Churkin didn’t return Rykov’s grin. ‘A setback. And a minor one at that.’

Rykov dropped the small talk.

‘How are the wheels?’ he asked, his voice suddenly considerably lower.

‘Greased,’ Churkin replied.

‘And the minds?’

‘Changing.’

‘Should we be concerned?’ Rykov asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ Churkin said. ‘But it wouldn’t hurt to send some flattery in Yuri Andropov’s direction.’

‘The head of the department for liaison?’

‘He’s in the ascendent. Brezhnev hasn’t forgotten how he handled the Hungarian Uprising. I wouldn’t be surprised if he replaces Semichastny soon.’

‘What do Kosygin and Podgorny think?’

‘Kosygin needs to be here to have an opinion, and no one cares what Podgorny thinks.’

It was a sign of the confidence between the two men that Rykov could ask such questions and Churkin could answer them so directly.

‘The short leg of the stool,’ Rykov said, recycling one of the better lines he’d heard the basement poet use a few weeks ago to describe the troika that currently led the Soviet Union.

‘Someone always has to be the junior partner,’ Churkin mused.

By now they were passing along the top of Ivanovskaya Square. To their right was the huge concrete and glass slab of the Palace of Congresses, Khrushchev’s grand arena for mass events, and to their left was the cluster of cathedrals that reminded people of the higher power that had once held sway inside the Kremlin’s red walls.

‘The Party, the people, the Church,’ Churkin said. ‘One is always weakest, and only one is ever really in charge.’

‘And we faithfully serve whoever that might be,’ Rykov replied, finally drawing a smile from the older man.

‘Politics is a tedious business. Stay in the shadows as long as you can. Speaking of which, what do you have to report?’

‘All’s well with the Volk,’ Rykov replied.

‘And Project Mykl?’

‘Mykl continues as planned,’ Rykov said.

Intelligence agencies all over the world enjoyed giving their operations oblique codenames, and the KGB was no exception. Volk had been chosen for its double meaning, and Mykl had been selected for its biblical connotations which, should the Americans, British, or anyone else ever happen upon it, would tantalise and confuse them in equal measure. The project was named after the archangel Michael, the warrior angel who was an eternal force of vengeance and retribution. It was also, Rykov hoped, about to become the Soviet Union’s newest and possibly greatest weapon against the West.

‘Good,’ Churkin said, his voice suddenly gruff. ‘We have let the Americans get too far ahead of us with their weapons and rockets. And there are rumours coming out of Beijing that Mao has finally finished licking his wounds and wants to try another great leap forward. We may soon find ourselves surrounded. Project Mykl needs to work. If it doesn’t I will be the one seen to have failed.’