His nakedness was upsetting, humiliating. Davenhill bent down, and pulled the trousers up to his waist. The buckle was missing, and the waistband was torn. He gently guided the young man's hand until it held the trousers in place. Then he picked up the shirt, saw its condition and abandoned it, then pulled the anorak across his heaving shoulders. The chattering noise had gone. Sobs, irregular and heaving, were the only sounds now.

Waterford came back into the room.

'The back way,' he said. 'Get him moving.' Precise, clipped tones; army manoeuvres. The voice enraged Davenhill.

'You bastard! He'll freeze to death before we can get back!'

'Rugs, blankets in the jeep. He won't freeze - if he runs fast enough!' He glared theatrically at the Russian, who bowed his head, his mouth opening and closing, fish-like.

Davenhill stared Waterford out for a long moment, then capitulated. The man was right - always bloody right. And the Russian had talked. Folley was alive, somewhere in Russia.

And, he realised, they had a witness.

He bundled the young man in front of him, out of the main room, down the corridor, through the kitchen. It was already getting late in the afternoon, and the weak sun low on the horizon, a bleary, tired eye. Waterford went ahead of them, moving quickly, and Davenhill found the gun in his hand again, and he prodded the Russian in the back. He moved like an automaton, and Davenhill snarled, 'Pick your feet up!' in Russian. And shuddered as if he had caught some infection.

They almost walked into Waterford, because the man stopped suddenly.

A patrol of four, returning, topping the rise twenty yards away. Rifles, Kalashnikovs, slung over their shoulders, gait weary, relief and tiredness evident in the slouch of the shoulders.

Davenhill had an impression of heads snapping up, of fumbled movements, then the Parabellum roared in the quiet where the only sound had been the labour of footsteps through the snow. The noise banged back from the building behind them, seemed to echo from the low sky.

Then the Russians were firing, even as they split from the tight group; two of them, moving in separate directions, firing from the hip, bent low and running. Two bodies lay on the ground, ugly sprawling things like dark stains.

Then the exaggerated noise again from Waterford - he was in a crouch, hands stiff in front of him, both holding the gun. He was turning on his axis like a doll, spinning like something on a muscial box, firing alternately at one then the other. Davenhill saw flame from the direction of one of the Russians, who had paused long enough to kneel in the snow - and the young man in front of him, who had stood stupidly observing events he seemed not to comprehend, was flung back against him. Davenhill clutched the thin body as the anorak came away, and then stumbled and fell, the dead Russian on top of him, an obscene weight, his Walther sticking butt-up from the snow, out of reach of his hand.

Then there was a single shot, then silence. Davenhill lay sobbing, feeling the scream rising in his throat, threatening. It had to be madness, this being buried beneath a dead body naked to the waist and the trousers hanging open across the privates ...

He heaved at the Russian, as at something loathsome, and staggered to his feet. Waterford was inspecting the bodies. Davenhill plucked his gun out of the snow, and wiped it, attending minutely to the whiteness, the wetness that had gathered on it, and in the barrel. Then Waterford was beside him, his hand on his shoulder.

'Don't sulk,' he said, but his voice was without rancour or sarcasm. 'I'm sorry the game has changed.'

Davenhill felt himself shaking with relief, quivering, and was ashamed. Waterford squeezed his shoulder. Davenhill looked at him; he saw the gulf between them in experience and nature, and he saw the kind of man Waterford was. Yet he saw something akin to pity, too - even regret.

Then the moment was over. Waterford said, 'We'll have woken the dead. Let's get moving. We might have to run all the way to Ivalo yet.' He looked down at the dead young man whose buttocks were exposed by the broken trousers as he lay face-down in the snow. 'Pity they killed that poor sod. Star witness, he would have been.'

Then he walked abruptly away, towards the top of the rise. Davenhill looked at the white buttocks, and the creeping red stain just showing beneath the hip, and felt sick.

'Come on - there are other patrols out, Alex. We have to move!'

Davenhill began to walk up the slope in Waterford's deep footprints.

There was an increased tempo of activity. Ilya was certain of it now. While Maxim interviewed a Senior Sergeant in the KGB Border Guard, Vrubel's most senior NCO, he was standing at the window of the wooden hut put at the disposal of the two SID men to conduct their enquiries. It was late afternoon, and Ilya's head was thick with cigarette-smoke and pointless interviews. Maxim seemed to have the stronger constitution when it came to the dead-end minutiae of their profession.

Outside, the pace of footsteps through the packed snow, the number of people appearing from the doors of other huts in the HQ compound of Wire Patrol Station 78, increased. Movement between huts: men emerging into the failing light tugging on jackets - a fur-lined flying-jacket, he would have guessed in one case - the tread of heavy boots audible, even through the double-glazing.

He looked once at the Senior Sergenat, a heavy man with a square, passionless face, probably looking a dozen years older than he was - grizzled hair stiff on his head, creased low forehead. The man was glancing over Maxim's shoulder. As his gaze caught Ilya's, he looked promptly back at Maxim.

'Thank you, Sergeant, that will be all,' he said on impulse. He saw Maxim's shoulders flex, then relax. He would play along.

'You've been very helpful,' Maxim said.

The Sergeant seemed suspicious, then nodded and stood up. The chair scraped on the wooden floor.

When he was gone, Ilya said, 'Come over to the window -tell me what you see.'

Maxim, amused rather than intrigued, joined him. They were silent for a few moments, then Maxim said in a curious voice:

'The wire which divides Comrade Lenin from Coca-Cola -was that what you wanted ?'

'No, idiot. Closer than that.' Ilya, too, looked across the six or seven hundred metres of treeless, levelled ground that separated them from the wire and the two visible watch-towers that overlooked it.

'Oh. Mm .. .' He rubbed his chin in mock-thoughtfulness. 'Ah - a Border Guard running, is that it ?'

'Yes!'

'Unusual, I agree. Shall we put him on a charge ? Perhaps he is a follower of Trotsky ?'

'Why is he running ?' 'Caught short ?'

'Lot of people about ?'

'Some.'

'More than earlier ? See that man in the flying-jacket ? That's the second I've seen in a couple of minutes.'

'Oh, no!' Maxim exclaimed in an assumed falsetto. 'It's happening! Finland is invading us!'

'Seriously ...'

They both heard the sound of rotors quickening, and across the snow from somewhere out of sight a redness was splashed from helicopter lights.

'Where are they off to ?' Maxim asked.

'I wonder. Let's ask.'

He walked swiftly to the door, taking his fur-lined coat from a peg beside it, jamming on the fur hat as he went through the door. The sudden change from the fugginess of the room struck both men - the crisp air after the fumes of the stove.

They walked out into the middle of the open space before their hut. Suddenly, Maxim began to trot, a mere half-dozen steps before he cannoned into a soldier, who lost his balance and fell over. Maxim pulled him to his feet, dusted him down, and snapped:

'What the devil's the rush, soldier?'

'Trouble across the wire, man! All hell's broken loose by the sound of it!' Then he gagged, saw the civilian topcoats, the two strange faces, and backed away. Maxim moved after him, but felt Ilya holding his arm. The soldier was fiddling with the strap of his rifle.

Then all three of them looked up involuntarily as a helicopter, red lights at tail and belly, lifted over the huts, the nearest trees parting like dark waves from the downdraught. Then the soldier, sensing his release, trotted off- looking back over his shoulder from time to time until he was out of sight behind a barrack block.

The helicopter shifted sideways in the air, gained a little more height, and streamed away from them, towards and across the border wire.

'What in hell's name - ?' Maxim breathed, watching it.