'If you took Ferris off Rickshaw,' Iasked Croder, 'who would replace him?'

'That is hardly your business.'

Perfectly true. I was being offered a director in the field of my own choosing and I could take him or leave him. I wasn't invited to play any part in decision-making at the highest control level.

'Then if I agreed to work this one,' I said, 'I'd need Ferris.'

Croder's head came up. 'You would have him.'

'I'm not saying -'

'You would have him,' Croder nodded quickly, 'if you in fact decided to accept the mission. It doesn't commit you.'

Croder has – has always had – his scruples. Tonight he was ready to give me anything I asked for as an incentive to get me into Balalaika, but he was going to stop short of coercion.

'What about -' I stopped short as the distant thudding of an assault rifle started hammering at the walls of the church – distant but closer, a lot closer than the last shots we'd heard. We waited for it to finish: I would have put it at a three-second burst, quite long enough to bring about what was intended.

'At this point,' Croder said, 'let me tell you that if you reach final briefing with Legge, he'll impress it upon you that these people in Moscow are not your cosy Sicilian brotherhood. These people kill those of their protectees who refuse to pay, simply as an example. But they also kill policemen, government agents, bankers, judges, whoever gets in their way. I mention this advisedly.'

The smell of cordite out there somewhere lacing the snow, blood creeping from the red-running eggshell skull, a hand flung out to clutch at the last vestiges of life, the fingers already uncurling, empty.

I suppose I'd been silent for a moment, because I heard Croder saying, 'I'm ready for questions, if you have any.'

'All right. What about expenses? If I had to infiltrate a milieu as affluent as the mafiya I'd need credibility.'

'The figure suggested – I have this directly from the prime minister – is one million US dollars in hard currency, immediately available from Barclay's Bank in Moscow.'

'And if that isn't adequate?'

'You'd be able to call upon whatever further funds you needed.'

'Fair enough. Now tell me about this man Legge.'

'Legge has been in Moscow for nearly ten years. He headed the leading support group for Cossack, Sabre Dance and Roulette. In his last operation – this was post-Yeltsin – he got the executive out of a remote detention camp run by a clandestine cell of former KGB officers by commandeering three armoured cars and a mortar unit from a Russian Army garrison in Tashkent. Prisoners were not taken.'

'Real pro. How big is his group?'

'He runs fourteen men under constant training, and can recruit more from sleepers and agents-in-place if needed.'

'He ever indulge in free-lancer bullshit?' A support chief who commandeered armoured cars from the host services could be tricky to handle.

'I don't quite follow.'

'I mean, he takes orders?'

'From those he respects. I rather think you qualify.'

One of the candles guttered, and smoke spiralled upwards across the statue of St Marius.

I hadn't got any more questions.

Took a turn, watched the man down there polishing his sacred artefacts, felt an instant of brotherhood, listened again to the thudding of the rifle and saw again the fingers slowly uncurling, thought of Moira – how long would the rose take to shed the first petal? – thought of Daisy in the Caff, good luck, she always said, knowing when we were going out, knowing sometimes more than the superannuated cardinals in Administration, knowing sometimes when a shadow wouldn't come home. Thought of life's continuance against great odds, turned back to Croder.

'Look,' I said, 'I'll take it as far as I can.' I heard the echo of my voice from a niche in the chapel. 'That's all I can offer.'

Croder's eyes were bright. 'That's all I can ask.'

The hot wax of the candle drowned the wick at last, and the tendril of smoke vanished into the shadows. I nodded and turned away, going out of the church through the small side door and into the drifting snow.

'Suite twenty-nine,' Legge told me as we pulled up outside the Hotel Moskva International. 'You're checked in as Dmitri Berinov. Here's the key. I'm going to park the car, then I'll see you there – three knocks, one long, two short, before I ring the bell.'

I got out and went up the soaked strip of red carpet they'd laid across the snow under the canopy. The two escort vehicles had peeled off when we'd pulled away from the church: they'd been there to protect the rendezvous, nothing else. From now on I'd be working solo.

It didn't mean, I thought as I went through the revolving door, that Croder had checked me in personally under Dmitri Berinov; it was simply the mission code-name for the executive, applicable to anyone he could get. He'd set things up for Balalaika as a certainty as soon as he'd left 10 Downing Street, trusting in whatever pagan gods he granted the privilege of his prayers.

People in the lobby as I went through to the staircase: a group of Japanese entrepreneurs in dark silk suits with leather briefcases; three women in sable coats and hats, one of them wearing too much Chanel No. 5; a Russian in from St Petersburg, according to the label on the pigskin suitcase that was just being swung onto the porter's trolly; two hotel security men standing near the elevators. The only character here I didn't care for was the Russian sitting in one of the red plush chairs on the far side from the registration desk with a copy of Pravda open in front of him. I put him down as a government security peep. I watched his blurred reflection on the pink marble wall as I reached the stairs but he didn't turn his head – not that he had any reason to: I was a total stranger here and Legge's security had been perfectly sound since I'd met him at the airport. But later there could be peeps on the watch for me and I would take more notice.

The door of Suite twenty-nine on the second floor was heavy to swing and two inches thick with a deadbolt at shoulder-level; the suite itself was spacious and ornate, with glass-fronted cabinets of Sevres objets de vertu and gilt Louis XIV chairs, a four-poster bed with a red silk fagoted canopy and solid marble furnishings in the bathroom with gold-plated taps. I felt uneasy here, was more used to a back-street safe-house with peeling walls and a rusted fire-escape at the rear and a scrambler on the phone and total security.

I'd been dead wrong about Croder: he had indeed booked me into this hotel personally as Dmitri Berinov because the five suits laid out on the bed were my size and London-tailored by the firm that works for the Bureau when we need sartorial camouflage more appropriate than something off the peg, our presence requested at an embassy party or a host-country bash. The shoes lined up in a row on the burgundy pile carpet were hand-made by Simpson and Webb and the snow boots were tooled Russian calf. Again I felt uneasy, preferring jeans and a windbreaker and shoes with quiet, flexible rubber soles, the uppers softened with beeswax.

Croder may, yes, have asked Fern and Teaseman if they had the stomach for Balalaika before he'd called me in from Paris, but only as reserves in case I came unstuck. He'd put me in the sights as his main target the minute the prime minister had told him what he needed done.

I heard the echo of Croder's voice in the freezing chapel: There isn't anyone else capable. A compliment, if you like, or a sentence of death; you choose.

Thai silk shirts and a quilted dressing-gown and a box of linen handkerchiefs initialled DVB; a dozen French silk ties – three conservative, the others on the flashy side, the kind a mafiya capo would sport; gold cuff-links and a pleated scarlet cummerbund; a matching set of Givenchy shampoo, aftershave and cologne, but only for show in the bathroom because that stuff can kill you if you leave traces when the hunt is up, and they'd known that when they'd packed it.