'Don't worry,' Jane said quietly, 'she's totally witless and never talks to anyone -- she wouldn't know what to say. She's at the embassy too, makes the tea. You want to report in, or shall I do it?'

'Do you go through an operator?'

'God, no, we can dial direct now, through the new exchange.'

She went into the kitchenette and I got on the phone and told Signals I was in Moscow. I didn't know who was on the board at this time of night but it sounded like Medlock.

'I'll tell Mr Croder,' he said. 'Meanwhile we're waiting for Zymyanin to contact us again and tell us where he wants the rendezvous, and when.'

'He's still in Moscow?'

'As far as we know. You'll hear from us as soon as we've got anything for you. Everything all right there?'

I said yes, and shut down the signal. I hadn't caught anything in Medlock's tone but he was probably worried, and so was I. Zymyanin had got here soon after eleven o'clock last night -- 'He arrived in Moscow twenty minutes ago,' Croder had told me when I was at the Hotel Constanta in Bucharest -- and he should have oven us his ideas for a rendezvous before now. One of the reasons why he hadn't done that could be because he'd been frightened off by what had happened to Hornby, and he might even think twice about contacting us again. There were other possible reasons, and one in particular that I didn't want to think about.

'Would you like a cup, now I've made it?'

Jane had put a tray on the long carved stool; one of its legs had been mended with glue and string. 'It's not Chippendale,' she aid -- she was a quick observer -- 'but it's better than the plastic able I found here when I came.' she'd taken off her windcheater and was suddenly thin, boyish, in a ballet top under a black cardigan.

I said I didn't want any coffee: there might be a chance of some sleep.

'They gave me instructions,' she said,' to clear you for the USSR, since it looks as if they'll be running the mission here. You're completely fluent and can pass for a Muscovite, is that right?'

'Yes.'

She fetched a couple of faded blue cushions and dropped them onto the floor, one on each side of the stool. 'Or do you want to sit a the table?'

'No.'

'Okay --' she lugged a weathered black briefcase from under the stool and flipped the buckles open -- 'this will be yours to keep, as well as the stuff inside.' she pulled out a thin typed file and a map and turned them to face me. 'Light cover -- you probably won't have enough time to study anything deeper, will you? The map's only a few months old. When were you in Moscow last?'

'Before Yeltsin.'

'Been a few changes.'

'Yes.' I hadn't seen any KGB when I'd come through the airport, and there'd been no 'concierge' on the ground floor when we'd come into the building.

'They're surface changes,' Jane said, 'at the moment. The KGB are meant to be calling themselves the MPS, Ministry of Public Security, but of course most of them are still very much KGB under the skin -- think of the power they had! -- and a lot of them are just going through the motions of being nice to the proletariat while they wait for another coup. And there --'

'You think they'll get one?'

'Coups and rumours of coups ... someone sounds the alarm about once a week, for obvious reasons: unless the Russians and the satellites can get through the winter with enough food and the basics they're liable to storm the government offices and demand a coup just to get Yeltsin out. This is mainly embassy gossip, but everyone knows there are something like three million die -- hard apparatchiks holed up across the country with a hammer and sickle behind the curtains. We can't let our guard down yet, that's all.' With a shrug -- 'But I expect you know all this, from the stuff going through the London signals room.'

'It's a help to have it confirmed in the field.'

A quick smile -- 'thank you. Shall I get you cleared?'

She didn't have any printed forms here so I gave it to her verbatim and she made notes -- no medical problems, date of last vaccination, no request for a codicil, bequests unchanged. Then she made some notes of her own and I signed them: active service waiver in the event of death, responsibility for expenses incurred, the undertaking to protect secrecy -- most of the forms they had for this kind of thing at the Bureau were from the Foreign Office and totally out of date, and every time we ask them to do something about it guess what happens.

I made the final signature and Jane asked me: 'Do you want a capsule?'

Her eyes widened a little as she watched me.

'Ask them to send one out with my DIF. I shouldn't need one before then.'

She looked down. 'Or at all, I hope.' she made a note and shut the pad.

'They probably told you that as far as we know you'll be operating in the USSR, so there's a good little second -- hand clothes shop for men I can take you to first thing in the morning -- they've got shoes as well. And you can start letting your nails grow and don't wash your hair too often, work up a bit of stubble -- but I'm sure you know all this, you're very --'

'Reminders are invaluable.'

She suddenly drew in a deep breath and let it out again. 'You're being terribly polite, but it's just that -- you know -- I don't get many people coming through here with your track record and I think I'm rather desperate to get everything right. Blown my cover?'

'Not really.'

She finished her coffee and said, 'Okay, I'll get you some blankets and we'll pull out the couch, bathroom's through there, you won't disturb Amy.' she levered her legs out of the half -- lotus and took the pad over to the phone table and put it into the drawer and locked it and came back.

'You do ballet?' I asked her.

'Shows in my walk?'

'Yes:'

A wry smile -- 'Always tell a beginner, can't you? We overdo it, hoping people are going to notice, not many things in Moscow that'll give you status unless you're in the nomenklatura and then you'd be in a Zil. Prance along with your feet out and your pony -- tail dancing and you've got it made.' she went over to the Put -- U -- Up and I helped her. 'Stinks of mothballs, but I suppose there are worse things.' she brought a white patched sheet and some blankets. 'If you feel like some food, just help yourself from the pantry; the fridge is empty, doesn't work. It's only local fare but the bread's terrific, of course. You'll take the call, right?'

'Yes.'

She watched me for a moment, her young and intent blue eyes showing the concern of a mother. 'You'll be all right? There are more blankets if you need them, but the stove keeps in all night.'

'Get some sleep, Jane.'

She gave a little nod and went across to the other room, her feet out and her pony -- tail swinging.

I went over the map and opened the thin typed file and gave my cover a first reading: Viktor K. Shokin, forty -- two, married to Natalia Yelina, nee Maslennikova, two children, boy and girl, Yuri and Masha, six and seven. Brief history of schooling, university, first job as a stringer for a local newspaper and then a stint as copy -- boy in the Pravda overseas office before joining the reconstituted Toss agency.

A lump of coke fell inside the big cast -- iron stove and sparks lit the mica window. I thought I heard Jane and Amy talking, or it could have been some people in another flat.

Favourite sport, football, no hobbies, slight knowledge of English, Russian Orthodox.

It was just gone 3:15 when I dropped the file onto the floor and switched the lamp off and heard a spring twang as I lay down and started memorizing the cover, giving it another ten minutes. The voices had stopped, and through the small high window the snow drifted in silhouette, black against the haze of the city lights, and the last thing I saw was the steady green glow of the LED on the scrambler over there, and the last thought I had was about the other reason that might have delayed Zymyanin's getting into contact with us again: he could have set up the kill himself at the rendezvous in Bucharest and could be busy setting up another one, for me.

3 ROSSIYA.

'I broke K -- 15,' she said, and tilted the frying pan to get the butter over the eggs.

'Oh, Jesus,' I said, 'and you were trying to impress me by walking like a duck.'