I shoved my boots down the front of my bomber jacket and zipped them in, then liberated my Maglite and the CO2 canister. canister.

Charlie crawled back to where I'd been sitting. He'd get his own boots off, prepare the camcorder and wipe the porch dry with one of the towels I'd nicked from the hotel. When Baz got home, there mustn't be the slightest trace of our visit. The subconscious takes in everything; when the mat isn't at exactly the same angle, when the dust on the table has been inexplicably disturbed, little alarm bells start to ring. Most of us don't hear them because we're not smart enough to listen to all the things our brains are trying to tell us. But some people do, and Baz might just be one of them.

I peered round the door. The place reeked like every auntie's house I'd ever gone into as a kid, of over-stewed tea, old newspapers and stale margarine.

I held my breath, opened my mouth, and c.o.c.ked my ear. The only sound was the gentle ticking of a clock, off to my right. The opening of a door at night changes the atmospheric pressure in a house ever so slightly, but sometimes just enough for even a sleeping person's senses to pick up.

I let go of the door and, keeping control of it with my left shoulder, stepped inside. I hooded the lens of the Maglite with my fingers, leaving just enough light to see there was a staircase rising steeply along the external wall to my left and a longish hallway dead ahead with two doors on either side of it.

A strip of flowery carpet ran down the centre of what looked like a parquet floor. The parquet was the first piece of good news I'd had since we made it through the front gate; it wouldn't creak. The walls were bare, apart from a couple of framed pictures above a wooden chair with some coats thrown over it.

Baz didn't seem like much of a homemaker, at first glance, but he was certainly keen on security. As I flicked the Maglite to my right, a floor-to-ceiling, steel-barred gate glinted in the beam, hinged to swing across the main entrance but opened flush against the wall. There were two receptors each side of the door and flat bars lying on the floor with a pair of padlocks.

I checked Baby-G. It was 2.28. We still had to find the safe, let alone defeat it. At this rate, we might be here for hours and we only had about four and a bit left until first light.

Charlie made only the faintest of sounds as he shouldered the satchel and came in behind me. I was going to be in charge of the next phase, the room clearing; he would keep control of the noisemaker, the bag.

I covered the torch lens with a finger so that just enough light came out for us to move, leaned back and spoke softly into his ear. 'Let's just check for another exit. We need to concentrate on finding the safe.'

Charlie thought for a second, glanced at his watch, then nodded. I moved off, keeping to the nine-inch-wide strip of parquet at the right-hand edge of the carpet, so as not to disturb the pile, and trying to avoid rubbing against the walls.

I took two paces and stopped to give Charlie room to come in. He was already taking IR film with the camcorder, but handed me two rubber doorstops as he went past. Thank f.u.c.k his brain hadn't been in 'Oh I forgot' mode when he wrote down his kit list.

I closed the door softly behind me, and shoved one immediately below each of the two lever locks. If Baz came back unexpectedly, they would buy us a bit of time to play burglar. If he was already upstairs asleep and tried to do a runner, they would help make sure he didn't get outside in a hurry, and start shouting for help.

Charlie switched the camcorder to standby. The plan was to record the layout of the place wherever we went, then check it on the way out to make sure we'd left everything exactly as we'd found it.

The doors off the corridor were all open, and I headed for the first one on my right. It was a living room, and by the look of it, Baz's answer to Mrs Mop hadn't been too energetic with her feather duster recently, though she had remembered to wind the grandfather clock. The dark wooden furniture and faded wallpaper somehow matched the smell.

Black-and-white pictures of a couple on the mantelpiece. His parents, maybe. Pictures of him as a little lad. Magazines littered across the floor, some quite recent ones in Russian, some in Paperclip.

The first phase of a house search is always a quick once-over. It would be pointless doing a detailed inspection of every room in sequence, only to find what you're looking for smack in the middle of the very last room, three hours later. It's on phase two that you start moving sofas, lifting carpets, looking up the chimney.

The two picture frames in the hallway held large, sepia photographs of the house during happier times. There were no bars on the windows, no other buildings in sight, and no wall, just a three-foot-high fence to keep the horses from munching the gra.s.s that had predated the courtyard.

