There wasn't any way out. If I tried running they'd head me off and if I stayed where I was they'd question me: what have you done to your face? Why is your coat torn like this? Were you in an accident?
'The snow is already thick, in Abramtsevo. The chickens can hardly find the grain.' She moved forward with her son.
There was no way out but I had a choice. Schrenk carried a capsule, Croder had said. He would have saved us an immense amount of trouble if he had used it. The small red box was in a pocket on the inside of my waistband and in it was the capsule, cushioned in Silica-Gel desiccant. They might not search me immediately, not for anything small; but they'd see me if I tried to reach it and in any case they'd make a detailed search as soon as we got to Lubyanka and that wasn't far from here, four minutes in a police car.
It depended on how much he'd told them. Ignatov. He didn't know who I was. He was a total stranger and he hadn't looked at me once in the meeting hall or when I'd followed him to his car, not once. But he'd told them to pick me up.
We moved forward again and the woman's son took his camera across to the locker room and came back. The police guards were watching us closely now, their caps jutting and their bone-white faces reflecting the snow.
Natalya? She might have told Ignatov, he said that if Helmut was in Moscow there were certain friends who'd try to get him out of prison. Natalya, possibly. I didn't think so; she hadn't enough guile. Who else, if not Natalya? There was no one who knew me.
'Keep close in line.' Their eyes moved over our faces.
We shuffled forward again and climbed the steps between the guards of honour, going inside. It was quiet now except for the movement of feet across the wooden platform. People had stopped talking, and the men were taking off their hats. Guards with fixed bayonets stood watching us as we climbed the steps to the tomb.
It would depend on what Ignatov had told them. If he'd said I was a dissident trying to provoke others last night in the Star Cafe, a dissident with certain friends who would try getting Schrenk out of prison, I could manage what they would do to me. But if the inconceivable had happened and Ignatov had told them I was an agent from London then they'd take me through the full routine as they'd taken Schrenk, and I didn't know for certain if I could stand up to it as he'd managed to do, because I wasn't fresh in the field and the tensions of the last operation were still flickering in the nerves. I could break and if I broke I could blow London, the whole of what I knew.
'There…' said the woman in front of me, and leaned forward in her black shawls to gaze at the bright glass coffin with the exhibit inside it, either the preserved body or an effigy, it was impossible to tell. She began weeping quietly, but the line wouldn't stop for anyone and I had to nudge her, as the man behind me was nudging me. We went down the steps and made for the huge rectangle of the doorway, passing between the guards and reaching daylight. The snow fell softly over the square and over the dark moving figures, bringing its silence to the scene. I stayed with a group, talking to the woman and her son; she was still weeping quietly but he took no notice. The nearest policemen were fifty yards away; I could hear their voices under the dark sky.
'When do you expect to get your licence,' I asked Viktorovich, 'in sewage engineering?' I steered the two of them to the left, towards the history museum, keeping my head down to talk to the boy and holding the paper wad against the wound with my hand covering most of it, because the blood must have soaked through by this time.
'When they give it to me,' the boy said. 'I've passed my exams. It's a question of time.' He looked around him at the huge museum and the gilded domes. 'One day I'm going to live here, you know that? But you need a visa, and you can't get a visa without a job here, and you can't get a job here without a visa.' He kicked at the snow, thrusting his bare knuckly hands into his pockets.
The woman stopped weeping and gave a sigh, fumbling among her shawls for a handkerchief. 'It was beautiful,' she said, 'beautiful.'
I held her arm, keeping her in a straight line for the museum through the gap between the two policemen. I watched the ground.
'Look at this snow,' the boy said. 'I forgot to cover the tractor before we left this morning.'
The policeman on the left was questioning someone: I could hear his voice. It was the other one, on the right, who came suddenly across to us, the leather of his new boots creaking.
'You,' he said. 'Papers.'
8: VADER
Within a minute there were five or six of them round me, forming a circle.
'His face,' they kept telling each other. The first one had raised his arm and held it like that until a captain came up, the heels of his polished black boots clinking on the hard surface: I think they were iron-capped.
'His face, Captain,' the first one said.
'What have you done to your face?' The captain pulled my hand away and stared at the wound.
'I fell against some railings outside my apartment.'
'When?' His breath steamed against my face.
'An hour ago, when — '
'An hour ago. Did you have an accident?'
'Yes, I slipped on the snow — '
'Did you have an accident in your car?'
Others came up. Behind them I caught a glimpse of the woman in the shawls, staring at me with her bright eyes, shocked.
'When did he have the accident?' It was another captain.
'He's lying.'
'How did he tear his coat?'
'Papers. Show me your papers.'
I could feel blood trickling on my chin: the wound had opened when the captain had pulled my hand away.
'Kapista Kirov. That tells us nothing.' They came closer, gathering round like boys who'd found an injured animal. More of them came, and one of them said: 'He is the man I saw running away from the car.'
'Are you sure?'
'I was there! Of course I'm sure.'
They all started talking at once.
Capsule.
'Take him along. Four of you.'
'March!'
People stood perfectly still in the falling snow, watching us as we walked past them towards the roadway. Three Black Ravens had already pulled up alongside the kerb; their engines were still running. The rear doors of the nearest one swung open with a bang and I got to it when they hustled me inside: it was in my hand by the time I sat down on the padded bench.
The rear doors slammed and the steel bar was dropped across outside. Four of them sat with me, watching me but not talking.
'I don't understand,' I told the captain. 'I fell against some railings. You're making a mistake.'
'Perhaps.'
I went on talking to him, explaining that I wasn't the man they wanted. He shrugged at intervals. The box was in my hand but I hadn't decided yet. I couldn't get the capsule out while I was sitting here: they were watching me the whole time.
Dzerzhinsky Square, through the barred windows, and the Children's World department store. Then, just opposite, Lubyanka.
I had no information. The choice was simply heads or tails, black or white. Ignatov had known I was an agent and had told them so, or he hadn't. If he had known, and had told them, then I risked betraying London when they brought the pressure on and my system began overloading. If I wanted to avoid that risk, I would have to take the capsule within the next few seconds, and blow the fuse.