Robert Harris - Archangel

'It's a surprise,' he said.

'I am an accredited member of the foreign press corps -, began O'Brian.

The crack-crack of a high velocity rifle was answered by a heavier bang.

'The American ambassador -, said O'Brian.

Suvorin wound the handle of the gramophone very fast -anything to block out the noise from outside - and placed the needle on the record. Through a hailstorm of crackles, a tinny orchestra struck up a wavering tune.

More gunfire. Someone was screaming, far away, through the trees. Two shots followed in rapid succession. The screaming stopped and O'Brian started whining, 'The/re going to shoot us. They'll shoot us, too!' He struggled against the plastic wire and tried to rise, but Suvorin put his wet shoe on O'Brian's chest and gently pushed him down again.

'Let us,' he said, in English, 'at least try to act like civilised men.

This was not what I dreamed for myself, either, he wanted to say. It formed no part of my life's dreams, I do assure you, to arrive in some stinking madman's hovel and hunt him down like an animal. Honestly, I believe you would find me an amusing fellow, if only circumstances were different.

He made an effort to follow the beat of the music, conducting with his forefinger, but he couldn't find any rhythm, there seemed to be no sense to it.

'You'd better have brought an army,' said the Englishman, because if it's just three against one out there, they don't stand a chance.'

'Nonsense,' said Suvorin, patriotically. 'They're our special forces. They'll get him. And yes, if necessary, they will send an army.

'Why?'

'Because I work for frightened men, Dr Kelso, some of whom are just about old enough to have been touched by Comrade Stalin.' He frowned at the gramophone. What a racket. It sounded like howling dogs. 'Do you know what Lenin called the Tsarovich, when the Bolsheviks were deciding the fate of the Imperial Family? He called the boy "the living banner". And there's only one way, Lenin said, to deal with a living banner.'

Kelso shook his head. 'You don't understand this man. Believe me - you should see him - he is criminally insane. He's probably killed half a dozen people over the past thirty years. He's nobody's banner. He's crazy.

'Everyone said Zhirinovsky was crazy, remember? His foreign policy towards the Baltic States was to bury nuclear waste along the Lithuanian border and blow it into Vilnius every night using giant fans. He still got twenty-three per cent of the vote in the ninety-three election.'

Suvorin couldn't stand this unearthly, bestial music a moment more. He lifted the needle.

They heard a solitary shot.

Suvorin held his breath for an answering salvo.

'Perhaps,' he said doubtfully, after waiting a long while, 'I should think about calling up that army -,

'THERE are traps,' said Kelso.

'What?'

Suvorin was at the doorway, peering tentatively into the twilight. He looked back into the cabin. He had looped some rope around their wrists and attached it to the cold stove.

'He's put down traps. Be careful where you tread.'

'Thank you.' Suvorin planted his foot on the top step. 'I'll be back.'

His plan - and that was a good word, he thought, that had a certain ring to it: his plan - was to get back to the snow plough and use the radio to summon reinforcements. So he headed towards the entrance to the clearing, the only fixed point he had. There were good footprints to follow here, although it was getting dark, and he must have been midway along the rough path when he felt the explosion and a second later he heard it, a great rush of snow marking the passage of the shock wave as it travelled through the forest. Cascades of crystal pattered down from the higher branches and bounced off into space, leaving tiny clouds of particles hanging in the air like puffs of breath.

He spun around, the gun held out in a double grip, pointing uselessly in the direction of the blast.

He panicked then and began to run - a comic figure, a jerking marionette - trying to bring his knees up as high as they would go to avoid the sucking, clinging snow His breath was coming in sobs.

He was so intent on keeping going he almost tripped over the first body.

It was one of the soldiers. He had been caught in a trap -a huge trap: a bear trap, maybe - so big and powerfully sprung, the jaws of it had actually clamped into the bone above his knee. There was a lot of blood smeared around in the flattened snow, blood from the shattered leg and blood from a big head wound that gaped through the back of the ski-mask like a second mouth.

The corpse of the other soldier was a few paces further on. Unlike the first man, he was lying on his back, his arms outstretched, his legs arranged in a perfect figure 4. There was a puddle of blood on his chest.

Suvorin put down his gun, took off his gloves and checked the pulses of both men - although he knew it was useless -pulling aside the layers of clothing to feel their warm, dead wrists.

How had he ambushed them both?

He looked around.

Like this, probably: he had laid the trap on the path, buried in the snow, and had lured them over it; the man in the lead had missed it, somehow, the man in the rear had been caught - that was the screaming - and the lead man had turned to help only to find their quarry behind them - that was what was cunning: they wouldn't have expected that. And so he had been shot full in the front, and then the second man had been taken out at leisure, executioner-style, with a bullet at point-blank range in the back of the head.

And then he had taken their AK-74s.

What kind of creature was this?

Suvorin knelt by the head of the first soldier and pulled off his ski-mask. He took out his ear-piece and pressed it to his own ear. He thought he could hear something. A rushing sound. He found the little microphone attached to the inside cuff of the dead man's left hand.

'Kretov?' he whispered. 'Kretov?' But the only voice he could hear was his own.

Then the gunfire started up again.

THE fire was like a red dawn through the trees, and when Suvorin stepped out on to the track he could feel the heat of the burning snow plough, even at a range of a hundred yards. The fuel tank must have exploded and the inferno had melted the winter all around it. The vehicle stood blazing in the centre of its own scorched spring.

The gunfire was continuing sporadically, but that wasn't Kretov returning fire. That was boxes of ammunition, exploding in the cab. Kretov himself was sitting down, doubled over in the centre of the track, beside the RP46, as dead as his comrades. He looked as though he had been shot while trying to set up the machine gun. He had got as far as mounting it on to the bipod but he hadn't had time to open the cannister of ammunition.

Suvorin went up to him and touched his arm and Kretov toppled over, his grey eyes open, a look of astonishment on his broad, pink face. Suvorin couldn't see a wound, not at first, anyway. Perhaps the heroic major of the Spetsnaz had simply died of fright?

Another loud bang from the direction of the fire made him look up, to find himself being watched by Comrade Stalin, in his generalissimo's uniform and cap.

The GenSec was some way up the track, standing before the fire, his left hand on his hip, his right holding a rifle almost casually across his shoulder. His shadow was long in proportion '~ to his squat torso. It danced and flickered on the churned snow.

Suvorin thought he would choke on his own heart. They looked at one another. Then Stalin started marching towards him. And marching - that was the word for the way he walked: quickly, but without hurrying, swinging his arms up across his barrel chest, left-right, left-right: look lively there, comrade, here I come! Suvorin fumbled in his pocket for his pistol and realised he had left it in the trees, beside the first two corpses.