9 FUGUE.

'The airport,' I told the driver, and he set his meter going.

Tanya Rusakova sat with her head back against the upholstery and her eyes closed. Her face was so pale that even her lips had no colour. One of her legs was straight out in front of her, the fur -- lined boot against the back of the driver's seat; the other was bent at the knee. She was sitting sideways a little: I'd noticed it in the dining car on the train.

'Why are we going there?' she asked me, her mouth moving as if it were numbed. I only just heard her: the taxi was running on chains, making a lot of noise as we hit the ruts of piled snow and bounced out again.

'Trust me,' I said.

I didn't think she did. I wasn't even sure she understood the danger she was in. When the general had pitched down onto the snow she'd turned away and started running, and that was when the militia patrol had swung round the corner, its headlights flooding across her. It hadn't been responding to the scene, couldn't have been, unless they'd been tipped off, given the location of the rendezvous and told that something might happen there. But I doubted that. Even if Velichko's companions had suspected anything they would only have warned him; they wouldn't have exposed the assignation -- he would have killed them for that.

He has a reputation as a lady's man, Galina had told me, Galina Ludmila Makovetskaya, that perfidious bitch.

Tanya was saying something, too quietly for me to make it out.

'What?'

'I am not leaving Novosibirsk.'

'Don't worry,' I said, 'we're not flying anywhere.'

With our voices at this pitch the driver couldn't hear anything; in any case I thought I heard him singing to himself, just below the noise of the chains, not a care in the world, I'd caught a whiff of his breath when we'd got in.

There were no lights in the mirror, not yet. Two more patrol cars had passed us going the other way, flying their colours. I didn't want to know what our chances were of getting clear tonight: Chief Investigator Gromov would have heard by now that I'd made it as far as the city and he would have concentrated the hunt with the Vladekino Hotel as its epicentre. A second hunt would have been mounted with its focus on the rendezvous point where General Velichko had lain slumped against the wall only three or four blocks away. I'd told our driver the airport simply because it was a good hour's run on a night like this and we needed distance, as much as we could get. I also needed a telephone.

She had run into an alley, Tanya, and I'd intercepted her at the other end; she'd just been running blindly, not away from the militia, I thought, but away from the man lying back there with his face on the ruddled snow, away from what had suddenly happened in her life; this was my impression. She'd struggled when I'd held her and tried to make her understand that she was in the most appalling danger and that I wanted to help her, help get her away.

She hadn't listened, until I'd told her she had to go with me for her brother's sake.

She had listened then.

Once, when we were slipping and lurching across the snow, we'd passed the end of the street where the hotel was, the Vladekino, and seen three or four militia patrol cars outside with their lights flashing. So one of the crews had gone into the hotel earlier to look at the register, and seen the name Shokin, Viktor Sergei there on the page, and got on his radio.

The taxi had been outside another hotel, the first in the rank, and Tanya had got in without protest.

The traffic was light at this hour, 11:14 by the clock on the dashboard, but there were snow -- ploughs still churning through the streets, and produce trucks running late because of the storm.

Tanya was saying something, and I leaned closer. 'I'm sorry?'

'How did you know I have a brother in Novosibirsk?'

'A provodnik told me.'

'How would a provodnik know?'

'They know everything.' Galina had telephoned Moscow from the train.

She still hadn't opened her eyes. She was trembling: I'd heard it in her voice. I pushed myself forward on the seat and spoke to the driver.

'Have you got a drop or two of vodka on board?'

He swung his head round with a look of great surprise. 'I'd get arrested!'

'Look, we've been freezing to death out there trying to find a taxi, and my wife's starting a cold. Come on, be a hero, ten roubles a shot.'

He reached for the glove compartment and fished out a plastic flask from among all the camouflage and passed it to me. I got the cap off and wiped the neck on the end of my scarf, best I could do, and nudged Tanya to get her eyes open.

'No,' she said, 'I don't want any.'

'This is medicinal -- you're in shock.'

She took the flask in her gloved hands and tossed some of the stuff back and choked on it but I made her have another go; then I gave the flask back to the driver and he put it away.

'There's no more flights tonight,' he said. 'I suppose you realize that'

'Yes. We work at the airport. We thought we'd have a night on the town and then the car broke down.'

In a moment Tanya spoke again. 'You said I was in danger. Why?'

The lights changed and we slid to a stop halfway across the intersection, and when we got the green and the chains started thrashing again I moved my head close to Tanya's.

'You're in danger because that militia patrol back there caught you in its headlights and when they found that man lying there they would have started looking for a woman walking alone in the streets, walking or running or trying to hide. Your name is in the registration book at the Vladekino Hotel, where you saw those other militia patrols crowding around outside, and the concierge would have told them you'd left there fifteen minutes before -- because they'd have asked her a lot of questions and that would have been one of the answers, and by this time they'll have made the connection between the young woman leaving the hotel on foot and the young woman seen running from the scene of a shooting only a few blocks away. You also made a statement to the investigators on the train, and that too will be on record. Did you tell them you've got a brother in Novosibirsk?'

'Yes.' then she saw the problem and said defensively,' I had to.

They asked me if I had any relatives, so what else could I say? If you lie to those people they can find out and then you're in trouble.'

I didn't say anything.

The driver was singing again, and the sound of his voice against the demented percussion of the snow chains lent eeriness to the night.

'Why are you helping me like this?' Tanya asked me. She hadn't closed her eyes again after drinking the vodka; she was sitting straighter now. watching me, the green shimmer dulled by the shock that was still going through her. But a bit of colour had come into her cheeks, and the trembling had stopped.

'Because I need information.' there were lights flashing ahead of us and I watched them. 'I need information about General Velichko and the other two.'

In a moment she said, 'Is this for a story?'

'A what? No.'

'You told me you're a journalist.'

A whole circus of militia patrols along there, half a mile away, some kind of road block. I didn't tell the driver to take a side street because he'd wonder why, and if anyone along there saw us running for cover they'd send out a patrol to cut us off and ask questions and the only papers I had on me were in the name of Shokin, Viktor Sergei.

'Yes,' I told Tanya, 'I'm an investigative journalist with political interests.'

'I don't know very much,' she said, 'about the generals.'