'No,' Seryshev replied in a stolid, unexcited way. 'Only students. Heavy sentences, to discourage others, of course. But - no leads to anything. No expectation of anything . . .' He waved a heavily mittened hand towards the wreckage. 'Anything like this.'

Vorontsyev rounded on him.

'The men here were wiped out! Someone did a very professional job on them - wives and families, too, in some cases. Each one with a bomb. Don't you have any idea ?'

Seryshev shrugged. 'No.' He did not like the admission, but it was safer than bluff, he considered, at that moment.

Vorontsyev stared at the wreckage, as if willing himself to remember every detail. Then he said, 'Nothing else ?'

'Not for months.'

Silence, then Vorontsyev called, 'Blinn! Anything yet?'

The stooping forensic officer looked up, his face caught by the revolving, winking light on the police car. He looked chilled, and irritated.

'Don't be stupid, Vorontsyev! What would you expect ? I'm still putting together the parts of the people here!'

'Get moving, then!' Again, the unreasonable, unreasoning anger flared, filled his throat like nausea. 'Balls to the bodies! I want to know how they died, and who killed them!'

Blinn took a step towards him, casting aside a charred length of carpet. It rolled back over something humped and blackened that Vorontsyev did not care to identify.

'You're a prize bastard, Vorontsyev! Its people who died here, don't you realise that ?'

Vorontsyev was shouting now, in contest with the wind and Blinn. Blinn seemed even more deeply shocked than he over the atrocity. As if the massive safety of his organisation and his office had been stripped from him like so many inadequate clothes.

The two men stared at one another across the spars and frozen waves of the ruined building, Blinn's taut, thin face reddened by the light, the sleet blowing across it caught by the same glancing light.

'I want to catch the bastards who did it! And I may not have a lot of time to do it. Can you get that into your thick skull ?'

Blinn's nostrils flared. Vorontsyev saw the puzzlement succeed anger in his face. He had said too much.

'What the hell has tune got to do with it ? All the watches and clocks around here have stopped!'

'I - I'm sorry,' Vorontsyev said. 'It - look, it may be urgent,' he added, stepping away from Seryshev. 'Urgent. So put someone on the explosive - exclusively. At each house that was blown up. I want to know type, amount - all of it.' Blinn was already nodding in the concert with the demands. 'I want to know how much there was. And then perhaps we can guess where it came from.'

'OK, I understand.' He looked at Vorontsyev. 'I wondered why they sent you out here.' He turned away.

Vorontsyev looked once more at the rubbish of the building and its occupants. Where did the explosive come from? Ossipov, you bastard, he thought, this isn't like slipping a tail in the cinema toilet... Again the unreasonable anger. If it was you - I'll finish.

Even then, in the street, despite the sleet, the chilling cold, and the traffic thinning in the square behind him, it did not sound a particularly stupid boast.

General Ossipov was entertaining a young man in civilian clothes in his quarters; his town quarters, a suite of rooms on the top floor of the Dalni Vostok Hotel on Karl Marx Street .The young man was standing before him, almost at attention, staring into a mirror above the mantelpiece - an ornate, gilded mirror in which he could see the back of Ossipov's grey head and sometimes the side of his face as he spoke. The young man felt angry with his orders from Moscow, and half-afraid of their effect on Ossipov.

The General had taken too much to drink already, that was evident. His tie was slightly askew, and the grey suit appeared rumpled - the collar was wrinkled to the hairline, he could see. He was feeling aggrieved that he should have to berate the General, imitating the anger that Kutuzov had shown when he had briefed him the previous night. He was not certain the General, in his present semi-drunken mood, would respect his status as courier.

'You dare to tell me that I have acted precipitately - that I am wrong ?' Ossipov snarled, a second or two later than he would have done, the emotions muddied by the drink. The young man winced at the evident blame he was attracting.

'Sir,' he said again, 'I am only repeating what I was told to say. You know that is my function. My opinions are irrevelant.'

'You arrogant young turd!' Ossipov snapped, and the young man saw the head jolt upwards, in the mirror, and refrained from meeting the General's eyes.

'No, sir,' he said.