We reached the door at the far end. It was hinged inwards on the left and open about an inch. I shone the torch round the frame to check for telltales. I couldn't see anything. I signalled to Charlie and he filmed the gap.

I nudged it open with the end of the canister. It didn't take long to realize this was the kitchen. The smell of margarine and old papers was so strong here it nearly made me gag, even through the ski mask. More old furniture; a wooden table and a couple of chairs. The cooker looked like Stalin might have done his baked beans on it. Had Whitewall pointed us at the wrong place?

I opened the door fully and found myself facing the external wall. Set into it, directly ahead of me, was what would have been the back door if it hadn't been covered completely by a large steel plate, bolted firmly into place.

I turned to Charlie and nodded. We were in the right house.

4

I shone the torch around the kitchen from the doorway, picking out dented old aluminium pots and pans hanging from hooks over the cooker, and a half-drunk bottle of red wine on the table next to an open newspaper. A fly-screen in the corner seemed to lead to some kind of larder. Jars and cans glinted behind the mesh.

I stood and listened for another three or four seconds, but the only noise was the ponderous ticking of the clock. I turned back up the hallway, tapped Charlie on the shoulder, and aimed the torch at the door to our right, about three paces ahead. The small red LED on the camcorder began blinking again.

It was only just ajar. I checked for telltales round the frame, then gave it a gentle push. There was a window opposite, protected by an external grille, but completely filled by the perimeter wall.

It looked like I was in somebody's sewing room. A Singer treadle sat in the far corner, next to a wooden bench top, but there were no half-made clothes or swatches of material. There were no cupboards. Swirly carpet covered most of the wooden floor, apart from a couple of feet around the edges. The fireplace looked like it hadn't been used for years, not since the last time the pictures hanging either side of it had got within reach of a duster.

I walked round the edge of the carpet and checked the pictures for telltales, intentional or otherwise. The one on the left was of a bunch of flowers in a vase. There was nothing behind it except a paler square of wallpaper. There was no safe under the one of a mountain, either.

I made my way back into the hallway and signalled to the door opposite; Charlie was right behind me, recording.

This was much more promising. It was obviously Baz's office; what looked like Bill Gates's very first prototype was sitting on a desk in front of the window. Files and newspaper cuttings were strewn all round it, and on the floor as well. The shelf along the wall to my right had bowed under the weight of too many books. There was a cupboard in the far corner a light oak veneer, flat-pack job, rather than somewhere Uncle Joe might have hung his uniforms.

I moved out of the way to let Charlie past. He panned the camera left to right before we started moving stuff around. Using the torch to make sure I didn't step on any of the paper on the floor, I headed first for the desk, in case there was a number on the phone. There wasn't.

We had better luck with the cupboard.

Having checked for telltales, I pulled open the door and bingo, we'd found what we'd come for.

I stepped back to let Charlie see the prize. He filmed the whole thing inch by inch, every bit of chipped grey paint, every word of Russian Cyrillic, no doubt proudly announcing its manufacture by royal appointment to the Tsar. It was about two foot square, and solid. The door was hinged on the right, with a well-worn chrome handle on the left, then a large keyway, and a combination cylinder dead centre. Once Charlie had the position of each on film, he handed me the camcorder, tested the handle, shrugged, and fished inside his bag.

I shoved the canister back up my sleeve and let him get on with it.

He brought out a towel and laid it in front of the safe. The bag was wet and he didn't want to leave sign.

5

Charlie knelt on the towel in front of the safe, the bag to his right, and carefully unrolled the fibre-optic viewing device from a strip of hotel towel. Every item in the bag had been wrapped to prevent noise or damage.

I fired up the camcorder and went over to Baz's desk, filming everything on the top first, then the positions of individual drawers. There were about ten of them each side, designed to hold a thin file or a selection of pens. Some were slightly open, some closed; some pushed further in than they should have been.

I lifted the telephone, but there was nothing taped underneath. There was a small wooden box beside it, loaded with pens, pencils, elastic bands and paper clips. No joy there, either.

I checked for telltales on each drawer, and went through them one by one. I found sheet after sheet of paper in Paperclip and Russian, but no key to the safe, or anything scribbled down that resembled a combination.

