‘You must help me.’I found Krasov sheltering inside a telephone box on the Barton Road. His black overcoat, briefcase and hat made him sharply visible through the glass of the kiosk. ‘My dear friend,’ he said. He took off his glove to shake my hand. ‘Forgive me for dragging you out on such a day.’ He tried to smile but his face was stiff with cold. I was shocked at his appearance. He had not shaved for a day or two, and his eyes had sunk even further into his skull. He seemed smaller and more fragile than ever. ‘For now I have escaped,’ he said. ‘It was not difficult. As matter of fact, those cretins they send to follow me would not see me if they were standing on other side of road right now.’ But there was a hollowness to the bravura. This was not the man I had met only a few days before. The stuffing had been knocked out of him. Krasov hunched against the cold and pulled his overcoat tighter around him. ‘I am rather cold,’ he said.
