The women were screaming, and one of their buckets came rolling past our compartment door as the whole train went on shunting and Konarev and the other two found their feet and I got off the floor with a certain amount of caution because of the gun — he was still holding it on me but with both hands now: I think he'd knocked his head when he'd crashed against the wall and was feeling a bit dizzy, didn't want me to take advantage and try something fancy, but that was out of the question because the Rossiya was rolling like a ship in heavy seas and nothing looked certain: it had been doing a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour before the explosion had happened and there was a fire raging back there, half a dozen carriages away or perhaps closer than that: all I could see was the bright orange glare across the snowfields and its light flickering on the faces of the two security guards in the corridor as they picked themselves up and stared into the compartment with their mouths open.

The floor shifted again under our feet and we landed against the forward bulkhead as the train went on decelerating in massive jerks — obviously the carriage back there had blown up and jumped the rails and pulled the adjacent ones with it, and the locomotive was under the brakes as it dragged the train behind it like an injured snake through the snows. One of the women went staggering past in the corridor with blood running from her face, perhaps in shock and moving instinctively away from the fire.

"Don't move!' Konarev shouted above the noise and I noted this too: as well as having the beginnings of a cold he was more nervous man I'd thought him to be, didn't want me to get too close while hell was breaking loose like this. I'd lurched into him, that was all, couldn't help it, and there was nothing I could do in any case — bring the link between the handcuffs down across the gun, yes, but I'd only get shot in the leg when his trigger finger reacted. And he wasn't the only armed man here, there were four others, and he didn't seem to realize I hadn't the slightest chance of getting away.

The train was still shuddering, the carriages shunting as the speed came down more progressively now as small buildings began swinging past the windows, dachas, I think, and a pall of smoke started rolling across the snow with its shadow meeting it. The last time I'd looked at my watch it had shown 4:48 and the city of Novosibirsk would have been a hundred kilometres to the east; I would now put it at something like thirty, perhaps less, and that was why we were running through scattered buildings on the outskirts, though none of them had lights in the windows.

A lot of noise as something smashed behind us, closer than the explosion; it sounded like the whole side of a carriage being ripped away, could have turned over, snapped the couplings. The speed was right down now: we were crawling, and smoke began blowing through the corridors. The two police officers went out there and one of them shouted Oh my God and they started running aft to help people and the security guards followed them as the shunting got a lot worse for half a minute and then we stopped and Konarev and I hit the bulkhead again and I kept my distance as best I could because he might pull off a shot by mistake: his finger was inside that bloody trigger guard.

'Don't move!' he said again and I shook my head and stayed exactly where I was, my back to the bulkhead and pain moving in on the nerves now there was time for the organism to pay attention: the left shoulder had taken the worst of the impact when I'd hit the bulkhead the first time. There was an iron bracket sticking out of the wall where the bunk had been ripped away for replacement and I must have torn my thigh on it, because there was blood creeping down my leg, I could feel it, but it didn't worry me because it wouldn't stop me running if I had to, if I could, it's the only thing we think about when we're in a trap — if we can get out of it can we run?

People were coming past the doorway now, more security guards and provodniks, some of them with blood on their hands or their faces, one with her uniform ripped off at the shoulder. The smoke was thicker along the corridor and a man went past with a handkerchief pressed to his mouth and Konarev looked at me and jerked his gun and said — 'Out!'

It was very cold.

We were standing, Konarev and I, a hundred yards from the train. He was behind me and had prodded me with his gun as a reminder that in spite of everything that was going on I was still a prisoner under guard.

The security people and the provodniks and some of the cleaners were bringing the dead and the injured out of the train onto the snow, making a temporary first-aid station while people still inside were pulling sheets and blankets and pillows off the bunks and passing them down to the others. The carriage that had blown up — the twelfth back from the locomotive — was still on fire, and small figures in the distance, black against the snow, were forming a chain brigade with water buckets and waiting until they could get close enough to use them. Smoke still lay in a dark swirling shroud to the north of the train, and above the distant snows the sky hung black and enveloping, part of it rust-red from the glow of the burning carriage.

A kind of silence had moved in now that the train was standing still, and voices carried through the freezing air, mostly those of the rescue crews. The train staff was shouting instructions and information as they herded the passengers across to the comfort station they were setting up — no one was allowed to go back into the train even to fetch their belongings, since it was possible there might be further explosions. A radio message had gone to the army barracks, hospital staffs and emergency services in Novosibirsk, and medical rescue helicopters were already known to be airborne. There would shortly be enough blankets available from the train to provide warmth for every passenger, and a soup kitchen was being set up.

Something was on my mind.

'Are you injured?' Konarev asked me.

'What?' He was looking down at my fur-lined boot: the blood had reached there now. 'No.'

When I looked up again and across at the train I realized it was Galina, the large woman I'd been watching as she helped with the rescue work, her back braced to lift the smashed bulkhead that had come down across a passenger's legs while someone pulled him clear; she would be good at that, Galina, the morals of a toad but with a streak of crude humanity in her that was brought out by crisis, but it didn't excuse her, the bitch. I was standing here with these handcuffs on because of her odious greed — and I could have raised the bidding if only she'd asked me, given her double what she'd been paid by the generals, wouldn't she like to know that?

Something was on my mind and I knew what it was now. The burning carriage was the twelfth back from the locomotive, and that was the one where the generals and their bodyguards had been before Galina had moved them, at their request. I'm relocating them from Car No. 12 to Car No. 4. They say they 're too near one of the lavatories.

Two provodniks were swinging one of the huge copper samovars down from the train, smoke curling from the furnace underneath.

Others were bringing wooden trays of cups, following the path of the samovar across to the comfort centre, the sweat bright on their faces in the light of the fire.

Children were crying, their voices thin and piping, shreds of sound in the night, their cries torn from them, from their pain.

Would Zymyanin do this to children?

Oh, yes. He'd been a man with a cause. When you set explosives you know you won't be there when they go off; it gives you the same feeling of remoteness a bomber pilot has when he watches the patchwork streets of the enemy city come into the sights: he too is a man with a cause and the cause is his country and that is enough.