“I want my mate back,” I shouted up, the words reverberating in the great hall.

“Well you can’t have him,” said the Liver Bird with a taunting tone, “I have a very special guest coming, and I’m serving him for dinner.” He paced the raised stone stage slowly, looking down at me, all seven despicable, preening feet of him.

We’d been having quite an enjoyable afternoon until the point where the Liver Bird snatched Jack Dudley. The Honorable and Worthy Peddlars tended to travel in great numbers at that time, before Nobby Clarke, Ken Jessop and other left-wing proselytizers splintered off to form the Internationalist Cyclist Anarchist Collective and Social Club. At a quieter part of the Public Bar, away from Ken and Nobby’s revolutionary chatter and excited talk of our chances of returning to Wembley next May, Jack had been discussing gardening with Dicky Maltley, whose allotment was known as the Eden of Ettingshall. Dicky could go on a bit, it has to be said, and Jack had found himself short of Craven ‘A’ after doing so much listening, so he’d popped out to a nearby shop for some more. A few minutes later, when Ken Jessop and I were heading out of the pub for the same reason, we saw the giant bird swoop down Barlow Lane and snatch Jack (lighting the first fag of his new packet) by the collar of his overcoat and fly away, like an anti-stork. Ken had resolved to discuss the matter with his comrades immediately, while I had snatched my bike and pedalled furiously after the bird all the way to this oversized mansion in Croxteth. It had taken some time to discover where in the grounds Jack was, and by the time I found him he was stood upon a shelf behind the Liver Bird’s stage, bound by rope. Below him on the stage a large cauldron simmered. It actually smelt quite good but the thought of Jack bubbling away in it turned my stomach. It would be upon me to explain the unfortunate episode to his Margaret, as well, and that thought was hardly appetizing.

The Honorable and Worthy Peddlars tended to travel in great numbers at that time, before Nobby Clarke, Ken Jessop and other left-wing proselytizers splintered off to form the Internationalist Cyclist Anarchist Collective and Social Club.

I looked up at the Liver Bird. He seemed to be waiting for something.

“You can’t cook him,” I protested, “It’s… it’s against the law.”

“Ha!” sneered the fowl, all seven foot of him, “Here my will is the only law. Though I do pay my rates on this place and they are frankly extortionate. Do you have a Labour council where you are from?”

“I’m not talking politics with you,” I said, indignantly, while surreptitiously scanning the walls for a way I might scale up to Jack. “Anyway, if you can’t afford the rates why don’t you move somewhere smaller?”

“It’s mostly a question of scale,” said the Liver Bird, and as if to illustrate his point he took off and flew around the hall, creating a considerable breeze with his giant wings, before coming back to rest on his stage, “a two-up-two-down in Garston isn’t quite suitable for our needs, know what I mean, like?”

Was that the royal ‘we’ he was using? Though I wouldn’t have put it past him, more likely there were more of his kind here; I tried to disguise my concern at this and asked some mundane stuff about heating bills, maintenance and the like. On his shelf, Jack struggled against the ropes while the steam rose in ever denser wafts from the cauldron.

The Liver Otter strolled into the hall, reared up on its hind legs and stirred the pot, tasting the stock and adding a little salt before heading back out the way he’d come.

I didn’t have to wait long for my suspicions to be confirmed: after a minute or so of the Liver Bird’s dreary complaints about the cost of lead for the roof and the effect that the post-war building programme was having on the availability of building materials, the Liver Otter strolled into the hall, reared up on its hind legs and stirred the pot, tasting the stock and adding a little salt before heading back out the way he’d come.

“And he doesn’t come cheap, either,” crowed the Liver Bird, lifting his beak up towards the door distainfully. “I think he’s overcharging me on the ingredients, too. Makes a decent enough scouse, though, I suppose.”

“You didn’t pay much for today’s ingredients, did you?” I said, calculating my chances of scaling the stonework up to Jack’s shelf.

“There are some things money can’t buy,” said the bird.

