The bomber had not wired for instantaneous explosion presumably for his own safety when arranging the body on the bed. It was a ridiculous way to have avoided death; he could still feel as a sensation in his fingertips, the delicate cold wire, the strand that had linked him for a moment with death.

As the hours passed, he found his attention returning to the minutes of his occupancy of that cold, small bedroom at the dacha, and the face of the Ossipov-substitute. He had been found, face-down in the slush, by a senior member of the Central Committee Secretariat, who was cohabiting in his dacha with a woman not his wife. Vorontsyev retained a dim impression of a man in pyjamas and Wellingtons and a silk dressing-gown round his shivering form - before he had passed out again from the pain of being turned over.

Why ? Why such - extreme measures ? What was he so close to that a bomb had to be used to stop him? Vrubel - they would not see him again, unless he re-emerged in the last condition of the Ossipov-substitute. According to his wife's statement, Vrubel had made two telephone calls before leaving her flat. She had overheard neither call. How many men would it have taken to organise the operation that quickly ? A lot -trained, expert men. The ruined dacha belonged to an unimpeachable member of the Council of Ministers. It was impossible that he should be involved. He was not even in Moscow at the time, but at a trade conference in Leipzig.

Vorontsyev lit one of the cigarettes at his bedside, coughing on the raw smoke. Then he lay staring up at the ceiling for a long time. Thought became, gradually, suspended; he almost dozed. Cigarette after cigarette disappeared from the packet, and the most conscious thing he seemed to do was to stub each butt in the metal ashtray advertising some awful beer.

It was late in the evening when he received a visitor -Deputy Chairman Kapustin. The bulky man with the broad, expressionless face settled himself on a chair at the bedside without enquiring after Vorontsyev's health. Vorontsyev tried to sit more upright; Kapustin seemed not to notice his efforts.

'I want to discuss your - accident, Major,' he said. Vorontsyev sensed the pressures of other voices, issued orders. Perhaps even from Andropov ? He felt a quickening of thought, almost in the blood. 'I have to be completely frank with you,' he added as if he disliked the idea, and wished to disown it.

'Yes, Deputy ?'

'From the report you dictated this morning, it is clear that you have stirred up something rather nasty, and far-reaching. Though you can have no idea what it is.' The final phrase was heavy with seniority. Vorontsyev could not like Kapustin, but was too intrigued by what he might learn to resent the man's proximity. Yes, he decided, he was nattered by the promise of revelations, of being fully informed.

'Your investigations,' Kapustin continued, his homburg hat still balanced on his knee, but the fur-collared coat now unbuttoned, 'were intended to add to our knowledge of the movements and contacts of senior army officers. This surveillance was ordered by . . .' He paused, as if forcing himself to overcome the habits of years, ingrained, then he managed to say: 'By the First Secretary and the Chairman, in joint consultation. Similar surveillance has, as you are aware, been carried out during the past year on a number of generals and military district commanders. What you in your section of SID do not know is that similar surveillance has been applied to senior members of the Politburo, the Praesidium, the Supreme Soviet, and the Central Committee Secretariat. ..'

Vorontsyev was shaken. He said, 'All with the same - suspicion in mind, Deputy ?'

Kapustin nodded. Vorontsyev lit another cigarette, and saw that his hand was trembling with excitement. Whatever was going on, it was huge, out of all proportion to the small sliver of the totality that he had glimpsed, that had embedded itself in his flesh as surely as if it had been a splinter of wood from the ruined dacha. The compartmentalisation of all the security organs of the state extended even to the SID. He had had no idea that perhaps half the force was working on the same operation as himself and his team.

Kapustin said, 'You talked with Vrubel - what impression did you get of him ? Did he know who you were ?'

