'We could take no chances - chemical warfare training is an annual event. Last year, we failed to get it right, and we had to wait. Soldiers talk, Grigory Ilyich - and that is something not to talk about. Ossipov's men think they are only carrying out normal training -' Praporovich raised his hand.

'Very well, old friend. I agree. Let us not quarrel. As long as the cleaning-up is timed to the minute, I don't worry about it.'

'It will be. Radio-traffic for everything, using the hourly changes of code, from now on. Tell Dolohov.'

Praporovich nodded. 'Your part of it ?'

'Valenkov's gone underground. The KGB know it, but they can't do anything about it. Valenkov will be ready at 06:00, when I give the order, to move his tanks into the centre of Moscow. They will take up positions around and inside the Kremlin, and in Dzerzhinsky Street - a display of strength. Andropov will be - collected at home by a special squad. The Politburo members will be similarly rounded up. As for Feodor the traitor - he will be taken care of.'

'He must come back for trial -'

'What else ? It is taken care of.'

Praporovich nodded reluctantly. 'GFSG are still bellyaching about not being in on the action,' he observed.

'They won't move ?'

'No. Marshal Bezenkov will do nothing. "1812" will come to a complete stop at 06:00, as you ordered.'

'Good.'

Kutuzov stood up, crossed to the drinks cabinet in one corner, and poured vodka for them both. He raised his glass, aware of, pleased at, the theatricality.

'Your health, old friend.'

'Yours, also.' They touched glasses, drank off the liquor. Kutuzov stayed the Marshal's hand for a moment.

'I have to stay alive, because without me, Valenkov will never order his garrison regiments into the streets of Moscow. You have to stay alive, because without you the Army has no leader in the north. Remember that when you're tempted to walk the streets today or tomorrow - eh, old friend ?'

Praporovich nodded. Then, together, they threw their empty glasses into the fireplace. Praporovich roared with laughter, the laughter of a young man. After a moment, Kutuzov, too began to laugh.

The senior Helsinki detective had been deferential, almost silent, certainly careful to avoid recognition of Davenhill and the wounded arm he nursed in a sling. He had his orders, evidently, and satisfied his frustrations by enjoying the discomfort that the cold of the city morgue brought to the pale-looking Englishman. Diplomacy, intelligence services, twist justice the way you want - the thoughts rumbled away in the back of his head.

'I'll leave you, if you wish, Mr Davenhill ?' he said, sliding out the drawer of the great metal cabinet that might have contained gigantic files. The expected white sheet with its contours like those of hidden furniture nevertheless shocked Davenhill, made him gag as if the thing under the sheet had rotted.

'Don't you want my identification ?' Davenhill snapped.

'Naturally. I meant afterwards -'

'I-'.

The detective pulled back the sheet like a conjurer. Water ford's face stared up at them. Davenhill could imagine the eyes beneath the closed lids, glowering, discontented with the ordinariness, the boredom of death. Davenhill nodded. Then he remembered his lines.

'Yes - that is Mr Alan Waterford, of the British Diplomatic Service.' It was incredible, even insulting. The detective accepted the blatant untruth, the agreed version of identity.

'Thank you, Mr Davenhill.'

Davenhill was staring into the cabinet drawer. Waterford was neat, tidy. He did not hear the detective walk away, to wait outside for him.

Civil servant - dear God! he thought. At last they had put Waterford in a category, and one he could not threaten or burst from. Waterford the killer, the operator, the desperate man - a clerk. Davenhill could feel nothing more than the irony of his words, his identification. He could not feel that Waterford had saved his life, more than once; he could not apprehend the person that Waterford had been. But he was assailed by a sense of loneliness that had nothing to do with the white room, the ranked drawers, the table with its sluice in the middle of the tiled floor, the gowns hanging up on the door. It was a loneliness that belonged not to himself, but to Waterford. Waterford in life rather than dead.

Stupid tears pricked at the back of his eyes. In an effort to dismiss them, he slammed the heavy drawer shut. It slid smoothly on its oiled rails, and clanged shut. The noise rang from the white walls, from the chequered tiles of the floor.

Vorontsyev sat huddled hi a narrow gully, staring at the Makarov 9 mm automatic in his hands. Hands that were clumsily gloved so that he could only just press the trigger-finger into the guard. Eight rounds in the magazine, and three spare clips in his pockets. Thirty-two 244 milligram bullets between himself and the whole of Ossipov's Far East Military District forces. He could not bring himself to contemplate the number of divisions posted at this end of the Soviet Union.

Ludicrous.