“You know, my friend has a wonderful allotment. I could get you some lovely veg, in exchange…”

“Never! Any way, my friend doesn’t eat vegetables.”

“Who else do you have working here?” asked Jack from up on the shelf, fatigued by now with struggling against the ropes for no gain.

“The Liver Monkey takes care of the gardens, and the Liver Rat does odd jobs, cleans the windows, builds the fires, that sort of thing. The Liver Pony and the Liver Squirrel do the cleaning, and the Liver Cheetah is my personal secretary. Oh, and the Liver Rhino looks after my security….”

“Not any more he doesn’t,” came a deep bass from the entrance. Through the imposing double doorway the Liver Rhino entered, followed by the rest of the Liver Help and, to my surprise, the Honorable and Worthy Peddlars. “As of today these grounds and properties are under the administration of the Syndicate of Liver Anarchists. Stand down, Liver Bird, from the perch of privilege and totalitarianism you have occupied for far too long.”

“What are you talking about, you lumpen dolt?” snapped the Liver Bird.

“Comrades Jessop and Clarke have opened our eyes to the injustice and exploitation that has been carried out upon us for these many long years. The Liver Animals will no longer do your bidding, but will run this place as an Anarchist Cooperative. The Liver Monkey is already digging up the flowerbeds with a view to planting some broad beans.”

“You’d better wait for October before planting,” interrupted Dicky Maltley quietly, “You’re a bit early yet.”

“Calm down, calm down. You can’t do this. Look at all I’ve done for you, like. Where’s the gratitude, eh? Eh?”

…we pedalled as if we were chasing a thousand Liver Birds…

“Here,” said the Liver Squirrel, handing him a broom, “Give your beak something useful to do. There’s a cobweb up there in the corner. And untie that human while you’re up there, Comrade.” At this the Liver Anarchists and the Honorable and Worthy Peddlars all cheered, and, with a resentful sneer, the Liver Bird took the broom and set to work, first sweeping cobwebs and then freeing Jack Dudley. Once he’d returned him to ground level, and after hearty thanks to Clarke, Jessop and the other left-wing proselytizers amongst the ranks of the H & WP, the Liver Animals set about the cooperative’s first committee meeting, while we mounted our machines to get over to Goodison. The Liver Bird’s guest, the Liver Tiger, arrived just as we were setting off, and Nobby Clarke warned him in no uncertain terms that the revolution was inevitable and the Liver Feline would put himself in great danger and historical anachronism if he tried anything reactionary once we’d left. We pedalled as if we were chasing a thousand Liver Birds and arrived just in time for the kick-off of a game Cullis’s cup holders would go on to win 2-1: a great result whatever your politics and up the blooming Wolves!

Harold ‘Chimdy’ Sweep had originally come up with the idea of making a barrel organ and busking to the UEFA Cup (or “EUFA Cup”, as the Brits were calling it back then) before the first round match in Coimbra, but he didn’t manage to finish building it until the weekend before the Quarter Final First Leg against Juventus in Turin. I must admit, I’d been surprised at this delay, given the way he turned his hand to things, but when he’d shown it me on the Sunday after an afternoon at the Crown and Cushion, I can tell you it was a real beauty. Confident of our earning capacity, we’d decided, in the end, to head straight to Turin, make a killing in the Piazza Castello, and either head straight back or stop off in Paris and grind if we were still a little short for the boat fare.

The morning started off fairly prosperously and we’d picked up maybe ten thousand lire, mainly from Shroud tourists visiting the nearby cathedral. The problems began around ten o’clock, when Arnold ‘Tockie’ Shipton and Ted Timms turned up. With a barrel organ.

They parked right by us to say hello.

“Where on earth did you get that from?” I asked.

“I made it ‘em,” said Chimdy, taking the opportunity to rest and stretch his winding arm.

“Whyever would you do that?”

“They paid me.”

“But look what a situation we’re in now! You’ve aided the competition.”

