He got up cautiously, testing his fingers and toes. They had a dull disconnected feeling. He balanced himself against the bed and managed the three steps to the door. There was no handle. He shouted, ‘Hello!’ and was answered by howls and groans, as he began to beat his fists against the door. There was a rapid padding of feet outside, and the door swung inwards, knocking him back against the bed.
A short square man in a white cap and smock, like a butcher, looked at him for a moment, then stepped forward and pulled the door shut with a slam. From somewhere close came a thin ululating wail, followed by a snatch of song.
A couple of minutes later the door opened again. The orderly in the smock stood aside, and a tall man wearing a suit and tie came in. He paused to put on a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, then said in English: ‘What is it you want, please?’
‘I want to know where the hell I am!’
‘This is a night station for alcoholics,’ the man replied.
‘I’m not a bloody alcoholic!’ Cayle roared.
The man studied him through his spectacles and said, ‘It is necessary to explain why you were in the street without shoes or sufficient clothes, at four o’clock in the morning, in a temperature of more than thirteen degrees below zero. You are fortunate you did not lose certain of your extremities.’
‘I wasn’t drunk,’ said Cayle.
The man gave a slight shrug. ‘You will wait here until your case is investigated.’
‘I want to talk to the police now. I have something urgent to tell them.’ But as he spoke, the orderly pushed him back against the bed.
‘Your case will be investigated,’ the tall man repeated, and they both went out and the door slammed shut again.
The commissionaire stepped in front of him and said, ‘Can I help you?’ Cayle noted that the ‘sir’ was offensively lacking.
‘I want to see Mr Simon Harm — Chancery.’
‘Got an appointment?’
‘No. Just tell him it’s Cayle — C for Charlie, A for apple…’
‘Wait here.’ The commissionaire went back into his cubicle and lifted a telephone. At the same moment a grey-haired man appeared from a side-door and paused, looking at Cayle.
‘Are you waiting for someone?’
‘I’ve got a lunch-date with the Ambassador’s wife,’ said Cayle.
The man was still thinking of the right thing to say when the commissionaire returned.
‘Mr Hann is engaged at present,’ he said, with pedantic satisfaction. ‘But if you’ll fill in this form, I’ll find out if someone else can see you.’
‘It’s got to be Hann or nobody,’ said Cayle. ‘Tell him it’s a matter of international importance.’
‘Excuse me.’ The grey-haired man had moved closer, ‘Are you a British subject, sir?’
Cayle turned his bruised, unshaven face towards him and leered, ‘No, and I’ve forgotten my black tie too. Now will you stop pretending this is White’s, and get me Mr Hann and smartish!’
The man turned stiffly to the commissionaire. ‘Give the gentleman the form, Albert. Will you wait here, please,’ he added to Cayle, and strutted back through the side-door.
Cayle took the sheet of paper with the Embassy heading, and against the question, NATURE OF BUSINESS, wrote ‘confidential’, then handed it back to the commissionaire, who grudgingly returned with it to his cubicle. Cayle sat down on a mock Empire sofa and waited.
Hann came down ten minutes later. He looked sleek and calm. ‘Hello, Mr Cayle. I heard you’d gone to Leningrad with the rest of your people.’
‘I had. That’s what I want to talk to you about.’
Hann glanced at his watch. ‘I can only spare you a few minutes. I’ve an appointment at eleven.’ He turned and led Cayle briskly towards the lift.
His office was a small impersonal room on the second floor. Cayle hung up his new muskrat coat, which he’d bought on his way here from GUM, along with a new pair of boots and gloves, and sat down under Annigoni’s portrait of the Queen, while Hann walked round behind a leather-topped desk.
‘You look terrible, Cayle. Have you been drinking?’
‘No. But I could do with one.’
Hann ignored him. ‘You said it was important. What’s happened?’
‘I got beaten up and spent most of the night in a sobering-up station. They gave me several injections against frost-bite and fined me fifty roubles.’
‘And I suppose you got robbed too? Well, if they’ve taken your passport, you’ll have to go to your own Embassy. We can’t help — even if you are a British resident.’
‘Thanks,’ said Cayle, ‘but as it happens, they didn’t take my passport, or anything else. Just me. I was grabbed off the Red Arrow Express to Leningrad last night. They knocked me cold in the toilet, and I woke up in some building back here in Moscow. I managed to get away, but without my coat or boots, and damned near froze to death before the cops found me.’
Hann had picked up a feather-stemmed ballpoint and began stroking it against his cheek. ‘Have you reported this to the police?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I wanted to, but then after they let me out of the medical station, I reasoned I’d had enough trouble without trying to explain everything to the Moscow cops. For a start, they probably wouldn’t believe me. Even if they did believe me, it would be months before they let me go.’
‘They’d be able to check easily enough if the train had been stopped and any of the passengers were missing,’
