We needed to be inside the mansion over there. That was the objective for the mission, for Meridian: to get the information that was in the generals' heads, send it to London. But I was lying on the ground with the awareness floating insubstantially, the awareness of the creeping light and the rumbling of heavy vehicles and the man's voice.

'You got a problem?'

I sensed him near me, Frome, caught a glimpse of his face as he peered under the car, felt the known world coming back into focus, the strength moving into the muscles, my fingers tightening inside the heavy gloves, the lungs expanding against the ribcage.

'Look, we're leaving it too --'

'Minute,' I said. 'Give me a minute.' Reached for the cross -- member and got a grip on it with one hand, both hands, the headlights flooding the snow and the drumming of the diesels filling the night as I got my left boot lodged again and kicked upwards, finding the rear axle, shouting to Frome, 'Get going.'

His face vanished and the door of the car slammed above me and the engine gunned up and the rear chains cut into the snow as the wheels span and then got a grip and the tension came into my hands and I locked my fingers and closed my eyes, we stay like this, felt a drop of oil against my face as Frome made the turn through the gates of the park, we stay exactly like this with the fingers locked, this is all we have to do, someone shouting somewhere, perhaps a guard at the gates, is he armed and do we wait for a shot, no, we stay like this and think of nothing else, nothing at all, the gears banging as the military column slowed outside the park, the transmission shunting, the light brightening again as the leading vehicle turned, then dimming out as Frome took the Mercedes in a curve alongside the building, we stay like this until the time is right and he signals, exactly like this, the clinking of the Mercedes' snow -- chains echoing from a wall now, from stone or brickwork, my body swinging as the car straightened and I hung on, if it doesn't look as if I've got a reasonable hope of making it, don't do it at all, just back off and get clear, the tension in the fingers burning now and my shoulders brushing the snow and the light of the convoy spreading again and then going out as the double knock from the tyre -- lever sounded against the floorboards above my head and I let go and dropped.

Smell of furniture polish, leather, ancient fabric, wood smoke.

The first three doors I'd tried had been locked; the fourth had taken me into a boiler room, and this short passage had led from it to the huge rotunda.

Two galleries circled it on the first and second floors, the higher one set back from the lower by its own width, their beams and pilasters deep red mahogany. The windows of the rotunda were mullioned, its doors gilded like the ornate balustrades of the galleries above. The lower walls were silk -- panelled, and boxed silk canopies overhung the doors. Logs burned in a huge open hearth.

In the centre of the rotunda, at a ring of tables below three brilliant crystal chandeliers, sat a group of Chinese military officers, most of them wearing the epaulettes of high rank, and when the main doors of the building were banged open they got to their feet. As the two Russian generals came down the steps with their aides and bodyguards, a Chinese officer, grey -- haired and with a general's flashes on his lapels, left the group at the tables and went to greet the Russians, who returned his salute. An interpreter from each party came forward and stood waiting.

Slamming of metal doors and thudding of boots as the rearguard of the generals' convoy halted outside. Shouts: orders to deploy.

In the centre of the rotunda, introductions were being managed with the aid of the interpreters: much formality, punctilious bows. I recognized the aides and the bodyguards who had been with the generals on board the Rossiya.

I was aware of the short passage behind me, the one that had led me here. I was aware of the shadows above the two galleries that circled the dome. I listened for sounds, for soft, alien sounds, alien to the voices of the international delegates in the centre, the clicking of boots and the scrape of chairs, for sounds nearer than that, closer to where I watched.

Because he was here in the building too, the rogue agent.

Talyzin -- was that his name?

There was a man in the Ministry of Defence called Talyzin, Ferris had told me. From raw intelligence data going into London, he could be your rogue agent.

The SAAB 504 had been outside, buried among the trees, when I'd rounded the building trying the doors. I had looked for it, or I wouldn't have noticed it. It had arrived here only minutes before I did, it must have. The agent hadn't been waiting there on the hill road to launch an attack on the generals. He hadn't been waiting to follow them here -- or wherever they might have gone. All he'd wanted to know was when they would leave the camp, and the moment he'd seen the transports gathering and the figures of the two generals framed in the field -- glasses he had left the hill road and driven here first, ahead of them.

