They took their place in the queue. The ambassador lit his pipe and unfolded yesterday's Times from London.

Holt craved a cigarette, the prohibition could not last.

And Jane touched his arm. They had been in the queue for five minutes and not moved an inch.

"Do you know the hoary old one about queuing here?

If you do you're still going to hear it again. Ivan was in a queue for two hours trying to buy a pair of winter boots, and he snorts to the people around him that he's had enough, and he's going down to the Kremlin, and he's going to shoot old Gorbachov, and that's going to be his protest about the inefficiency of the Soviet Union. off Ivan goes, and three hours later he's back. He's asked if he's indeed shot Comrade Gorbachov. 'No,'

Ivan says, 'I couldn't be bothered to wait, the queue was too long.' Like it?"

Holt managed a small smile. Jane squeezed his arm, as if to tell him to calm down, as if to say that a queue at Vnukovo wasn't his fault.

"Certainly hoary, Miss Canning," the ambassador intoned "I have heard that anecdote told in turn of Messrs Brezhnev, Chernenko, Andropov and now Gorbachov. But I think that I am safe in stating that it was never said out loud during the revered leadership of uncle Joe Stalin… Don't fret, Holt, it won't go without us"

The blockage at the head of the queue was removed.

A man was shoved aside, hoarse with complaint and waving a ticket. Jane said it meant the flight was overbooked, and they were shedding the least important. A sour-faced woman behind the counter examined their tickets, looking at them as if to ascertain whether they could possibly be forgeries. They were checked once more by a bored militiaman at the gate, who then took an age studying Holt's and Jane's Foreign Ministry permission to leave the Moscow environs zone. They went on to the security barrier. Two more militiamen, an X-ray machine, and a metal detector arch to pass under. Jane had a camera, a palm-of-the-hand-sized Olympus that she took out of her handbag before it went on the belt. The ambassador's spectacle case, attracted the flashing red light and earned him a cursory body patting.