'What did they do?'

'They passed me over for promotion again.'

'Rather short-sighted.'

'What? Of course. You know – you know how long I've been working in this bloody outfit?'

'Tell me.'

'Nine years. Nine bloody years.' He watched the general join a group near the buffet. 'His fault, you see. Head of Personnel. Some – sometimes I wonder if I'm not in the wrong business.' He looked back to me, his eyes taking time to focus. 'You people do pretty well, don't you?'

'Mustn't grumble.'

'You make mil – millions. I know that. Dollars. American bloody dollars.'

'There are good times and bad. Tell me, where does Sakkas stay when he's in the capital?'

'You know what I make in this outfit? I make peanuts.'

'So why don't you come across?'

He watched me for a long time. 'You deal in nickel, do you?'

'Sometimes.'

'I know someone with a whole – whole train load of nickel stuck at the Latvian frontier.'

'He should offer the customs a bit more.'

'If I left the service, I could help people like that.'

'Help yourself, too.'

'Of course. It's tem – tempting.'

I got out my wallet and gave him my card. 'Phone me any time, major. Perhaps we can work something out. But you'll have to steer clear of Sakkas if you start up in business. Where does he stay when he's in Moscow, by the way?'

'Steer very clear, yes. House – he's got a house in Sadovaja Samotecnaja Ulica.'

'On the Boulevard Ring.'

'Yes.'

'What number?'

'Don't know what number.'

'A mansion, probably. An old mansion.'

'Don't know.'

'Would any of your colleagues know? What department -'

'No one – no one knows a thing like that.' The sunken eyes were steady for a moment; I couldn't tell if he was alert enough to lie. 'The big money,' he said, 'is in plutonium. You know that.' It was either a jump in his thought-train or just a vodka-induced non sequitur. Was Sakkas, perhaps, in plutonium?

'When you can find it,' I said.

'Not difficult. When that stuff is made in a fast-breeder reactor, they can turn out a kilo – kilogram more than the standards require for every hun – hundred changes of fuel.' He watched me from under his heavy lids, didn't say any more, had lost his train of thought.

'And then?'

'What? Yes, and then the official amount is reg – registered in the books, and the surplus goes onto the black market. Some of the plants, they just throw the stuff over the wall, it's as sim – simple as that.'

Then he dried up again, his head moving a little as someone came up behind me, and when I turned round I found myself looking straight into the eyes of the Cougar.

He wouldn't waste any time.

'You assaulted two of my guards,' he said. His eyes were fixed in a stare, as they'd been in the private room of the Baccarat Club last night. 'I don't like that.'

'You shouldn't have sent them after me. If you want the diamonds, you'll have to buy them.'

Behind the stare, crystallizing it, giving it depth, was the rage again. 'You assaulted the Cougar personally,' he said, 'when you assaulted his guards.'

This was new. I hadn't detected megalomania in him before. He was standing so still that he made a centre of calm in the movement going on around him and behind him as the groups of people shifted, gestured, as the waiters weaved among them. There was quite a bit of the reptile about this man, but he wouldn't be aware of that, or he would have called himself the Cobra.

'Look, Vishinsky,' I said, 'I'm a businessman and I deal with businessmen. I told you that at the club. If you want to play the robber baron that's entirely your choice and it's probably quite fun, but I'm not interested. I prefer working with men of intelligence.'

Pushing him as far as I could to see what would happen, bring out his character, test his reactions, watching his eyes change, catching a hint of unease, which I understood quite well. There were no bodyguards in here: the Federal Counterintelligence Service people had presumably issued the invitations with that proviso, not wanting an army standing around to embarrass them in the presence of foreign diplomats. They would be outside the building, the guards, waiting for their employers, watching over the Mercedes and the Jaguars and the Lamborghinis. And this was worrying Vishinsky: at any other time he could have had me surrounded with muscle. It's the same situation when someone who relies on a gun finds he can't reach it in time: suddenly he's lost, powerless. Legge would have to learn this, because it was a lesson that could one day cost him his life.

'You like provoking me, Berinov,' Vishinsky said, his narrow head lifting an inch, the stare as steady as a beam of light playing on my face. 'You like provoking the Cougar.'

'Not really. I never waste energy, and frankly I've got better things to do. If you'll excuse me.' I turned my back on him, looking past the drunken major to the massive gilt mirrors ranged along the wall.

Vishinsky wasn't wasting any time now, didn't want to show haste but moved deceptively fast among the guests towards the main doors, which were standing wide open because of the heat.

I waited until he was out of sight before I followed him, watching the top of his dark pomaded head as he went down the staircase to the lobby. There was a telephone on the mezzanine floor and I used that.

I heard the line open as Ferris picked up on the second ring. He didn't speak.

'Red sector.'

'Where?'

'The Hotel Faberge.'

'Do you need support?'

'No.'

I shut down the signal and used the door to the fire stairs and climbed the eight floors of the building, taking my time. Vishinsky wouldn't bring any action into the hotel until the party was over, didn't need to. There would be three or four exits, possibly more, and by now there'd be at least one of his guards mounted on each of them, sealing the place off from the street. I didn't have any illusions: this was a trap.

You knew there was a chance he'd be here.

Very thin chance, yes. But there must be a hundred dons in this city, and only seven of them are here tonight. Weren't you counting?

I left the fire stairs and went into the corridor, looking for a vacant suite.

I don't like traps.

That's a shame.

Bloody little organism starting to panic.

You needn't have come here tonight.

I'm getting in their way, that's all. I've done it fifty times and the principle's perfectly sound: when you want to bring the opposition into the open you just get in their way. You know that.

The door of the fifth suite along the passage was open and I went in there. found no one.

You could have asked for support.

Oh for Christ's sake shuddup.

The gradual emergence of sweat on the skin as the imagination tripped in and brought biochemical reactions, to be read as normal: a trap is a trap and no animal is at peace in one.

Support was the last thing I wanted anyway. Legge had said he could call on fourteen men in his group and Vishinsky had brought six guards into the Baccarat Club and there would have been no earthly point in staging a twenty-gun shoot-out in the street; my job was to infiltrate, not start a bloody war.

The Croder thing, though, was a worry.

The suite was ornate in the fin de siecle Russian style: an ormolu writing desk, two inlaid consoles, a Volkov print – 'Girl With Red Bow' – ivory plush chairs. The windows looked down on the front of the hotel and I could see dark figures against the snow, their breath clouding under the lamplight. Later there would be more, if Vishinsky sent for increased support of his own.