Mal – our best computer buff but always a worrier – said, ‘Yeah, and I for one wouldn’t blame them.’

‘Who?’

‘The Russkies. If they made a search. It pisses me off that we’re doing what we are, anyway.’

‘Me too,’ I agreed.

Most of the guys, Mal in particular, were confident that it was technically impossible for Anna to have accessed the program. They reckoned that her visit was nothing more sinister than a repercussion from her past – a return to her old KGB habits of snooping – and that she couldn’t have discovered anything damaging. So, after a bit of a Chinese parliament, we decided to keep quiet.

Until that moment I’d had no cause to suspect the woman of duplicity. Quite the opposite: she’d seemed fully on side, and had been a terrific asset. She’d thrown herself into the training with real zip, and had never shown the slightest irritation when people kept calling on her for translations. Her physical presence had been enough to give everyone a lift: she was very fit and energetic, and went up ropes or over the assault course as fast as any man, often joining in for the fun of it when there was no real need. And the students liked her as much as we did. They were slightly in awe of her, and referred to her as Polkovnik – the Colonel – in a way that was partly sarcastic but had an edge of respect as well. Several times she’d reinforced my impression that she was right behind us visitors by telling indiscreet stories about her days in the old-style KGB. She’d joke about how clumsy and stupid and suspicious all her Communist comrades had been – with the implication that nowadays everything was sweetness and light.

Her private life, though, had remained mysterious. Like Sasha, she had a room in the officers’ mess at the other side of the camp, and she’d dropped hints about a flat somewhere in town. Beyond that I knew nothing about her. On a personal level I was still fancying her in a cool sort of way, and I was planning to ask her out to dinner one evening when the time seemed ripe, suggest a meal at a place of her choice and see what developed. So far, though, I’d been so busy and had so much on my mind that I hadn’t got round to issuing an invitation.

For a long time that night I couldn’t go to sleep. My mind kept returning to the tunnel, to the hollow we’d made in the brickwork, right under the wall of the Kremlin, and to the chaos that would follow if we’d been rumbled. Arrest? Gaol? Deportation? International incident? Should the whole team do a runner while the going was good?

No matter which way my thoughts turned, they were anything but soothing.

Chapter Eight

EIGHT