The traitors to the Revolution would be swept from power, from life. Andropov and his gang of thugs and leeches. The KGB - Beria's gift to Russia, descendant of the MVD, the NKVD, and OGPU, the Cheka - the Cheka alone might have been necessary. The others were sores and lice on the bear.

He went to fetch his overcoat, and a small bag he had packed. He would only come back after it was all over. He paused for a moment before a photograph on the wall, of a young man, which he had draped with black crepe. He shook his head, and left the study. He had the city of Moscow in which to hide, and only twenty more hours to hide.

'Alexei -!' he cried involuntarily, ashamed of the sound in the moment he uttered it. He tugged on his coat stiffly. Then he picked up his bag, heard the dog snuffle at the closed kitchen door, and went out into the below-zero temperature of Kropotkin Street. He stopped at the gate for a moment, and looked back at the restored house. Then he walked away, upright, his stick clicking on the icy pavement.

Galakhov looked up at the window of Khamovkhin's bedroom as if studying a target or an obstacle in his path. He was on the point of being relieved of duty. He would disappear until the following night, when his return to duty would provide him with the opportunity of killing Khamovkhin.

Kill him - for what ? A part of him he did not wish to acknowledge asked the question in a precise, cool mental voice. Kill him, now that they knew who Kutuzov was? And the generals were all dead? It had been a long night, after he had heard the gossip of the radio traffic coming in from Moscow - a longer early morning after Andropov's last message, the one they had relayed direct to Washington and London - the ringleader, code-name Kutuzov, has been identified and is on the point of being arrested in Moscow. Subject identified as Mihail Pyotravich Gorochenko, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union. Subject identified - Kill Khamovkhin, who had laughed like a bully-boy when he heard the news, so the rumour said ? An American CIA agent had told Galakhov, had sounded relieved, and then spat into the snow cursing all Russians for bastards.

Security was relaxed - except that they still worried where 'Captain Ozeroff' was. He could kill - but why ?

He saw a guard hurrying along the path to relieve him.

Kill him for revenge - do the worst you can. Kill him because it did not work, he told himself.

Sixteen: Anna Dostoyevna.

Vorontsyev let himself into the empty house with the key that he had been given on his sixteenth birthday - an inordinate time to wait, he had thought as a youth, before Mihail Pyotravich Gorochenko had let him come and go as he pleased. But he had always kept the key, and now it enabled him to enter the house silently by the front door.

The dog barked from the back of the house as he pushed open the door. He knew the house was empty, and that Gorochenko had left the dog. Vorontsyev laughed - of course he had left the dog. He intended coming back - the next day, or the day after that.

He pushed open the kitchen door, and the big, overweight bundle of red fur was planted against his chest, the pink tongue slobbering for his face. He lowered his head and let himself be licked, ruffling the fur, bunching it in his hands as memory assailed him, making the small incident perilous with allusion.

'Down, boy,' he said softly, pushing the dog away. The great paws left his chest, and the dog ambled beneath the kitchen table, curling in its huge basket which was still too small. Brown eyes stared up at him, tongue lolling out, breaths wheezing. It was always hard to realise the dog was old.

Like Gorochenko.

He looked at the sink-unit. A cup filled with water, a single saucer and plate. A slight smell of the breakfast that had been cooked remained. Gorochenko was not long gone, and he had left in no particular hurry.

Swiftly, after closing the kitchen door behind him, he searched the rest of the house. He did not go near the room he had once occupied himself, nor the room that had confined his adoptive mother in the months before her death. It was evident that no one else had yet searched the place, and he became anxious, having frequently to shrug off the slow-motion that memory imposed, to complete the task before he was surprised.

He found that the gun was missing from the drawer of the escritoire. And that it was nowhere else in the house. It was a realisation that filled him with foreboding. He was sustained by a certainty that he would find Gorochenko, sometime that day or night, and to know the old man had a gun depressed, worried him. Apart from the gun, there was little missing. The dog had been given only one meal, and he had already guzzled half of it.