I looked over at Charlie. Torch clenched between his ski-mask-clad teeth, fibre optic inside the keyway, he was manipulating the controls like a surgeon performing arthroscopy except that he was doing it on his hands and knees, with his a.r.s.e in the air. He was attacking the day lock first, in case it was the only one being used.

It was decision time. Nothing had turned up on this sweep, and I could spend all night searching this place for the key or any hint of a combination, and the more I looked, the more I would disrupt the area. I called it a day and went and knelt down on the towel, waiting until Charlie was ready to speak to me.

It was as quiet as Tengiz's grave now quieter, probably, if the knitting circle were still gobbing off right next door to it. The only sounds were the old disco-dancer's manic breathing and the distant ticking of the clock, and once or twice a vehicle in the distance.

He finally removed the fibre optic and leaned towards me. I got my mouth into his ear. 'How long do you reckon?'

He rolled the fibre optic into its piece of towel, and replaced it in the satchel.

That was a good sign; you never leave anything out that you're not using; it gets packed up straight away in case you have to do a runner.

'Piece of p.i.s.s, lad. The day lock is warded, and the combination, well, it's a combination. Anything up to four hours. Don't worry, there were loads like this in Bosnia.' He paused and I knew there was a funny coming. 'Any longer than that and I'll let you blow it.' This time I could see the grin, even behind the nylon. He shoved the key-ring torch back in his mouth, taking the mask with it.

He was right; the ward lock, at least, was going to be easy. It was basically a spring-loaded bolt into which a notch had been cut. These things had been around since Ancient Roman times. The key fitted into the notch and slid the bolt backwards and forwards. It takes its name from the fixed projections, or wards, inside the mechanism and around the keyhole, which prevent the wrong key from doing the business.

Charlie tucked the fibre optic away and unwrapped a set of what looked like b.u.t.ton-hooks, fashioned from strong, thin steel. All being well, one of them would bypa.s.s the wards and shift the bolt into the unlock position.

In next to no time I heard the deadlock clunk open, and Charlie's head swayed from side to side in triumph as he packed the hooks away.

The combination cylinder was next. This time, the lock would be released once an arrow on the left-hand side of the dial had triggered the correct sequence of numbers. Our problem was that there was no way of telling when the tumblers had reached their correct position; the only noise we'd hear was when the lever finally descended into the slot, once the right combination had been dialled.

Charlie started rotating the cylinder left and right. He may have been trying Baz's number plate first, or running through the Russian factory default settings.

Once he'd exhausted the obvious ones, he would have to go through every possible permutation. In theory there'd be about a million of the little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, but the good thing about old and low-quality cylinders like this one was that the numbers didn't have to be located precisely; up to two digits either side of true and the lock would still open, which cut the possible combinations down to a mere 8,000 or so. It wasn't what Charlie might call a piece of p.i.s.s, but even with his hands wasting away he should be able to rattle through them in a few hours. He told me once that he really never thought about what he was doing; he just switched onto autopilot.

He leaned over to me. 'DOB?'

He hadn't asked me for it since my trip to the bookshop because there was no need. If I hadn't found Baz's date of birth, I'd have told him.

'Twenty-two ten fifty-nine.'

His hands started to turn the cylinder: 22 anticlockwise... 10 clockwise... 59 anti-clockwise...

For some reason, that was the most commonly used sequence of movements.

I realized I was holding my breath.

Nothing. No sound. No falling lever; no question of simply turning the handle and hearing the bolts slide back into the door.

Charlie played with the three number sets in sequence, but varying the direction of rotation.

After a dozen or so other attempts, he tried 22 anticlockwise, 59 clockwise, 22 anticlockwise.

There was a gentle clunk from inside the door.

Charlie picked up his torch and shone it round the floor to make triply sure that he'd left nothing lying around.

I could have opened the safe while he did so, but there was a protocol to be observed at times like this. That honour belonged to Charlie.

He turned back when he was satisfied everything had been packed away. He pulled down the handle. The bolts retracted from both the hinged and the opening side, and it swung open with a small metallic creak.

Charlie still had the key-ring torch in his mouth, and his head was inside the safe. I leaned over him. There was a shelf in the middle, and it held just two items: an open box of antique jewellery, maybe his mother's, and a blue plastic folder.

