Robert Harris - Archangel

They were nothing special, just a couple of English-language freesheets, given away in every hotel lobby.

The Moscow Times. Domestic news: the President was ill again, or drunk again, or both. A serial cannibal in the Kemerovo region was believed to have killed and eaten eighty people. Interfax reported that 60,000 children were sleeping on the streets each night in Moscow. Gorbachev was recording another television commercial for Pizza Hut. A bomb had been planted at the Nagornaya metro station by a group opposed to plans to remove Lenin's mummified body from public display in Red Square.

Foreign news: The IMF was threatening to withold $700 million in aid unless Moscow cut its budget deficit.

Business news: interest rates had tripled, stock market prices halved.

Religious news: A nineteen-year-old nun with ten thousand followers was predicting the end of the world on Hallowe'en. A statue of the Virgin Mother was trundling around the Black Earth region, weeping real blood. There was a holy man from Tarko-Sele who spoke in tongues.

There were fakirs and Pentecostalists, faith healers, shamans, workers of miracles, anchorites and marabouts and followers of the skoptsy, who believed themselves the Lords Incarnate. It was like Rasputin's time. The whole country was a tumult of bloody auguries and false prophets.

He picked up the other paper, The exile, this one written for young westerners like O'Brian working in Moscow. No religion here, but a lot of crime:

In the village of Kamenka, in the Smolenskaya Oblast, where the local collective farm is bankrupt and state employees haven't been paid all year, the big summer activity for kids is hanging around the Moscow-Minsk highway and sniffing gasoline, bought in half-litre jugs for a rouble. In August, two of the biggest gasoline addicts, Pavel Mikheenkov, 11, and Anton Malyarenko, 13, graduated from their favourite pastime - torturing cats - to tying a five year-old boy named Sasha Petrochenkov to a tree and burning him alive. Malyarenk was deported to his native Tashkent, but Mikheenkov has had to stay in Kamenka, unpunished:

sending him to reform school would cost 15,000 roubles and the town doesn't have the money. The victim's mother, Svetlana Petrochenkova, has been told she can have her son's killer sent away if she digs up the money herself, but failing that must live with him in the village. According to police, Mikleenkov had been drinking vodka regularly with his parents since the age of four. He turned the page quickly and found a guide to Moscow night life. Gay bars - Dyke, The Three Monkeys, Queer Nation; strip clubs - Navada, Rasputin, The Intim Peep Show; nightclubs - the Buchenwald (where the staff wore Nazi uniforms), Bulgakov; Utopiya. He looked up Robotnik:

'No place could better exemplify the excesses of the New Russia than Robotnik: bitchin interior, ear-splitting techno, Babe-OLitas and their flathead keepers, Die Hard security, black-eyed patrons sucking down Evians. Get laid and see someone get shot.'

That sounded about right, he thought.

THE departure terminal at Sheremetevo-2 was crammed with people trying to get out of Russia. Queues formed like cells under a microscope - grew from nothing, wormed back on themselves, broke, re-formed, and merged into other queues: queues for customs, for tickets, for security, for passport controls. You finished one and joined the next. The hall was dark and cavernous, sour with the reek of aviation spirit and the thin acid of anxiety. Adelman, Duberstein, Byrd, Saunders and Kelso, plus a couple of Americans who had been staying at the Mir - Pete Maddox of Princeton and Vobster of Chicago - stood in a group at the end of the nearest line while Olga went off to see if she could speed things up.

After a couple of minutes, they still hadn't moved. Kelso ignored Adelman who sat on his suitcase reading a biography of Chekhov with extravagant intensity. Saunders sighed and flapped his arms with frustration. Maddox wandered away and came back to report that customs seemed to be opening every bag.

'Shit, and I bought an icon,' complained Duberstein. 'I knew I shouldn't've bought an icon. I'll never get it through.'

'Where'd you get it?'

'That big bookstore on the Noviy Arbat.'

'Give it to Olga. She'll get it out. How much d'you pay?' 'Five hundred bucks.'

'Five hundred?'

Kelso remembered he hadn't any money. There was a news-stand at the end of the terminal. He needed more cigarettes. If he asked for a seat in smoking he could keep clear of the others.

'Phil,' he said to Duberstein, 'you couldn't lend me ten dollars, could you?'

Duberstein started laughing. 'What're you going to do, Fluke? Buy Stalin's notebook?'

Saunders sniggered. Velma Byrd raised her hand to her mouth and looked away.

'You told them as well?' Kelso stared at Adelman in disbelief.

'And why not?' Adelman licked a finger and turned over a page without looking up. 'Is it a secret?'

'Tell you what,' said Duberstein, pulling out his wallet. 'Here's twenty. Buy one for me as well.'

They all laughed at that, and openly this time, watching Kelso to see what he would do. He took the money.

'All right, Phil,' he said, quietly. 'I'll tell you what. Let's make a deal. If Stalin's notebook turns up by the end of the year, I'll just keep this and then we're quits. But if it doesn't, I'll pay you back a thousand dollars.'

Maddox gave a low whistle.

'Fifty to one,' said Duberstein, swallowing. 'You're offering me fifty to one?'

'We've got a deal?'

'Well, you bet.' Duberstein laughed again, but nervously this time. He glanced around at the others. 'You hear that everyone?'

They'd heard. They were staring at Kelso. And for him, at that moment, it was worth a thousand dollars - worth it just for the way they looked: 'open-mouthed, stricken, panicked. Even Adelman had temporarily forgotten his book.

'Easiest twenty dollars I ever made,' said Kelso. He stuffed the bill into his pocket and picked up his suitcase. 'Save my place for me, will you?'

He moved off across the crowded terminal, quickly, quitting while he was still ahead, easing his way through the people and the piles of luggage. He felt a childish pleasure. A few fleeting victories here and there - what more could a man hope for in this life?

Over the loudspeaker, a woman with a harsh voice made a deafening announcement about the departure of an Aeroflot flight to Delhi.

At the news-stand he made a quick check to see if they had the paperback of his book. They did not. Naturally. He turned his attention to a rack of magazines. Last week's Time and Newsweek, and the current Der SpiegeL So. He would take Der Spiegel. It would do him good. It would certainly last him an eleven-hour plane ride. He fished in his pocket for Duberstein's $20 and turned towards the till. Through the plate glass window he could see the wet sweep of concrete, a jammed line of cars and taxis and buses, grey buildings, abandoned trolleys, a girl with cropped dark hair, a white face watching him. He looked away casually. Frowned. Checked himself.

He stuffed the magazine back into the rack and returned to the window. It was her, all right, standing alone, in jeans and a fleece-lined leather jacket. His breath misted on the cold glass. Wait, he mouthed at her. She stared at him blankly. He pointed at her feet. Stay there.

To get to her he had to walk away from her, following the line of the glass wall, trying to find an exit. The first set of doors was chained shut. The second opened. He came out into the cold and wet. She was standing about fifty yards 'away. He looked back at the crowded terminal - he couldn't see the others - and then at her, and now she was moving away from him, heading across a pedestrian crossing, heedless of the cars. He hesitated: what to do? A bus momentarily wiped her from view and that made his mind up for him. He hoisted his luggage and set off after her, breaking into a trot. She drew him on, always maintaining the same distance, until they were into the big outdoor car park, and then he lost her.