Malakov and Shelby arrived in Nakhodka just after six o'clock. The roads were empty this early in the morning, so the journey only took them ninety minutes. There was no direct train route from Vladivostok to Nakhodka, so Malakov had commandeered the staff car of a local major. He had also commandeered the driver.

The first thing they noticed as they climbed out of the car was that Nakhodka was much colder than Vladivostok. The town was at the tip of a peninsula jutting out into the Sea of Japan, whilst Vladivostok, which was nominally thirty miles north west of them now, was protected from Pacific weather fronts by being within a bay.

Nakhodka was half the size of Vladivostok. It was considered even less of a target so had even less coastal defences. There were guard towers behind the beaches but not all of them were manned. The small port mainly served local fishing boats, but also housed a navy refuelling station run by a corps of army engineers.

"What's so special about this place?" Shelby thought aloud as the car pulled away. "I mean, what's the difference between killing someone in Vladivostok and killing someone here? Why come all this way?"

Malakov clamped a cigarette between his lips and grunted in concurrence as they approached the gates. He had been thinking the same things.

The port was run-down and decrepit. Numerous buildings had been abandoned and the repair-work to others was entirely improvised. The barbed wire fence around the perimeter seemed almost unnecessary. It felt like nobody had much care for this place since the end of the war. A deadly stillness hung over the port.

"No guards on the gate?" Shelby said.

Malakov was fumbling with a book of matches. "Hmm?"

"I thought you said you ordered a military presence."

The agent looked up. "I did," he said around his cigarette, which he then took out of his mouth. "They're probably guarding the ship."

Shelby nodded, but continued to wonder.

They walked through the gates and into the port. A cold wind was blowing off the sea and sweeping through the buildings and Malakov was having a time keeping his struck matches lit long enough to light his cigarette. He took shelter by the side of one building and someone inside spotted him through the window.

"Can I help you?" they asked, opening the door.

"If you're the harbour master, yes."

"No. You'll be wanting Mr Oranova."

Malakov knew that much. "Do you know where he is?"

"Yes, hang on." Then he disappeared back inside.

"I think we're getting ourselves a guide."

The man reappeared, wearing a coat that was too big for him, a Cossack hat and what looked like mittens. "He should still be in the engineer's office," he told them as he led the way. "He's been there since the incident."

Malakov nodded. "How much do you know about what happened?" Seeing as the man had called it 'the incident', Malakov doubted he knew much.

"Not much. I just went and had a look afterwards."

Malakov glanced across at Shelby and raised an eyebrow, forgetting for a moment that the American hadn't understood a word said. Shelby frowned back.

"What do you mean?" Malakov asked their guide.

The man responded with a rueful sigh. But it wasn't another cryptic answer; up ahead, two men had just cut across their path carrying something large wrapped in a tarpaulin. Their guide held his hat down to his chest as they passed.

Shelby watched them go, but Malakov wouldn't have given them a second look had their guide not then said, "That must be the tenth this morning."

At which point, Malakov did glance back. If the rough shape of the bundle and the way it sagged in the middle didn't give away what was wrapped inside, then the mottled grey hand hanging out of one of the flaps certainly did.

Malakov stopped abruptly and turned round.

The two men carried the body toward a dilapidated warehouse near the edge of the harbour. They put the corpse down to open the doors.

"They're putting them all in there for now," their guide explained. Then he sighed again. "Come on. The engineer's office is just up here."

"I want to go back there," Malakov said.

The man screwed up his nose. "Why?"

Malakov didn't answer, didn't even look at the man, just gave him another of his narrow, brown envelopes and pointed Shelby toward the door. The man opened the envelope, skimmed over the contents and bit his lip.

"I'll go and get Mr Oranova," he said.

He scurried off as Malakov led Shelby into the warehouse.

"What's in here?" Shelby asked.

"More victims, by the sound of it."

But their guide had been wrong. Perhaps he hadn't been looking out of his window as much as he thought he'd been. Because there were considerably more than ten corpses. At a rough guess, Malakov reckoned more like thirty. The two men with the bundle were looking for an empty space at the far end of the warehouse.

"I thought you said it was trapped," Shelby muttered.

Malakov didn't say a thing.

"Some trap."

For a moment, neither of them moved from the doorway. Then Malakov crouched down by the nearest corpse and flipped back the cover.

"Military," he said quietly.

