Two sentries with automatic rifles stepped forward and peered in on either side, their breath thickening the mist. The driver flashed his headlamps twice, and the red and white pole swung up. The truck moved forward, into a tall grey courtyard where the snow had been stamped down into boot-patterns of dirty ice. The driver kept in bottom gear, round the edge of the yard until they reached a low doorway. The small plain-clothes man next to Cayle opened the truck door and stepped down. Cayle followed, gasping with the cold.
Inside the building a flight of concrete stairs ended at a padded door. The small man pushed it open and there was a rush of warm air. The corridor beyond was painted the colour of milk chocolate. The only sound was a low humming like the inside of a great ship. The plain-clothes man stopped at an unmarked door and opened it without knocking, then motioned Cayle inside.
It was a narrow office with a steel filing-cabinet, a desk, a bench, and a tube of fluorescent lighting that fizzed and flickered from the ceiling. A woman with straight grey hair and rimless glasses sat at the desk under a faded brown photograph of Lenin and peered at Cayle over the top of an antique typewriter. The plain-clothes man nodded Cayle towards the bench, then closed the door and stood with his back to it. He spoke rapidly to the woman, who inserted a double sheet of pink duplicating paper into the typewriter; then said to Cayle: ‘To empty your pockets, please!’
Cayle was beginning to feel like a schoolboy caught out in a misdemeanour. The plain-clothes man took each item and described it in Russian, and the woman punched out the words with two fingers on the typewriter, while the man arranged the miscellaneous belongings on the desk beside her: keys to Thackeray Mansions and the Moke, wallet, passport, traveller’s cheques, dollars and roubles in cash, Press cards and letters of introduction, and Lennie Maddox’s business card. Also a sheaf of used air-tickets from London to Moscow via Kabul, with a wad of receipts to correspond — all to keep the accounts people happy back in London, and as good as a written confession of his devious itinerary back into the Soviet Union. Finally, there was his ticket and reservation on the Red Arrow Express to Leningrad, dated the night before.
The whole procedure took forty minutes and filled two double pages of pink paper. The plain-clothes man laid them out on the desk, produced a pen and jabbed it at Cayle. ‘Please, to sign!’ Cayle signed; and the plain-clothes man gathered the pages up and stuffed them into his inside pocket. ‘Please, to follow.’ Cayle followed, down more milk chocolate corridor, and stopped at another unmarked door. The plain-clothes man opened it and stood aside: ‘Please, to wait.’
Cayle glanced inside and said, ‘How long do I wait?’ It was the first question he’d asked since leaving the Hotel Rossija.
‘To wait here,’ the man repeated; he stepped back and closed the door, and Cayle heard the sound of a key.
It was an odd room. There was a tiled floor, a small window with frosted pebble-glass but no bars, a camp-bed with a grey blanket, a table and two chairs, a plain overhead light, and a half-partition leading to a basin with one tap and a lavatory without a seat. It was spartan and military: not so much a cell as the sort of room a commanding officer might use on manoeuvres or at the front. It was clean and there was no smell.
Cayle tried the tap on the basin. The water was icy. He took off his jacket and shirt, and sluiced down his face and the back of his neck and dried himself on a corner of the blanket. Then he looked at his watch — the only thing they’d left him besides his clothes. It was 3.45. He felt dirty, unshaven, and dog-tired.
He turned out the light, dragged off his shoes and trousers, and lay down under the blanket and dropped into a dreamless sleep.
Cayle was woken by someone shaking his shoulder. He blinked up at the light and saw a tall man standing by the bed. He wore a dark-blue suit, white shirt, dark tie; his mouth was straight and without expression. He said: ‘It is time for you to wake up, Mr Cayle.’ His English was relaxed and almost without accent.
Cayle said stupidly, ‘What time is it?’ — then looked at his watch. It was a few minutes before six. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment,’ he added. He went behind the partition and shook his head under the cold tap.
The Russian said, ‘I’m sorry we don’t have a towel to offer you. This room is not often used.’ He waited until Cayle was ready, then opened the door and let him go out first, switching the light off after them.
‘Is it far?’ said Cayle.
‘No, not far,’ the Russian said. He walked briskly, with the movements of a man who kept himself fit. They came to another padded door which led into a wider, higher corridor with dark panelling and a green and white chequered marble floor. Cayle guessed that they had entered the older half of the building — the one that had been the offices of an insurance company in Czarist days, before it became part of the Lubyanka Prison and administration headquarters of the Committee of State Security.
They reached a tall porticoed door. The Russian tapped gently and turned the brass knob. Holding the door half-open,
