'Suite twenty-nine,' Legge told me as we pulled up outside the Hotel Moskva International. 'You're checked in as Dmitri Berinov. Here's the key. I'm going to park the car, then I'll see you there – three knocks, one long, two short, before I ring the bell.'

I got out and went up the soaked strip of red carpet they'd laid across the snow under the canopy. The two escort vehicles had peeled off when we'd pulled away from the church: they'd been there to protect the rendezvous, nothing else. From now on I'd be working solo.

It didn't mean, I thought as I went through the revolving door, that Croder had checked me in personally under Dmitri Berinov; it was simply the mission code-name for the executive, applicable to anyone he could get. He'd set things up for Balalaika as a certainty as soon as he'd left 10 Downing Street, trusting in whatever pagan gods he granted the privilege of his prayers.

People in the lobby as I went through to the staircase: a group of Japanese entrepreneurs in dark silk suits with leather briefcases; three women in sable coats and hats, one of them wearing too much Chanel No. 5; a Russian in from St Petersburg, according to the label on the pigskin suitcase that was just being swung onto the porter's trolly; two hotel security men standing near the elevators. The only character here I didn't care for was the Russian sitting in one of the red plush chairs on the far side from the registration desk with a copy of Pravda open in front of him. I put him down as a government security peep. I watched his blurred reflection on the pink marble wall as I reached the stairs but he didn't turn his head – not that he had any reason to: I was a total stranger here and Legge's security had been perfectly sound since I'd met him at the airport. But later there could be peeps on the watch for me and I would take more notice.