The Croder thing was a worry because the executive had signalled a red sector to his director in the field and it wouldn't stop there: Ferris would relay the information to London through the mast at Cheltenham and the man at the board for Balalaika would reach for the chalk and when the Chief of Signals saw what he'd written it could trigger his decision then and there. Ferris: I think it's possible that at any given time Mr Croder might act suddenly on the dictates of his conscience and instruct me to pull you out of Balalaika and send you home.

We're usually at least halfway through the mission before we find ourselves in a red sector, but this time I'd got into one almost straight off the starting block and Croder wouldn't like that, would blame himself and pull me out before it was too late.

It might be too late already. This is -

Shuddup.

I moved for the door. Time was of the essence: we teach the neophytes at Norfolk that if you're in a red sector you need to get out as fast as you can before the opposition brings in reinforcements and turns the trap into a siege. That was a Federal Counterintelligence Service party going on down there but the Faberge was a regular commercial hotel and a mafiya boss of Vishinsky's calibre could tell the manager he wanted his guards to search the whole building, every vacant room, the elevators, the staircase, the corridors, the mezzanines: the only difference between the dons and the police squads in this city was that the dons didn't need to flash a badge.

Get out fast, but I hadn't got many options. Vishinsky would have ordered his people to cover every exit from this place and stay on the watch all night if they had to, all tomorrow, all the next day – he wouldn't give up, would, on the contrary, bring in more guards to mount the search, changing them in shifts until they'd found me. He was enraged, the Cougar, because I'd committed the unthinkable and laid a hand on his employees, and he wouldn't rest until I was pitched into the back of his Mercedes and driven into the forest and pushed against a tree with no blindfold, no ceremony, just the one short burst that would bring the rage down and leave him sated, redeemed.

With every exit covered the only thing I could do was to get to higher ground, so I moved for the emergency staircase again and climbed the last flight. There was only one chance of getting out of here and that was via the roof.

When I reached the top step I stood listening, hands on the rail as I watched the silent concrete vortex of the staircase below me for movement, shadows, caught one almost at once, flowing across the wall down there and darkening, sharpening under the lamp and then softening as the man kept on climbing, the shadow-gun swinging, cradled in his arms. This was to be expected: the staircase was an obvious exit path and they'd cover it. I could hear his shoes now on the steps, softly, softly, not hurrying – he was simply patrolling the vertical perimeter of the search area, could lock onto me in the instant if he heard or saw me above or below him, rat-tat-tat and the echoes hammering, the smell of cordite, finito.

I moved and got the door open without making enough noise to travel down to him, got it shut again, inching it, my weight against the panel to stop the latch clicking, the air cold now against the face, the crescent of the moon clear below a cloud-bank and spreading light across the snow-covered roof, usable, dangerous light according to how things went.

The snow crisp under my feet as I checked out the environment: four squat chimneys stinking of soot, a cluster of metal ventilators, one with a cowl turning, some kind of wire antenna stretching halfway across the roof, the surface of the roof itself hidden by the snow, uncharted, perhaps treacherous if I went too near the parapets – this was nine floors up, call it a hundred feet from the ground for a building of this period with twelve-foot ceilings, not that it would make a dramatic difference if I fell nine floors or only six, five, la meme chose a la fin, I'm not a bloody cat.

I didn't think the man on the staircase would come as far as the roof, or at least not yet. Vishinksy had last seen me in the ballroom on the second floor, would expect me to be there when he went back because I hadn't shown any signs of leaving, had made a point of it. He'd have the lower floors searched first and it'd take him a little time to find the manager and give him the score.

So I had an immediately available but indeterminate time zone to work in before the man on the staircase thought of checking the roof, let's say ten minutes, and that was all I'd want. The thing to avoid was being seen at any distance from that door when – if – the guard pushed it open because if I wasn't within reach of him he'd simply level the thing and start pumping.

Light was flushing the building across the street from the entrance of the hotel and when I got to the parapet and looked down I could see the two dark figures I'd seen before from the window of the vacant suite. The snow crunched under my feet as I crossed to the side of the hotel and looked down into the street and saw a single guard covering whatever doorway he'd found. Bouncing on his heels to keep the blood circulating, the muscles in tone, an athlete, one of the chorus line of Cougarettes.

Straighten up from the parapet and watch the door over there, the door to the staircase, don't assume too much, assumptions are dangerous, he can open it at any given time. Keep to cover, then, crossing the roof to the side street on the opposite face of the building, two men there, hands pushed into the pockets of their padded track suits, their breath white in the lamplight. Three sides of the building covered, then, so let us hope for more luck on the fourth.

Hands on the frozen parapet, a shadowed alleyway below, hardly even that, a four-foot gap between the buildings with not even room for a garbage bin down there, no door, or there'd be a guard to cover it, no direct light from a window or anywhere else.

But there was a drainpipe.

Watch the door to the staircase.

A drainpipe, and this was what I'd been looking for. Not this one specifically, because sooner or later one of the guards would start patrolling the alleyway below; but there would be – should be – a pipe like this one running down from the roof of the next building.

What sort of red sector?

Croder, his voice coming out of the scrambler in Ferris' hotel room: he'd have got through by now, with only light traffic on the satellite into Moscow.

He didn't say.

Did he ask for support?

No, sir. He said he didn't want any.

No surprise in this for the Chief of Signals: he knows my views on support, especially at night when you need to identify people in a tricky field, and at once.

This was ten minutes ago?

Thirteen.

Silence on the line while Croder thought, while Ferris waited for him to say all right, if he breaks out of this I want you to abort the mission and send him home, is that understood?

Oh for Christ's sake, give me a bloody chance.

Watch, yes, the door. And think, reflect, my good friend, upon the situation, think again of clearing that four-foot gap between the buildings in these conditions: frozen snow with only pale moonlight to work with, the shadows deceptive, the distance too great for any kind of confidence, the muscles sluggish because of the cold, the chances of success dauntingly thin, so look, yes, before you leap.

The problem was that I hadn't got any choice.

You shouldn't have -

Oh piss off.

Vishinsky wouldn't do half the job. He would seal off this hotel – had already sealed it off – with every man he could muster, and they would be many when he called others in, as many as it would take to make absolutely certain that this single quarry would be flushed out, caught and cornered, spinning like a fox in the ring of clamouring hounds. I had, after all, offended him, had displeased the Cougar.