It wasn't very good at the T-section. We had to cross Ulica Solec to get on to the Wybrzeze Kosciuszkowskie along the Vistula and there was some traffic piled up at the major fork: we took the first set of lights on the green but had to brake the next on the red and I lost most of the front end trying to clear a pharmaceutical van and not successfully, swinging it half round and hitting a drift that the river wind had swept against the centre bollards so that we slewed twice and skinned the long scarlet flank of a bus as the Warszawa closed fast with its lights full on and its klaxon sounding. A couple of M.O. police had a go at waving me in and their whistles were shrilling but there wasn't anything they could do and I was worried more by some nasty spin from the rear wheels as we crossed the packed ice of a bus stop; the Warszawa couldn't make progress either and we were both shaped up for the long straight haul down the river stretch with the gap drawing open slightly as I flicked into third and settled for the odd chance of piling up enough speed to try slotting some of the slower traffic between us and baulk them before we had to go left towards Sobieski. I didn't think we could lose them now.

It was instinctive to think in terms of overall speed but in these conditions it was traction that counted and I levelled off at fifty k.p.h. and even then we were well beyond the hope of slowing in time if anything crossed our bows: the steering kept going slack and for periods we were skating across the surface without any real kind of control and then two things happened in close succession. A black stunted Moskwicz pulled away from the kerb and ahead of us I saw a truck.

The surface along here was mostly ice-ruts with patches of thin hard snow towards the crown: there was no point in trying to plan anything because action designed to cope with the conditions lying ahead would be right or wrong according to what they turned out to be when we got there. The little Moskwicz wasn't a hazard: we were already in the fast lane and I didn't even have to touch the wheel but I could see that the Warszawa needed to take avoiding action and had started to do it: our shadow, thrown by its lights against the back of the truck, was shifting to the right.

Then something else happened and at first I thought it was gunfire because the effect followed the sound in logical sequence: it was as if they'd shot one of our tyres flat. Chain. One of the chains had gone, its straps half-severed when we'd dragged a rear wheel along the buried kerbstone in the park: it had hammered under the body-shell and been flung aside and now the Fiat was in a slow ten-degree pivoting attitude and for the last time the wheel went slack in my hands.

'Good luck.'

She answered with something in Polish. Then we heard the Warszawa, metal on metal and the explosive pop of safety-glass; the light swept away from the truck and across to the buildings on the other side and went out. It wasn't important now.

I cut the ignition. There wasn't much noise, just the long hushed skittering of the tyres over the ice as we waited. The pivoting attitude was increasing and periodicy had set in and I knew that nothing could break it: there must come the point where mass dominated momentum and then the Fiat would automatically spin. Left, and right, wider to the left, and wider 'to the right in a slow swinging action with the brittle whisper of the tyres across the ruts and she spun, breaking wild and closing on the truck in a series of loops that took her down the camber to hit the kerb and rebound and spin again and strike it this time front end on with the wheels rolling so that she mounted and ran straight for a while with the springs hammering at the limit-blocks, thick snow along the pavement now but the speed too high and the balustrade coming and the swirl of the east-bank lights tiding across the windscreen and then the balustrade and the impact and the drag on the seat belt and a period of weightlessness as we tilted nose-down and struck and shook and struck again and rolled half over, the roof sliding, the speed dying, lights in the sky, inverted, reflected in the sheen of the ice, the thought coming, black water below.

Glass shattered.

I kicked at the screen. She was already on her feet as I slithered from under the front end: she'd used the side window, breaking it. A faint sound had begun, the crackling strain of the ice-crust between here and the bank. She was moving at an angle, loping forward not far from me; the surface was blackish here and we made for the nearest patch of white but the crackling became loud and we couldn't run without slipping and falling. She turned once and I told her to get on. Then the crust shivered and broke in a long crescent and I heard the Fiat strike water, a gigantic bubbling behind us.

Sand, a sandbank, the thin ice breaking as we trod its edges, then stones, the ankles freezing. Quite a long way off the high alternating notes of an emergency vehicle.

'Keep moving.'

There were steps going upwards.

'They'll see us,' she said.

'No they won't.'

There was snow on the steps and we went up slowly. A frieze of icicles along the higher plinth flashed diamond colours as the first lamp showed; I told her to wait, and climbed the last three steps ahead of her, checking the street. Small group round the hole in the balustrade where we'd gone through, well over a hundred yards from here; we'd breached it at an angle and the Fiat had slid quite a long way down-river before we'd got out. Bigger group half a mile distant on the roadway, a lot of people and vehicles. The ambulance klaxon had stopped.

I nodded to her and she came up into the lamplight, dark I eyes glowing in a bloodless face, the blue greatcoat ripped at the shoulder, the patent-leather kneeboots neatly together on the snow as she stood with her head turned to look along the street.

'They're too busy,' I said, 'for us.'

She faced me without expression as if she didn't quite understand. It was shock, that was all, shock setting in. It hadn't been much of an impact because we'd hit the iron balustrade obliquely and the stanchions had broken away the edge of the stonework, the thing was only meant for leaning on while you had a sandwich, and the belts had kept us back; it was listening to the crackling of the ice that had worried us most. I put my arm round her shoulders and we started off, crossing over and going down Ulica Lipowa away from the river.

Nobody noticed us: the few people we passed were watching where they put their feet; but we had to turn back twice along the Krakowskie Przedmiescie to avoid M.O. patrols. I didn't know what the situation was, down by the river: the Warszawa had made a lot of noise but there could be survivors and their radio might not have been bust up.

Sobieski was a quiet narrow street, more like a mews, and we got into the building without needing to check. In the lift I said

'Have you got a source for papers?'

'What did you say?'

She leaned against the mirror, her dark eyes vague and her gloved hands pressed to her face; she had more to deal with than the physical shock of the Fiat thing: we hadn't talked much on the way here and she'd had time to think and what she'd probably thought was that, if the Policia Ubespieczenia had decided to pull her in it was because Jan hadn't managed to hold out.

'Identity papers. Can you get a new one easily?'

The cable tapped against one of the guide rails.

'No. We made some, but they were not good. People were caught with them.'

'Give me yours. It's no more use to you.'

It was a recent photograph, not much like her, they never are. When I looked up she was watching me, uneasy. They are like that, or they become like that, the people of the police states. They mean so much to them, these dog-eared little cards with their creased folds and their grandiloquent crests. Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa. Take them away and you take away their identity, leaving them nameless. I knew what was in her mind as she watched me put the card into my pocket: tonight I'd blown my cover and that was just as bad.