He pushed Khamovkhin down the first step, and the men fell back in front of them. Turn at the stairs, and the long corridor down which he had sprinted - that might have been the moment when the mental pulse had outrun him - and the security men, silly and innocuous, despite the guns, in their pyjamas and dressing-gowns, or coats thrown on over pyjamas. One in his vest and pants, even less dangerous. Buckholz was two paces behind him, and he did not know where Aubrey was. Not that it mattered. Every face he passed was distraught, angry, frustrated. He had them beaten, and he was going to make it.

A moment of shame - an image of Kutuzov, looking in disapproval, as he had done when ordering the death of Vrubel. But they had Kutuzov, and it was all over, and he had been stupid and found himself trapped, and there was no other way he could act - he couldn't squeeze the trigger and kill Khamovkhin, because he could feel the bullets of their reply he could feel his skin crawling and wincing with the impact of their bullets. The imperative of survival had established itself like a disease.

Stairs again, then the corridor to the hall - everything done in silence, until Buckholz said, 'I have to have a coat, man.'

They stopped, like toy men whose mechanism has run down. Galakhov half-turned, and snapped, 'Someone give him a coat.' Then he pushed Khamovkhin on, through the kitchen, out into the cold night. As if the other men were party-givers seeing off last guests, they came no further than the door. Their footsteps were loud after all the silence, and their breathing suddenly visible hi the moonlight - breathing had been almost the only sound they had heard all the way from Khamovkhin's bedroom. Galakhov let Buckholz walk ahead, so that his gun covered both of them, until they came to the garages.

'Something powerful,' Galakhov said as Buckholz dragged open the doors. He peered into the darkness. Buckholz switched on the lights, and Galakhov flinched as if a searchlight had suddenly been turned on him.

What was he doing here ? Where were they going ? He suddenly wanted to call back at Aubrey that they must supply an aircraft, in Helsinki - where was he to go ? Anywhere - literally anywhere, with such a passport He quailed inwardly. Nowhere, nowhere. The moment he let Khamovkhin from his grasp, he was dead. He would have to spend the rest of his life with a rifle against the Soviet leader's spine if he wanted to stay alive. Anywhere - New York, London, Moscow, Cairo, Tunis, Rome, Rio - somewhere, a man with a gun would remove him, as soon as there was sufficient daylight between himself and the Soviet leader -Siamese twins.

'Get in - get in.'

Buckholz seemed surprised at the tone of his voice, then smiled grimly in satisfaction. 'Beginning to understand, uh, kid?'

'Get in, get in!' The gun waved in Buckholz's direction.

'OK. You're the boss.' The irony was a slap across the face.

Galakhov pushed Khamovkhin before him into the rear seat, made him slide across, got in himself. Buckholz turned round.

'Where to, bud?' He was almost laughing!

'North - follow the lake, north!' Galakhov tried to snarl, but the words came out as the utterance of someone without direction. Buckholz turned away, and switched on the ignition.

The guide opened the door, then stood aside. Gorochenko was seated at a rough table, his overcoat and fur hat on, his hands gloved. He was smiling in welcome. Vorontsyev lurched into the room, dizzy with weariness, and the old man rose anxiously from the chair, a spasm of pain on his strong face. The guide caught him, lowered Vorontsyev into another hard chair. Then he saw Gorochenko shake his head, and the door closed, leaving them alone in the room with its blacked-out window and small, shadowy lamp.

The silence seemed interminable. Vorontsyev stared at the edge of the rough table, feeling the aching in his left leg dying to discomfort. He did not move the leg. His sock was stiff with dried blood. All the time, he sensed Gorochenko studying him.

Then the old man said, 'You're hurt, boy. Do you want it looked at ?' Vorontsyev waved his hand on the table in a small, impatient gesture. Then he looked up, his eyes burning.

'You betrayed me!' It was intended to recriminate, to express hatred. Instead, uncontrollably, it was a wail of anguish, even though he did little more than whisper.

'I never did that,' Gorochenko replied.

'Natalia - Ossipov in Khabarovsk - the dead man wired with a bomb - Vassiliev on the plane - each time you were trying to kill me!' Vorontsyev, in the presence of the old man for minutes now, was unable to react in any other way. He realised that he did not know, any longer, why he was there, what imperatives had driven him to this meeting. Perhaps only some sense of dramatic climax. He had no policeman's motives left to voice.

'I - ordered none of those, Alexei.' There was little softness in the voice, no apology. Yet there was a desire to be judged innocent. Tour wife is a whore, I agree I used her.' The judgement was almost prim rather than patriarchal. Vorontsyev ground his teeth together. 'She was intended to watch you, and report to me. I - blackmailed her . . .' The sense of authority that was natural to him was clear in the neutrality with which he confided his actions. 'I would ruin her career, even have her arrested if she did not go with you, and report to me, via Ossipov. It was Ossipov who used her.'

'No, it was you. And you who killed Ilya and Maxim. They are dead.' The scorn fell dully in the room, as if something in its cramped, ill-lit confinement deadened sound. Vorontsyev had the unnerving sense that, whatever had driven him here, whatever humanity he had brought, it had been stilled in him. They were two almost disembodied voices discussing distant matters.

