"The Stars and Stripes are burning in the streets of Moscow today! The cloth from which your pitiful banner is woven is stained with the blood of the Russian people! In all righteousness we shall sweep you from the face of the earth!"

"I'm not an American! I'm not! I'm not! I swear it!"

Hanlon translated all this for Shelby later. They were standing in an office of the administration block at the Ussurysk train-yards. There were three others in the room: two local police officers, and their prisoner.

Their prisoner's name was Mikhail Kramer. He had been caught fleeing the scene of the slaughter, shot in the ankle, and arrested. Several other men fleeing with him were killed on the spot. Another had died in this same chair.

Kramer was tied to it now, naked, blood trailing from his bashed and broken mouth all the way down his neck and chest toward his groin, which had already been pulped separately. At the signal of the police officer in command, the subordinate slipped the belt he had wrapped around his fists over the man's head and began to garrotte him with it. He choked, shaking all over, but they didn't allow him to lose consciousness. The police sergeant in charge threw water over him.

It was probably a good thing Shelby didn't understand what the interrogators were saying to Kramer, Hanlon thought. He didn't know the man's resolve would be able to stand the hate, the pure bloodlust the sergeant - who had a notable erection burgeoning in his trousers - was letting fly. Hanlon could pass himself off as a loyal comrade of the Soviet Union, but Shelby only spoke English.

He had introduced Shelby as his partner. As far as the local cops knew, they were both KGB agents and Shelby was the stony-faced silent type.

Last night the train from Nakhodka stopped just outside the station and police officers had boarded the train to tell them to disembark here. They would be taken out of the station on a bus. Some had seen the police teeming over a distant platform littered with cadavers and there was screaming. Hanlon promptly pulled out his papers and surprised Shelby with a convincing Russian accent.

Having pulled rank on the local cops, he and Shelby were allowed to examine the bodies. They did this silently. They didn't need to speak, however. They both knew they were looking for bodies with heads, and they didn't find a single one without one. Plenty of injuries, savage injuries, fingers lost and limbs cleaved almost in two, but nothing taken. The fingers lay near their owners.

The pair of them had retired to a local boarding house that had once been an army barracks. Ussurysk was a decaying town, not so much stuck in the past as stuck with it. Old drunks walked the streets around the boarding house wearing military uniforms from a world war that had never reached the area.

Early in the morning a young fresh-faced police constable came to the boarding house with news of a gang caught running from the train-yards. They had been hiding most of the night beneath a train, as police had swarmed over the station looking for those responsible for the carnage. As they made a break for it, they had been spotted. Some were gunned down, and several were captured.

The sergeant gestured for the junior officer to stop. Then he leant in close to the man's ear, whispered something Hanlon couldn't hear. Kramer hadn't screamed or cried out. He didn't make a sound as the sergeant stepped directly in front of him, his feet wide apart, and undid his trousers. Kramer's eyelid flickered as an arc of urine impacted his bloody brow. He looked up at Hanlon, defeated.

Hanlon doubted the man was American. And he knew he wasn't in any way responsible for the attack. The idea that this was a hostile American action arose during the night, as he and Shelby had been sleeping. When he woke up, the word was everywhere. America was threatening the Soviet Union with war over Cuba. Not many of these rural folk, thousands of miles from Moscow, knew where Cuba was; as far as most of them were concerned, it could have been ten miles away, and when news also reached them of the train-yard attack during the night, hysteria got the better of them. The Americans weren't coming; they were already here!

The sergeant shook off and buttoned up his trousers. He clearly relished the opportunity to interrogate a real enemy of the Soviet order. Hanlon could imagine similar scenes all over the country. The Russian people needed no stirring up for war with America. Here was this lowly country cop, pissing on a common criminal, and he probably thought he was doing something great for the war effort.

"You need to go, too?" the sergeant asked.

His deputy shook his head feverishly, and when the sergeant looked at Hanlon, what Hanlon saw in his eyes wasn't evil, just naughty. There was a certain childish naughtiness, an impishness about his demeanour. Hanlon shook his head; as did Shelby, who didn't need to understand Russian to get the hint.

"All we want is a confession," the sergeant said.

Well, that wasn't all Hanlon wanted. He'd phoned up his contact in the ground radar station this morning, and he'd told Hanlon that the radar ghost, whilst heading north, had gone right out of his range, which was about a hundred miles. So the alien could be anywhere, Hanlon needed a lead, and this guy was one of the only ones to have been in the wrong place at the right time. Still, the quicker he confessed, the quicker Hanlon could take him away and interrogate him more successfully.