Charlie didn't need the camcorder to remind him how the folder lay; he lifted it straight out and handed it over. A quick sweep of the Maglite revealed about twenty pages of handwritten Paperclip.

It didn't look much, but it was obviously worth two hundred thousand US to someone.

He hardly had time to shrug before the door burst open and the lights came on.

6

There were two of them, hollering at us in Russian or Paperclip. They were both carrying suppressed pistols with big, bulky barrels; we raised our hands very slowly, so they couldn't fail to notice that, unfortunately, we weren't. I kept my left elbow slightly bent, to try and hold the CO2 canister in place. canister in place.

They were in their early thirties; short black hair, jeans and leather jackets, lots of gold rings and bracelets, and both looking confused about the situation.

Their faces weren't masked, and that was bad news. They didn't care about being identified. One was dark with stubble; the other had bloodshot eyes. I wondered if he'd stopped by the Primorski on the way over.

Their yells increased in volume, and reverberated around the room. Just having our hands up obviously wasn't enough.

It looked like the one with the bloodshot eyes was in charge. He glared at me and opened his leather jacket repeatedly with his spare hand. I got the message. Keeping my right hand up, I unzipped my bomber very slowly with my left. My boots dropped onto the carpet. Charlie followed suit.

They now knew that neither of us was carrying, but that didn't stop the shouting. I didn't know what else they wanted, and I wasn't going to ask. I didn't want them to know we were Brits. I shrugged my shoulders and twisted my hands.

They gobbed off at each other, very quickly and aggressively, then Red Eyes moved towards Charlie, pistol steady, while Stubbly covered him. He waved his free hand again, shouted, gesticulated at the floor.

Charlie got it: the boy was after the folder.

He reached down and picked it up with his left hand, keeping his right in the air. Red Eyes took a step forward, grabbed it, and jammed his weapon into Charlie's neck. I could see Chinese characters engraved along the barrel. It was old and really well worn, but that didn't matter. It would still f.u.c.k Charlie up if he pulled that trigger.

Keeping the muzzle right where it was, Red Eyes bent down and reached into the safe. The jewellery found its way into his jacket pocket with the speed and precision of a conjuring trick. For a finale, he yanked off Charlie's mask, then gave me the same treatment.

He took a couple of steps back to survey his handiwork. They both stood there for several seconds, one each side of the doorway. Red Eyes muttered something to his unshaven friend, placed the folder on the desk and started to flick through its contents. Stubbly kept moving the muzzle of his weapon from my head to Charlie's and back, just in case we hadn't got the message.

They barked stuff at each other as Red Eyes turned the pages. I didn't know what to do next. I had been in the situation enough times myself to recognize the look and sound of uncertainty. Finally he looked up, glowered at the two of us, and pulled out a cell phone.

I glanced over at Charlie, who was studying the floor so closely he appeared to be trying to memorize every fibre of the carpet. I knew that look. He was wondering how the f.u.c.k to get us out of here. I hoped the silly old f.u.c.ker would come up with something before these boys got permission to top us.

There was a series of rapid beeps as Red Eyes punched in the number. Whoever was at the other end answered immediately. Red Eyes studied each of us in turn, giving what sounded like a description, then picked up the doc.u.ment and quoted a couple of chunks from it. Then he looked at us again. I didn't understand what he was saying, but I got the drift. Whatever problems they'd expected to have to deal with in the house, they now had two extra ones, and they were less than happy workers. As if I was.

There was nothing we could do to help ourselves immediately, so I studied Stubbly's weapon instead so I'd know what to do with it when I got my hands around the pistol grip. The power of positive thinking.

His finger was on the trigger and the safety was off; the lever on the left-hand side of the grip was down. These kinds of suppressed weapons normally had both a single-shot and semi-automatic capability. With the one, you loaded manually, pulling back the top slide and letting it go forward to pick up a new round from the magazine each time you fired. With the other, the top slide wasn't locked in position, so you just kept firing until the magazine was empty.

I didn't know what setting Stubbly had gone for, but something told me it wasn't single shot.

Red Eyes was still waffling into the phone and riffling through the papers when we heard a metallic rattle from the direction of the street. He stopped in mid-sentence. There was a loud creak as the front gates swung open.

Red Eyes closed down the conversation by running out into the hall.