“What competition?” replied Tockie Shipton, licking an ice-cream, “There’s plenty of Turin to go around! No reason at all why we can’t both make a decent take!”

I scratched my jowl and nodded. “I suppose not. But you can’t stay here. One barrel organ in the Piazza Castello is just about capacity.”

Ted Timms wasn’t having it, however. “You car tell us where to set up! If you don’t like the competition, it’s you that should sling yer hooks.”

“We were here first!”

“Chaps! Be reasonable!” I protested, “We can’t possibly make any serious money with two barrel organs in the same piazza!”

“But it was always our plan to come to the Piazza Castello! We’re not about to redesign our entire business plan because you ‘got here first’” (nobody had invented the “quotation marks” hand signal back in those days. You just put on a more pronounced Black Country accent in order to suggest that the original speaker was thick.)

“Chaps! Be reasonable!” I protested, “We can’t possibly make any serious money with two barrel organs in the same piazza!”

There was a sudden quiet after I spoke; the kind that makes you turn around nervously. When I did so, Sid Pritchard and Peter “Handy” Ives were standing behind me.

With a barrel organ.

“All right, Gonby! Chimdy!”

“Right,” I said, “You can’t stay here. This is our patch.”

“It ay your patch!” said Ted Timms, sternly.

“Yow car tell us where to play,” said Handy, flicking his fashionably long fringe to one side, “This place seems as good as any, to me, Sid…”

Sid took off his flat cap and held it up as Handy cracked his knuckles and flexed his arms in preparation for a good wind. Before he got to start, however, the unmistakeable sound of a barrel organ playing Mary Hopkins’ “Those Were The Days” reached us from the southern corner of the Piazza. I raised my hand against the glare of the spring sun and made out Reg Cotteridge and Gerry Pinter. “How many of these things did you make, Chimdy?” I asked.

“Car remember. Quite a few.”

There was a pause, before Ted Timms asked, a little curtly, “Do they all play the same song?”

Chimdy nodded. “International, ay it?”. A middle-aged man strolled past us at this point, softly crooning “quelle irano giorni” into his wife’s hair.

It was clear we’d have to find a new patch. After a pensive Craven ‘A’, Chimdy and I headed towards the spires of the cathedral, beneath which, in the Piazza San Giovanni, Alfie Newham, Gosser Pembrose, Dick Flint, “Payday” Pete Gleeson, Charlie Sands and Bert “Traincrash” Thompson were operating three separate barrel organs, emiting Mary Hopkins’ hit at slightly different pitches and radically different speeds.

Thus we headed south, hoping to find some space and custom (and respite from the cacophony) in the Piazza San Carlo, but before we even got there (and having passed a number of itinerant Wolves organ-grinders on the way) we were stopped on the Via Roma by a well-dressed, diminutive Neopolitan with metal-capped teeth who introduced himself as the life-president of the Sindacato Italiano di Suonatori d’Organetto (SISO) and warned us, with the help of some intimidation by his much-taller associate, Scimietta, that we risked “arrest or worst” [sic] if we continued to practise organ-grinding without a licence, and our only options were to hand in our device to the SISO head office across the river in the Borgo Crimea, or to take it to the nearest scrapyard, also in Borgo Crimea, very close to the SISO office and owned by his brother, Paolo. We decided on the latter option, but the queues and animated arguments in front of us told us that we’d be in for a long wait and short recompense (supply far outstripping demand), so we dropped it off at the SISO headquarters and headed to the Stadio Comunale, where a Kenny Hibbit penalty levelled the scores and gave us a vital away goal for the home leg.

By that time, the song of those hundreds of defunct or commandeered barrel organs had captured the minds of the crowd, and Italians and English sang their particular versions of “Those Were The Days” throughout the game. Thus a Wolves tradition was born, though I don’t know why we don’t sing the “ner-ner-ner” bit at the end anymore.

There came a point, mid-Friday, where Jack Dudley’s words rang horribly true, like a spiteful conscience.

