'I want to have a look at Army HQ - but only casually . . .' He had to trust the man; time was limited, whatever happened, after Ossipov's move against the KGB. He went on: 'You know their exercise areas ?' The pilot nodded. 'Let's overfly some of them, and come back via HQ, eh ?'

Vorontsyev settled back in his seat as the chopper seemed to spurt forward towards the distant hills. Already, his attention was impeded by memories of the past twelve hours seeping back. His wife - the tremulous sense of happiness of which he was afraid, and the more stark eroticism that now seemed to be re-established between them. This flight seemed removed from any useful investigation. He began to wonder whether Military District Far East could in any way reveal its secrets to a whirring speck in the sky.

Just before he left the hotel, there had been a telephone call from Police HQ. Over the wireprint from Moscow had come an unconfirmed report that Ilya and Maxim were missing. Their helicopter had radioed a distress message just before all contact with it was lost. Search parties had failed to locate any wreckage.

He had not known what to make of the report. It had been authorised by Kapustin, but he was uncertain whether it was a warning. He could not believe that the two men were dead, and therefore attempted to ignore the possibility. The report remained as a speck, irritating the mind's eye.

The foothills were below them now, mounting to the still fogbound clefts and peaks of the mountains. The pilot's voice crackled in his headset. 'Do you want to be seen, or not ?'

'What?'

'There'll be a lot of chopper activity soon, when we hit the exercise areas. Do you want to explain what we're doing, or not?'

'Preferably not.'

'Then I'll try it as low as I can.'

The nose of the MIL dropped towards a forest-blackened cliff face, and the chopper sidled sideways, hugging the tree tops. Vorontsyev craned his head to look down. The dark fir trees flowed beneath the cabin.

'How often do they exercise up here ?'

'All the time. Constant readiness. I was stationed along the Manchurian border when I was in. The yellow peril, my Major!' He laughed. 'More peril from some of the women in the brothels up there!'

Vorontsyev returned the laughter, settling in his seat, his eyes casting to right and left, and ahead. Small clearings, empty, passed beneath them, then a towering cliff face, bare and grey, threatening the tiny helicopter. Mist rolled beneath them in a deep valley like something alive, or as if flames roared beneath it.

Then the MIL slid across a knife-edged ridge of mountain, and the last tendrils of mist were vanishing. Vorontsyev saw a deep valley, and the Ussuri, a tributary of the Amur, narrow at the bottom of the steep cleft. Snow lying thinly on its banks, ice moving like great grey plates on the river surface. The MIL drove down the mountain side, below the treeline. Then Vorontsyev saw them: an engineer unit had thrown a bridge across the Ussuri, and ZSU self-propelled guns were crossing -a dark-green caterpillar. They swept over them. Further downstream, an amphibious BTR-50 was grinding through plated ice, hurling it aside as it progressed like a green wedge.

'What are they doing?' Vorontsyev asked, pointing down and behind.

'Testing equipment. Some kind of tactical deployment exercise, I suppose. Can you get across a river in winter, or something like.'

The MIL followed the line of the Ussuri as it snaked through its lean, deep valley; then the pilot, a straighter, and empty, stretch of the river ahead of him, lifted up and away, past the treeline, the bare face of rock, sliding across another fold of mountain which fell away more gradually on its western side. Deeper shadow here, even at eleven in the morning. Forest, then more open country, stretching to the shore of a spot of blue lake.

In the distance, a winding road, crammed with green vehicles. Vorontsyev used the glasses the pilot handed him. Almost solid - tanks moving in single file. At the head of the snaking column the lighter T-34 tanks and, as if riding herd to the main column, heavy APCs and T-34s in the fields, driving swathes through the long grass, melted snow glistening as it sprayed up from the tracks. Behind the light screen, the heavy JSs and T-62s and T-64s. An armoured column, moving swiftly now that he saw them magnified, racing towards the spot of blue water and the sloping forest beyond.

