'Anywhere here,' I told Frome and he pulled up on the churned surface of a truck exit to minimize wheelspin later.
I got a tyre-lever out of the boot and dropped it onto the passenger's seat and stood for a moment watching the string of lights to the south. It was near enough to show movement now: the transports had met the east-west road and were turning towards the park.
'Is it a go?' Frome asked me.
'Yes. Stand off somewhere outside the park. If I need you later I'll use the walkie.'
I got down onto the snow and slid under the Mercedes, feeling for hand-holds good enough to use with gloves on, staying aft of the gearbox and to the driver's side of the propeller shaft away from the exhaust silencer, finding a cross-member with enough space above it for my hands and swinging my feet up, getting one of them lodged above the chassis and kicking with the other one until my boot found purchase on the back-axle casing.
Light began flooding the road to the west, and I could hear the rumbling of the military column, the faint ringing of the snow-chains on the smaller vehicles, the drumming of diesels. My right foot had slipped off the rounded axle casing and I shifted backwards, swinging my boot up again, but everything was blacking out and the sound of the transports died to silence, and in the silence I heard Frome's voice, a long way off.
'You all right?'
My shoulders were on the snow and the nape of my neck was freezing, but I couldn't move: the intention was there but the muscles were numbed. The light from the leading vehicle of the column was creeping under the Mercedes.
'You all right, are you?"
Said yes, but it didn't make any sound.
Cold against the neck, freezing cold, and my left foot coming away from the chassis and dropping onto the snow. The light crept, brighter now.
We needed to be inside the mansion over there. That was the objective for the mission, for Meridian: to get the information that was in the generals' heads, send it to London. But I was lying on the ground with the awareness floating insubstantially, the awareness of the creeping light and the rumbling of heavy vehicles and the man's voice.
'You got a problem?'
I sensed him near me, Frome, caught a glimpse of his face as he peered under the car, felt the known world coming back into focus, the strength moving into the muscles, my fingers tightening inside the heavy gloves, the lungs expanding against the ribcage.
'Look, we're leaving it too — '
'Minute,' I said. 'Give me a minute.' Reached for the cross-member and got a grip on it with one hand, both hands, the headlights flooding the snow and the drumming of the diesels filling the night as I got my left boot lodged again and kicked upwards, finding the rear axle, shouting to Frome, 'Get going.'
His face vanished and the door of the car slammed above me and the engine gunned up and the rear chains cut into the snow as the wheels span and then got a grip and the tension came into my hands and I locked my fingers and closed my eyes, we stay like this, felt a drop of oil against my face as Frome made the turn through the gates of the park, we stay exactly like this with the fingers locked, this is all we have to do, someone shouting somewhere, perhaps a guard at the gates, is he armed and do we wait for a shot, no, we stay like this and think of nothing else, nothing at all, the gears banging as the military column slowed outside the park, the transmission shunting, the light brightening again as the leading vehicle turned, then dimming out as Frome took the Mercedes in a curve alongside the building, we stay like this until the time is right and he signals, exactly like this, the clinking of the Mercedes' snow-chains echoing from a wall now, from stone or brickwork, my body swinging as the car straightened and I hung on, if it doesn't look as if I've got a reasonable hope of making it, don't do it at all, just back off and get clear, the tension in the fingers burning now and my shoulders brushing the snow and the light of the convoy spreading again and then going out as the double knock from the tyre-lever sounded against the floorboards above my head and I let go and dropped.
Smell of furniture polish, leather, ancient fabric, wood smoke.
The first three doors I'd tried had been locked; the fourth had taken me into a boiler room, and this short passage had led from it to the huge rotunda.
Two galleries circled it on the first and second floors, the higher one set back from the lower by its own width, their beams and pilasters deep red mahogany. The windows of the rotunda were mullioned, its doors gilded like the ornate balustrades of the galleries above. The lower walls were silk-panelled, and boxed silk canopies overhung the doors. Logs burned in a huge open hearth.
In the centre of the rotunda, at a ring of tables below three brilliant crystal chandeliers, sat a group of Chinese military officers, most of them wearing the epaulettes of high rank, and when the main doors of the building were banged open they got to their feet. As the two Russian generals came down the steps with their aides and bodyguards, a Chinese officer, grey-haired and with a general's flashes on his lapels, left the group at the tables and went to greet the Russians, who returned his salute. An interpreter from each party came forward and stood waiting.
Slamming of metal doors and thudding of boots as the rearguard of the generals' convoy halted outside. Shouts: orders to deploy.
In the centre of the rotunda, introductions were being managed with the aid of the interpreters: much formality, punctilious bows. I recognized the aides and the bodyguards who had been with the generals on board the Rossiya.
I was aware of the short passage behind me, the one that had led me here. I was aware of the shadows above the two galleries that circled the dome. I listened for sounds, for soft, alien sounds, alien to the voices of the international delegates in the centre, the clicking of boots and the scrape of chairs, for sounds nearer than that, closer to where I watched.
Because he was here in the building too, the rogue agent.
Talyzin — was that his name?
There was a man in the Ministry of Defence called Talyzin, Ferris had told me. From raw intelligence data going into London, he could be your rogue agent.
The SAAB 504 had been outside, buried among the trees, when I'd rounded the building trying the doors. I had looked for it, or I wouldn't have noticed it. It had arrived here only minutes before I did, it must have. The agent hadn't been waiting there on the hill road to launch an attack on the generals. He hadn't been waiting to follow them here — or wherever they might have gone. All he'd wanted to know was when they would leave the camp, and the moment he'd seen the transports gathering and the figures of the two generals framed in the field-glasses he had left the hill road and driven here first, ahead of them.
He'd known that when they left the camp they'd be coming here.
And so I was aware of the passage behind me, and listened for alien sounds.
'… Marshal Jia Chongwu… Major-general Yang Zhen… Lieutenant-general Zou Xinxiong…'
More introductions: salutes, bows and handshakes, no smiles — the atmosphere was heavy with significance. These people weren't gathered here to exchange courtesies; they were here to work.
'Colonel Rui Zhong… Colonel Wang Yongchang…'
Their voices carried clearly under the immense dome of the rotunda, and the scraping of chairs as they sat down would have pushed the needle of an audiometer into the high sector. I would have to listen very carefully if I were to pickup any sounds the rogue agent might make.