“Y’am mad, Gonby!” he’d said at The Fox that previous Tuesday, as I rapped the pack for him to cut. “Absolutely bloomin’ barmy.”

I turned up a jack. “We’ll get in.”

“No yer woe,” he’d replied as I pegged my two points. Corny Slice and I were on our way to winning by a street but Jack seemed determined to at least win the argument. Now, as I finished elaborating my sixth disguise of the day, I felt as though he’d all but succeeded. I looked at Rex Bush, who gave a dry smile beneath his false moustache and saluted. We stowed the costume chest under the sinks and left the public convenience with haste.

“Can we move along please, ladies and gentlemen?” called Rex as we approached the queue. “There’s nothing to see here.”

“There’s a football match to see,” said one of the assembled, a rickety old dame with spectacles.

“Not for another two days, there isn’t,” I said, in officious tones, “Now please vacate the area. You are causing a disturbance.”

“But there’s only five of us!”

And that, in a nutshell, was the problem. The Filbert Street ground had capacity for only four spectators, and as a supporter of the visiting team you had no chance of being there before a capacity crowd had formed at the turnstile. Our only hope was to trick at least sixty percent of those assembled into leaving, even for a minute, and then taking their places in the queue.

Rex said I made a fetching bride, but it was three days since my last shave and police helmets don’t make the most realistic padding

Five different ruses had already failed: sandwich boards offering free cakes and sausages at the local bakers’ and butchers’ shops; firemen needing access to the hydrant; peaky blinders on an extortion racket (we’d actually made ninepence off that, but returned it guiltily once it was clear they were still not moving); phantoms (the old girl with glasses asked Rex if he could pass a message on to her Albert, who had passed away some years before); and a married couple seeking help saving their baby drowning in the nearby Soar (Rex said I made a fetching bride, but it was three days since my last shave and police helmets don’t make the most realistic padding). It wasn’t clear whether they had seen through our rozzer disguises or whether they considered themselves above the law, but either way they weren’t budging now, either. A fat pipe-smoker suggested I blow my whistle for help and, with resigned looks at each other, Rex and I headed back down Filbert Street for our final rummage into the costume chest.

On the way to our makeshift dressing room we spotted Harold Sweep pulling a very tall contraption behind his bicycle. “What yer got there, Chimdy?” I asked him.

“Something I’ve been working on. I’m calling it ‘Proculorama’”

“What is it?”

“You’ll see, Gonby. By which I mean: you really will see!”

A bit cryptic, that, from Chimdy but I asked no further questions as Rex and I were keen to get into our next costumes – albeit with rather bleak views on our chances of success. If the people queuing were regulars they would smell something fishy when they didn’t recognize us, but it was also unusual for players – however keen – to queue up with the public twenty-four hours before a match. As it turned out neither of these two issues came up. One of the younger assembled took exception to the kits we were wearing.

“The blue is wrong! And I don’t like the collar!”

“The blue is wrong! And I don’t like the collar!” he said, pointing at our jerseys.

“That’s right!” said Four-Eyes, “They wear white collars these days! Imposters! Imposters!”

The game was up, and they only thing to be said for it was that we didn’t have to run away from them because they still wouldn’t budge from their places in the queue.

Around the corner, we saw Chimdy atop his construction. “Nearly ready, Gonby!” he called, and as we had little else to do, I suggested we acquire some bottles of ale from a nearby outdoor, and wait to see what he was up to.

It was worth our while. The tower that he’d been pulling behind his bicycle carried a mirror positioned at a forty-five degree angle to the floor, which reflected the game onto the mirror on an identical tower, which reflected the image down to a third mirror at ground level from which the game could be viewed. We could see the pitch perfectly (albeit in mirror-image), and congratulated Chimdy heartily on his plan. Chimdy was excited about the project, taking out his sketch books and showing me plans for further development of the Proculorama, which included placing a succession of advertising boards in front of the mirror at half time, charging companies for the exposure. He also envisaged reflecting the images into pubs so that patrons could sup and smoke while enjoying the game, and even sending the images between cities.