'You tell me that Kutuzov considers me a fool who has acted like a silly, middle-aged virgin when a man looks at her ? God, I got rid of that stinking KGB gang in one night! And the Separatists will get the blame!' The General laughed, but the young man considered it was only the confidence of alcohol.

'I was told to inform you that the SID have a man here - a Major. That Kutuzov considers to be an indication that the -enemy - have a strong suspicion that all is not as it appears out here.'

'Considers? Rubbish!' Ossipov poured himself another vodka, a noisy meeting of bottle and tumbler. 'We have five days, if his bloody marvellous plan works! What, pray, is there to fear ?'

'You become an object of suspicion, General,' the young man proceeded. 'An SID unit was on to you - you eliminated your double with Vrubel's help. Now you have attracted this attention to the Far East District, just a few days later.'

Ossipov shifted in the chair - the young man saw the head jerk, the whole body move, as he came out of the chair. Shorter by five inches or more, his head came into view at the edge of eyesight as the young man strained to stare into the neutral mirror.

'Attention? Attract attention? What the hell does that mean?'

The young man swallowed, then said, 'It means - Kutuzov considers that the exercises should be suspended while the SID man is here.'

There was a silence. As if drunk himself, the young man moved his gaze over the reflected room; over the ornate furniture, most of which belonged to Ossipov, over the thick, patterned carpets - returning, unwillingly, to the back of the General, the square shoulders and the bull neck.

'No,' Ossipov said with difficult restraint, the glass clinking against his dentures a moment before his reply. 'Kutuzov should have asked me whether I was able to suspend the tests, not give me an order when he's thousands of miles away. I will not jeopardise the whole operation because of one man. "Exercise Mirror" must continue. There are still problems with the chemical attack to precede the armoured assault. These must be solved in the next two days!'

Ossipov regained his seat, studied his drink for a moment, then went on: 'I am working without expert assistance - I have to, since I can't trust the scientists I could otherwise lay my hands on.' The courier stood patiently at attention, staring into the ornate mirror. It was, he presumed, one of his more irksome duties to listen to these old men as they communed with their drink and their past, present and future. 'And if we are to test the chemical devices, then we have to go through the fiction of the whole exercise to fool the American satellites.'

He looked up briefly, but the young man did not meet his eyes and he returned his gaze to the carpet, his head resting on his chest. 'They must continue to think we are once again rehearsing the invasion of China - not the invasion of Norway. Tell Kutuzov when you return to Moscow - ' The General seemed to have created in himself a certainty born of reasonableness, and of reasoned argument, and was prepared to end this tirade on a note of quiet defiance. 'Tell him that for his sake, for all our sakes, I will not stop now.' He paused, then, with confidence, snapped, 'Now, get out!'

Eight: Border Incident.

The MIL helicopter followed the single road from Murmansk to the Finnish border, flying at little more than five hundred feet above the narrow white parting between the heavy darkness of the trees and the strip of dull glass that was the river Lotta.

Already, the country below was boring to Ilya. Their flight to Leningrad, then the transport plane, an old Ilyushin, which had taken them to the military airfield at Murmansk, had tired him. He never slept well on aircraft, unlike Maxim, who had dozed in the seat next to him, wrapped in his heavy overcoat, snoring gently. Instead, he had drunk whisky on the prolonged flight and in the uncomfortable, sparse transit lounge at Murmansk, until the MIL was able to take off before first light and in improved weather.

He had little idea of how to conduct the investigation. Major Vorontsyev had told them, repeatedly, to be careful, to convince whoever they met that it was a straightforward missing persons case - except that the missing person was a KGB officer, and that was why the SID had been called in. But he knew that they would find out little that way.

What was there to find out, anyway ?

The dark trees, the snow-covered swellings of the landscape, flowed beneath him like waves.

Finland Station. That was all.

He tapped the pilot on the arm. The young man turned to him, lifting one earphone of his headset.

'What is it?'

Maxim stirred lazily in the seat behind him, irritating Ilya.

How could he sleep so soundly, with the rotors beating above them, and the insecurity of being suspended above the wild landscape below.