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It is an impressive CV: Winner of a gold National Achievement medal in 1984; awarded the Order of Friendship by President Yeltsin in 1997; presented with the Russian State Federation Award and the Order of St Daniel. 'Dr Sautov's innovative work and everyday heroism is [sic] devoted to the eternal purpose of preserving Russia's culture for future generations,' the CV concludes. What do we have to offer the Tsar?2

We are not good at doing nothing. We need to think and to plan and after all to celebrate away from the gloom of Sovetskaya 7, out in the satin light of the wintering Gulf of Finland. We take the Nevsko-Vasileostrovskaya Metro, the green line, and thirty minutes later emerge at Primorskaya, where apartments pile on top of one another. Navy veterans in ragged blue-and-white-striped sweaters dive into the gutters as if they are swallows at dusk trapping flies. Couples roll in and out of each other's arms, waltzing in Primorskaya's frozen fug of alcohol. Beyond, we can finally smell the wide-open Baltic blasted by gulf winds that are as sharp as cut glass.

As the last daylight slips away, an umbilicus of lights reaches around the sandy coast inside hundreds of plastic marquees and faux-wood izbas. Outside, the shallows begin to freeze. Some girls beckon us over. 'Come on, drink, our friend is pregnant.' Plastic cups are pressed into our hands at this improvised baby shower, all of us toasting in Baltika beer the good fortune that has brought strangers together to get drunk by the sea. We are pulled into an izba where a boy plays the squeeze-box and we all sing along to songs that we have never heard before. 'Dance, Andre, dance,' the darker-haired girl cries, spinning faster and faster.

The beer is replaced with Russki Standard vodka so we can seriously celebrate the conception of a child whose parents we have yet to meet. One measure of vodka, the Russians believe, is medicinal. The second is sweet but slightly vulgar, passing the time before the decisive third shot, the no-going-back slug that unlocks lust and buries sobriety in a deep trench. And soon enough we can taste nothing but the air that we are gulping and all we can see is the cabin door opening and all we can smell is the Baltic and all we can feel is the gritty Russian sand.

The Catherine Palace is muffled by snow as our marshrutki pulls up. We jump down from the shared minibus-taxi and into the soft, white powder, away from our brooding fellow passengers, who have been staring at our drawn faces as if we are the dead. The metro trip to the marshrutki stop at the end of Moskovsky Prospekt was equally appalling, pickled in a gaseous train carriage of early-morning boozers, the whole journey spent crushed against an advertisement for Molotov Cocktails ('a revolutionary new bottled drink') while four pickpockets from Mongolia clumsily fumbled at our bags.

We cannot face Dr Sautov yet and so at the public entrance to the Catherine Palace, we pay our roubles, slip tapochkis - cobalt-blue plastic-bag slippers - over our snow-damp shoes and follow the crowds up the Monighetti staircase, past Brodzsky's marble Sleeping Cupid and through the gilded doors, salon opening on to salon until we reach what resembles a half-finished stage set, one side alight with candelabras, gilded cherubs and a mosaic of amber lozenges and the other, bare plyboard, stepladders and plastic sheeting. Packs of tour groups file through, gasping - French, German and Russian: 'La chambre d'ambre\ 'Bernsteinzimmef and 'Yantarny komnata\ Dr Sautov's craftsmen are constructing a replica of the Amber Room and even though it is difficult to see Andreas Schliiter's vision in this building site yet, it enthrals in any language.

We feel better and head for the staff department. Outside Dr Sautov's office a group of naval officers is bidding him farewell with bear hugs and cheek kisses, the brims of their hats rising like sails. Ushered into the Director's office, we stand to attention before an expanse of polished