“The only consideration is cost,” he said, drawing deeply on his bottle of Everard’s and lighting up a Capstan, “The mirrors have not come cheap. If you could chip in for the cost that would be very helpful.”

In principle we were agreeable, but between four (Corny Slice had helped him out with the donkey work) it would be very steep. “I’m sure some of Leicester supporters would enjoy watching the game, too,” I suggested, and for the next few hours Rex and I canvassed locals to the wonders of the Proculorama. By two o’clock the next day, Chimdy had been fully reimbursed thanks to a 2d-per-head surcharge and I was laughing smugly at Jack Dudley’s words of discouragement. After three minutes, however, a wayward strike by Dicky Baugh smashed the first mirror and, while players first covered their heads and then spent ten minutes retrieving shards of glass from the pitch, the four of us made our getaways with an angry mob at our heels (Rex and I grabbing onto a tower each as Corny and Chimdy pedalled furiously).

□ □ □ □ □

Though not out of pocket, Chimdy took the matter badly. He rebuked himself over the coming weeks for not investing in thicker glass (“another ha’penny per head would have done it!” he seethed over and over) and filled his notebooks with improved designs while everybody else enjoyed a game of crib or dominoes, or a relaxing cigarette. Such designs would prove superfluous. At the end of the season, Leicester informed the Football League of their intentions to make Filbert Street an all-seater venue, thereby reducing the capacity from four to two. Chairman William McGregor wrote a terse letter describing their plans as “intolerably silly”, and urging them to increase, rather than reduce, the ground’s capacity. Seeing the commercial viability of such a proposition, Leicester constructed a new main stand to the west and raised banks around the rest of the ground, and thus ingress to matches ceased to be a problem in the years to come.

It was a Wednesday when I saw them for the first time in three years, their faces emerging expressionless above overcoats, below tilted fedoras, through thick steam on platform one of the Low Level station. We’d been playing dominoes away at the Great Western and, on my way back home, I’d nipped onto the station to get a packet of gaspers from the cafeteria. As the last train from London breathed out, I had to look hard to assure myself that this was, indeed, Allan and Grattan. Their wide-lapelled suits looked tailored, their moustaches carefully barbered; they each turned down a Craven ‘A’ in favour of something unspeakably French.

“How am ya, Gonby?” It was Allan who spoke first.

“Not bad, ta,” I replied, “What you been up to?”

Grattan raised his finger to his lips. Come on. Walk with us.”

We passed through the collonades towards North Street. Suddenly, Grattan threw out an arm to halt my progress. Again he motioned for silence. An old man came past us with a dog. We continued our walk. Outside of the echoing tiles, Allan spoke.

“We thought you might like to come on a trip with us.”

“I’ve got work in the morning, chaps,” I replied. “Anyway, the pubs are closed.”

“Oh, if it’s a drink you want, that can be arranged,” said Allan, jovially, “Work? We won’t keep you long. Come on.”

They took me to a basement drinking club on Queen Street, and we sat in the corner, me supping on Springfield bitter and they with vodka. Something had changed with them but I felt it wasn’t something new.

“I’ll bet you thought you’d never see either of us again,” said Allan. The crowd was sparse and he talked low; I hesitated at the implication of his words.

“You don’t think I had anything to do with…”

Grattan again raised his finger to his lips, shaking his head.

“Of course not,” said Allan, jovially though not completely without tension.

“You must be wondering why we’re back here, though, instead of freezing in some Siberian hell-hole. Or worse.”

“It wasn’t easy,” said Grattan. Or Gruminksy, as he was formerly known.

“We’re going on a trip,” continued Allan, “We’d like you to come with us.”

“Turkey.” said Grattan.

“Lovely weather this time of year,” Allan again. He’d worked selling insurance for a bit and he was probably fairly good at it. “Expense account.”

“I don’t think so, chaps,” I said, quaffing more deeply at my drink and looking at my wristwatch.