He'd known that when they left the camp they'd be coming here.

And so I was aware of the passage behind me, and listened for alien sounds.

'... Marshal Jia Chongwu... Major -- general Yang Zhen ... Lieutenant -- general Zou Xinxiong...'

More introductions: salutes, bows and handshakes, no smiles -- the atmosphere was heavy with significance. These people weren't gathered here to exchange courtesies; they were here to work.

'Colonel Rui Zhong... Colonel Wang Yongchang...'

Their voices carried clearly under the immense dome of the rotunda, and the scraping of chairs as they sat down would have pushed the needle of an audiometer into the high sector. I would have to listen very carefully if I were to pickup any sounds the rogue agent might make.

Security guards had taken up station on the ground floor, all military, all of lower rank. Three men in plain clothes were moving along the walls, not going anywhere, just stirring their feet as they watched the assembly in the centre. They would also be security, not civilian but MPS, former KGB officers, or possibly GRU.

The tables in the centre were not uniform, had been pulled out of the rooms and office's leading off from the rotunda. As a courtesy the most ornate pigeonhole desk had been offered to the leader of the Chinese delegation, and he was sitting behind it now, flanked by an aide and an interpreter. The desk was mahogany like the walls here, and overlaid with gold scrollwork at the corners. It was massive, an important piece.

Preliminaries were still going on, and I went back along the passage and took the corridor that followed the curve of the rotunda. Doors were set in the wall at intervals, some of them open to reveal offices; I took care when I passed them, but he wouldn't be in any of these rooms, Talyzin: he would be watching the assembly in the rotunda, and watching it from one of the galleries, remote from the security guards below. I believed he would have the assault rifle with him, the one he'd used against the Skoda I'd been driving. But even if he'd left the rifle in the SAAB outside he would still be armed.

The staircase I'd been looking for was simple, with a thin iron banister, curving upwards behind the main wall of the rotunda; it was used for service, presumably, for cleaners and maintenance crews. I'd seen the main staircase to the galleries when I'd arrived here: an ornate affair leading directly from the well of the chamber. Talyzin wouldn't have used that one; he would have used this.

I tested every stair as I climbed, putting my feet on one end, against the wall. Voices came from below, fainter now but still intelligible.

'We have just learned that Marshal Trushin should be arriving very soon -- his plane was delayed by bad weather. He is replacing General Velichko, and will receive a transcript of the preamble as soon as he reaches here.'

I tested another stair.

'I am asked by my colleagues --' first in Mandarin, then translated' -- to offer our sincere condolences on the loss of the late General Velichko in such tragic circumstances. We feel personally bereft of a valiant comrade in arms.'

I thought that was interesting, because it was in line with the show of formality I'd seen before, the salutes and the bows and the .handshakes. Despite the military uniforms, these were the studied courtesies of statecraft. It told me something. It told me a very great deal more than I wanted to think about at this particular moment.

A stair creaked under my weight and I froze. I didn't think the sound could have carried as far as the gallery above, but I was moving into that deadly zone where a slight indiscretion, a lapse in attention to even the smallest degree, could be terminal. This was the final phase of Meridian and I'd broken into it before I'd realized, and if I could send anything useful to London I'd be doing it within the next few hours: that, or lacking discretion, lacking attention, I could go down without feeling anything much, just the instant inferno as the bullet hit the brain and blew the circuits and brought down the dark.

The nerves edgy, that was all, because those bloody things had come intimately close as they'd smashed the windscreen and ripped into the car.

'Your sympathies are appreciated, gentlemen.' the voice of the Chinese interpreter, full of throaty aspirates, took it up as soon as he got the drift. 'But fortunately, we are certain that Marshal Trushin -- a Hero of the Soviet Union -- will be able to help us further our cause with a degree of courage, energy and foresight equal to that of our late comrade.'