Vorontsyev, because his mind raced to the possibilities., ignored his private humiliation, so much so that he said immediately, 'He found me comical as a cuckolded husband .. .' Kapustin remained silent. 'But he was cocky, and not just with sex ...' Vorontsyev concentrated, seeing the man's face, hearing his voice. 'He knew who I was, and that if I wished, I could make trouble just because he was having my wife. But he didn't seem to care. It seemed to make him more confident.'

'What do you conclude from this, Major ?'

'I don't know. At the time I suspected something - some secret knowledge or power that made him - immune ?' Kapustin's eyes lit up. He said. 'Exactly! that is what I suspected from your report. A great pity that you did not take other men with you ...' He waved aside protest, and went on: 'Whoever is behind this, they are suitably ruthless. One must admire them for it, if for nothing else.'

'What do we know, Deputy ? So far?

'Mm. I am permitted to tell you - ordered, in fact. The earliest clue was a tapped telephone call from the Bureau of Political Administration of the Army; a senior member of that department of the Secretariat who was about to retire, due to inoperable cancer. Perhaps he made a slip just because he was old, or ill - or confident. He used a phone that he would not know was tapped, but he might well have suspected it. His name was Fedakhin. He talked in what was obviously code, and he mentioned two strange things. He referred to Group 1917, and later in the conversation - that was his call-sign, we think - he referred to Finland Station. He was responsible for that area of the border, and the north-western military district. Apparently, this Finland Station was proceeding well, and he could look forward to retiring a happy man - to await the great day, as he put it.'

'Vrubel referred to nothing like that,' Vorontsyev murmured unhelpfully.

'I didn't suppose he had,' Kapustin observed. 'But what do you think the terms might mean, eh, Major ?'

Vorontsyev wrinkled his brow, looked at the Deputy, and said, 'I can't think what they might mean - I know what they do mean, the date of the Revolution, and the destination of the train from Switzerland . . .' His mouth dropped open. 'You don't think . . . ?

'I think nothing. Chairman Andropov's thoughts are what I convey to you.' There was a solemn emphasis in the words. 'Revolution? Seems hard to believe doesn't it?' There was a bright glint of perspiration on Kapustin's forehead, above the heavy creases of age and office. 'I would prefer not to think -but I have to, and so do you.'

'Very well, Comrade Deputy.' Vorontsyev felt that the situation required formality. 'What happened to the man Fedakhin ?'

'He died. Apparently the disease was more advanced than was diagnosed. We put maximum surveillance on him, but to little or no effect. It appears that somebody was suspicious -no one went near him again.'

'But - his contacts before. How much do we know about them?'

Both men seemed to accept the collusion that the situation forced upon them. Both relaxed into the tense informality of their common business. Kapustin said, 'Not very much. Typical party background - kept his nose clean. Ready to change sides and loyalties when Kruschev was swept away, had never identified himself with that regime, except when he had to. A second world war soldier, political indoctrination -then returned to his duties in the Secretariat. Clean record -until this chance telephone intercept.' Kapustin shrugged.

'Family?'

'Know nothing.'

Vorontsyev persisted, as if Tie were interrogating the Deputy. Kapustin, hotter still it seemed in the airless room, aquiesced; as if it were easier for him to be questioned than to volunteer a briefing to a subordinate - and one in a hospital bed, at that.

'What else is there, Comrade Deputy ?' Vorontsyev did not question his own eagerness - whether revenge, or in the burial of private worlds.

'Not very much. For the expenditure of so much effort, very little indeed. We have a dossier . . .' He patted the briefcase that rested by the chair, and to which he had not referred since his arrival. 'Of all movements and contacts of officers and bureaucrats under surveillance during the last year. All the teams are going through them, as you did with Ossipov, checking for some new lead, or some connection.'

'The - suspects ? Are they confirmed, or not ?'

'No. They are - everyone who might possess the power or the influence was put under surveillance. Automatically.'

Tower for what ?' Vorontsyev asked after a while.

'Revolution. That is the broad picture. The assumption that a revolution is being planned . . .'

