We say strange things, when not knowing what to say.

'Yes. And filled with remorse, and gratitude.'

Been rehearsing it.'Tanya,' I said, 'what did you tell the militia? As briefly as you can, just the essentials.'

She went straight into it, had been briefed by Ferris.' they asked me why I had come to Novosibirsk, and I told them it was to see my brother, as I always did when I had leave. I knew they would telephone Moscow to ask about me, and would find I had a brother here. I said I met General Velichko by chance on the Rossiya, and he proposed an assignation when we arrived in the city. He seemed quite a gentleman, and said he would like to please me by "arranging" early promotion for my brother.'

She was surprising me, Tanya Rusakova. It would have taken courage, in that interrogation cell at Militia Headquarters, to admit that she'd made plans to meet a man who was later shot dead against a wall. But she'd had no choice: she couldn't have explained, otherwise, why she'd booked in at the Hotel Vladekino and then left there soon afterwards, under the eyes of the concierge.

'I told them that when I met General Velichko at the appointed place, I was shocked and horrified to see a man force him from his car and shoot him down. I ran away, terrified, but the man caught up with me and threw me into another car, where I was blindfolded. He took me to a house, and kept me there. Of course I realized he was protecting himself -- I'd seen what he had done and could recognize him again.'

I was listening with much attention. She'd taken things right to the brink, because she'd known she'd have to. She'd invented the simplest way to explain her known movements on that night.

'Are you still there?'

'Yes,' I said, 'go on.'

'I told them that the man had kept me tied to a bed all night, but the next morning when he was away from the house I managed to escape. And then, when I was safe again in the street, I was stopped by a militiaman, and arrested because of my papers.'

There was silence on the line, so I said, 'And they asked you to give a description of the assassin.'

'Of course. I said he was short, but very strong, with greying hair and a scar underneath his left ear. He spoke with an Estonian accent.'

'And they tried to break your story.'

'But yes. They tried very hard.'

And hadn't succeeded, because for a few days it would have remained unbreakable, until they'd taken their investigations to the point where they could destroy it, word for word, and get to the truth. Did you bear any kind of grudge against General Gennadi Velichko? Were you aware that he was the head of the regional state security office in Krasnogvardeiskaya at the time when your father, Boris Vladimir Rusakov, was rumoured to have been executed without formality? Didn't you in fact request five days' immediate leave on medical grounds due to uterine cramps at the time when General Velichko was about to visit Novosibirsk?

I didn't know what exact questions would have been asked, but that would have been their tenor, and she wouldn't have had any answers that would have kept her out of the penal servitude camps for life on a charge of being an accessary to premeditated murder.

'You did well, Tanya,' I said.

'I wanted very much to keep your name out of it all.'

'I'm indebted to you.'

'No. But perhaps it made up a little.'

Made up for her leaving the safe -- house and getting herself arrested.

'Of course. Tanya, stay near the phone for twenty minutes.'

The door of the bar swung open and crashed back against the wall and a man came out with his hands covering his head, two others after him and catching him up, landing a kick and sending him sprawling, setting on him as he lay on the ground, "Fucking Jew ... You come here again and you 'II finish up in the river, cock -- sucking Jew -- boy. ..'

The Pamyat brigade. Goodbye Stalin, hello Hitler, le plus ca change, so forth.

'When shall I see you again?' Tanya asked me.

'I don't really know,' I said. She'd turned over sometimes, during the morning at the safe -- house, and lain with her face against me, not moving away, moving closer. She didn't wear perfume, but I remembered her scent. 'As soon as I can manage,' I told her. 'Put our friend back on the line, would you?'

The two men were crunching across the snow towards the bar, one of them with blood on his wrist.

When Ferris came on the line I just told him that if Rusakov was in the bar I'd call back in twenty minutes and let him talk to his sister for a moment.' I've got to have his trust, and her voice will give him proof that I've got her into safe hands.'

'We'll stand by for you,' Ferris said, and then, 'I've been doing a bit of research, by the way, on your rogue agent. There was a man in the Ministry of Defence called Talyzin who spoke out rather too loudly against some of the die -- hard generals, and they put him into a psychiatric ward when no one was looking. After six months he escaped, and from raw intelligence data going into London he might be your agent.'