'Yes, they are dead. But - you sent them to Finland Station. What they witnessed left my - colleagues, no alternative.' A sudden spurt of emotion, violent as the cutting of an artery. 'They were KGB! What do you think they would have done to me if their report had been made ?'

The contempt now evident in the voice was like a hand which had been shading the light, suddenly taken away. It stung Vorontsyev, but before he could respond, the room's deadness seemed to settle on him once more. He said, almost sullenly, 'They were just pawns in your game. Of no value. Like Vrubel.'

'No. But Vrubel wanted to get rid of you. He could not believe he was safe from a jealous husband in SID . . .' A flicker of hard amusement on the lips, then: 'He killed the substitute - an actor, by the way - and tried to kill you.'

Implacability. Vorontsyev had seen it before, but confined by the minor problems of a parent's unheeded authority. Now his father disposed of lives much as he might have upbraided him for poor marks at school.

'Ingratiating act - father,' Vorontsyev observed, and was pleased as the old man's face winced as from the taste of lemons, hollow-cheeked suddenly. 'I'm only grateful.'

'Only natural in a son,' Gorochenko remarked coldly. Then something in his eyes seemed to decline, a light or a fire. He said, seeming ill at ease with a softer voice, 'I always knew that you would find me. If anyone were to do it, it would be you.'

'You had me transferred to SID - what did you expect ?'

'Don't be ungracious, boy. I agree, however. I created my own Nemesis when I did that.' The powerful shoulders sloped forward, the head stretching to him in emphasis. 'I did it to protect you.'

'Protect me ? How ?' The room seemed to have lightened as a force on his frame and voice. Or perhaps it was only that Mihail Pyotravich was less oppressive as a presence.

'The safest place in this police-ridden state of ours is - in the police. Especially in the SID. How else could I be certain that you would never have to suffer ?'

'Why ? What would I have suffered ?'

A pain seemed to glance across Gorochenko's face, and he said, 'It does not matter. I wanted to protect you, and that is the way I chose to do it.'

'Why did you do all the other things?' Vorontsyev asked, responding to some contact re-established between them. 'Why ? You, of all people!'

It was as if Gorochenko could no longer control himself. Even muscular control of his features seemed to lapse, and his mouth worked silently. One side of his face, as if he had suffered a stroke, was still, but there was a tic near the right eye. His strong, veined hands curled and uncurled on the table. When he spoke it was in a sudden shout like an exhalation of all the rage of his life.

'Me! Why me ? Boy, you are a cretin, an imbecile! Who else would it be but me ?' He got up, as if obeying a summons, and paced back and forth on his side of the table. 'How many times did I bring you here - how many times ? Didn't you listen to anything I said ?'

He was a pedagogue, and Vorontsyev had shrunk in his own perspective. He had seen imitations, pale substitutes, for this anger before in Gorochenko. He had never been patient with weakness, with intellectual failure, '1917! It was all for nothing! Stalin was something from the Middle Ages, with a savage dog he let off a chain. Beria. Even now I can smell that man and what he did; like a stench in my nose! Do you know that, eh ? A stench! Everything came to nothing. One prison, from one end of the Soviet Union to the other. A bloody, dark, infested prison!'

He paused. Vorontsyev saw him venting the rage he had never expressed, not as wildly. All the years of silence, of compromise, of acceptance, had burst like a boil.

'And I'm a policeman!' Vorontsyev said. 'You made me belong to something you hated so much. Why ?'

Gorochenko was calmer, passing from fire to ice in a moment, it seemed.

'I have explained that to you already. Didn't you understand ? I never sought political sophistication in you, Alexei. But I never expected stupidity.' The tone was hard-edged, gleaming like a blade. The very exercise of contempt seemed to calm Gorochenko. An anodyne drawn from his own superiority. Vorontsyev saw the cold, aloof ego of the man, and he understood that he had always feared Gorochenko in some way. Perhaps this was why. Some secret sense of the qualities in him that had made him into Kutuzov. 'Never mind. It doesn't matter - not that part. But, you wanted to start a war I' 'I agree,' Gorochenko said frostily.

'Right was on your side, of course ?'

'Naturally.' Vorontsyev searched the face as if seeking some other, deeper confirmation. As if his gaze was a blow, he saw the face crumple into softer outlines. The deep lines at the side of the mouth, habitually cast in an ironic frame, became shallower.

'Just listen to me, Alexei.' His hands were flat on the table, as if in declaration. 'I - became Kutuzov. All the years I worked for it, using my standing with the Army, with old friends who had risen high - I knew what the price would be.' Again the rasp of certainty. 'And I was prepared to pay the price of a change of leadership. I knew that the Army wanted, needed, a limited war in Europe. Scandinavia was their prize for assisting me.'

'And it would end there?'

Gorochenko shook his head.

'Of course not! Nor should it. Stalin is the one who decided the revolution should end at the borders of Russia!' Again the contempt for political ignorance or incertitude.

'How can I be here, debating with you ?'

'Because you have to know why I am the man you have searched for, why I have done the things I have done.'

'Is that all?'