"I am a thief," Kramer managed to splutter. "My name is Mikhail Kramer. I am the leader of the Proletariat. You must have heard of us, sir. We are the ones who rob the trains and steal from the rich. We are always in the papers."

The sergeant snorted. "Are you American?"

"I came here tonight in a black sedan car. It was stolen five weeks ago from a widow whose husband drove it. We threw her in the river. You can find the car on the tundra, half a mile from here. When we arrived, we found - "

"Are you American?"

"No, sir. I am not American."

The sergeant signalled to his deputy. Mikhail Kramer began to cry; silently, but his body heaved within the restraints. As the deputy choked him once more, he gagged, but they were half-hearted gags. His will to go on was waning.

As Hanlon and Shelby watched - and Hanlon could tell Shelby was finding it increasingly hard to stand there - the sergeant grabbed the man's crotch. They had already pummelled it with a baton, splitting his scrotum wide open. Finally, a look of abject agony burst across Kramer's face and he let out a great scream.

"I'm an American!" he cried. "I'm an American!"

And then it was all over. The deputy stopped choking him, and the sergeant let go. His hand was covered in bloody flecks of flesh, but he was oblivious. His face was white. The swelling had gone from his trousers. He looked honestly afraid.

"I knew it," he said, breathlessly. "I just knew it. The Americans are attacking us. The bastards! This is war. This is World War Three!"

By noon, John F Kennedy's head was spinning with such colourless phrases as strategic targeting initiative and sustainable damage limit and minimum offensive predilection and collateral loss projection. He was sitting in the windowless war room at the White House for a second day, longing for someone to talk plain; to talk of dropping bombs on a million people when that's what they meant. He listened to his generals, each buzzing with a sort of sexual energy, give him plans and forecasts, only to come back an hour later and contradict themselves with an update.

President Kennedy had a headache. It was hard to stay focussed as the generals argued over a map of the Soviet Union, debating where to drop nuclear missiles. None of them seemed to know where, apart from Moscow. They really didn't know much about Russia at all, he thought. They had this map of the country and they were bashing around it like a kid in a blindfold goes for a pinyada. The thought made him smile, much to the delight of one general, who bristled with a natural high as he spoke of dropping nuclear bombs on Minsk.

Kennedy was glad when a Justice of the Peace politely interrupted the meeting to tell the President his wife had returned. He left the generals without an excuse or an apology - he didn't feel the need to give them one. He went up into the main part of the building, and found Jackie in the bedroom. She was wearing pink, but it didn't suit her grey face this afternoon. Her husband asked her if she was ready to take a little tour of the facilities, and gestured the Justice of the Peace behind.

She gripped his hand tightly as they descended to the basement level of the White House - so tightly, in fact, that he couldn't even tell if she was exuding a nervous sweat. He knew he was. The bomb-shelter was four storeys beneath the basement, so five levels below ground - about sixty feet down. The Justice of the Peace led the way through the cool basement, toward the elevator.

But when they reached it, he started unlocking the door beside it. Kennedy knew what was beyond it. It was a stairwell.

"Aren't we taking the elevator?" he asked.

"No, sir. In the event of sudden attack, there might not be enough time for the elevator to reach the bottom before the electrics are disabled."

The President nodded sagely.

Jackie shuddered and put her hands on his lapels. "Jack, I don't want to do this. Take me back upstairs. Please."

Jack was a pet name for him. She wasn't the only one who called him it. He took her hands in his and beamed his famous smile.

"Everything's going to be okay."

She shook her head. "You're not at the Democratic convention now, John. I know when you're just saying the right thing."

He didn't have a response for that.

"Okay, we're through," said the Justice of the Peace.

It was a long walk to the bottom, several hundred steps, which took the best of five minutes. They were made of grey cement, and together with the whitewashed walls, it felt like they were descending into a cave. Indeed, as they went down deeper into the earth, Kennedy found it getting notably colder.

At the bottom of the stairs was a great metal door, like one that would be found on a bank vault. The Justice of the Peace spoke into the intercom and something in the door clunked. Jackie rubbed her cold arms as the door slowly swung open, to reveal a couple more Justices of the Peace on the other side.

"Mr President, if you'll follow me," said one.

Then their first guide started back up the stairs.

"Everything is now prepared, in case of any eventuality, and especially in anticipation of the worst case scenario," the Justice of the Peace explained, his cap low on his head, which was tipped back so he could see the President.

Kennedy nodded. He always thought how insincere these military personnel sounded when they used the passive tense - which was always.

"I'm going to show you around the operations centre, the storage facilities and the living area. If you have any questions, just stop me and ask, sir."

