house was different from being put to the test in the street. Above all I wasn't sure of the essential steadiness of nerve I was going to need if they lifted a hand and said Propusk. Papers. 'What other friends did he have?' I asked her. There wasn't much time now; we might get separated. 'He didn't have many friends.' 'Give me one of them. Two of them. Trust me.' They carried walkie-talkies. So if I turned round and took the girl with me and began hurrying they didn't even have to shout to us to stop: they just had to press a button and tell the other two to stop that car when it reaches you, and check it out. And there'd be no hope this time of keeping enough distance between them and the number plate: they'd see it and alert the Volga and bring in the radio networks and it wouldn't matter how fast I drove or how far. I could feel the blood leaving my face and going to the muscles, and the quickening of the pulse as the adrenalin started to flow. I was that bad, to that degree unready even for a routine encounter with a couple of flat-footed young militia men: an exercise the training directors put the novices through on their first trip behind the Curtain. So what was it going to be like when Bracken called me and said yes, he's inside Lubyanka after all, we want you to go and get him out? 'Ignatov,' the girl said. 'Other name?' She hesitated again because she didn't know that she wasn't putting Ignatov in danger. Or Helmut. I watched the militia men coming. 'Pyotr,' she said, half holding it back. 'Who else?' 'I don't remember anyone else.' She thought she'd gone too far. 'Natalya,' I said, 'is your identity card in order?' She swung her head. 'Yes. Why?' 'These two here,' I said. 'If they question us, don't mention Helmut, or Pyotr Ignatov. We're just recent acquaintances, you understand?' 'Yes.' They were watching us now. Peaked caps, batons, side-arms, radio sets. They were walking in step. 'You don't know anything about me,' I told her. 'Just my name. My name is Kapista Kirov. But we both like music. Classical music.' Close now. Briskly in step. They were young men, conscious of their uniforms and their heady power. They might stop us simply because they decided they'd like to talk to a pretty girl, watching her ice-blue eyes while they went through the routine questions. 'I'll step off the pavement,' I told her. 'We'll make room for them. The whole problem with Prokofiev, it seems to me, isn't in his music at all. It's simply that he's overrated by the critics. The result is that a lot of his work sounds disappointing, after all the eulogies and the acclaim.' Their eyes in the shadow of their peaked caps, watching us. 'His music is just as good as it always was, and we should listen to it as if we've never heard of him before. Otherwise we shall miss a lot of what he was trying to convey.' Briskly in step. 'Nikolai doesn't agree with me, I know, but -' 'Propusk,' one of them said as they stopped.