, he had told Henziger, but good fun all the same. And the hospital visit still on, he added.

The whole of the next day nothing. A space. Spying is waiting. Spying is worrying yourself sick while you watch Ned sink into a decline. Spying is taking Hannah to y6ur flat in Pimlico between the hours of four and six when she is supposed to be having a German lesson, God knows why. Spying is imitating love, and making sure she's home in time to give dear Derek his dinner.