I watched him go along to the Land-Rover through the flurries of snow and talk to the driver. He'd been checking the environment while he was picking his way through the frozen snow with his back to me: he'd stumbled a couple of times, hadn't been watching the ground, even though his head was down. Then he came back and passed the Audi and in the outside mirror I watched him talking to the driver of the rear escort vehicle. There was good street-craft in his movements and I put him down as someone more important than a local contact or sleeper or agent-in-place, possibly the chief of a major Bureau support group: Moscow was still a major field.

When he came back to the Audi he put his head in the open window and nodded. 'We'll be out here. We shan't move.' He looked at his watch. 'Rendezvous time was for 18:00. Couple of minutes to go, but your contact's already arrived.'

I got out of the car. 'Code-name? Code-intro?' I shouldn't have had to ask.

Legge looked at me with no change in his expression. 'You won't need anything like that.'

I crossed the crusted pavement, a snowflake settling on my face and burning the skin as it melted. The arched main doors of the church were shut, chained and padlocked, but the narrow entrance door was unlocked and I went inside, having to get used to the dim lighting in here after the baroque lamps of the street. Security didn't cross my mind: I'd been brought here under escort and Legge had checked the environment – as I had – and my contact for the rdv was already here, would have done his own reconnaissance or been escorted here as I was.

Three candles were burning in a small chapel on my right, their light reflecting from the gilded robes of three plaster saints – Nikolai, Marius, Pyotr. At the far end of the nave I saw movement and more light, flashing on bright silver, silhouetting a dark figure with a bald pink head.