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'But of course.' Deville took the glass from him and gestured out across the sea. 'This really is very beautiful. You're going to miss it.'

Mikali put his glass down on the balustrade and lit a cigarette. 'And what's that supposed to mean?'

'It's very simple. You've had it. We both have. If Morgan managed to discover your identity, then eventually so will someone else. Oh, I don't mean next month, or even next year. But certainly the year after.' He smiled and lifted his shoulders in a shrug. 'Or perhaps next Wednesday.'

'And if they got me, whoever it turned out to be,' Mikali said, 'you think I'd talk? Sell you down the river?'

'Rubber hoses went out with the Gestapo,' Deville told him. 'They'd stick a hypodermic in your arm and fill you full of succinylcholine, a rather unpleasant drug which takes you to about as close to dying as a human being can get. The experience is so awful that few people could stand the thought of a second helping.' He smiled gently. 'I'd sing like a bird, John, and so would the Cretan Lover.'

A mile out to sea the hydrofoil passed on its way to Spetsae. Mikali said, 'And what would you suggest?'

'Time to go home, my friend!'

'To dear old mother Russia?' Mikali laughed out loud. 'It may be home to you, old buddy, but it doesn't mean a damn thing to me. And if it comes to that, what about you? You've been away too long. They'll give you a VIP card to shop in the special section at GUM but it's hardly Gucci. And when you're queuing up in Red Square to get a look at Lenin in his mausoleum, you'll be thinking of Paris and the Champs-Elysees and the smell of damp chestnut trees along the boulevards after a shower.'

'Very poetic, but it doesn't alter the fact of the matter. My old grandmother used to get rheumatism and knew it would rain within twenty-four hours. I can smell trouble with equal facility. Time to go, believe me.'

'For you, maybe,' Mikali said stubbornly. 'Not for me.'

'But what will you do?' Deville was genuinely bewildered. 'I don't understand.'

'Live a day at a time.'

'And when that special day arrives, the day they come for you?'

Mikali was wearing a loose cashmere sweater which concealed a Burns and Martin spring holster clipped to the small of his back. His right hand came up holding a Walther.

'Remember my Ceska? That was my London gun. This is the Hydriot variety. As I told you, I'm always ready.'

At that moment the phone started to ring. He excused himself and went inside. Deville sat on the balustrade looking out towards Dokos, savouring his cognac. Mikali was right, of course. Paris was the only city, or London on a good day. Moscow meant nothing to him now. He thought of the winter there and shivered involuntarily. And there was no one - not really. A cousin or two. No other close relative. But what choice did he have?

Mikali came out through the french windows laughing, a glass in one hand, a bottle of Napoleon brandy in the other.

'Isn't life the damnedest thing.' His face was ablaze with excitement. 'That was Bruno - Bruno Fischer, my agent. Andre Previn's just been on to him. It's the last night of the Proms this Saturday. Mary Schroder was to play John Ireland's piano concerto. She's broken her wrist playing tennis, the silly bitch.'

'And they want you to take her place?'

'Previn's offered to change the programme. Let me play Rachmaninov's Fourth. We've done it together before so it wouldn't take too much rehearsing. Let's see. Today's Thursday. If I catch tonight's plane, I'll be in London tomorrow. That gives me two days to rehearse.'

Deville had never seen him so alive. 'No, John,' he said. 'To go back to London now would be the worst possible thing for you. I feel it my bones.'

'The Promenade Concerts, Jean Paul,' Mikali said. 'The most important series of concerts in the European musical scene. In the entire world, dammit. Do you know what it's like on the last night?'

'No, I've never been.'

'Then you've missed out on one of life's