Then he dropped the cover and stood up. Tucking his hands under his arms, he strolled amongst the bodies, and picked another.

"Military," he said again.

The other two men deposited their latest addition and started making their way back. Malakov was still checking bodies at random.

"What's that smell?" said Shelby.

It smelt like oil: thick, acrid, he felt it behind his eyes, it was so strong. But as he looked around the warehouse, he couldn't see any spilt.

As he picked his way through the bodies, following Malakov, the smell just got stronger. He stopped when he found several sheets stained with the stuff. The shape of the people underneath was imprinted in oil, like eerie Turin Shrouds.

Shelby knelt down by the nearest and pulled back the cloth. It was stuck to the person's flesh. Strings of congealed oil peeled away from its face. The body was covered in the stuff, but Shelby could still tell he was wearing a military uniform, just like the ones Malakov had found. There was no doubt in Shelby's mind anymore that the men Malakov had sent to guard the alien had died trying.

But that didn't explain the oil. Nor did it explain why, when Shelby pulled the cover back further, he couldn't find any stab wounds, any burns, any slices, or any blood. Nor did it explain why, when Shelby squeezed the boy's shoulder, it wasn't just oil that spurted out between his knuckles, but water too.

It was then that Shelby began to realise the bodies weren't all lying in a giant wet patch because the roof of the dilapidated warehouse was leaking.

"Drowned?" he muttered to himself.

He had a sudden flash of the Roosevelt.

"Which one of you's Malakov?" said a voice. Shelby didn't understand, but he still looked up. The man with their guide was bespectacled and greying.

Malakov recognised Pavel Oranova from his profile.

"I am. We spoke on the telephone."

Oranova nodded, disinterested. He didn't look like he'd slept lately. "Just tell me what you want to know, and I'll do my best to help."

"Can you take me to see the Jaldysh?"

Oranova inhaled noisily. "Yeah. Thought you might say that. I got an outboard motor waiting for us down by the dock. You want to go now?"

Malakov frowned. "Why do we need a boat?"

The two men that had been lugging corpses all morning reached the door and overhearing this gave Malakov funny looks. Didn't he know?

Oranova sighed impatiently. "Because when the Jaldysh sank an hour ago, Mr Malakov, it took the jetty with it."

Khrushchev ate his Monday breakfast alone. He still didn't have much of an appetite. Last night he had dreamt about the Battle of Stalingrad, except that in his dream the enemies were Americans not Nazis. The Hammer and Sickle was being burnt and replaced, not with the swastika, but with the Stars and Stripes.

There was a knock at the door. Ana the serving girl had someone with her. Khrushchev almost hoped it wasn't Gharkov, not if the KGB leader was bringing him more bad news. But no, it was worse than that.

"Good morning, Mr Chairman."

"What are you doing here, Metzkin?"

Metzkin sat down uninvited several seats away from Khrushchev and helped himself to a mug of tea. He tasted it, sucked his lips.

"Have you got any sugar?"

Ana nodded and dipped out of the room obsequiously.

"What do you want, Metzkin?"

They were alone, but Metzkin's smile didn't fade. He was a good liar. The smile even spread to his eyes. Perhaps he was genuinely happy.

And that made Khrushchev nervous.

"I won't stay long. I just came to give you this, really." He took the folded document out of his jacket pocket and slid it along the table.

Khrushchev reached out warily. As he unfolded it and began to read, Ana returned briefly with the bowl of sugar. Metzkin started supping his tea.

The document was a copy of three telegrams. The first was from a sergeant in the town of Nakhodka. He had received an order from a KGB agent to guard a ship in port and requested confirmation. The second telegram was that confirmation. And the third, sent several hours later, was a report that the ship in question had sunk.

Khrushchev finished reading and handed it back.

"How did you get this?" he asked.

"I have my sources," Metzkin said between sips.

"Who?"

Metzkin chuckled. "The question you should be asking is not who they are, Mr Chairman, but how come they're quicker than yours?"

Khrushchev glared at him.

"You didn't know, did you, before I came in?"

Khrushchev didn't answer.

"As I thought." He went back to drinking his tea.

Khrushchev took it slow, had to take it slow. Metzkin was as slick as a viper and, if this document was anything to go by, two steps ahead already.

"Why is this of interest to you, anyway?"

Metzkin put down his mug. "Nakhodka's thirty miles from Vladivostok, Mr Chairman. I think that's more than just a coincidence."

