Thus, his reluctance to consider himself a policeman, on an investigation.

A beginning?

He refused to think about that, by an effort of will. Nevertheless, now he had recaptured the mood, there was a deep contentment in him for those few minutes after waking. He had enjoyed eating with her again, and enjoyed the clever, familiar humour they both brought, at one time, to conversation. And their first love-making, hurried and urgent though it was. He had been close to her then, for a few moments - lost in her.

When he had woken her later in the night, then perhaps that had been - more erotic, yes, but not as he would have wished. There was a small wince of shame, of impurity, that ran through his frame; it sprang, he knew, from the kind of puritanism he had inherited from his father, and had imbibed in Gorochenko's house.

In the ecstasy, he had asked her to reassure him, and she had done, telling him over and over that he was better than her other lovers, there was no one like him.

Alexei, Alexei - yes, yes . .. He felt the stirrings of an erection even at the memory, and the little shame - deeper than the embarrassment at recollected intimacy.

He had wanted her to master him, riding above him, her breasts like fruit just out of reach of his mouth - yes, he had wanted that, and it had seemed real for her as well.

It was himself he disliked a little.

But she had come back to him. And now, while she was still asleep and there could be no contradiction of perfection by anything she did or said, or they did or said, he was content again. He felt his eyes pucker at the sense of her nearness, and the weight of memory pressing on tear-ducts.

He got softly out of bed, and went over to the window. He lifted aside the heavy drape; it was a clear day, windy, high-clouded. It would serve for his purpose.

He looked back at his sleeping wife, the bare arm over the coverlet, the black hair massed on the pillow, hiding the small face. Because the moment offered a complete contentment, he had abandoned it. It would be preserved in memory, ready to be returned to. If he had let it go on any longer, it might have passed ripeness. He was afraid, he admitted - as afraid of happiness as he had been of isolation, disappointment.

So, he returned to his job. He looked out of the window again.

The police had rounded up a few suspected Separatists, and he had tried to show a polite interest, but he had known those frightened little people could never have planned to take out the whole KGB Office in Khabarovsk. They amounted to little more than slogan-daubers, booers at public meetings from the safety of crowds.

Which left the Ivanov Charter Company, which rented hangar-space at Khabarovsk Airport, nine kilometres outside the town. Ivanov, or whoever was in charge of the operation, owned two old Antonov high-wing monoplanes, and a helicopter. A small MIL. Which was paid for by, and reserved for, the KGB in Khabarovsk. An economy measure - the lawman's twentieth-century horse in the Soviet Far East.

Ivanov was obviously a local entrepreneur; the charter company was not state owned, like many of the small companies and businesses in this part of the Soviet Union; it was more efficient to allow enterprising capitalists to set up, and fund and operate, such ventures. Ivanov delivered mail to outlying villages, flew missions for the doctors and hospitals, delivered groceries to state-owned outlets throughout the region. And he assisted the KGB in the matter of a helicopter.

Vorontsyev had stumbled across the information by chance. A policeman had referred to the fact that 'Old Ivanov was lucky he didn't get blown up too, and his precious helicopter.' When Vorontsyev had elicited the source of the reference, he had trembled with excitement. A non-military aircraft; the only successful means of sniffing around the Military District HQ - from the air.

'Have you got any cigarettes, Alexei ?' he heard Natalia ask. She was sitting up in bed, her breasts free of the sheets, her arms stretched as he pushed the thick dark hair away from her forehead. He breasts were taut, inviting. He was almost certain it was an unconscious gesture. Something like the feelings of the previous evening, an ameliorated sense of the erotic mingled with something like longing, came over him. She smiled. He was able to imagine invitation, and a curious innocence and warmth, in the movement of her lips.

He took the packet of American cigarettes from the dressing-table, and threw them to her. Then the lighter. She seemed to weigh it in her hand, and then said:

'We do have the good life, eh, Alexei ?' She was still smiling. 'You and I.'

He nodded. 'We ought to be able to live reasonably convenient and happy lives.' His tone was neutral, carefully so; yet he was inviting her to commit herself. She puffed at the cigarette, leaned back against the headboard, one arm behind her head, and studied him. He was acutely conscious that he was naked, and that the act of her merely looking stirred him.

'We ought - yes,' she admitted. Then she stubbed out the cigarette, and murmured, 'Come back to bed.'

He almost looked at his watch on the dressing-table, to check the time. He smiled at himself, yet there was a tiny sense of disappointment in him, as if her invitation was a substitute; as if he had been reading a great book, and then been told it was superficial, unreal; or involved in a complex puzzle only to be told that the answer was easy, and not worth the finding.