It was certain, then. Twenty-four hours. No more than that. The old man had perhaps one fresh shirt, his shaving tackle, his heavy overcoat, galoshes. All in the small bag he had had since the war. The bag had belonged to Kyril Vorontsyev. He had been told that the first time he had asked Gorochenko why such an important man used such a shabby old bag. A soldier's luggage, had been the unsmiling reply.

Talismans to ward him off - the old bag, the old dog - ?

He had not asked himself what he would do when he and Gorochenko came face to face - had not asked on the plane, that sleepless hour, nor as he showed his papers at Cheremetievo, his palms tacky and his forehead beating as he waited for them to arrest him. But he had been too quick, just a little too quick, and the word to bring him in had not then been issued, he realised.

What would he do? The answer, of course, was simple. Why else was he on his own, the decision to dump Folley at the Consulate and catch the first plane to Moscow already made before he had consciously analysed the matter ? He wanted to find Gorochenko by himself. Stupid knight-in-shining-armour idea. No - an idea prompted by the weight of the past on him, which he could not ignore or overcome. If he could find Gorochenko, he could stop the coup - that would be his duty.

Find Gorochenko. Find, like an order to the dog. Find, but not kill Gorochenko must not be put on trial, and executed, no matter that he had used Natalia against him, ordered Ossipov to kill him; ordered the deaths of Ilya and Maxim. Tried to kill him in the dacha, with the booby-trapped corpse. He must not be caught The telephone, suddenly ringing next to him as he stood indecisively in the study, caused him to jump. His hand came away from the blotter on the desk as if it were electrified. With simple reflex, before his thoughts could interfere, he picked it up.

'Yes ?'

he asked, caution catching in his throat like phlegm.

'Is that the Gorochenko house? Who is that speaking?' Masked, official tones.

He slammed down the telephone. He glanced round the study once, realising that it oppressed him with a weight of obligation. He moved to the door, and noticed for the first time the portrait of his father, dressed in uniform, a photograph taken in the last year of the war, perhaps just after the patriotic army had entered Germany. It was the picture of his father he had liked best as a child - slim, youthful, laughing, a tank and its crew behind him. The picture was surrounded, carefully, by black crepe.

Which made Vorontsyev run cold for a reason he could not understand. His father - the anniversary of his death had been six months before. He touched the black crepe gingerly, as if he half-expected a seaweed sliminess, then shook his head.

He ignored the dog in the kitchen, and let himself out of the house. There were a few parked cars, but none of them suspiciously occupied. He closed the gate behind him, and heard the faint barking of the dog from the kitchen. Its tone seemed plaintive. He shuddered as if cold and hurried away from the house where he had once lived.

Aubrey was, reluctantly, becoming adept at conversation with Khamovkhin. Now that the Soviet First Secretary was no more than a problem in security, he had lost a great deal of his interest in the Snow Falcon operation, as he still termed it - which meant he should have been bored. The fact that he was not was yet another indication that he was getting old.

They were walking on one of the terraces of the Lahtilinna, overlooking the slaty-grey expanse of the lake. The sky was a pale blue, with little cloud, a spring day without the temperature to sustain the illusion. Buckholz was on one side of the Russian leader, Aubrey on the other. They walked with the slow pace of statesmen or pensioners.

Khamovkhin was relieved, it was evident - and confident in Andropov's security machine. Aubrey thought it the over-confidence of a man driving a car that has never broken down before. The knocking in the engine - not possibly something wrong, the car never goes wrong. Any fear he had was a personal one, that assailed him at moments, for his own safety. Which was smaller, more agreeable, than the emotions aroused by the potential cataclysm the Soviet Leader now considered impossible.

'I do think you should spend only the minimum of time out of doors,' Aubrey said stiffly, and disliked the old-maid manner of his solicitation.