The man knew about Vladivostok!

Khrushchev said nothing.

But Metzkin could read his face. "Oh, yes, I know we were attacked there too, though I seem to have been the victim of a certain communicative oversight."

Khrushchev glowered at him.

"Though I'm not alone there, am I?"

Khrushchev lowered his eyes.

Metzkin downed the rest of his tea and stood up. "Anyway, I said I wouldn't stay along, and I think I've made my point, no?"

Khrushchev didn't say a thing as Metzkin headed for the door. He already had his hand on the knob when Khrushchev called out to him.

Metzkin turned. "Yes, Mr Chairman?"

"What are you going to do with this information?"

"Do with it?"

"Who have you told?"

"Just you."

For now, thought Khrushchev.

"Now that you're in full possession of the facts" - including the fact that Metzkin knew everything - "I trust you'll take the correct course of action."

Khrushchev nodded slowly.

"Good morning, Mr Chairman."

Then he left the room.

Khrushchev sat in contemplative silence for a long time. It could have been as much as an hour, or as little as ten minutes. He didn't know, but when he reached for the teapot without thinking, the drink he poured himself was cold.

The silence was eventually broken by a knock. It was loud knock, made by a bony hand, not Ana's usual light heartbeat rhythm.

"Come in."

It was Gharkov.

"Sir, there's been another - "

"Yes. I already know," Khrushchev said. "Close the door." Then he told the KGB leader about Metzkin's visit. Gharkov listened in silence.

"For what it's worth," he said afterwards. "I don't think Metzkin will do anything with this, sir. It's his only trump card. This is the only influence he has over you. He won't surrender that to Brezhnev."

Khrushchev slumped back in his chair and buried his face in his hands. He sighed. "That's not the point, Gharkov."

"Isn't it, sir?"

Khrushchev looked up.

"Gharkov, I'm starting to think Metzkin may be right."

The Jaldysh lay on her side in the shallow waters of the port, her starboard gunwale rising out of the water for several feet. As she fell, her port side had crushed the jetty beneath it and the water lapping around her exposed hull was rife with shattered wood. The surface of the water was black with leaking oil.

"This is as close as we can get," Oranova said.

It was close enough. Malakov and Shelby were sitting in the front of the outboard. From here they could see the mammoth hole in the ship's hull, though only half of the circular cavity was visible above the water line.

"What could make a hole that big?" Malakov asked.

He already knew what. Even from this distance he could see it was a perfect circle, the edges smooth, like it had been cut out of butter with a hot knife. He'd seen similar damage on the tanks in Vladivostok, but not on this scale.

"Torpedo, maybe," said Oranova.

"Did you see or hear an explosion?"

Oranova shook his head. "Nope, nothing. One minute it was fine, and then the next, the stern was just slipping under the water. The bow came up, right out of the water, and when it got top heavy, it just toppled over."

"And crashed into the jetty."

"Yeah. I never seen anything like it."

There was a rowing boat that got even closer to the ship. Two men were ploughing through the oil and wreckage, retrieving bodies from the water. Malakov could see four or five in the rear of their dinghy already.

"How many made it off in time?"

"Six. And they were all on deck when it started listing. The rest, the ones below decks, they didn't have a fucking chance, it went so fast."

They had drifted with the current along the entire length of the ship. Oranova gave the engine a few revs to keep them in the area around the hole in the hull.

"Ask him if it could have survived," Shelby said.

Oranova looked at this English speaker warily.

"Could anything in the hold have survived?" Malakov asked.

Oranova snorted. "Not a chance. Not at the speed that thing went down. She must have been taking on a thousand litres a second."

"Is that a lot for a sinking ship?"

"You kidding me? She had a watertight bulkhead that went all the way up to A Deck. The water has to fill up the entire hold before it can spill over the bulkhead and flood the rest of the ship. I known boats to sink that fast with the bulkhead open, sure, but the captain swore on his mother's cunny he closed it."

Malakov turned and frowned.

"The captain was one of the survivors?"

"Yeah. He weren't even on the ship when it went down. He was injured round midnight time. Probably drunk off his ass."

Midnight. When the alien was captured, thought Malakov.

"Where is he now?"

The nurse spoke in hushed tones. "You'll be lucky if you can get any sense out of him, gentlemen. I've just given him a shot of morphine. Even if he's awake he'll be quite delirious for at least two or three more hours."

