Crackle of gunfire and this time the nerves reacted a little, goose flesh under the sleeves. The sudden contact that only the eyes can make at a distance between two creatures is intimate and dramatic. When that incredible girl looked up -- remember? -- from halfway across the crowded room and saw you watching her, there was a rush of hormones, wasn't there, as the glands kicked in; it was like swallowing all the perfumes of Araby in one gulp, I know the feeling, but that wasn't the feeling I had now as I sat in the car among these alien snows and kept still, perfectly still, submitting to a hostile scrutiny I couldn't escape.

It wasn't unexpected. I'd known that if the man with the field -- glasses were watching the camp again today he would also make frequent checks on his environment, and my cover wasn't as good as his: there were no trees here and all I'd been able to do was squeeze the Skoda in between the ruined hulk of a barn and the dry -- stone wall that ran past it -- not even cover, call it camouflage.

It wasn't unexpected but there was engagement now; contact had been made at a distance between these two creatures out here under the early morning sky, and the scene had changed. He wouldn't just leave things like this, the agent up there among the trees. He wouldn't want to be watched. He would need to make a move, but it wouldn't be like yesterday's, because yesterday he would have had a whole battalion to contend with if he'd stayed his ground, and today there was only one man.

He would be a violent antagonist, if he chose to confront me. That would be his nature: he was a rogue. And he would be armed. Their lives in the field are short, but they'd be shorter still without the advantage of weapons. I'd known this when I'd left the Natasha an hour ago and put the mission into hazard, but I'd had no choice. I still didn't know whether I had any chance at all of monitoring the movements of the generals and infiltrating whatever operation it was they were running, but I knew at least that I'd never be able to do it if a rogue agent were in the field and moving ahead of me with the intention of finishing what he'd started on that train -- of killing them off.

Listen, Zymyanin had said as the corridor of the train had rocked under our feet, this is all I can tell you for now. The Bureau should do everything -- everything -- to keep those people under surveillance.

That was why I was here this morning, with the ice caking the windows and the rasping of the digital clock on its worn bearings stressing the silence inside the car -- to reach the objective for Meridian if I could, and get the information to London. I'd lost my director in the field but I'd set up a close support base with communications and liaison for Rusakov, but it would all be useless if I let that man on the hill take over the action.

I'd found him. Now I had to stop him, get him out of the picture.

He was here to follow the generals when they left camp, and in this we had the same purpose, but I believed it would end there. He had their death in mind, and when he'd followed them far enough from the camp to do the thing without bringing all hell on his head, then he would do it. Or it could be a suicide run he was here for, and the moment the generals left camp through those gates across there he'd move down from the hill and intercept and pump a volley of dum -- dums into them as the alarm was sounded and the first of the armoured cars was started up and sent in pursuit. He wouldn't get far and he would know that, but a suicide run would fit quite well into the thinking process of a typical rogue agent, and he could be one of the psychopaths, capable, for instance, of bombing a crowded train with no thought for the women and children.

And if that was his plan, the hail of dum -- dums would not only obliterate the generals. It would blow Meridian into Christendom.

He was still watching me. The field -- glasses hadn't moved since I'd seen them lock onto the image of the Skoda.

Gunfire, echoing from the huts. I kept still, watching the twin glint from among the trees, staring him out.

He would have plans for me, too, now that he'd seen me. It had been the major calculated risk I'd had to take. If he were here to wipe out the generals with a burst of fire he would do the same with me, immediately afterwards, because I'd present a threat: at the least I would be a witness to his act of assassination and at most I might intercept him when he left the hill and block his run, leave him set up for the armoured cars. But perhaps he wouldn't wait for that. Perhaps he would deal with me first, soon, get me out of the way, as a spider moves onto the web and removes a foreign object that has fallen there and then goes back into cover to wait for the fly.

That was the risk, but it was calculated: it's the only kind I'll take.

And I had options. Perhaps, for instance, I could talk to him.

He was still watching me, so I started the engine. He hadn't swung the field -- glasses away, was still wondering who I was and what I was doing here. I wanted him to see me move off, so that he could follow me with the glasses, know that I was coming. I didn't want to surprise him: he might react, and lethally. I had to approach him overtly -- he knew that I knew he was watching me; I wouldn't be some honest burgher out here to admire the view, because all the honest burghers in Novosibirsk were in the queues for a loaf of bread, poor buggers, be there all bloody day. He would know, that man on the hill, that I would be one of his kind, up to nothing innocent, and perhaps might sense a kindred spirit in the field.

A touch optimistic this morning, aren't we?

Shuddup.

The snow broke under the tyres as I moved down to the fork in the road, and the bodywork creaked as we shimmied over the ruts. I had options, yes, but there weren't any others 1 could choose at this particular time. They were for later, if he proved a danger to Meridian, as I believed he was; then I would try to get past his weapons and contain him, bring him away from here, take him to the support base and tell them to look after him, get him medical attention if that were necessary, if he put up too much of a struggle and had to be subdued with some of the more extreme techniques.