Our cause... Yes indeed, our cause... I would have given a great many roubles, a great many yuan, for a tape recorder here with me now. I could of course raise Frome on the radio and give him a short, urgent debriefing for onward transmission to the signals board in London through the support base in Novosibirsk: Russian and Chinese -- repeat Chinese -- military talks taking place Novosibirsk, subject a joint cause. But I'd have to go down the stairs again and into one of the rooms below to do that, and it was vital that I found Talyzin first and in some way got him compromised, made safe, so that I could concentrate on taking in the information I was here to get -- The Bureau should do everything to keep those people under surveillance. Zymyanin. Had he known there was to be a clandestine meeting in Novosibirsk, of great significance?

Talyzin had known. He'd known the generals were coming here.

He'd been here before.

I reached the fourth stair from the top, my eyes level with the floor of the first gallery, the scalp tightening. The gallery was in deep shadow, thrown by the chandeliers below; I could make out the shapes of tables here and there, of chairs; above them, catching the light, leather -- bound volumes lined the walls. If Talyzin were here he would be here to watch the assembly down there, and to watch it he would have to sit or stand near the balustrade, where his face would also catch the light.

I couldn't see him.

It was necessary then to move higher, to climb the last three stairs, expose my head, shoulders, the heart area, moving slowly, watching for him, tracing the curve of the gallery full -- circle.

'... And it is our conviction that the opportunity for us to assume joint command of all those territories hitherto known as the Soviet Union is immediately available to us, and that such an opportunity is not likely to occur again within the foreseeable future. The people of Russia and the so -- called independent states are in a mood of imminent rebellion, thanks to the catastrophic breakdown in the economy. It is therefore the first step in our overall enterprise to oust the present government in Russia and the so -- called independent states by inciting rebellion in Moscow and the major cities and demonstrating to the people that we alone have the power to put bread into their cupboards and shoes on their feet, to reinstate peace and stability and usher in a secure and promising future for their children -- and their grandchildren. Our troops and our tank? will act demonstrably as the allies and the saviours of the people, thus ensuring their loyal support as we gather the reins of power.'

The two voices, Russian and Chinese, echoed among the shadowed reaches of the dome. I could see the complete circle of the lower gallery now, and if Talyzin were there he must be well back from the balustrade, watching, perhaps, through its polished redwood uprights.

Crawl. Crawl, then, to the next curve of the staircase, crawl in the shadow, silent and dark -- garbed, moving a centimetre at a time past the ornate archway, a thing unseen, a creature of the shades, crepuscular, a night -- crawler of harm to none, yet with the hairs lifted at the nape of its neck and its arms goosefleshed, its ears alert for the bang of the gun and the whine of the homing shot Crawl.

'... We consider our opportunity propitious in the extreme. The belated attempts of the government of the United States to buy the allegiance of our peoples at a time when they find themselves in need of the very basics of human life have brought the capitalistic empire -- mongers to their knees economically, and their naive decision to reduce arms -- production in the imagined light of global rapprochement makes the way ahead for us the easier...'

Faint light slanted across the first four or five stairs, and I crawled up them with the deliberation of a sloth, getting onto my feet in the higher shadows. I lost some of the generals' preamble between the first and second galleries but it came in again as I neared the top of the staircase.

'We fully understand the uneasiness of our Chinese neighbours in view of the possibility that Russia and her satellites might one day embrace capitalism and as a result cede their nationhoods to the West, leaving China as the last bastion of Communism on the globe, isolated and beleaguered, out -- voiced and outnumbered in the halls of international debate, an island of a thousand million people in a hostile sea...'

Then their voices began coming out of silence, and I moved my head, trying to lift it off the stair, nerve -- light flashing, an awareness of time passing, the pain of a splinter driven into my hand when I'd slumped, losing focus again.

'. . . And that together, as one ideologically homogeneous federation, we would claim no less than one fifth of the earth's total territory and comprise no less than one fourth of its population, a potential work force of one thousand three hundred million people dedicated to the socialist cause..."

I got onto my feet, the flat of my hands against the wall, stood there for a minute or two, feeling my way back to full consciousness before I began climbing again.