'Why?'

'Three reasons. It's believed he came out of the psychiatric ward with some of his marbles gone, two of the generals who put him in there were Kovalenko and Chudin, and he'd served hi Afghanistan as a mine -- sweeping engineer.'

'Knows explosives.'

'Yes.'

'Another case of revenge, then, if he blew that train up. Attempted revenge.'

'We've had reports of hundreds like that, following the coup. Old scores to be settled. They're still working on it forme in London, and if I get anything more I'll pass it on.'

'That name again -- Talyzin?'

'Yes.' He spelled it forme. Then, 'Control has also been in signals with me, asking for a progress report.'

Bloody Croder. 'So what did you give him?'

There was nothing. There was nothing to give Control.

'I just said that progress is being made.'

It's the stock diplomatic answer the director in the field some -- times uses when London asks what's happening and there's nothing positive to offer. The shadow can be crawling on his stomach out of a wrecked support car with his clothes on fire and the host country's security forces moving in on him with war -- trained Dobermans and if Control wants a report he'll be told that progress is being made, if only by the fact that the poor bloody ferret has managed to crawl another six inches with his smashed leg as the heat of the flames reaches his skull and his brain begins going into short circuit as a prelude to the big goodbye, I don't mean to dramatize, but that is exactly what happened to Siddons when he bought it in Beirut, while his DIF was reporting progress to that bastard Loman in London.

Compared with which of course my situation was decidedly cushy, I was only holed up in a phone booth in Siberia watching that poor bugger out there struggling to get up before he froze to death, but all the same I didn't take kindly to Croder, Chief of bloody Signals, asking for a progress report from a director in the field who was notorious for refusing to call up London when there was nothing to tell them, believing it quite rightly to be a waste of time.

'May he get the pox,' I told Ferris and shut down the signal and dialled the ambulance service and told them there was a man outside the Harbour Light Bar on the west bank of the Ob needing attention. Then I forced open the door of the booth against the rust on the hinges and went across to the Jew and helped him onto his feet and told him there was an ambulance coming with any luck.

Pulled open the door of the place and got hit by the reek of black tobacco smoke and straight spirits and human sweat, the air hot against my face after the freezing temperature outside. When my eyes adjusted to the smoke haze I saw a man sitting alone in a corner on the far side of the room from the bar, a pair of gloves on the table, different shades of brown. He saw me come in but I looked past him and went over to the end of the long teakwood counter and ordered a vodka straight up, pulling out a stool and settling down to check everybody in the place, one by one.

I took fifteen minutes, not hurrying, because I didn't know Captain Vadim Rusakov any better than he knew me and even though he'd shot that general down he could still be working undercover for the Podpolia or Pamyat, the extreme nationalist right, and could have brought people in here to look me over. Or he could have picked up ticks in the army barracks and brought them here without knowing it, and I just wanted to talk to him alone, wasn't in the mood for a party.

Bloody London.

Rusakov was the only hope I'd got of putting Meridian back on track and bringing it home. But he might know nothing, nothing at all.

Six or seven tarts, two of them Chinese, they brought them here regularly from Beijing and Vladivostok on the Rossiya, one of the taxi -- drivers had told me. The other women were jealous of them, of their slight and flawless looks, blowing smoke over them from their lipstick -- reddened cigarettes to loud laughter from the men.

A huddle of Russian naval officers round an illegal crap game, three sailors drinking themselves under a table near the door, one of them with a trouser -- leg soaked. A lone militiaman in uniform, too far gone to be on duty unless someone had slipped him a mickey for a giggle. Two dogs, one of them with a broken leg, snuffling and tearing at something unholy under one of the tables.

I poured the shot of vodka down the leg of the bar stool and put the glass back on the counter and left the change and made my way close to the walls until I came up on the table where the odd gloves were lying and pulled out the chair opposite Captain Rusakov and sat down and saw the chalk moving across the board for Meridian in the basement in Whitehall, Executive reports possible breakthrough, is now in contact with valuable informer.