Which was why he stood at the edge of the bed for a moment, just looking at her. She held out her arms to him, her breasts still free of the sheets, and he saw something crude, soiled about the open eroticism of it. He wanted her to be otherwise, even as he wanted her. She smiled as she saw his erection, which for an instant became a visible, hated helplessness as far as she was concerned.

Then he ignored the fuzzy complexities of his responses, and got into bed.

It was quick, hungry, abrupt. He did not care whether she came or not; he thought she probably hadn't. He was satisfying himself only. Something to make up for the last months -or to try to indicate his independence.

If Natalia was disappointed, she did not show it. While he telephoned the Innokenti Ivanov Charter Company of Khaborovsk, she sat beside him, smoking another cigarette.

'You want breakfast ?' he asked as he waited for the call to be connected to Khabarovsk Airport, where Ivanov had an office and rented hangar-space. Her eyes were dosed, and her face tilted to the ceiling, head resting against the headboard.

She nodded. 'Will they serve it here ?'

'I should think so - hello, Ivanov Charter ?'

The voice at the other end was female, middle-aged, gruff and masculine. 'Yes - what do you want ?'

'I want to check over the helicopter you fly for the local KGB. And I want to talk to the pilot - have him standing by.'

'Who is this, comrade ?' the voice asked, suspicious but undeterred by the evidence of authority in his voice.

'Major Alexei Vorontsyev, Moscow SID. Is that sufficient for you ?'

'May be. Bring your ID card, or you don't go anywhere near the helicopter.' The woman had to be Madame Ivanov.

'Naturally,' he said, not unamused.

'What time are you coming ?'

'Shall we say - ten o'clock ?'

'Say it if you like. We'll expect you, Major.' The receiver clicked at the other end. Vorontsyev stared at the purring instrument in his hand, then burst out laughing. He was still laughing when he called the hotel switchboard and ordered breakfast for two.

The MIL helicopter was an old one, a cramped cabin with canvas seats up front and a dark hole behind for storage space when the helicopter was used by Ivanov himself rather than the Khabarovsk KGB. Which, Vorontsyev was certain, was often. And, he did not doubt, the KGB footed the parts and fuel bills for most of the private trips.

The pilot was young - Ivanov's nephew, who had learned to fly during his army conscription. Since which time he had worked for his uncle, disliked him intensely, shared his passion for business and money, and was obviously waiting for the premature death of his energetic relative so that he could inherit control of the business.

Vorontsyev had been terrified by Madame Ivanov in the cramped, dusty office. She was everything the telephone conversation had promised - large, badly dressed and made-up, coarse, and clever. Her husband was off flying one of the planes to Vladivostok to collect some freight, she told him grudgingly - one of the two regular pilots was ill. She considered, as she told Vorontsyev, that he had a dose, and serve him right.

After a desultory inspection of the chopper, and a conversation with the nephew concerning recent KGB flights in it, Vorontsyev said, 'Right, you can take me on a little trip.'

'I didn't know you wanted to go up.'

'No ?' Vorontsyev smiled. Neither did whoever was listening to his telephone calls at the hotel. Nor the car that had tailed him to the airport, and was parked near the terminal at that moment. 'No - but it seems like a good idea. Since my company owns it, and there's no one else to use it.'

The nephew shrugged. 'OK. I'll go and get us cleared. You wait here.'

It was half an hour before the MIL lifted away from the airport, and Khabarovsk was spread beneath them and away to the south. The two rivers on whose confluence the town stood gleamed like polished silver in the pale sunlight, and the town, as they ascended, became more and more a diagram of a place where people might live, set out as it was like many towns in Siberia and the Soviet Far East in a rigid, functional grid pattern.

Like American cities, Vorontsyev thought, though he had never seen one except in photographs brought back by KGB men who had spent time in the Washington Residency, or had travelled briefly to America. However, it was as if a child, with his building blocks, had ignored the fact that he required a flat piece of ground if he were to assemble a completely orderly structure. Khabarovsk began to straggle over the three long hills that it had been built upon, losing its firm, clean outlines -looking, he thought, as if it was lived-in after all.

Patches of green, the haze of heavy industry away towards the River Amur - shipbuilding there, oil refining; neat white blocks of offices, colleges; the rural fringes of the town of nearly half a million creeping back, it seemed, rather than being encroached upon.

'Well?' the pilot asked. 'Where do you want to go, my Major ?'

Vorontsyev turned in his seat, looking ahead. They appeared to be drifting slowly north, towards hills blue and shapeless still with mist, dark with forest where the fog had lifted.