"I'll go as a boar with a ring in my nose, and you can go as a farmer and lead me round, and show everyone who's boss."

They both laughed. She thought it was funny and he thought it was sad, and the ambassador's orange juice looked as awful as their coffee tasted.

They boarded, and take off was only 25 minutes late.

The ambassador was behind them, in the aisle seat, and next to a man in a dark suit with a bulging briefcase.

Before the belt sign was off the ambassador was booming out his conversational Russian, angling for a rapport. A one-class aircraft, a Tupolev 134, rear engines and 72 passengers. He had hardly slept, not after she'd run him back to the embassy, and he'd been plagued with the niggling worries about getting the trip moving well – he started to doze. There was the drone of the voice behind him, and he was wondering how the ambassador managed to test the waters of Soviet opinion when he talked so much that the fellow next to him barely had the chance to get three consecutive words up his gullet.

He'd sort it all out. He'd sort it all out with Jane in time, because he had to, because he loved her. Up to cruising altitude, and he was nodding, eyes opened then collapsing shut, so damned tired. He was a wild pig, and she was pulling him round, and they were all laugh ing, all the Second and Third Secretaries and their wives, and all the personal assistants, all laughing their heads off because his girl had him on a leash.

Flying due south. A journey of 750 miles. A route over Tula, Kursk and Charkov. Cruising at 29,000 feet, ground speed 510 miles per hour.

He felt her pull him forward, and then to her. And his eyes were closed, and he waited for the soft brush of her kiss behind his ear, where she always kissed, and he waited. He opened his eyes. She was looking down at her watch, concentrating.