'Ridiculous!' was Vorontsyev's first reaction. Then he stopped short, abashed at his indiscretion.

Instead of anger, Kapustin said, 'I might agree with you, Major. If I knew as little as you do. But - fantastic as it is, I have to consider the possibility. So do you.'

'But - why? And how? With the Committee for State Security so effective. It would need cooperation - converts - in the Politburo, the High Command, the Praesidium, the Secretariat, the KGB itself.'

'I quite agree. As to why, I don't know. As to how - it could take ten years to plan, and execute. And it would need the army - and the navy, too, perhaps. Certainly elements in ah1 the organs of government and control in the state. It would be - huge.'

'I can't believe it!'

'Perhaps not. But - something is going on. Generals don't have to have substitutes in order to visit prostitutes, of either sex. And the substitutes don't get killed on the merest suspicion that discovery may be just around the corner! Think of that when you're reading these files . . .' Again he tapped the briefcase with a hand that was backed with dark, curling hair - dark as the hair that curled from his wide nostrils. 'And think of this, too. If it would take say ten years - and it is happening - where are we in their timetable, at the present moment ?'

Folley watched the guards carefully; it had become a habit so to do, as automatic as glancing in a driving-mirror at precise intervals. There was no possibility of escape connected with it.

The two young Red Army soldiers, a corporal and a senior private, seemed content with his company. During the hours of the short day, they seemed comfortable, even approachable -as if they had received no orders against fraternisation. Folley realised that it was an illusory state, and it was designed to make him less troublesome to his guards.

The small tent was cold, but he was still warmly clad in his winter combat clothing, boots and mittens - the Finnish uniform beneath it they had disbelieved, especially when his command of the language had been discovered to be rudimentary by a Senior Lieutenant who interrogated him in Finnish; but they had allowed him to keep it, and his supposed identity. Except for the papers, which had disappeared. They had spoken to him in English after that. His silence was a tacit admission. He had not answered their questions, but they knew his nationality. He had to ask for the toilet, for food and drink, in English, before they would respond. Yet still they had not beaten him.

The three of them sat round the oil-stove, feeling its warmth on their faces, the fronts of their legs. In the hours that he had been held in the camp, they had done little else. They had allowed him to exercise, of course.

They had interrogated him, but not physically. He had told them nothing; though he was evidence by his solitariness of the level of suspicion that had despatched him to Finnish Lapland.

They did not take him seriously. That was his impression of the regimental commanders, colonels both; and the impression given by the small, neat, precise man with the one large silver star of a major-general on his shoulder-boards. He had met the General only once, when he had been taken to be questioned in the wooden hut erected to serve as headquarters for senior officers.

During the night of his pursuit, another regiment had arrived; this time a Motor Rifle Regiment, comprising a tank battalion of forty older T-62 tanks, a battle recce company, three motor rifle battalions, whose vehicles were mainly BMP and BTR-60 armoured personnel carriers; field artillery and anti-aircraft batteries; the medics and technical support group. And a chemical platoon and its vehicles.

Folley had been unnerved by this latter more than the assembled firepower and personnel; it was the most real of the sights, the most vivid in imagination. For many hours afterwards, he was not sure that he had seen it. He tried to persuade himself that it was not the case; he had pieced together the skeleton of the major rifle regiment from the vehicles he had seen, and the men; and within that context, he knew he had caught a glimpse of the vivid yellow vehicles of the chemical platoon.

No one had explained the presence of the Russian armour in the forest south-east of Ivalo. And there was a comfort in ignorance - until what he knew of current war games, the conversation of a friend on the War Studies Team at Cranwell, and his own tactical sense, pressed upon him the conviction that he was amid only one spearhead. There had to be others, concealed on either or both sides of the Soviet border, along its length with Finland.

And the main armoured strike would be to the north, along the single main road to Kirkenes, into northern Norway. And that strike would be preceded by chemical attack; that much he could be certain of.