As the Justice of the Peace started down a long drab corridor lit by glaring strip-lights, Kennedy gave Jackie a wan smile. But he couldn't muster a genuine enough feeling to convince her. He felt just how she looked.

The bomb-shelter was very basic and utilitarian. Everything was either the grey of unpainted concrete or whitewashed. If they stood still too long, Kennedy began to see a colourful aura appear around the Justice of the Peace.

It was also much larger than he'd thought. He'd been down here once before, when its use had never seemed likely, but it had been expanded since then. It was an endless string of long, straight corridors, echoing passages, and drab metal rooms. The air was cool and tasted dusty. There was a constant hum of the air supplies through the insulated pipes that ran along the ceilings of all the passages. Occasionally they heard the spark of something electric or drip of something wet.

The Justice of the Peace gave the tour as if he was introducing something no more fatalistic than Disneyland. He showed them the operations centre where a lit-up map of the world was being studied by some generals that Kennedy had been listening to less than an hour before. The rest of the shelter seemed abandoned in comparison, as they walked for what seemed like miles without seeing another soul.

Their guide took them to see the pumps, which thrummed with the sound of churning air. He explained how they filtered radioactive fallout, in such a way he gave the impression he thought it was a great scientific development. He showed them the boilers, the great water tanks, the food storage rooms - the President and his staff could survive down here for the better part of a year.

And then it was on to the living quarters, which were actually right next to the door by which they had come in. They had done the round trip. This area wasn't quite so basic and spare as the rest of the shelter. The walls were papered, there were proper light fittings, and a common room had comfy armchairs. The Justice of the Peace invited Mrs Kennedy to sit down. But she wanted to see the bedrooms.

The Justice of the Peace obliged, and took them along a corridor, on both sides of which all the doors that led off it were already name-labelled. The President and his wife had been located at the far end. It was a small room. It only had room for a bed-side table each, a wardrobe each, and the bed. A double bed. It was already made up, and had a nice, soft woollen blanket on it. Jackie bent down and felt it.

"I've got to get out of here," she said suddenly.

Then she ran from the room. The President and the Justice of the Peace looked at each other, then Kennedy ran after her. She hadn't got very far. He found her on the bottom steps of the stairs leading up, crying into her arm. The other Justices manning the door looked lost. Kennedy told them to close the metal door behind him.

"I can't, John! I just can't!" Jackie wept.

"It's just a precaution," her husband told her.

"No, it's not!" she snapped. "I'm not blind. I can tell what all the people down here are thinking. They're thinking they're lucky, they're damn lucky, because at least down here they're going to survive. But what about everyone else?"

She looked up into his eyes, her face wet.

He sighed, then brought his hand up to brush away her tears. "Don't you think I know that? And don't you think Khrushchev knows it, too? War between us would kill tens of millions. We must have faith that sense will prevail."

"While burying yourself in a hole."

He didn't have a response to that.

"I've got to get out of here," she said again. Then she got to her feet, ignored the hand he offered and started back up the stairs first.

As he watched her go, Kennedy felt he was losing her. Before he started up the stairs after her, he made himself a silent promise. That if he survived this - if they survived this - he would never, ever be unfaithful to her again.

Hanlon frowned. He switched the phone to his other ear and turned his back on Shelby - not that the American could understand what he was saying.

"Are you sure about that?" he asked.

He and Shelby were alone in another office in the administration block. He had phoned his inside man at the ground radar station as normal, but his contact, very apologetic, said he wouldn't be able to obtain readings from a more northerly radar station without arousing suspicion. So his use to Hanlon was at an end.

On a whim, Hanlon had used one of the cycling telephone numbers for the CIA's double agents in the KGB that he'd been ordered to memorise. He'd got through to one of his contacts - and made a surprising discovery.

"Khabarovsk. Got it. Goodbye."

Then he hung up and turned back to Shelby, who was leaning against the door, his arms folded, looking halfway between curious and bemused.

"Looks like your man Malakov made it."

Shelby's arms unfolded of their own accord and his mouth fell open. "But you threw him out of the train. Are you sure it's him?"

"Yeah. And you know what, I'm glad."

Shelby frowned, but said nothing.

Hanlon grinned. "Because he's just given me a new lead. Come on. We've got to get the train to Khabarovsk. I'll explain on the way."

As they walked to the platforms, Hanlon explained how Malakov was booked on a private flight to Khabarovsk. This wasn't in itself a lead, but Hanlon said he had a hunch that Malakov was still on the trail of this thing, and Khabarovsk was in the direction his ghost was heading when it went off the radar. The pieces fit.