'Do you want to get closer?' the pilot asked. They had dropped below the level of the trees, at the edge of the open land, and were hovering.

'No,' Vorontsyev said. 'What are they doing ?'

'Time trials. How long to move from A to B, or how much can you move in a given time.'

'What purpose ?' Vorontsyev asked, his eyes still pressed to the glasses.

'You've heard of "Blitzkreig", haven't you ? What the filthy Fascists were doing in the war ? Well, you can't say the Red Army doesn't learn! One of our intensive practices.' He nodded towards the column of dark green vehicles, now simply gun-barrels and turrets above the level of the grass. The grass moved like an angered sea as light tanks ripped through it, moving away from them now.

'Are they doing this all the time ?'

'Of course, my Major!' The pilot laughed, the sound hard and deafening in Vorontsyev's headphones. 'For when the yellow peril comes boiling across the Ussuri. Practise, practise.

It never stops. I sometimes think we keep on doing it just to fool the American satellites - when we finally do go, they'll think it's just another exercise.'

'All right. Find something else.' Vorontsyev said, taking his gaze at last from the fascination of the armour. The MIL seemed to hop over the trees, sneaking away from what it had witnessed like a child crept downstairs to watch adults at their pleasures.

'Why do they practise here, in this sort of country?' Vorontsyev asked as they skimmed the tree tops, leaning up the slope as they did, climbing back towards the ridge.

'What?'

'This isn't like the country in northern Germany - good tank country. Is it ? Why the emphasis on armour here ? Isn't it going to be infantry and artillery all the way round here ? This country looks much more like - ' He sensed himself on the verge of a discovery - its momentousness welled up in him so that the thought itself seemed about to be lost in the accompanying mood. Slowly, slowly, he told himself, looking at the terrain. Like, like - The dark trees, the bare rock, over the ridge, slipping along beneath it, the noise of the rotors echoing back to them, amplified. Then he was distracted, almost as he seized upon the realisation.

'What's that ?' Vorontsyev snapped, pointing ahead of them. A haze, yellowish it seemed, undispersed. He could not help believing that it was artificial.

'Mist.'

'Go over it if you go near it.'

The nose of the MIL lifted, and Vorontsyev had to crane to see the yellow-painted TMS-65, looking like a petrol tanker with a trailer - the suited men around it like insects, masked heads looking up, spray nozzles in their hands. They were moving beneath a belt of trees.

'For God's sake - pull away from that!' Vorontsyev almost screamed.

The MIL whisked up and sideways, rolling with violence of the change in the angle of the rotor disc.

Tucking gas!' the pilot snarled. 'What the bloody hell are they doing with it - trying to kill the bloody trees ?'

As if to answer him, they flew over a ragged, trailing hole in the forest. Black, naked branches stared at them, a sudden desert. As the MIL followed the defoliated line, it adopted the appearance of a road. Open to the sky, a ragged swathe.

'That's not new,' Vorontsyev said. He looked over his shoulder, then smiled grimly at his stupidity. 'For - of course! That TMS down there is for decontamination work, isn't it ?'

The pilot banked the chopper, and up ahead of them again was the rising, yellowish cloud.

'It is.'

'Then - that damage to the trees, what was that ?'

'Shelling.'

'What with?'

'Gas.'

The cloud was rising, gleaming with droplets in the sunlight, steaming out of the tree tops like an exhalation of the ground.

'What is that, then?'

'An alkali fog - I don't know. They didn't give us more than the usual introductory lectures on chemical warfare - how to put your suit and mask on, and what filthy stockpiles the United States had built up! You know the bullshit.'

'Guess what they're doing - and pull away again!'

The MIL banked sharply. Masked heads followed them when observing, measuring the effects of the fog that was being sprayed in a widening area beneath the trees. They headed towards the ragged hole in the forest once more, following the narrow road that was its winding central line.