Malakov nodded. He and Shelby were standing at the foot of Captain Sergei Tchlinsky's hospital bed on a cold and empty ward that smelt of disinfectant and vomit. The captain's eyes were open, but he stared right through them.

"Thank you, nurse," Malakov said.

She smiled, then returned to her duties.

Shelby watched her go. "Seeing as I'm still here and not on my way to some prison somewhere, am I right in assuming you don't think it's dead?"

"Yes. You are."

Shelby groaned.

"Captain Tchlinsky?" Malakov said, bending down. He waved his hand in front of the man's face. His pupils didn't even dilate.

"So how did it escape, then?"

"Don't ask me, because I don't know. All I know is that our alien friend made the hole in that ship and that nobody's found its body."

Shelby perched on the edge of the mattress and sighed. "In other words, we're back where we started, with no leads as to where the damn thing's gone."

"I'm hoping the captain can tell us something."

Shelby snorted and watched as Malakov clicked his fingers on either side of the man's head and he didn't even respond, just started drooling.

"Give me his charts. The nurse said he lost his leg, but they don't know how he lost it. Apparently he didn't lose any blood."

Shelby frowned and lifted the end of the bed sheet. Sure enough, Tchlinsky's right leg was gone below the knee. All that was left was a blackened stump. Shelby smelt the odour of burnt flesh and covered his mouth.

"Shelby, look."

He dropped the cover and almost jumped.

Captain Tchlinsky wasn't staring through them any longer - he was staring right at Shelby. Malakov was holding the captain's charts in his hand, but the captain was gripping Malakov's wrist. His mouth opened and closed.

"Captain Tchlinsky?" Malakov ventured.

Slowly, the captain turned his head toward Malakov.

"Captain Tchlinsky, can you hear me?"

Tchlinsky opened his mouth, but only a hoarse moan came out.

"Captain, do you remember what happened?"

The captain let go of Malakov's arm. His face began to quiver. Beads of sweat formed visibly on his brow. He started grinding his teeth.

"Malakov," said Shelby gently.

Urine was blooming through the sheet above Tchlinsky's crotch.

"I think he remembers all right."

"The devil!" the captain suddenly cried.

Both Malakov and Shelby started.

Malakov leant in close. "Captain, I know it's difficult, I know you don't want to, but if you can remember, tell me: what was the devil doing?"

Tchlinsky choked on the words.

"Captain?"

"It's the drugs," Shelby said.

"No. He's trying to say something."

Tchlinsky's mouth changed shape repeatedly, as if trying out all the different words that came to mind before he found the right one.

Malakov got in even closer.

The captain managed a whisper: a couple of broken sentences, which he stuttered. Then he fell back against the pillow, exhausted.

Malakov took a step back.

"What did he say?" Shelby asked.

"He thinks it was searching for something."

Shelby frowned. "Searching for what?"

"I don't know. He doesn't know. But he says whatever it was looking for, it didn't find it - and it was really pissed off about that."

The hunter looked down at the panel on his arm. The green circle on the last screen was almost complete now and spinning more wildly than ever before.

That meant he was close.

He felt like deactivating his invisibility cloak, extending his spear to its full length and dealing a triumphant war cry toward the sun.

But that would wait.

The hunter started down the hill at full pelt. At the bottom was this strange confluence of metal tracks. It was probably down there.

As he ran, several long vehicles chugged along the various different tracks, belching out black smoke through small funnels mounted on top of them. They all stopped briefly at the bottom of the hill, though not always at the same place, and when they moved off again, they did so with a couple of loud hoots.

Halfway down, he checked the panel again.

But this couldn't be. The green circle wasn't spinning so wildly. It wasn't even as complete as it had been back at the top of the hill.

The hunter smacked the panel with the back of his hand. But it didn't make any difference. Slowly the realisation dawned on him.

He swung his arms back to scream at the sky. Then he extended his spear anyway - and his wrist-blades shot out with rage.

NOTES:
The longest chapter so far, though only by thirty words, and only because at the last minute I decided to carry over a scene from the next chapter that fitted better in a more truncated form at the end of this one. Namely, the Predator's final massacre. This is roughly the two-thirds mark, and the next chapter sees everything change as things escalate, both toward the Cuban Missile Crisis, and toward the end of the story. I'm acutely aware that Malakov and Shelby have got bogged down in mere detective work, instead of fighting the Predator, so envisage a two-chapter pay-off showdown at the end of the story.