I wished him no harm, be this noted. In looking for the death of those two generals he would, I'm reasonably sure, be seeking to dispatch them to the same Elysian climes to which they would have dispatched others, perhaps hundreds, in the execution yards. The late Gennadi Velichko, with at least a Rusakov's blood on his hands, had been their close confederate.

The snow crunched under the tyres, the chains clinking now on the roadway, where military traffic had pounded the surface and reached the hardtop. I couldn't see from here whether he was still watching me. I didn't need to see. He was watching me very carefully, I knew that, and a tingling sensation began in the exact centre of my forehead. It was familiar, and didn't rate any attention: this wasn't the first time I'd moved deliberately into a potential line of fire and felt the phantom impact of a bullet, perhaps this time a dum -- dum, not my favourite, they blow the whole thing into a chrysanthemum, nothing left but the stalk.

I was halfway there now, a quarter of a kilometre from where I'd last seen him: a snow bank had blotted him out as I climbed the hill. He would use this, if he were trained, to change his position and turn the car to face my direction so that he could see me through the windscreen when I appeared; or he might get out and stand there with the assault rifle ready to swing up into the aim as soon as he saw me. Then there'd be the delicate business of going closer to him under the gun, close enough to talk to him, and then, if the talk broke down and he told me to get out of this area on pain of instant death, close enough to get behind the weapon and effect a change in things. That would be the tricky bit.

I kept a steady pace in low gear, bumping over the ruts, watching for him among the higher trees.

7 don't like this. You won't have a chance if he -- Oh, piss off.

Watching carefully now, trying to find the profile of his car or part ADAMHALL of it, enough of it to know if he'd turned it round or got out to wait forme.

Watch carefully.

The snow crunched under the wheels.

You won't have a chance if he -- I've told you before, piss off.

Crackle of gunfire and sweat broke instantly.

The rooks flew up from the camp.

Keeping a steady pace up the hill. Any change in the scene at this point -- sudden acceleration, a burst of speed -- could trigger his nerves and the gun.

There were widening columns of light now between the trees where I'd seen him last, but the configuration of his car wasn't there. He might have turned it, so that its narrower front -- end profile would be presented, but I thought I should see it, even then: I'd marked his location at the outset, where the branch of a tree had hung down at an angle, broken by a storm.

He'd moved the car. This was where he'd been, less than a hundred yards away -- and then I saw him, moving in the distance along the hill road, and I gunned up and lost the rear end and steadied things and gunned up again more carefully and started building up the speed, saw him again as the road straightened, saw that I was holding him now -- at a distance but holding him.

The observer drove away, Rusakov had told me, before he could be challenged.

Skittish, then.

He was driving something European, not Soviet, possibly a SAAB 504 but nothing fast like a Porsche. The speed factor didn't come into things in any case: I'd simply have to gain on him by playing with the gears to get as much traction as possible on the snow, keep the Skoda on the road, keep him in sight until I could draw close enough to see where he was going, catch him if I could, yes, but in these conditions it wouldn't be easy.

He was still the same distance ahead of me when the road dropped from the hill and straightened out, and I was trying to bring the speed up a degree when I saw he was pulling away, not fast but gradually, taking me three kilometres, four into the desolate open ground between the military camp and the suburbs of the town, and it was here that he slowed and then swung in a U turn until he was facing me and the first shots hit the front of the Skoda low down and began smashing their way upwards in a raking volley of fire as I dropped below the windscreen and it was blown out and the shots began hammering into the metal roof in a deafening percussion storm that blanked out conscious thought, I was only aware of closeness to death, could only see the snow and the sky revolving slowly as the Skoda rolled and churned among the drifts and hit rock and bounced and rolled again, rearing now with the front end going down and the whole thing swinging over, over and down, crashing amidst whiteness, whiteness and silence and then a sunburst, sounds dying away.

22 ZOMBIE.

It had happened before.

Fell forward. Forward and down, fell forward.

Lying with my face in the snow, freezing cold, cold iron mask on my face, get up.

Something was down there. Important?

Down in the snow. " I got up and the sky reeled and I sat with my back to the engine again. Important.

I reached down and dug around in the snow and found it, walkie unit, dropped it, I had dropped it, mustn't -- must not -- do that again.

The sky steadied. It had landed on its side, the Skoda, and the bonnet had burst open, so I'd been sitting with my back to it, not very warm any more, long -- how long?

Thirty -- two minutes. Patience, my good friend. Hurt anywhere?

A long icicle was hanging from the middle of the radiator where the fan had been driven into it by the impact; the engine bearers had sheared. Yes, head hurting a bit.

Not skittish, then, no, he'd led me away from the camp, hadn't wanted anyone to hear the noise when he pumped that bloody toy, he tried to kill me, you know that?

Very cold out here, it was very cold. Yes, a violent man, the agent didn't give anyone a chance, kerboom and rat -- tat -- tat, don't get in my way, not one of your more subtle espions, lacked reticence.

Car coming.