'I'm going to spend a night,' I said, 'in Novosibirsk.' this chicken really was bloody awful, God knew what they'd done to it down there in the galley, wiped it all over the floor, conceivably; she was taking her time, perhaps wouldn't say anything at all.

'Yes?' she didn't lookup. She was wondering how to ask me the question that was burning to get out: Why had I mentioned General Velichko, quite out of the blue?

'Just to break the journey,' I said. 'I wouldn't think there'd be much to do, in a place like Novosibirsk. Would you?' The Rossiya blew its whistle just then and the sound came with "' the shock effect of a scream in the night and she almost flinched, and I wanted to comfort her in some acceptable way, put my hand over hers just for an instant; she wasn't having much fun, Tanya Rusakova, sitting here with her nerves like an open wound, sensitive to loud noises, to the sudden mention of a name.

'There's an opera house,' she said.

'Oh, really?'

Then she covered it, too late. 'So I believe.'

An attempt to disassociate herself from the city of Novosibirsk, to be noted.

'Are you fond of the opera?'

'I quite like it, yes. Prince Igor.' she put her knife and fork together, her chicken unfinished, and got her grey leather bag, giving me a glance in passing with nothing in her eyes except perhaps distrust. 'Goodnight,' she said, and slipped gracefully between the bench and the table.

'It -' was a pleasure, but I broke off, starting to rise and then stopping at once but not before she noticed it. I caught a look of surprise. It was so easy to forget and it could be so dangerous. Behave like a Russian, be like a Russian, think like a Russian...

She walked down the aisle, and I watched -- I watched very carefully -- the man sitting six tables along, heavy -- faced, broad -- shouldered, impressively -- tailored. He glanced up as Tanya Rusakova passed him, and by his expression I could see that there had once again been a smile for the general.

6 SHOT.

They have asked for a new compartment.' Galina stood watching tic. 'I'm relocating them from Car No. 12 to Car No. 4. They say they're too near one of the lavatories.'

The dark was coming down on our second day out from Moscow; the Rossiya had ploughed through nearly two thousand kilometres of steppes and the Ural mountain range and now we were running through forests of birch and pine and cedar standing draped in snow under the endless leaden skies. We were due in Novosibirsk tomorrow.

Galina had shown herself in the doorway of our compartment a few minutes ago, glancing across Slavsky -- who was reading as always -- and giving me the slightest movement of her head. I had followed her to the provodnik's station.

'They object to the smell,' she said, simmering.'so what would they expect? Look what the passengers do in there all day, are they rose gardens? Would our friends perhaps prefer the smell of roses? So would I!'

'But you've agreed to move them?'

She lit a cigarette, its black tobacco glowing as the flame of the match went out. It smelled of forest fires. 'I have decided to accommodate them, yes,' she said.' there are three compartments in Car No. 4, nearer the locomotive, occupied by Chinese tourists.' Her small eyes kindled sparks of light. 'Certain favours were exchanged, as you will understand. Our friends are not ungenerous, and the Chinese are indigent, being Chinese. Thus there is no problem.'

She had started yesterday to talk of the generals as' our friends', without my prompting. She would train well, if she ever wanted to enter the shadowed nether -- world of covert operations.

'You're moving their entourage,' I asked her, 'as well?'

'But of course.' she watched me steadily, squinting in the smoke from her cigarette.' I thought you should be informed.'

'Yes. Do you think their reason for wanting to move was genuine?'

A shrug. 'With men of their kind, who knows what is genuine, and what spurious? They had power, once. Now they have no power. But they think they have. Their ways are devious.'

I drank some tea with her as the train plunged into nightfall through the dizzying snow that drove past the windows, piling against the frames. She told me that she had chosen to supervise the switching of compartments personally, and would report to me of anything she observed or overheard.

In the evening I shared a table in the dining car with Boris Slavsky, and listened to his views on the future of the CIS, if -- as he said -- it could be considered to have one. He spoke well, marshalling his facts, but my attention was less with him than with General Velichko and his companion, Tanya Rusakova, smiling and attentive, at the table for two we'd been sitting at last night.

Galina searched me out an hour before I turned in; she had nothing to report except that during the changing around of the compartments she'd learned that the former General Velichko had been made a Hero of the Soviet Union for gallantry in Afghanistan, and then was stripped of his rank and honours following the coup.

I didn't see her again until soon after dawn the next morning, when she came to our compartment bringing tea for us, and the news that one of the passengers in Car No. 9, Nikolai Vladimir Zymyanin, had been found shot dead.

