I could hear a car moving at high speed with its engine racing. I didn't look back; I walked with the three men in black through the drifting snow. The wad of paper was pressed hard against my face; if I could stop the blood flow I could regain something like a normal image. I didn't know whether the paper was white or red; it would make a difference when I reached the queue of people. They were facing towards us, all of them, wrapped tight in their fur coats and hats and headscarves, staring across the square. 'What's happening over there?' 'Was there an accident?' We walked steadily towards them, joining the line near Spassky Gate. It was four deep and I took up my position on the far side, away from the department store. 'Do you have toothache?' 'Yes,' I said. 'What's happening across the square there?' 'I don't know.' I counted seven police cars, one of them moving slowly round the cathedral and another one turning and accelerating in the opposite direction, but both keeping close to the square. 'Tch! There's blood on your face. Are you hurt?' 'It's nothing much. I slipped on the snow.' 'You need medical attention.' 'It will heal.' A body of militia men was moving away from the thick of the patrol cars and spreading out along the edge of the square, facing this way. One of the cars had dropped two men off not far from Nikolsky Gate, and they were walking steadily past the museum towards the queue of mourners. They looked closely at everyone they passed. I turned away from the queue but saw a police van slowing to a halt opposite Nabatny Tower; a dozen men got out of it and began forming a group facing this way. I turned back. 'Do you live in Moscow?' `Yes,' I said. 'We are from Abramtsevo.' She was a motherly woman half buried in black shawls, her bright eyes watching me. 'This is my son, Viktorovich. He would like to live in Moscow, but he can't get a visa. He's a sewage engineer, an apprentice.' I nodded to him. 'You must keep trying. You know how it is, when you want something from them.' When I looked behind me again I saw the group of police spreading out and moving slowly towards the queue, stopping a man here and there and questioning him. I turned again and looked towards Spassky Gate, where two sentries stood. 'Have you visited the Mausoleum before?' asked the woman. 'No. I've been wanting to see it for a long time.' The sentries would certainly see me and probably stop me: they were aware that every male in the square was being scrutinized. The three lines of police and militia men were moving steadily in from the other three sides. 'We have been twice already,' she said. 'Every time I see the sepulchre, I have tears.' She rocked gently, nodding with the whole of her round shawled body. 'Every day we have fifteen thousand people here to see it. But you will know this, since you live in Moscow.' The snow was falling thickly now; the sky overhead was storm-dark and the air was heavy. We shuffled forward, watched by the police guards. 'The last time we came,' the woman said, 'the queue reached right round to Kutafya Tower! Of course it was summer then.' She peered up at me with her bright eyes. 'Do you have influence in Moscow?' 'No,' I said. 'But your son should keep on trying. It wears them down in the end.' A man and a woman broke from the queue not far away, and a police guard called to them. 'Return to the line, please! Get back into line!' 'But we can't wait any longer. My wife has a cold.' 'Very well.' We shuffled forward again. The militia men were halfway across the square by now, one of them stopping the man to question him while his wife waited, puzzled. When I turned round I saw two of the police unit reach the end of the queue and start moving along it, scrutinizing the men. Ahead of us people were breaking away to put