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His only reply was a brief grunt of what he took to be surprise. And then silence. After a pause he tried again.

'Hello,' he said brightly. 'I trust, since you've gone to all this trouble, that you want something from me. I should advise you that I can prove to be very uncooperative if I'm trussed up like a sack of potatoes'

Again there was no reply, although the Doctor thought he could detect a small ripple of ironic laughter from the other side of the van.

He stretched out his feet and felt them come into contact with something solid. He sniffed the air, detecting a faint odour of oil and an even fainter smell of soap. When he next spoke his voice was light and chatty in a way that belied his situation.

'I expect the Progressive Club will have reported my abduction to UNIT by now. They're a snobbish crowd, but hardly unobservant. Three clodhopping chaps can't walk in off the street and snatch a member in broad daylight without somebody noticing.' The Doctor's voice levelled out. He was attempting the same steady, regular speech pattern as he had used during the Soviets' first attack. Hypnotic suggestion, a way of extracting oneself from potential harm with merely the power of the spoken word.

'I was in Russia in 1917 during the October uprising,' he said simply. 'I love your country, such a proud people, so noble under tyranny. I met old Lenin in Petrograd, as it was then known. Splendid chap, loved cricket you know. He was exiled in London for fourteen years, hardly missed a day at Lord's during the summer...' He allowed his voice to trail away whilst he took deep regular breaths, and then resumed at the same pitch. 'Of course, I never agreed with what you did to the Romanovs - that struck me as a frightfully bad show. They were a decent-enough bunch, just a bit stuck in their ways. You'll find most royal families are like that, really.'

underneath the privileges and the pomp and circumstance, they're just as ordinary as you or I. Of course, I met the Old Tsar at the Dri Kaiser Bund in 1871. I remember I said,

"Nicholas," I said, "it's all very well you being Tsar of all the Russias, but you must use your despotic powers in a benevolent way. The Liberation Movement is a powerful one.

Listen to Tolstoy and Stakhovich." But he wouldn't -'

'Enough' The voice that stopped the Doctor in his tracks was high-pitched and angry.

'Madam,' the Doctor said bluntly, 'you have me at a disadvantage. In fact, you have me at several disadvantages all at once. I request that you at least allow me the decency of knowing to whom I am speaking'

'Niet,' said the woman angrily, and the Doctor felt the jab of what he took to be another Simonov in his solar plexus.

'Very well,' he said. 'I'll just sit here and shut up then, shall I?' 'Da,' came the reply.

'Wonderful language, Russian,' muttered the Doctor coldly. 'So expressive.'

The man's eyes stung from the fumes of Oxford Circus. He picked up the warm telephone receiver, and rested a coin against the slot. Several times his fingers slipped on the dial.

He felt sick. One job, one foul-up - one posting to Antarctica coming up.

'Good afternoon, Ministry of Defence.'

Pushing in the coin, the man cradled the receiver closer to his lips. 'Custodian Seven to Watchtower. Authorisation.'

Juvenal! The line crackled for a moment, and a polite male voice inquired, 'All right, what's happened?'

'Captain Yates,' said the man, 'I'm afraid things haven't gone according to plan.'

'Meaning?'

The Doctor lost me, sir, but I went to the club, and he's not there.'

'Not there?'

'Not there, sir. He signed in, but no one's seen him since.'

The Doctor estimated that he had been in the van for ninety minutes when it finally stopped. As the doors were opened a variety of smells hit him all at once.' the vague salty tang of a none-too-distant coast, the much more pungent odour of manure and hay. 'Lovely day for a drive in the country,' he said brightly as he was half dragged and half pushed from