The first thing he’d go for was the gun but the magazine was under the seat and he knew that. The second thing he’d go for was the envelope because without that stuff I couldn’t blow him and he knew mat too. At present there wasn’t time for him to go for either the gun or the envelope because I was catching up on the initiative and had his left arm in a clamp while I went for his face again. He was trying to get leverage against the dashboard with his foot and I saw the heel of his black leather boot gouge into the speedometer as he straightened his leg and got the pressure he needed and started to use it, his shoulder braced against my throat and his right hand darting for the eyes and missing and darting free again as I blocked him every time until he used a wedge-hand against the throat and half-succeeded: I began choking and brought my knee up and smashed it into his ribs and forced some of the pressure off.

The horn had sounded three or four times because we were milling inside the confines of the car and whatever we hit we smashed: the windscreen went and I saw his boot rip from the heel to the top because this stuff wasn’t safety glass. The envelope had slipped down between the driving-seat and the door and I freed my left hand and tried to push it under the seat but he saw what I was doing because if he couldn’t get the gun he’d settle for the envelope: it was all he really needed. The horn was sounding again and I realized I had my knee against it as he wrenched his arm free and drove a palm-hand downwards and connected with a shoulder-blade.

I tried three consecutive eye-darts and they fell short because my arm was half locked but they worried him and he spun sideways and got purchase again on the dashboard and kicked away from it and broke the seat frame and sent me on my back with the effect of a rabbit chop as my neck hit the edge of the rear seat: bright flashing lights and momentary paralysis, dangerous and I rolled over to miss his boot as it crashed down and ripped some of the seat fabric away, sensation of losing touch, sounds muted, felt him lurch across to the driver’s side as someone began shouting, which I didn’t understand unless it was the noise the horn had been making, face at the window and a gloved hand shooting out and trying to stop Kirinski as he hit the door open and pitched through and began running, knocking one of them down there were more people here and I got up and heard someone asking what had happened, was it a thief, so forth, down on my knees so I made a lot of effort and got up again, still choking because of the wedge-hand strike, still seeing flashes.

Men running and calling out stop thief stop thief and I told them no, it was just a quarrel that was all and someone said hospital and I made another effort and said no, I didn’t want a hospital. That would mean the police and statements and what I had to do was get away from here as soon as I could because he’d taken the envelope and that was going to change the whole situation: he’d let the KGB loose on me now because there was nothing to stop him.

The TU-154 came out of the haze like an image taking shape on a negative, breaking through the low ceiling a mile from the end of the runway and flopping down only ten minutes late despite the weather: they said there was more snow coming in from the south-west.

People began leaving the observation deck, their faces pinched with the cold. I waited until the plane had turned at the end of its run and started rolling in this direction; I was frozen from the drive in the Trabant but there were other things to consider. I was getting to know Chechevitsin: his signals were brief and security-conscious to the point of being uninformative. This wasn’t typically Russian and I suppose he was probably someone out from London and worried about making mistakes. This time the rdv was for 3.05 at the airport, courier arriving Flight 96 from Moscow, recognizable on sight. No precise point of rendezvous. I was expected to pick him out of a hundred and fifty passengers. No specific instructions: I was to assume that he was to receive the films.

I’d say the problem had been the Trabant. It was the driving-seat that had broken away and I’d had to take the other one off its runners and use it as a prop, wedging it between the rear seat and the driver’s squab. But there’d been nothing I could do about the smashed windscreen except clear the rest of the glass away and drive with my eyes half-shut against the freezing blast of air. I’d told the man at the hotel there’d been an accident on the snow and he’d let me put the car into the yard at the rear and I’d left it there, walking around to the household store to call Kirinski and then Chechevitsin: I wanted it out of sight as much as possible because there couldn’t be too many dark blue Trabants driving around the city without a windscreen and I might just as well put my name on the bloody thing. I’d asked Chechevitsin to get me another one but he’d said it would take time and I couldn’t put any pressure on him because even a used car would cost the earth and he’d be lucky to find one.

Only a few of the people were left on the observation deck now: the 154 was swinging into the reception bay and the service vehicles were going out to it. I waited another two minutes and went through the swing-door and down the steps, moving a little faster than normal but not running. He was still behind me at the end of the passage and I turned sharply, using cover and going into the open again to watch him react when he saw me. He’d lost me for only a few seconds but it had worried him and he shrugged himself deeper into his coat as he walked on past the information desk.

There’d been nothing in the mirror when I’d driven here but the Trabant had a unique image because of the windscreen and I’d left it parked between a big Chaika and a wall and I’d walked into the main hall through the freight entrance and taken a lot of trouble with mirrors and mirror substitutes and drawn blank everywhere. That had been at 2.40 and I’d come up to the observation deck through a clean field but at 2.53 the man with the sloping shoulder had come through the swing-door and stood there for a couple of minutes making a lot of fuss about the cold, stamping his feet and blowing into his bare hands and going out again. A lot of people were doing that: it was the first big freeze of the winter and they were feeling it; but this man had kept his back to me and faced the line of windows at the right angle and I’d noted it but hadn’t been sure until I’d checked on him. So it had been the Trabant and he’d picked me up at some time after I’d turned into the car park and kept station on me and held back too long and lost me and looked for me and found me on the observation deck, going out again and waiting for me at one end of the passage, not a first-class tag but he wasn’t running any risk because the other one had closed in and was watching me now from light cover near the main entrance.

“Excuse me, comrade.”

A man with a bunch of faded carnations, God knew what they’d cost him but he had the eyes of a romantic and he was past the age when he could afford to lose a good woman even if he couldn’t afford the flowers either.

“Yes?” I answered.

“Is that the Moscow plane, just in?”

“That’s right, comrade. Flight 96. She’s a lucky girl.”

“They were all they had left.” He shrugged wistfully and walked off across the hall with both tags watching him and a man coming away from the newspaper stall on the far side, a third man, waiting to question him when the time was right.

Three.

It didn’t look good. There were things I wanted to know and there wasn’t time to think about it because the courier would now be coming through Gate 1 and I’d have to make a decision within the next minute and then act on it. But the same pattern was here: the second courier was moving straight into a trap and this time London hadn’t been on to it. Either that or Kirinski had thrown the whole thing at the fan: I’d called his apartment as soon as I’d got the Trabant stowed away in the hotel yard, but Liova had answered the phone and said he wasn’t there so I gave her the message: I’d taken copies of the material so if he thought he could blow me now he’d better think twice. But he must have triggered the KGB on his way home and when he’d got there it had been too late to do anything about it, and the Trabant must have become red hot within half an hour of my driving away from the waste ground he thought he’d got nothing to lose if the KGB put me through interrogation because I had no evidence and they wouldn’t take any notice of what I said: a man under interrogation will say whatever might save him.