'What the hell - ?' he said, aloud. Her face narrowed, then he added, 'All right. Sit down - but don't get in the way!'

'Very well, Alexei - certainly, Alexei!' she chorused, mimicking her pretence of subordination, of dutiful wifehood, from the early days. He could not prevent the smile, even though he almost choked on the sudden sense of loneliness memory brought him; and despised, for an instant, the dependence he was demonstrating.

She moved the small leather travelling-case to her side, smoothed the long leather coat beneath her, and crossed her long, booted legs. She was desirable, even now, he thought. Yet he said, 'Just don't interfere when I'm working, that's all.'

'I won't. But you won't be working all the time, will you ? We will have time to - discuss things ?' He would not admit the suggestiveness of her tone.

'I suppose so.'

It was with relief that he saw the approaching figure of Blinn, the Deputy Senior Forensic Officer of the SID; tall, gangling, hang-dog. He looked like that American film actor -what was it ? Matthau. Walter Matthau. Yes. He had seen him in a film, a couple of years ago, at the Dom Kino, by virtue of his privileged rank. Behind Blinn were two others. Then minutes before their flight was called. His thoughts turned to Khabarovsk, and seven dead men.

Already - and it was the shortness of the time that terrified him - Folley was finding it increasingly difficult to retain any firm hold on experience. Even though he had not been beaten again since his arrival at the house where they were now keeping him, he was blindfolded, his ears filled with wax, thick gloves on his hands. He was kept in a cellar, he imagined, because he climbed steps when they wanted to talk to him. Already, he was grabbing the stuff of their coats - uniforms, he thought -when they took him, leaning against them, trying to make them talk to him.

He had done the things they had done to him - undergone the white noise, the spreadeagling, the lack of sleep, the hooding. He should - was - able to withstand it. They were only the techniques used on Proves, in the earlier stages of interrogation, and he had been trained to take them - easy ride, they called it in 22 SAS.

But, they weren't here. Didn't want to know where was here. They had walked down familiar corridors, into familiar rooms, before the sessions began. Not like him - not like him at all.

He did not know where he was - just somewhere in the Soviet Union. Which, he realised, was a ludicrous thought, and not at all comforting. But the worry lay deeper than that. He was not disturbed or disorientated by the interrogations. The two officers who had conducted them, using the shit-and-sugar formula, tough and pleasant, had failed to elicit the kind of information they were seeking; and though their interminable questions whirled like frozen sparks in his brain for hours, and he had not slept for what seemed like days, he had not broken. And he did not think he would.

Except for the sapping of resolve that was going on all the time, deep inside him, like the crumbling away of a cliff, or the subsidence of a huge building. Because no one, not even himself, knew where he was; he would already have been disowned by London. Expendable. Waterford's word for him. And he would only have been passing on the message from on high.

It was hard, and harder all the time, to resist the sense of annihilation that crept closer to him, made him curl on the narrow cot in the cellar as if afraid of the dark. He had become afraid of wetting the bed, and he wanted to suck his thumb -or call out for the guard, who wasn't a bad sort.

No, he thought, definitely, and with an effort. It had not become as bad as that. That had been the nightmare last night. Night ? The last brief sleep-period, he corrected himself. He walked hooded up from the cellar when they wanted to talk to him, feeling along blind corridors with closed doors and uncarpeted floors, into a room with heavy curtains always drawn. Once they had let him see it. And he had the feeling, the inhibition, that if he had moved to tug the curtains open, they would have shot him.

Only a nightmare. But, he knew they would have heard the noises - probably even now they were feeling the rough stuff of the sheets, seeking the evidence of drying sweat, or urination.

He had ejaculated once - when was that? He had been ashamed of the semen staining the sheet, and his trousers. It was weakness, even if it did not help them. Yes it did, he corrected himself - they knew that under the unhelpful surface, he was escaping.

It was Novetlyn this time. The sugar-man. The modulated voice of an actor or a queer. Insinuating, full of Russian promise ... He formed the silly joke with difficulty, and laughed aloud, beneath the hood which was too thick for any light to penetrate. His bruised lip, which was healing slowly, cracked again, and he felt the dribble of warm blood down his chin.

He wanted to cry, wanted to dab at it roughly with a handkerchief. Everything had to be an assertion, have about it a residual toughness. He had to go on believing he was holding out, winning.

He said, 'Let me ask you a question ? Which lot are you in ?'

'Lot?'

