"Thanks," I said.
"But I'll come in front."
I settled in the passenger seat and asked, "What's your name?"
"Sergei."
"You speak English?"
"Some." He gave a deprecating grin.
"City centre?"
"No. I want to go to Balashika."
"Balashika!" He sounded amazed.
"Balashika first. Then city centre. Then back to Balashika.
How much will all that cost?"
"Dollars?"
I nodded. As he pulled out on to the highway, I could see his mind ticking up figures.
"One hundred fifty."
"I'll give you two hundred."
"Khorosho!"
He drove fast but well, not taking risks, but watching all the time for openings in the traffic, and taking short-cuts to avoid the blocks at major intersections. When I praised his navigation, he answered in quite fluent English. We chit-chatted about this and that, and when I asked how old he was, he suddenly, with a flourish and a big grin, whipped off his cap to reveal that he was almost completely bald.
"Feefty!" he exclaimed. I refrained from saying that without his hat he bore a strong resemblance to Lenin, but I felt that if I had, he wouldn't have given a damn.
He took the outer ring-road, round the north perimeter of the city. Out in the country there seemed to be more snow, and although the main road was clear, the ground was uniformly white.
As we approached Balashika I felt my anxiety building. I hadn't quite worked out how I was going to handle my re-entry into the camp. The time was 6:30 p.m." and the chances were that the team would be back indoors for the night.
Taxis weren't allowed inside the barracks, so I asked Sergei to wait outside the gate. Luckily the guy on the baffler recognised me, and even greeted me cheekily as Stank Old Man.
I ran up the steps of the barrack block in some trepidation, but again I was in luck. The guys had eaten supper early and gone out again to run a night exercise. Only the two scalies were in residence. I had a word with them, and said I'd be back later.
Then it was just a matter of collecting basic essentials from the caving kit: wire ladder, head-torch and bolt cutters, plus a towel, sweater and spare padlocks from my own locker.
In fifteen minutes we were heading back into town, down the all-too-familiar Shosse Entusiastov, past the scene of the fatal ambush. As we went by, I twisted to my left in an attempt to pinpoint the spot. Yes there was the wooden hut the Mafia had used as a decoy GAl station.
Going against the flow of traffic, we reached the centre of Moscow in thirty-five minutes. Sergei must have been curious about what I was doing, but he had the sense or the good manners not to enquire. I asked him to head for Sofleskaya Quay, and got him to drop me a hundred metres short of the churchyard gateway, at a point where an alleyway ran back between two houses.
"Half an hour, back here," I said.
"Is good." He peered at his watch.
"Now seven-thirty. Back eight o'clock?"
"Tochno. See you then."
I was confident he'd return, because so far I'd paid him nothing, and I liked him the more for not having demanded the first instalment of his fee at half-time.
I walked a few steps down the alleyway and waited till I heard the car move off. Then I came back on to the embankment and hurried to the gateway.
Now, early in the evening, lights were on all over the convent building. Scarcely had I entered the yard when two women came walking towards me; but they passed without giving me a look, and a couple of seconds later I was safe in the pitch blackness of the old stable.
The bolt-cutters gave me sickening thoughts of Toad, but they did their work in a trice. I lifted the cover of the shaft, secured the top wires of the caving ladder round the hinges, and threw the rest of it down. Because of the wires, I couldn't close the cover while I was underground, but that was a risk I had to take.
Down in the tunnel the smell was exactly as I remembered it: damp, slime, decay. Of course I was scared but in my experience the best way to hold fear at bay is to keep moving, so I hurried forward towards the river, anxious to discover if the water level was up or down. It was up. It was within three or four inches of the arched roof. Jesus! I should have brought a mask and dry-suit.
Too late now. At the top of the slope I stripped off my clothes and left them in a heap on top of my shoes. Then, with the headlamp back on and the bolt-cutters in my right hand, I waded into the black flood.
The water was cold as ice. I gasped as it reached my crotch, but strode forward hard in an attempt to keep my blood moving.
Quickly my whole body became submersed. I made paddling movements with my hands to speed my progress. Soon I was up to my neck, then up to my chin. Down came the roof, down, down. I reached the point at which, with the top of my head touching the bricks, my mouth was under water and my nose just entering it. From now on the only way I could breathe was by tilting my head back and turning my face upwards in the narrow airspace. To do that I had to push the headlamp on to the back of my head so that it didn't foul the roof.
I took a deep breath, ducked under and drove forward, five steps, ten. Desperate for oxygen, I came up in that peculiar attitude, hit the roof with the headlamp, pushed it back, gasped in a breath and inadvertently got half a mouthful of filthy liquid.
When I choked explosively, all the grot flew upwards and came back down in my face. The setback left me gasping. For a few seconds I fought panic. Keep still! I told myself. Get yourself together.
With my mouth shut, I took in some air through my nose.
Then to my dismay I realised that in going for the headlamp I'd dropped the shears. I felt around with my bare feet. No contact.
Had I moved forward a short distance while struggling for air? I shuffled back a few inches and felt around again. Still nothing.
The cold was getting to me. I could feel my legs starting to go numb. If you piss about here any longer, you're going to get cramp and bloody drown yourself, I thought. Leave the damned things. You can manage without them.
I waded on. Then, after one more stop for air, the water level began to drop. My head came clear: once again I could walk and breathe normally.
I came out of the flood shuddering, adjusted the lamp with shaking hands, and ran naked the last few yards to the site.
Everything was as we'd left it. Scrabbling with chilled fingers, I dug away some of the spoil under which we'd buried Apple, until I came to the co-ax cables leading down from the SCR. I remembered how carefully Toad had connected them up, tightening nuts with his special spanners. Now I took hold of one in both hands and gave a big wrench. The cable held. I cleared more of it, right down to its junction with the black case, and heaved again, so hard that the whole device shifted, and pieces of spoil tumbled down the front of the heap.
Again I was on the verge of panic. Nothing on earth would persuade me to go back and search for the bolt-cutters again.
One last effort: a colossal jerk, and away the cable came, so suddenly that I hurtled back into the far wall of the tunnel, grazing my right shoulder.
I stood shaking, more from fright now than from cold. At least the effort of struggling with the cable had warmed me up.
"Right, you fucker," I said out loud to the bomb.
"That's you knackered."
Into the water again. This time the same breathing technique got me through without swallowing any sludge. By sod's law, I expected to tread on the bolt-cutters, now that I no longer needed them, but I missed them again. Back at my clothes, I looked at my watch and found I had ten minutes to make the rendezvous. I towelled off furiously, got dressed, stuffed the sodden towel into my day-sack and hauled myself up the ladder, pausing with my head out the top of the shaft to make sure that everything was clear. Finally I slipped two new padlocks into position, wrapped the old ones in the towel, and crept out of the courtyard into the street.