His breathing had now become less harsh, and his heartbeat no longer thudded in his ears. He must have been running for miles, for hours.

It had been for nearly an hour. It was twelve-fifteen on the 22nd. In Moscow, eight hours away by jet, it was - what was it ? Midnight.

He threw aside the thought with a shake of his head. It did not matter. What mattered more was that he wished he had the larger Stechkin 9 mm automatic, with a twenty-round magazine, better range, more stopping power, instead of the particularly futile Makarov.

He laughed aloud when he considered the uselessness of either gun against a T-54 tank, or even the platoon of men that might leap out of an Armoured Personnel Carrier.

He fumbled the map from his pocket, and folded and refolded it until it revealed his present position. He checked with the sun's position, then the compass, then the shape of the land - here, on the edge of the long knife of forest that had followed the valley as it narrowed. Pointing south.

He was eighteen miles from the outskirts of Khabarovsk.

He crouched instinctively as he heard .he beat of a helicopter, coming up the narrow valley from the south. He was just under the outlying trees, in an olive-green anorak and brown slacks, and jammed into a narrow dry watercourse. The beat of the rotors became louder, and he felt his arms against his head throbbing with nerves as he covered his fair hair. The noise was directly overhead, and he could feel the small down-draught. Dirt jumped and quivered near him, and the trees overhead were swaying in the created wind.

Then the noise died away northwards, the way he had come, the pilot and observer in the chopper hoping that their down-draught might part the trees like some green and spiky Red Sea just long enough for them to spot a running man. He waited, not uncurling from his crouch, because he now knew the pattern they were using.

Two minutes later, the second helicopter passed overhead. They could not seriously believe that he had come this far in the time - probably these were the original choppers that had escorted, then lost him.

He stood up. He brushed his trousers free of the little hard dirt that had accumulated, and stepped out of the gully. There was no snow on this side of the narrow valley, facing the sun. The day was almost spring-like, mild. He had even heard insects in the intense silence, above his own breathing.

A vague plan had formed itself in his mind - something akin to a half-dreamed ambition, and connected with childhood. Certainly not a definite plan of action. But it was all he had. It meant getting to Khabarovsk, at least to the eastern outskirts, soon after dark.

He knew he could not enter Khabarovsk, or return to his hotel. He could not even rely on Blinn and the rest of the forensic team, or the replacement KGB officers flown in from Moscow. A tiny force, impotent. He could not attempt to board a plane hi Khabarovsk - the airport was outside the town, but it would be patrolled by now, or soon, anyway. He would be arrested, probably on some trumped-up charge and by a GRU detachment, and brought to Military District HQ.

And then, he thought, the light would go out.

Beyond the trees, the narrow neck of the valley opened out. He looked at the map. A small village - Nikoleyev - lay behind the valley, where the mountains and uplands surrendered temporarily to high pasture. A sloping bowl of meadowland. then narrow, radiating valleys again, before the land dropped down to the long hills which cradled Khabarovsk.

In the village, he had to obtain a car. Covertly, or overtly, it did not matter. Probably, there were troops in the village already. It did not matter. He had to get to the village, and he had to have the car. Only by having transport could he hope to make the rendezvous that was already assuming a prominent place in his thinking.

There was some kind of hut on a little rise, perhaps half a mile from where he stood. Not a house, perhaps a store for winter fodder.

He stepped cautiously away from the trees, as if expecting to see the belly of a helicopter slide into view just above the tree tops. He scanned the sky, revolving on his heels until he began to feel dizzy. Nothing. He began to run.

The ground was tussocky with the poor grass, flinty stones unsettling his footsteps. He ran as carefully as he could, his eyes scanning the ground immediately ahead of him, yet his mind screaming at the sense in the back of his neck, across his shoulders, that he was nakedly exposed as he moved with such idiotic slowness across that half-mile of grass and stones.

His breathing became heavier, the steps more automatic, and more laboured. He began to consider the futility of running, of crossing half a mile when thousands of miles separated him from the people who could help him - no, not help, now; protect, hide. His breath began to tear and sob, like cloth being pulled apart roughly, something human in him being made into i rags for cleaning.

He forced his legs on, his body seeming to bend lower, his face closer to the ground - stumbling more now, trying to shift weight immediately so that an ankle wouldn't give, twist. He could feel the body-heat, rising and breaking out in sweat. There was even sweat on his forehead now. He looked up. The hut appeared hardly any nearer than the last time he had looked up - perhaps one hundred strides ago. No, two hundred at least.

One hand pushing away from the ground as he stumbled, and the tiredness stressed as he tried to drive the legs in a [ reasserted upright position.