He heard quick footsteps, and flinched as if before a stick, then the hood was pulled roughly over his head. Novetlyn's face was close to his, and he was smiling. Folley blinked in the subdued light, and was grateful. He dabbed at his split lip. Novetlyn sat behind his desk. He lit a cigarette, and laid one on the other side of the table, in front of Folley, ready for him to pick up and smoke when he felt he had resisted long enough to make his point. He smiled encouragingly, waited for the explanation.

'You know what I mean? Your partner, he wears GRU uniform - Colonel, too.' Folley, as if on a treadmill, felt the volition of scorn. 'But you don't. Nice Italian suit - cost a packet in the KGB shop across from the Centre, I'D bet.' He sneered. The grimace made the lip bleed again. He dabbed at it furiously with his grubby handkerchief.

'Ah. Would it help you to know? Yes, perhaps it would, Therefore, I shall remain a man of mystery to you.' He drew in smoke, blew it towards the ceiling, then said, 'Come, let us talk again. I like talking to you.'

'Piss off!'

'An English expression ?'

Folley clenched the handkerchief against his groin, hurting himself with the effort of restraint. It did get to you - the consistent superiority of the interrogator. That when they talked -and the collapse of the will when you were alone.

He stopped his thoughts. He imagined himself, on a road, slowing down - walking. Strolling.

Stopping.

Novetlyn said, 'Ready ?'

It was as if he knew, the bastard. Folley, lifting his eyes, saw the smile on Novetlyn's handsome, shaven face. The blue tie, with the large silver pattern; the lightweight suit, as if it were summer. Even the suede shoes were Western.

'You're a bigger shit than the other one!'

'Come - you haven't forgotten his name already ?' Novetlyn was evidently pleased with the situation.

The drawn curtains were behind him. A heady pattern of browns and oranges, which disturbed but drew the eye. There was nothing else hi the room on which to focus the gaze. Just the bare desk, and Novetlyn behind it. The carpet was neutral in tone, the wallpaper drab.

Folley picked up the cigarette. Novetlyn, as if he had timed the moment, had left his lighter beside it when he last spoke. Folley tried not to devour the smoke too greedily.

'You see,' Novetlyn said, pressing the long fingers of both hands together in a momentary steeple, 'we didn't have a chance to talk to the man who came ahead of you.' He smiled. 'We don't even know his name. He was clumsy, and got caught, and someone with too much enthusiasm and too little in his head shot him. Not like you - rather a good attempt, we thought. More the professional approach.'

'All London dustmen are trained to use that rifle - and in karate,' Folley said.

'Ah, the sense of humour returns - excellent. No, no. We are sure you are not a dustman - some other agent of disposal ?' His English was almost without accent. 'We think SAS - based at Hereford.' He had never mentioned the regiment before. Folley gripped the ball of the handkerchief in his hand, pressing his knuckle into his thigh.

'Who ? SAS ? They don't send SAS out to do this sort of thing.'

'I'm sure the Sultan of Oman would be disappointed if that were true,' Novetlyn remarked drily. 'Anyway, your unit is not important. We do want to know whether another will come, and then another. You see - it would be as well to be prepared.'

'When are you going to bribe me ?'

Novetlyn snapped, 'When you are ready to be bribed! Which is not yet, I think.'

The force of his insight struck Folley like a blow. They knew! They could hear the rumble as his self slid into the total isolation that waited for him like the sea. 'I don't know anything!' he persisted.

'Who sent you? Gaveston in SO- I? The Ministry of Defence ? No, I think not. Who, then ? How many people are interested in you, and in what you might have learned ?'

There was the slightest inflection of urgency. Folley glimpsed others, outside that room, pressing Novetlyn for results. And the man disliked haste. He grasped the tiny hope of a time-limit, regardless of the conclusion.

'Lots of people! So you'd better let me go, hadn't you, before my big brother comes to find me. He's a policeman.'

'Here, everybody's big brother is a policeman - and their little brothers are in the Army,' Novetlyn replied.

'Variety is the spice of life.'

As if he sensed the initiative slipping, Novetlyn frowned, then said, 'No one will come for you.'

'Sod off!' Folley replied, swallowing the gurgle of loneliness that was bilious in his throat. 'You don't know that - you don't know anything? He tried, and failed, to inflect his voice again with an imitation of childish sneering.

'But we will - and you know that we will. If I told you what progress we have made, what regress you have made - in the short time - if I told you what little time you have been here, you would realise that we shall, very soon, know all you know.'

'You've got Colonel Krapalot's script today!'