"So he's not coming back for me, then."

Shelby sounded almost dismayed, Hanlon thought.

"Think about it," he said. "He probably thinks I came to rescue you, and that we're several hundred miles away from all this bullshit by now."

"Yes, I suppose." Shelby nodded sagely.

Hanlon smirked. "He'd be shocked to know where we are now."

"Not as shocked as he would be to know where we're going."

"Got that right." Hanlon laughed.

They reached the platforms, and Hanlon waved his way through the police cordon with his KGB papers. But that was about as far as they got.

"I'm sorry, sir. I can't sell you a ticket." The man from the ticket booth was standing outside it, smoking a cigarette. "I can't sell you a ticket because there aren't any trains. They've all been cancelled until further notice."

The police sergeant who had been torturing Mikhail Kramer an hour or so before was standing on the platform nearby, listening to reports from his officers that had spent all morning combing the area for anything that could be construed as evidence. Hanlon pushed through the gaggle of cops and interrupted.

"I want you to contact your police chief, or your magistrate, or whoever it is who cancelled these trains, and tell them to reverse the order, on my order."

The sergeant jerked his head to tell the throng of deputies to get lost and then looked at Hanlon quizzically. "Can I see your papers again?"

"What?" Hanlon frowned.

But he handed them over, and the sergeant skirted over them before handing them back. He pulled on the end of his nose. "Seeing as the orders to cancel all the trains came from your department, care to tell me how you didn't know?"

Oh shit, thought Hanlon. Busted!

The sergeant continued: "I was told on the phone there was concern that those responsible - though they didn't say outright they were Americans - might try and use our own railways to travel further inland."

"Well, there seems to have been a failure in communications," Hanlon said.

The sergeant nodded. "I'd say."

As Hanlon beat a retreat, the sergeant watched him warily.

"We should get out of here, like now," Hanlon said in a quiet voice to Shelby as soon as they were far enough along the platform.

"When's the next train?" said Shelby.

"There is no train. Been cancelled. By the KGB. And I didn't know. And in five minutes that sergeant's going to find out why."

"How else are we going to get there?"

Hanlon stopped at the end of the platform, remembering, and smiled. "A black sedan car, on the tundra, half a mile from here."

"Oh, and that won't raise suspicion, stealing a car."

"I don't have to steal it. It's already stolen."

Then he walked off the platform and led Shelby back to the administration block, where Mikhail Kramer was waiting in a makeshift cell.

As night fell on another day, the hunter paused. It was the first time he had stopped since the sun came up, but he was not exhausted.

Once more he flipped open the panel on his arm. The green circle that had been broken and spinning slowly was now spinning faster, and was nearer a complete circle than it had been in several days. That meant one thing.

His spacecraft had stopped moving again.

Which meant something else: he was getting closer. The last time the circle had been spinning this fast, he had reached that hillside overlooking what became the scene of his last slaughter in less than half a day.

So with any luck, he would reach his ship before sunrise.

The red spike was now flickering over the final section faster than his heartbeat. He was almost out of charge. He wouldn't have enough power to use his shoulder cannon. If he met trouble, he'd have to use his spear.

He deactivated his cloak and started walking once more. The land was grey and austere, and there was no one around to see him.

NOTES:
A chapter where I cut loose, and which ended up the longest so far as a result, nigh on 4000 words (which brings the story as a whole past the 40,000 word mark - and thus the third longest story I've ever written). I thought I wasn't really giving a sense of the worldwide threat of nuclear war that the Cuban Missile Crisis enshrined. I wanted to represent the hysteria, as represented by the Russian police sergeant, and also the dread, as represented by JFK and Jackie's otherwise superfluous bomb shelter visit.

Which was, incidentally, based on my own visit to a government nuclear shelter in Mistley, Essex. I was at the height of my "Alien" fandom at that point, and couldn't help thinking how much the place seemed like the alien-infested colony in "Aliens". A year or so later I wrote a very "Terminator"-inspired story about nuclear war, and envisaged future archaeologists, thousands of years hence, finding these nuclear shelters and opening them up a bit like Tutankhamun's tomb, and discovering this forgotten section of human history.

I also wanted to introduce a little satire. The comment that most rural Russians might think Cuba was ten miles away is drawn from a joke at the end of the first Adrian Mole book where his father panics when the Falklands are invaded, thinking it's off the coast of Scotland. There's also my likening American military policy to bashing a pinyada, and of course, the eroticism surrounding waging war, as represented by both the sergeant and Kennedy's generals getting horny.