Khamovkhin's eyes sparkled. 'Your concern for me is very touching, Mr Aubrey.' He enjoyed the pursing of Aubrey's lips. 'You have much of the manner of our own security service.' Aubrey's face went suddenly like a chalky mask, and Khamovkhin realised that his joke had touched some secret nerve of loyalty or righteousness in the small old man beside him.

They came to the end of the terrace walk. Buckholz placed one foot up on the low wall, leaned an elbow on his knee.

'Tell me about this Gorochenko, Mr First Secretary. Our files seem to be as bare-assed as yours as far as he's concerned.'

'Perfect for the role of leader of a military take-over,' Khamovkhin observed, rubbing his mittened hands together, and nodding. 'Yes - war hero, immensely loyal throughout the Stalin period - or so it appeared to Beria and Stalin. You had to be loyal to survive the periodic - changes ? - in the Politburo in those days. And even more loyal to survive in the Army. But he did it. I suppose that was cleverness.' Khamovkhin was speaking to both, and neither, of them now. He stared out over the lake, but observed an internal landscape. Then anger suffused his face, colouring it despite the cold. 'I should have had him watched more closely!' It was the anger of a man outwitted by a sharper mind. 'He played the semi-senile old goat too well!'

Aubrey smiled. 'So it would seem. However, you appear very confident, sir, that his arrest is imminent.'

'Yes - he won't get away.'

'And we have nothing to worry about -?'

Khamovkhin looked at him sharply, as if the Englishman had unsuspected knowledge that Moscow Garrison was off the air and primed to begin the coup. He could not know that.

'No, we have not. Chairman Andropov will order the Chief of the General Staff and the Defence Minister to begin the stand-down of border units this afternoon. You will have confirmation as soon as it has been done.'

'As soon as our satellites can see it happening,' Buckholz commented drily.

'As you say,' Khamovkhin observed frostily, aware that the honours were now firmly with the two foreigners.

'Unless you are killed,' Aubrey said. 'If that happens, then everything could escalate again -' He raised his hands, as if to imitate some explosion. 'I think, for that reason alone, we should not prolong our exercise further. Shall we go inside ?'

'Very well'

Galakhov lay on the narrow bunk, smoking a cigarette. On the bedside table was a plate with a few crumbs and a smear of grease. It had been easy to collect a late breakfast from the kitchens and bring it to one of the unoccupied security team bedrooms in the east wing of the Lahtiliana. He had not quite possessed the bravado to occupy the room he had been given as Ozeroff, but it was on the same floor and corridor. The Finns doing the cooking had taken little notice of him, nor had the few off-duty Englishmen and Americans still eating. It was unlikely that anyone would disturb him before nightfall, when he could act as if on-duty again.

It was ridiculous, and ridiculously simple. Everyone assumed he should be there. As with Ozeroff, drafting in a security team whose members were strangers to each other had a fatal flaw -who could tell who should not be there ? He had dyed his hair so that it was lighter in colour, combed it another way - he had been wearing the hood of his parka all his duty-spell anyway - slipped in contact lenses that changed his eye colour, padded his cheeks slightly, and made sure that he walked with much more of a shuffle. He was certain that, in anything but the best light, he could walk past someone holding his picture -that passport picture they had issued, the one from his Heathrow disguise - and not be recognised.

He blew a contemptuous funnel of smoke towards the high, cream-painted ceiling. If they searched, he would be asleep, or reading. He was one of them, and they opened the door of the bedside cabinet. He took out a sketch plan made from his own observations of the castle, and a large-scale map of the surroundings of the Lahtilinna. The problem of making his escape had begun to concern him in an immediate, pressing way, so that when he thought of it, as he seemed to do with increasing frequency, his palms seemed to grow damp, his whole body just that infinitesimal amount of his control.

He began to recite to himself, using the sketch-plan, the litany of moves that would end with the assassination of Khamovkhin.