At 11.52 he stopped near Plevna Metro and went across to the telephone box by the cigar store, looking at his watch. I noted this because the people of this city are not punctual and he wasn't going to call anyone to say he'd be late, because he hadn't been hurrying. I didn't like it. There was a slot by the kerb and I put the Pobeda into it and sat scanning the environment and doing it carefully. He shouldn't have looked at his watch like that. When I'd picked him up at the Party meeting he'd walked to his car without any hurry and he'd driven at a normal speed to the Pavilion building and driven away from it at the same speed and suddenly he wanted to know the time. Nerves: the alarm threshold was still too low. Ten private cars parked, and a light van unloading cardboard cases near the intersection. A No.14 trolleybus moving in to the kerb and putting down four passengers, taking on seven. A militia man standing not far from the cigar store, hands behind his back, his feet feeling the cold. Other people on the pavement, most of them hurrying a little because the snow was getting worse. Nothing in the environment to worry me. Nothing. But the hairs had begun rising on the backs of my hands and my breathing had quickened. Ignore. The trolley bus pulled away and I could see the whole of the environment again, as it had been before. Nothing had changed. Ignatov was still in the telephone box, the pale blur of his face showing through the condensation on the glass. A woman in a muskrat coat came up and started waiting for the phone, a child with her, both of them eating ice-creams from the stall on the other side of the cigar store. In Moscow the people eat ice-cream in all weathers, even in the depth of winter. In Moscow the people are not punctual, and should not look at the time. The cold was creeping into the car again but I didn't switch the heater on because it would mean running the engine, and I didn't want to do that till I was ready to drive away because the militia man would catch the sound and turn his head. The ideal to aim at in a potentially hostile environment, they tell us repeatedly at Norfolk, is to become or remain invisible, inaudible and unfindable. Noted. A black Zil limousine with Central Committee MOC number plates and its rear windows curtained and its headlights on came hounding down the Chaika lane and I watched the policeman at the intersection jumping into the roadway with his illuminated baton raised to halt the cross traffic, his whistle shrilling as the Zil went through the red, heading westwards towards the Kremlin. The woman was still standing there eating her ice-cream. The small boy was waving his in the air, trying to make a snowflake settle on it. The woman laughed, and began doing the same thing. 11.55. Ignatov had been in the phone box for three minutes. My legs were getting chilled because of the cold air coming into the car through the gaps round the doors, and because of the nerves. Three minutes was a long time. In three minutes the environment had changed considerably: most of the people who'd been on the pavement when I'd arrived here had gone, and as many others had taken their place. But the woman and the child were still there, and the militia man had moved a few paces to stand watching them, smiling as the boy caught a snowflake settle on it. The woman laughed. The light flashed across the glass door of the telephone box as it opened and Ignatov came out. In the warmth of the box he had loosened his dark coat, and now he buttoned it up and pulled his woollen scarf straight, tucking it in. Without looking around him he stopped to talk to the militia man, halfway across to his car, taking something out of his wallet and show it to him briefly and getting a salute and putting the wallet away as he went on talking, standing quite close. In a moment the militia man undipped the radio from his belt and began speaking into it, looking up and down the street. I waited, watching them. It was all I could do, or needed to do: I had no information. The militia man was gazing up the street now, also waiting; then he began walking into the roadway, taking his time as he raised his baton to halt the line of traffic on the side where I was parked. In my mirror the line was slowing to a stop, except for a low black van with lights on its roof, a police vehicle coming up fast and overtaking the other traffic until the militia man swung his baton and pointed it straight at my car and I thought Oh Christ it's a trap. The police van was still slowing hard under the brakes and veering across the front of the traffic line when I hit the starter and botched the gears in and wheelspan into motion with the tyres squawking and the flashlight on the windscreen ledge sliding across and smashing against the pillar as I locked the wheel over and heeled into the roadway and straightened up, clouting the front end of the van and ripping my