He stopped short of where the other men stood waiting, and faced me with his head turned slightly to the right, his eyes trapping light from a pilot lamp overhead. 'This, I think, is as much as you need to know at this stage, but I'm prepared to answer any question, providing it's of the most vital consequence.'

He wouldn't give me long. He'd told me all he was going to tell me, because if I refused the mission he didn't want a critical mass of information loose in my head: any agent at any time can be got at and picked clean, even between assignments, if someone suspects he's loaded with some kind of product. Until I accepted this one I'd be told nothing more.

There was only one question I could ask Shepley that would give me an idea how big this assignment was, and whether I should even look at it. 'It wasn't Yasolev,' I said, 'who made the approach off his own bat. He's not big enough. So who was it?'

'General-Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.'

3: PICNIC

We inched forward again, the lamps sliding past the tinted windows of the Mercedes and throwing shadows across the driver's head. He hadn't spoken until a few minutes before, when we'd reached the checkpoint. 'We could go through the official-traffic lane, but we'd call more attention. Is that all right with you, sir?'

I'd said yes. Shepley had told me there'd be no delay getting through — no one would check us — but I wanted to attract as little notice as I could.

The driver had fallen silent again. The figures outside looked almost faceless through the smoked windows and my dark glasses; their voices were faint. It was four in the morning, a dead hour, with only half a dozen vehicles ahead of us.