'He said he would come,' said Rupert, 'but that doesn't mean he will come. You know what Poles are like.'

'No. What are they like?' I took my hands from my pockets and blew on them to restore circulation. I vowed to buy gloves: big fur gloves.

'Secretive. Clannish. Do you know about the unknown warrior?'

'What about him?'

'The tomb of Poland's unknown warrior — in Pilsudski Square — is where every foreign dignitary comes to lay a big floral wreath, and make a solemn speech about peace. The Soviets are all very keen on peace and very keen on speeches about it. And Moscow to Warsaw is the right distance. It makes a perfect weekend of banquets, sightseeing and vodka. So each and every year Moscow's leaders, generals and senior apparatchiks vie to attend this solemn ceremony, where bands play suitable music, generals wear acres of shiny medals, and the wives get a chance to show off their new outfits.'

'Oh, yes,' I said. He tended to go on a bit, I'd forgotten that.

'Very big crowds always gather at the ceremony. The Poles look on with an unusually smug satisfaction. Because it hasn't yet dawned upon the Russkies that the unknown Polish soldier's body, over which they like to pontificate about the peace-loving Red Army's advance to Berlin, was not recovered from some Second World War battlefield. It contains the body of one of Pilsudski's men, who fell in the 1920 fighting outside Warsaw when the angry Poles kicked the mighty Red Army back where it had come from.'

'I see,' I said.

'Not even the most resolute Polish communist has ever revealed that secret to the Soviet comrades. That's what the Poles are like: clannish.'

'Yes,' I said. 'Well, the impossible bloody language helps them there.'

'And the religion,' said Rupert. 'Lutheran Germans to the west of them, Protestants to the north, Orthodox to the east. The Poles are Catholic, and devout ones too. Take a look around; the churches are full and a Polish Pope sits in Rome.'

'Are you a Catholic, Rupert?'

'No. Well, sort of,' he said. 'I was once.' I didn't take too much notice of that denial; every dedicated Catholic I know says he's lapsed.

'So is George Kosinsid,' I said. 'A very serious believer. Is this him now?'

A VW Beetle came bouncing along across the ice and snow, snorting and sliding, its rear wheels spinning so that the car was skating around perilously. But I learned that this was the way many Poles drive in winter; they like to feel the car sliding around, and they get good at controlling the skids;. 'I don't think so,' said Rupert.

Two men climbed out of the car and then leaned inside to pull the seat backs forward, so that two teenage boys could extricate themselves from the confined interior. The icy wind blew the big hat from one of them, and he had to chase it to get it back. As he ran, the skirt of his heavy coat was whirled up by an especially violent gust of wind that created a twister of dirty powdery snow. 'It's not him,' said Rupert.

When the wind died down it would snow again, at least that was what the locals were saying. The driver of the VW scowled and pulled his hat down tight upon his head before getting back into the car and driving away. The other three marched off in the direction of the Russian War Memorial without looking back. Now there was no one in sight over the wide flat expanse of the old railway station. George still had not come.

'What motivates the bugger?' said Rupert.

'Love,' I said. 'He's in love, desperately and hopelessly in love.'

'What does that mean?'

'In love with his wife. Some say it accounts for almost everything he does.'

'You're a cryptic sod, Samson.'

'I don't mean to be.'

'I know. That's what makes it so irritating. You still don't believe it, do you? You just can't bring yourself to believe that Tessa Kosinski is still alive, can you?'

'I never said that.'

'They don't go to all this trouble for nothing. Not those Stasi bastards.' He was getting more and more bad-tempered as the cold wind chewed into him.

'Maybe.'

'Well, you would know. But in my experience they know exactly what they are doing, and why.' He didn't pursue it. He hadn't had a great deal of experience with the day-to-day cloak-and-dagger side of the Department's work. He was a money man, getting the right sort of currency to the right people at the right time. It was a hazardous task and I didn't envy him. He had carried a lot of money over the years — sovereigns and thalers and dollar bills; diamonds and rare stamps too, when that was what they stipulated. Twice he'd been attacked and badly hurt. It wasn't easy and you had to be at the top of the reliable list. It wasn't a job where you could get a signed and dated receipt.

He said, 'We're sitting ducks out here on this railway station. A man with a sniperscope . . . did you think of that?'

'It did cross my mind,' I admitted. I was surprised he'd not notice me nervously surveying all the likely spots, and squinting at every approaching pedestrian.

'Do you ever get frightened, Samson?'

'Fast heart rate, rapid breathing, measured basal metabolic rate and galvanic skin response? Is that what you mean?'

'Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood . . . Lend the eye a terrible aspect. That sort of thing.'

'No. Only public schoolboys get frightened like Shakespeare. Kids like me shit ourselves.'

'I was only asking.' He looked around and then looked at me. 'We should have remained in the car. How much longer should we wait?'

I could understand his concern, if my face was as chilled as his appeared to be. His lips looked sore and cracked, and the frosty wind had rouged his cheeks and nose like the face of a clown. 'In the car we wouldn't have been able to spot him. Give him another five minutes,' I suggested.

'The Rozycki flea market is just along the street. Ever been there?'

'Not for ten years or more.'

'You didn't take Cruyer along there on your last visit? To show him the lower depths of life in the big city?'

'Dicky isn't into open-air flea markets, especially not markets like the Rozycki. He likes first-class restaurants.'

'This is not his sort of town then?'

'No.'

'Two Polish traders were badly injured in the Rozycki. They are still in hospital. Beaten up by two foreigners. The police asked if we knew of any British criminals in town. It exactly coincided with the time you and Cruyer arrived.'

'Did it? Well, I'm certainly glad I didn't go along there. That could have happened to me and Dicky.'

'I don't think so,' said Rupert.

'Ambulance approaching,' I said. 'This will be it.' I don't know why I said it but I just knew that vehicle was something to do with George.

The ambulance was not one of the shiny new Russian ones I'd seen on the streets. Or the Polish army's camouflaged trucks with red crosses on the side. This was a lovely old slab-sided 'Star' from the FSC factory in Starachowice. Two men, equally old, got out and one of them opened the door at the rear.

'We've come to collect you,' said the other man in passable English. 'Mr. George sent us.' The men were not threatening; they didn't have the build to be threatening. 'Thirty minutes,' promised the man as he opened the back doors.

I wasn't inclined to go along with them until Rupert climbed into the back of the ambulance. It was only after we were inside, and bumping along over the corrugated ice, that I began to suspect that Rupert was so cold he would have jumped into almost anything to escape the cold wind. But at the time, I reasoned that Rupert was almost a local, and he had the diplomatic passport that would probably get both of us out of trouble with the law.

'Are you armed?' Rupert asked suddenly, as if regretting his action.