We slowed down the long descent towards the Wilenska Station, having to use more of the camber because the first trams had started running.

Of course it could be the other way round: the K.G.B. might not have picked it up — it could be their own man, the one with the borrowed Union Jack poking out of his breast pocket, feeding the stuff in. Why?

'It's like Wales,' he said, turning to look at me, 'and Scotland. You_ must try seeing it that way. They've kept their spiritual independence but they've willingly helped England fight her wars. Bit of flag-waving goes on at the Cup Finals but there's no harm meant, is there? Charles went over pretty big at Caernarvon, proof enough.'

By rough reckoning I had ten minutes. I didn't know why they'd switched me from the van to the saloon: it wasn't so that they could vet me because they could have waited until we were inside Grochow, where the grilling was going to start. Perhaps it was caprice on his part and his masters had indulged him: he was a first ranker of high value to them, twenty years' loyal service on the books.

What then had moved him, in the shadowed psyche below that brilliant mind, to offer me a ride in his comfortable motor car since we were going to the same place? Not his sense of irony: that was too cerebral. Something deeper: they'd said of him, those who'd been his friends, that if he'd ever gone right over the edge he would have been a schizoid, that the strain of his critically balanced double life would have led him sliding into a world of fantasy. But there was no real edge, no borderline: he was the type who would order a cleanly laundered shirt for the condemned on his way to the gallows, to give his death a token dignity; or choose that on my way into Grochow and beyond I should hear the accents of familiar speech, here in a foreign land, and know the comfort of being called 'old boy'. Or was it something more basic: self justification on the infantile level — here are you, a captive, and here am I, a free man, so who's the better?

Ten minutes but it was a question of chance, not time, hit the door open and pitch out and hope not to break a leg and try to run before the snow was pockmarked around my feet and they corrected the aim and I knew it hadn't been worth it. Smash the glass division with a rising kick and connect with the driver's neck and send the lot of us sliding wild and hope to get clear of the wreckage and use the confusion as flying cover.

Not really. There was too much against it and I was only making sure I could answer. the question that later, days later, would needle me when they got round to the advanced stuff and I'd give my soul to be free: hadn't there been anything at all I could have done? There had been nothing at all.

'Poland,' he said reasonably, 'and Czechoslovakia and the others, all keeping their spiritual independence and living in harmony with their mother country, just like Scotland and Wales. Does it sound so odd? It always takes time, of course — the future never likes being hurried. Think what a fuss there was when the Romans came, but they did a world of good, didn't they, gave us good laws and proper plumbing, don't know what England would have done without them. It's the same here, and you really ought to try taking the long view.' Looking out at the dark figures huddled at a tram stop he said in a quicker tone — 'You know your way, do you, around Warsaw?'

'A few of the main streets.'

'You know roughly where you are now?'

'East of the river.'

He nodded, tapping at the glass division. 'That's right Not far from anywhere, really.'

As the big saloon began slowing I saw the shape of the police van reflected beside him, closing in and then dropping back a little, keeping the distance.

He leaned towards me, his tone intimate now, the whisky on his breath. 'The thing is, old boy, we don't want you to rock the boat. Moczar's got his hands full at present, cleaning things up for the talks, and we'd rather like him to be left alone.'

He swayed back an inch as the saloon came to a halt by the kerb. The reflection of the van had also stopped, but none of its doors were opening: they were just sitting there, holding off. It could be a trap but if they wanted to rub me out they could do it quietly inside Grochow: the only point in this set-up would be to establish public testimony to the fact that I'd been shot while trying to escape and it didn't seem logical. It looked like a chance and this time a real one and it'd have to be done explosively within the next few seconds, the right elbow driven hard and upwards to paralyse the windpipe of the man beside me and the left foot kicking for the face in front of me as the weight came back, difficult because of the balance factor but only difficult, not impossible, Kimura could have done it without any trouble, this or nothing, this or Grochow.

'So we're hoping you'll be a sport.' He leaned forward, head tilted, the tone engaging. 'We've got your name, and we'll see it's passed around to all the M.O. stations, so if you get picked up again just tell them who you are.' A smile narrowed his eyes. 'Bodkin. So English — and so Russian. Alexandrovich Bodkin, yes. What I mean is, you won't need a pass or anything; we'll tell them to leave you alone.' He pulled at the chrome handle and the door swung open. 'Mind how you go: the streets are so treacherous, aren't they? Because of the snow.'

The cups had been specially designed, Bar Kino in white letters on the black ground of some 16 mm negative that went right round the rim.

'Prosze o rachunek.'

Half an hour was fair enough.

She made out the pay check with the indifference of fatigue, her thigh against the edge of the table as she took the weight off one foot. A lot of them took two jobs, Merrick had said, to earn enough to buy clothes.

Western jazz of the Thirties pumped from the walls. It had been a waste of time, the Fiat thing. Someone should have been here at nine and it was half past now and I was going because I didn't want to sit here thinking about what they were doing to her.

'Dziekuje.'

Or what they were doing to me. They had me in a bottle.

I'll see you in my dreams. One of the big bands, New Orleans, another world and another time. But you won't get far if you spend your life in a museum.

The thing was to avoid the attractions of the idee fixe; it can throw you. So we're hoping you'll be a sport. He needn't have said that. It had been quite enough to name the deal: they'd leave me alone if I'd leave Moczar alone. That was all I'd asked for and I'd got it and Alexandrovich Bodkin was now persona grata. And I'd been so glad to get off the hook that I'd fallen for an idee fixe: that my threat to the Minister of the Interior had worked, and worked even better than I'd expected. They'd not only given me the freedom of the city but, had shown concern that I'd be unsporting enough to tread on his face just for a giggle.

Another thing to avoid is low blood sugar: a bowl of stew won't last you twelve hours and you can get light-headed and it wasn't until I'd had some food that I'd seen the bottle they had me in.

He'd never received my note. They'd opened it and turned it over to the K.G.B. when they saw what it said. A foreign national gets picked up and says he's lost his papers and instead of answering questions he threatens to kick the head of the police department off his perch if they won't play it his way. An interesting case for investigation and they'd started to investigate it and they hadn't finished yet. It had been for the Englishman to make the decision: they could transfer me to a top security prison and take me slowly to pieces and see what was left or they could let me go and let me run and see where I went. Classical Russian thinking and often highly effective and that was why I didn't like it.