'What ?' He felt cold, at once recriminatory. 'How ?'

'An agent, the General thinks. Probably not Finnish.'

'He's dead?'

'Not yet - they are in pursuit. I was told it was only a matter of hours.'

'Who sent him?'

'The Americans - the British?'

'Damn!'

'General Pnin considers that you were ill-advised to order a full-scale rehearsal of the border crossing.'

'Damn Pnin! His security is - non-existent. How did the man get close enough - what did he see ?'

'Certainly the village - probably the crossing itself.'

'They must get him, then.'

'General Pnin sends his assurances as to -'

'Pnin is a fool.'

'Sir.'

The younger voice retreated into silence. Kutuzov stared up into the giant bronze face, aware of the frost that sparkled like eyes above the beard. He tried to draw strength from the statue, and calm rationality.

'The British sent a man before - the one who was killed before he could talk. Pnin should have been more alert. Vrubel is dead,' he added to the courier. 'He will have to be replaced by his second-in-command for next week. Tell Praporovich that.'

'Sir,' the courier replied.

'Are there arrangements for taking this agent alive ?

'The General is aware of the importance - '

'He'd better be. Are there arrangements to keep me informed, as soon as a - result is achieved ?'

'Sir. By tomorrow night, there will be word.'

'Then that will have to do. Tell Praporovich that SID knows nothing - though Vrubel did his best to give them a lead. And give the order for Pnin to withdraw - at once. As soon as he has captured the agent.

'Yes, sir.'

'What of Attack Force One.'

'Ready to move up to the Norwegian border on D minus One, sir.'

'Good. Dolohov and the Navy ?'

'All the ships required for Rabbit Punch are at sea, or refitting at Murmansk, ready to take troops aboard on D minus One.'

'All- at last?'

'All, sir.'

'Better news - better news. Very well. When is your flight?'

'Another two hours.'

'Very well. Tell Praporovich that the agent, when captured, must be transferred at once to the Leningrad house, and interrogated thoroughly. We must know what the British know - if anything. It must not upset the timetable.'

'Marshal Praporovich asked that the timetable be confirmed, as of now.'

'Assuming word comes from Ossipov not later than five days' time ?' As if sensing the grandiloquence of the moment, the old man stood erect before the bronze statue, staring up into Tolstoy's blind face. 'Yes. One week from now. D-Day is the 24th.'

As he swung down into a great fold of the Maanselka, the central mountain range, he could see, to the north-west, the peak of Kaunispaa; he was only a mile, perhaps, from the main north-south road and the village of Lannila. If he could make the road, he might again have a choice - north towards Ivalo, south towards Vuotso - west along the road to Kuttura. Places that offered rest, and help, however illusory.

His side ached intolerably, his body pleaded for him to stop, ached with effort and hunger - even so, it was spurred by the proximity of the road, the destination he had travelled towards all night and into the first daylight.

The MIL helicopter, a squat, droning beetle, had hugged the slope of the land, then descended on him suddenly even as he first picked up the noise of its rotors. It was barely light; but the helicopter was black against the grey sky. It rushed upon him, flurrying snow in its downdraught as it hovered, then moved ahead of him, skimming the ground. He watched as white-clad soldiers dropped from its belly, laid like mines across his path. He tried to stop, jumping so that the snow surfed up. The nearest man was less than a hundred yards away, and the noise of the MIL, and its skirt of snow, were deadening, oppressive.

He looked round, and the pursuers, dog-weary as he was himself, topped the last slope, and fitted skis again or rested for a moment. One of them waved, and Folley could hear a thin cheering.

The helicopter lifted away again, swinging above him so that he could see the grinning face of the pilot. His wave was an insult, perhaps even a recognition. Then the shadow was gone, a paralysis deserting his limbs. He unslung the rifle.

The men in front of him had fitted snowshoes, and walked clumsily, inexorably, towards him, in slow-motion. Each of them carried a Kalashnikov. And behind him the first of the tired skiers was thrusting down the long slope, only hundreds of yards away.

He could have angled his flight, thrust off towards the left or right and outdistanced the men on snowshoes. It appeared that they wished to take him alive rather than kill him. But his body revolted at the idea, and his legs were finally and suddenly without strength so that he knew he was not going to move any more Then a second MIL lifted above the slope that had masked it and its noise.

He pointed the gun uselessly at the ground. He swayed, felt he couldn't stand long enough for them to reach him. He kept turning his head as they closed on him. Kept turning it until they stood around him in a wary ring. Someone took away the rifle, examining it.

He kept looking not at their faces, but at the red stars on the far caps they wore beneath their camouflage hoods.

Four: Beach Head.

Kenneth de Vere Aubrey settled into the somnolent, contemplative mood that he usually enjoyed in the Public Gallery of the House of Commons. And he grew older, he was aware that the sounds that rose from the floor of the House, especially those made, as now, by a poorly attended Question Time, threw his awareness back upon himself. He had almost entirely lost an earlier, youthful sense of the business of the world being done there. The Chamber had become a club.

He had reported to the Foreign Secretary, after lunch, on the security procedures to be put into effect, by the SIS in cooperation with the CIA and the Finnish Intelligence Bureau, for the culminatory stages of the Helsinki Conference on Mutual Balanced Arms Reductions, one week hence. The Foreign Secretary himself would head the team of British observers at the treaty signing; the United States' partners in NATO would be signatories only to the second, and supplementary stage, of the conference, to be held in Belgrade in the autumn.

An Opposition speaker was on his feet, requiring a junior minister at the Foreign Office to explain what assurance the government, and the President of the United States, had been given as to the sincerity of the Soviet Union with regard to arms reductions - a late, and rather naive, attempt to stir doubt; or perhaps to draw attention to the speaker. There were a few half-hearted murmurs of derision from the government back benches. The Front Benches on both sides of the House were conspicuously bare.

Aubrey came to the House more often in these last days of his employment with the SIS than he had done in earlier years. It irked him that he could not precisely explain his motives; but it was tolerably warm. An obscure sense of desire for legitimacy nagged him, as it often did. Perhaps he was disillusioned after sitting below the salt for so long - enter Third Murderer, he thought. Here, at least, it was tolerably above board - at least, it gave that illusion. Perhaps that was also the reason he spent less and less time with the operational side of the service, and preferred administration and oversight of intelligence gathering.

Perhaps he was growing senile, and ought to begin attending the Upper House. He shifted in his seat, and cursed the ailing circulation that so swiftly made him cold and cramped when still. And, aware of the physical, he thought of other men of stronger sensual passions than himself; their horror at the growing inoperancy of limbs, their sense of desire unabated, but more futile and humiliating with the onset of age.