'No, no, my son,' explained the priest, shaking his head with a paternal smile. 'The body of a man like this deserves greater respect than that of any living sinner. Leave him there. His blessings will spread to the two men who lie on either side of him. And to you too,' he added, turning to the two men pulling the cart.

Once the priest had spoken, there was no room for argument. The two men heaved and the cart trundled along down the street, accompanied by a swarm of believers, interested to see more of the miracle that the priest had just described. They would have been more at home on the streets of Nazareth than on those of Moscow. The wounded man and his companion continued on foot. His footsteps repeated in turn the abrupt click of his crutch, the firm tread of his booted right foot and then the long, pointless scrape of his dangling left.

I walked with them for a while, away from where I should have been heading, stopping every cart and wagon that came past to see if it had any room for an extra, wounded man. It was about the tenth one I asked that did and so we hauled him aboard. His friend thanked me profoundly and walked alongside the wagon with a new spring in his step. The wounded man didn't understand enough even to raise his head and look at me. Whatever last vestige of life remained in him had been wholly focused on walking, on keeping on walking, as he had done all the way from Borodino to Moscow. Perhaps now he was being carried, his last reason to stay alive had been taken from him. I doubted that there would ultimately be much difference in the fate of a dead man whose body did not rot and a live one whose leg was rotting away beneath him.

I turned around and headed back the way I had come. It was already past eleven, so I hurried to make it to my meeting with Vadim and Dmitry. I crossed the once beautiful Red Square which, now deserted, could be seen in all its glory. Yet that glory was reduced to almost nothing by the absence of any people to enjoy it or even to ignore it. Red Square was near the very centre of the city; a city that everyone was trying to leave. And so, like the eye of the most fearful storm, it was the quietest place on earth.

As I passed Saint Vasily's and moved on to the Moskva Bridge, which stood beside the Kremlin spanning the river, the swarming crowds began to increase again. All were heading in the opposite direction from me, slowing my progress. Amongst them were a hundred soldiers with a hundred stories, each as pitiful as that of the men I had just encountered, but none of whom I could help. I realized suddenly how pointless it was for me to fret over issues that affected me and only me when all around the life of every one of my fellow countrymen was in turmoil. My concern for Maks and my concern even for myself seemed to become lost in this sea of faces. What observer, seeing the bridge with any degree of perspective, could single me out from the crowds through which I pushed my way? To any outside viewer, the global impact of this migration of a city's populace would have far greater significance than not just my own story, but the story of any one of us. Moscow was dying, and what was the fate of any single Muscovite against that? One might as well consider the fate of the individual cells in that poor soldier's gangrenous leg and forget the impending death of the whole man. Even the Lord God, Who could see inside the soul of every man on that bridge, would surely see in mine no greater cause for interest than in any other.

The temptation struck me to just lie back, to let the flow of the crowd take me in a direction of their choosing, not of mine, since whichever way I went, no one would notice. But someone, I knew, would notice. God might not be able to act as a constant sentinel in each of our lives, but He appoints as His deputy ourselves. In the very act of asking who cares what happens to me or to Vadim or to Domnikiia or to the memory of Maks, I provided at least one answer: myself. And by even mentioning those names, I reminded myself of others who, if they were to view the Moskva Bridge from the surface of the moon, would still pick me out from those around me.

I pressed on. Looking across the river to the far bank, I saw Vadim and Dmitry waiting for me. I raised my arm to greet them, but I was not sure whether they had seen me. At that moment, a hand grabbed my coat.

I turned and saw that it was a wounded soldier, lying on one of the open wagons which had been rattling past. The traffic had stopped moving once again and the man pulled me towards him.

'You!' He hissed at me with unspeakable hatred. 'You fiend! You monster! You devil!'

He lay back again, exhausted by the effort of speaking, but the fact that he had said all this to me in French reminded me of who he was; for, the last time we had spoken, he had revealed to me an expert knowledge not of the French language, but of Russian. It was Pierre, the young French officer whose camp we had infiltrated, and whom we had left to the absent mercy of the Oprichniki.

FOR GOD'S SAKE, SPEAK RUSSIAN IF YOU WANT TO LIVE ANOTHER five minutes,' I whispered to him fiercely.

'What do you mean?' he said, continuing to speak in French. He had acquired a Russian cuirassier's uniform from somewhere and so clearly had at some stage been trying to pass himself off, but it seemed to have been temporarily forgotten.

'You're in the centre of Moscow, Pierre. Speak Russian,' I continued under my breath, hoping that even if he didn't understand where he was, he would instinctively respond to my Russian with the same.

'Why am I in Moscow?' he asked, at last using the vernacular.

'You must have been taken for a casualty.' I still spoke quietly. Although he no longer spoke in French, anyone overhearing might soon work out his true nationality. No one seemed much concerned with our conversation however. Most of the crowd was pushing forward to see what was the cause of the latest holdup.

'Where did you get the uniform?'

'Uniform?' He looked down at his body and saw what he was wearing. Even then, he seemed to think my question trivial. 'I took it from a corpse after I escaped from you.' He looked at me again and his earlier vitriol re-emerged. 'You! Why did you do that? We may be the enemy, but we're not animals.'

He had a wound to his right cheek which made each word an agony to him. This at least meant that he was unable to raise his ' voice. The cheek was not quite cut through, but most of the skin was missing, carved away by two jagged, parallel score marks. Whatever had done it had both cut the skin and begun to flay it in a single stroke. He had a similar wound on the side of his neck – any closer to the front and it would have been fatal.

'It wasn't me,' I told him. 'When I left you, you were well. You'd just insulted the tsar,' I continued, encouraging him to remember. I was desperate to hear how the Oprichniki operated.

He raised his hand to his wounds as if trying to recall. His forearm bore an injury similar to the others. Clearly, Pierre had tried to fend off his attacker. Again a chunk of skin and flesh had been scraped off in a strip about the width of two fingers. It could have been inflicted by claws or teeth, but, knowing who it was that had attacked him, I immediately recalled the glimpse I had seen of Iuda's strange, double-bladed knife.

He peered at me closely. 'You're right,' he said. 'You and the other one did leave, and then some more of you came. But you must have been there!' He tried to raise his voice. I shook my head and put my hand on his shoulder to calm him. 'Or at least you paved the way for them.' That I couldn't completely deny.

'What happened when they came?' I asked, urging him on.

He fixed his eyes upon mine, but in his mind he was seeing that campsite near Borodino, five days previously. His description flickered between lucidity and incoherence. 'We didn't see them. Men started vanishing – over minutes, not hours. We were eating at the same time as they were. You'd turn away to get something and turn back and your neighbour was gone. Not everyone ate. Then Louis found them. And the bodies – among the bodies. We were so few left. They circled us. Stalked us. Weren't they satisfied? They moved so quickly. And killed. They could see through the darkness. I fought one off. Louis fought. It took two of them. I ran. They chased me. Spread out like wolves. Calling to each other like huntsmen. But I was fast – so fast – so afraid. They gave up. Louis screamed, but I was fast.'