'There's an embassy car on its way to you now,' the man on the line said, 'with the complete travel package: visa, maps, vouchers, cash. Questions?'

'Where do I find my director, for debriefing?'

'We're putting him into Novosibirsk, where the train makes a stop. Look for him near the main booking-office. You're mutually recognizable, I understand.'

'Yes.'

'Further questions?'

'No. Just put me back with Signals.'

Medlock picked up the line and I asked for Croder.

In a moment: 'COS.'

'No support,' I told him, 'unless I ask for it.'

'I've ordered none. I know you prefer that.'

'Thank you.'

We shut down. He was being distinctly cooperative, Croder. I usually have to fight Control and the DIF over the deployment of support groups, because they think the shadow's safer with a whole bloody platoon in the field, but it doesn't work that way — it works the other way.

Jane got off the floor as I came away from the telephone.

"There's a list of do's and don'ts,' she said, 'on the pad here for you to read. I've been on that train.' she fetched her windcheater and shrugged her small thin body into it. 'I 'm going down to warm up the car and bring it round. We need to pick up some other things but we can do that at the station — food, toilet roll, rubber ball, stuff like that.' she found her black fur gloves. 'Stay here and get your gear together and be ready to leave.' At the door she turned with a swing of her pony-tail, her eyes dark and intent.' they're running it bloody close, but we'll manage.'

Snow had drifted among the streets but there was no more coming down. The sky was oppressive, bruise-blue and swollen among the spires and minarets and rectangular termite nests of the housing complexes. Jane was watching the mirrors — from habit, I thought — as we turned along Kirov ulica past the Ministry of Works. She'd had field training, wasn't just a codes and cyphers specialist at the embassy. I felt safe in her hands, don't always, with strangers.

There was a traffic jam outside the enormous redbrick station and when we left the car we were immediately among a crowd of milling people, most of them staggering under the load of blankets and clothing and a week's supply of food. A man in a Royal Navy dufflecoat broke from the crowd and brush-passed a package to Jane and melted again. He would have been from the embassy.

'I'll see you at the end of the platform,' Jane said, and gave me the package.' the train's in — it's that one, the second along. But we've got a bit of time because they're still loading stuff into the dining galleys. I'll go and do the shopping.'

I made my way through the huge cavernous hall to the nearest lavatory, edging among Caucasians, Indians, Mongols, a lot of Chinese — the Rossiya was going to end its run in Beijing — their faces jaundiced in the sulphurous light of the massive chandeliers that hung below the roof in the sooty haze. There was an unoccupied stall and I stood with my back to the door — the lock was broken — and studied the three mug shots of Vladimir Zymyanin, turning them to catch the light from the flickering tubes in the ceiling and learning the bony, compact face with its tight mouth and its blank uncompromising eyes, the jaw thrust forward a little and suggesting belligerence, the face of a man not to be found off his guard, who would not hesitate for a second if in the course of his business he deemed it necessary to kill — necessary or expedient, to save time or to save trouble, even a little time, a little trouble. I knew his kind, as well I should: he was one of us, and of this I would have to beware.

I don't need to tell you, of course, that he may be very difficult to handle by now.

Croder, shredding his words carefully into the telephone.

I put the photographs away and went back through the crowded hall, not missing a face as I made for the end of the platform.

Jane was already there. 'You'll have to make room for this. The food on the train's not uneatable, providing you feel like boiled chicken twice a day for eight days.'

She stuffed the bulging plastic bag into the zipped case we'd bought this morning. I thought I saw him, Zymyanin, turning away from the ticket gate and going down the platform, but wasn't certain.

He could have been caught and turned and given new instructions. Is that what you mean by 'difficult to handle'?

Something along those lines.

Whistles had begun shrilling faintly from the front end of the train, and others sounded, getting nearer. Women with coats over their white aprons were still heaving crates and containers into the dining galleys, and gusts of steam came clouding from some of the windows.

'They've got the samovars up to scratch,' Jane said. 'It'd be a good idea if you went aboard now. You've got everything and you won't be lonely — six hundred people, this one's full.' she stood looking up at me, her black fur gloves held together in front of her like a muff, her small face white and pinched in the cold.

'First class,' I said.

'What?'

'You did a first class job.'

'Oh. Thank you.' she looked down, then up again, her eyes going dark. 'Good luck and everything.'

She turned and walked as far as the end of the platform and didn't look back. I picked up my bags and went along to Car No. 7.

Six hundred people, and one of them Zymyanin.

He could have been told to stay out of contact with London and draw me into a trap.

That is also possible.

The provodnik clipped my ticket and I slung my bags aboard and climbed into the train.

'Slavsky, Boris.'

He put out a pale bony hand.

'Shokin, Viktor,' I said.

He was tall, hungry-looking, his dry hair thinning, the dark-framed glasses too big for his face, his body curving in an academic stoop. 'Have you done this trip before?'

'No.'

He reached up to the shelf over the doorway and pulled down a paper bundle and slit it open and dumped it into my arms, bed linen, heavily woven, the real thing, none of your fancy nylon. He got his own bundle down and opened it and shook out the sheets.' I do this trip three times a year,' he said, and looked towards the open door of the compartment, lowering his voice. 'So let me tell you something. We have to be nice to our provodnik. A little tip here, a little tip there, you understand?' He had the tone of a lecturer, was waiting for me to say I understood. I said I did. 'I know most of them,' he went on, nodding his domed head, 'but not this one. She must be new. You've seen her, of course. Bit of a battle-axe, wouldn't you say?'

She was the woman, I supposed, who'd checked my ticket when I'd come aboard — large, heavy-boned, lavishly lipsticked and with hair the colour of a copper samovar, the shoulders of her blue uniform unnecessarily padded, the brass winged-wheel emblem glinting on her forage cap, her small bright eyes taking me in as I'd squeezed past her with my bags.

'She didn't look easy to tame,' I told Slavsky.

'Ha! Well put. But it has to be done. It has to be done.' He started making up his bunk, thumping the massive pillow.

Our berths were on each side of the narrow gangway, with a folding table under the window and ajar with some rather pretty blue-flowered weeds in it, the most one could ask for, probably, in the depths of a Russian winter. There was more than enough space for our bags — we could have brought a truck-load — and the compartment in general looked habitable, even for eight days at a stretch. The only critical problem was the lack of security: once anyone saw you going into the compartment or coming out of it they had your address, and there was no back door.