He was lying on his back with his face to the ceiling, and there were powder burns around the blood -- filled entry wound in the right temple. Flecks of blackening flesh and splinters of bone were scattered across the floor from the exit wound: the bullet had gone straight through his skull. The gun was also on the floor, not far from the open drain, a short -- barrelled heavy -- calibre revolver, perhaps army surplus.

'He shouldn't be in here,' one of the security officers said to Galina. He was looking at me. We were in the lavatory for Car No. 9, and the security people had got the provodniks to rig up a makeshift curtain of sheets around the door to give them more room and keep people out; there was a piece torn from a cardboard box pinned onto one of the sheets with instructions chalked on it: Out of order. Use lavatory in Car No. 8 or 10.

'He is an important journalist,' Galina told the officer, 'from Moscow. He is known for his crime reports in all the papers.' They were young, the security officers, and her tone was perfectly pitched: she spoke not as someone in uniform with responsibilities on this train but as a stern and implacable mother, the ultimate authority.

I squatted down, and the reek of the disinfectant burned inside my nostrils. I was looking for signs of torture on the face and hands and wrists, burn marks, the red pinpoint of a needle puncture anywhere. It had been set up as a suicide, but that wasn't in character, and Zymyanin had been left -- handed and the entry wound was in the right temple. What I needed to know was whether he'd been put underpressure, very great pressure to talk before they shot him, and whether to expect the same kind of thing if in fact they'd broken him and he'd blown my cover. But there weren't any marks, and the conjunctivae of the eyes that stared at the ceiling showed no damage.

I made notes, for the look of things -- Jane had put a shorthand pad into the briefing bag -- but I didn't ask any questions. Now that I'd seen what I'd come here to see I wanted to slip back into low profile and disassociate myself from the dead man.

I thanked Galina and pushed the curtain aside and started back along the corridors. The snowstorm had moved south, and a wintry sun was hanging above the pines on the eastern horizon like a Chinese lantern.

He'd died scared, Zymyanin. The Bucharest thing had shaken him, and more than he'd shown, though he'd shown a little: there'd been a note of panic in his voice when we'd been talking about Hornby's fatal incompetence: And what guarantee have I got that lean trust you? How do I know how competent you are? How do I know you haven't brought half a dozen opposition hit men onto this fucking train because of your incompetence?

That hadn't happened. I'd been totally clean when I'd come aboard the Rossiya in Moscow; there'd been no one surveilling me on the night flight, no one tracking me from the airport when I'd got into Jane's car: I'd made absolutely certain of that, had needed to make absolutely certain, because if the shadow executive for Meridian had landed for briefing in Moscow with even the smell of the Longshot thing on his shoes we would have gone into the mission compromised and endangered at the outset.

I hadn't brought any opposition hit men onto the train, but Zymyanin had. He must have done. I hadn't contaminated him, but he could have contaminated me in his last hours. Not his fault: That is all I can tell you for the moment. When I have something more, I'll contact you. In the meantime, keep your distance. I would slip Galina another hundred when I saw her again, tell her to play down the fact that I'd wanted to view the body. It had been a risk I'd had to take, a calculated risk; there'd been no choice.

I sat down to some eggs in the dining car when the first calls for breakfast came; I wasn't hungry but wanted to take in protein. There was only one topic of conversation among the other passengers, and they spoke in low voices.

'You mean he'd been lying there all night long?'

'But surely someone would have heard the shot!'

'Poor man, and we were all sleeping peacefully. I don't think I can manage any more, Julia, do you mind if I leave you here?'

I went back to my compartment soon after eight o'clock and found Boris Slavsky with sheets of writing paper laid out on his bunk like cards in a game of patience. He looked up at me, his eyes wide behind the thick lenses.

'What have they found out?'

He meant the security people.

'Nothing, as far as I know.' I hadn't told him I'd been to look at the body.

'They still think it was suicide?'

'I don't know. I haven't asked them.'

He went back to his papers. He was a professor of biology, he'd told me, at the Academy of Sciences in Akademgorodok, south of Novosibirsk.

Just before ten an announcement was made over the public address system. This is the chief of security. We shall be stopping briefly in half an hour from now, at thirty minutes past ten o'clock. Nobody will be permitted to leave the train, and passengers are instructed to keep away from the doors. I will repeat: no passengers will be permitted to leave the train.

I was reminded again that if anything went wrong with the mission, if I needed continued freedom of movement to keep it on track and make progress, I might be forced to do it in the confines of these narrow corridors, and might find that when I'd boarded this train in Moscow I had walked into a trap. The only way out of it, even if I could reach an unattended door, was across the limitless wastes of Siberia.