imagined you in a white army officer's uniform . . . chief. You looked impressive.'

'You go ahead and laugh . . .' said Edgar, pouring himself some coffee. 'How's the compass doing?'

I put the note on the table without speaking. A Twilight image appeared in the air above it – the round casing of a compass, a lazily spinning pointer.

I poured myself some tea and took a sip. It tasted good. Brewed to perfection, just as it should be for 'His Honour'.

'He's on the train, the scum . . .' Edgar sighed. 'Gentlemen, I'm not going to conceal the alternatives from you. Either we catch the perpetrator, or the train will be destroyed. Together with all the passengers.'

'How?' Kostya asked laconically.

'There are various possibilities. A gas main explodes beside the train, a fighter plane accidentally launches an air-to-ground missile . . . if absolutely necessary, the rocket will have a nuclear warhead.'

'Edgar!' I really wanted to believe he was overdramatising. 'There are at least five hundred passengers on this train!'

'Rather more than that,' the Inquisitor corrected me.

'We can't do that!'

'We can't let the book go. We can't allow an unprincipled Other to create his own private guard and start restyling the world to suit himself.'

'But we don't know what he wants!'

'We know he killed an Inquisitor without hesitation. We know he is immensely powerful and is pursuing some goal unknown to us. What's he after in Central Asia, Gorodetsky?'

I shrugged.

'There are several ancient centres of power there,' Edgar muttered. 'A certain number of artefacts that disappeared without trace, a certain number of regions with weak political control . . . And what else?'

'A billion Chinese,' Kostya suddenly put in.

The Dark Ones stared at each other.

'You're out of your mind . . .' Edgar said hesitantly.

'More than a billion,' Kostya replied derisively. 'What if he's planning to make a dash through Kazakhstan to China? Now that would be an army! A billion Others! And then there's India . . .'

'Don't be ridiculous,' Edgar said dismissively. 'Not even an idiot would try that. Where are we going to get Power from, when a third of the population is turned into Others?'

'But maybe he is an idiot,' Kostya persisted.

'That's why we're prepared to take extreme measures,' Edgar snapped.

He was serious. Without the slightest doubt that we really could kill these spell-bound conductors, chubby-cheeked businessmen and poor people travelling in the carriages with open seating. If we had to, we had to. Farmers who destroyed animals with foot-and- mouth disease suffered too.

I didn't feel like drinking tea any more. I got up and walked out of the compartment. Edgar watched me go with an understanding but by no means sympathetic glance.

The carriage was settling down as the passengers prepared for sleep. The doors of some compartments were still open, there were people still loitering in the corridor, waiting for the washroom to be free. I heard glasses clinking somewhere, but most of the passengers were too exhausted after Moscow.

I thought languidly that what the laws of melodrama required now was for little children with the innocent faces of angels to come dashing along the corridor. Just to drive home the true monstrosity of Edgar's plan . . .

There weren't any little children. Instead a fat man in faded tracksuit bottoms and a baggy T-shirt stuck his head out of one of the compartments. He had a red, steaming face that was already comfortably bloated by strong drink. The man looked listlessly straight through me, hiccupped and disappeared again.

My hands automatically reached for my minidisc player. I stuck in the earphones, put in a disc at random and pressed my face against the window. I see nothing, I hear nothing. And obviously I'm not going to say anything.

I heard a gentle, lyrical melody, and a voice started singing delicately:

You'll have no time to dash for the bushes

When the sawn-off mows you down

There is no beauty more beautiful

Than the visions of morphine withdrawal . . .

Yes, it was Las, my acquaintance from the Assol complex. The disc he'd given me as a present. I laughed and turned the volume up. It was exactly what I needed.

The devil-kids will return to the stars,

And they'll smelt our blood into iron,

There is no beauty more beautiful

Than the visions of morphine withdrawal . . .

My God! . . . It was more punk than any of the punks. Not even Shnur with his obscenities . . .

A hand slapped me on the shoulder.

'Edgar, everyone has his own way of relaxing,'