I began walking faster because people had started staring at my face again and I kept on using the handkerchief but it was soaked by now and I put it away and broke into a run as far as the corner and saw two militia men and swerved away and found a doorway as they shouted behind me and I knocked someone down, running hard, a room on the left and a girl with her face opening in shock and starting to scream as I kept going and found a corridor empty and ran hard to the end, the word MEN on a door and I went in and the bloodied face met me in the mirror as I stopped dead, no wonder she'd screamed.

Water gushing and a rolled paper towel: it was a long gash from the cheekbone to the chin and I could feel glass fragments moving in it as I went to work. Blood on my hands, on my coat: I used more water, swabbing at the astrakhan, listening for sounds outside, a door thudding and someone shouting. I ripped off some more of the towel and made a wad and held it against my face as I went out and climbed three steps and found the street again.

Slow. Slow down. Get the breathing under control, head down and watching the wet pavement like everyone else, breathe deep and breathe slow and don't look up, don't look round. The noise was behind me: a staccato medley of voices, and farther away a siren dying and the slam of a car door. I was on the east side of Red Square now with the walls of the Kremlin opposite. I went that way, crossing the open space with the knowledge that if they found me here there wouldn't be any cover except for the long queue of people reaching from below Spassky Gate to Lenin's tomb. I kept walking, my head down and the snow drifting across the ground, beginning to settle.

Three men walked together towards the line of people, and I moved nearer them to make a group. Others were crossing Red Square towards the walls of the Kremlin, hurrying because of the snow and because the queue was lengthening. One of the sirens was still wailing through the streets behind me, and I could hear a car moving at high speed with its engine racing. I didn't look back; I walked with the three men in black through the drifting snow. The wad of paper was pressed hard against my face; if I could stop the blood flow I could regain something like a normal image. I didn't know whether the paper was white or red; it would make a difference when I reached the queue of people. They were facing towards us, all of them, wrapped tight in their fur coats and hats and headscarves, staring across the square.

'What's happening over there?'

'Was there an accident?'

We walked steadily towards them, joining the line near Spassky Gate. It was four deep and I took up my position on the far side, away from the department store.

'Do you have toothache?'

'Yes,' I said.

'What's happening across the square there?'

'I don't know.'

I counted seven police cars, one of them moving slowly round the cathedral and another one turning and accelerating in the opposite direction, but both keeping close to the square.

'Tch! There's blood on your face. Are you hurt?'

'It's nothing much. I slipped on the snow.'

'You need medical attention.'

'It will heal.'

A body of militia men was moving away from the thick of the patrol cars and spreading out along the edge of the square, facing this way. One of the cars had dropped two men off not far from Nikolsky Gate, and they were walking steadily past the museum towards the queue of mourners. They looked closely at everyone they passed. I turned away from the queue but saw a police van slowing to a halt opposite Nabatny Tower; a dozen men got out of it and began forming a group facing this way. I turned back.

'Do you live in Moscow?'

`Yes,' I said.

'We are from Abramtsevo.' She was a motherly woman half buried in black shawls, her bright eyes watching me. 'This is my son, Viktorovich. He would like to live in Moscow, but he can't get a visa. He's a sewage engineer, an apprentice.'

I nodded to him. 'You must keep trying. You know how it is, when you want something from them.'

When I looked behind me again I saw the group of police spreading out and moving slowly towards the queue, stopping a man here and there and questioning him. I turned again and looked towards Spassky Gate, where two sentries stood.

'Have you visited the Mausoleum before?' asked the woman.

'No. I've been wanting to see it for a long time.'

The sentries would certainly see me and probably stop me: they were aware that every male in the square was being scrutinized. The three lines of police and militia men were moving steadily in from the other three sides.

'We have been twice already,' she said. 'Every time I see the sepulchre, I have tears.' She rocked gently, nodding with the whole of her round shawled body. 'Every day we have fifteen thousand people here to see it. But you will know this, since you live in Moscow.'

The snow was falling thickly now; the sky overhead was storm-dark and the air was heavy. We shuffled forward, watched by the police guards.

'The last time we came,' the woman said, 'the queue reached right round to Kutafya Tower! Of course it was summer then.' She peered up at me with her bright eyes. 'Do you have influence in Moscow?'

'No,' I said. 'But your son should keep on trying. It wears them down in the end.'

A man and a woman broke from the queue not far away, and a police guard called to them. 'Return to the line, please! Get back into line!'

'But we can't wait any longer. My wife has a cold.'

'Very well.'

We shuffled forward again.

The militia men were halfway across the square by now, one of them stopping the man to question him while his wife waited, puzzled. When I turned round I saw two of the police unit reach the end of the queue and start moving along it, scrutinizing the men. Ahead of us people were breaking away to put their cameras and parcels into a locker room, coming back to their places and shuffling forward again. The militia men were moving steadily in our direction.

There wasn't any way out. If I tried running they'd head me off and if I stayed where I was they'd question me: what have you done to your face? Why is your coat torn like this? Were you in an accident?

'The snow is already thick, in Abramtsevo. The chickens can hardly find the grain.' She moved forward with her son.

There was no way out but I had a choice. Schrenk carried a capsule, Croder had said. He would have saved us an immense amount of trouble if he had used it. The small red box was in a pocket on the inside of my waistband and in it was the capsule, cushioned in Silica-Gel desiccant. They might not search me immediately, not for anything small; but they'd see me if I tried to reach it and in any case they'd make a detailed search as soon as we got to Lubyanka and that wasn't far from here, four minutes in a police car.

It depended on how much he'd told them. Ignatov. He didn't know who I was. He was a total stranger and he hadn't looked at me once in the meeting hall or when I'd followed him to his car, not once. But he'd told them to pick me up.

We moved forward again and the woman's son took his camera across to the locker room and came back. The police guards were watching us closely now, their caps jutting and their bone-white faces reflecting the snow.

Natalya? She might have told Ignatov, he said that if Helmut was in Moscow there were certain friends who'd try to get him out of prison. Natalya, possibly. I didn't think so; she hadn't enough guile. Who else, if not Natalya? There was no one who knew me.

'Keep close in line.' Their eyes moved over our faces.

We shuffled forward again and climbed the steps between the guards of honour, going inside. It was quiet now except for the movement of feet across the wooden platform. People had stopped talking, and the men were taking off their hats. Guards with fixed bayonets stood watching us as we climbed the steps to the tomb.