“We’ve told people you’ll come… important people.”

“Thing is,” said Allan, tapping his Gauloise into a Guinness ash-tray, “we’ve told people you’ll come. They’re expecting you to come with us.”

“Important people,” said Grattan.

“Very important people,” agreed Allan, a.k.a. Alogrin.

“MI6 people,” said Grattan.

Allan raised his eyebrows at this and nodded at me. “The kind of people you don’t like to let down. And, as it happens, the kind that would be interested in how you and your family kept a couple of Cossacks in hiding at the end of the war.”

“You’re welcome,” I said bitterly.

“Sorry, Gonby. Really. It’s not nice, this. But it was the only way we could convince them not to send us back. Do this little thing for us and everybody gets to carry on with their own lives, quietly. It’ll only be a couple of days.”

□ □ □ □ □

Dennis Allan, a.k.a. Sergei Alogrin is the more amenable. In itself that’s not saying much. Gruminsky stares straight at me, through me, says nothing for ten, fifteen minutes at a time. I try to sit on the same side as him when we board the train to Istanbul, but he thinks nothing of getting up and moving so he can continue the intimidation. In Paris went to different clandestine meetings while the other baby-sat me: Allan could be okay but Gruminsky went as far as showing me his pistol a couple of times. He keeps my passport – a diplomatic counterfeit they had knocked up in London – until I need it.

“It’s an unfortunate situation,” admits Dennis / Sergei once while Clive / Boris is buying vodka in the dining car, “but it’s not a difficult mission. The hard work’s already been done: Turkey’s in NATO, the Americans are decided, and Kruschev’s accepting the inevitable. But there are elements – elements loyal to Malenkov – who are still trying to undo the last five years, force a new regime, break Turkey’s pact with the West. Who can say whether they’d get very far? But London’s worried enough to send us to make sure.”

“And when you find these agents?”

“We let London know who they are.”

“And that’s all. You don’t…?”

“Sorry?”

“You don’t…?”

Gruminsky slides open the compartment door, and speaks gruffly to Alogrin in Russian. The train carries on through the Romanian evening, the forests slowly inhaling the deep aroma of intrigue.

□ □ □ □ □

I don’t know why I expected a hotel. The house on Konuk Sk is humble, surrounded by noise and odours good and bad, if such distinctions even hold here. As in Paris and London, they take turns, one guarding me while one is in the field, but Alogrin is less garrulous now. I still have no idea why I’m here.

On the fifth day, a Thursday, Gruminsky returns with company, and pistol-whips him in front of my eyes, before entering the makeshift interrogation room. Behind the locked door there is shouting, much cigarette smoking (the chaps have finished their French stuff and we are all now smoking dark local brands), tense silences and the occasional bang and shuffle of physical violence. After an hour, Alogrin enters, there is a gunshot. It is Gruminsky that never leaves the room. The former interrogee takes us to a black saloon car parked way down Efem Sk and gives Alogrin the keys. He heads out of town discreetly, before barrelling east towards Horasan, and a field where a hot-air balloon awaits.

“Y’am in the Flying Squadron, ay yer?” “As a passenger!” I protest, “’Chimdy’ Sweep deals with the flying!”

“Drive,” says Alogrin.

“I don’t know how…”

“Y’am in the Flying Squadron, ay yer?”

“As a passenger!” I protest, “’Chimdy’ Sweep deals with the flying!”

“I said drive!” shouts Alogrin gruffly, his pistol now drawn.

I start the burner and we’re airborne in fifteen minutes, sailing east under a smart breeze. Turns out piloting a balloon is fairly simple. We take in the plains and the Aragats massif, and talk of the past, when my parents took in ‘Dennis’ and ‘Clive’, tutored them intensely in the local dialect until they were fit to leave the house and look for work. And the games I took them to, at home and sometimes away: the metamorphoses of Anfield and the dark holes we passed through into the Baseball Ground. It’s the best part of the trip for me.

Yeah, it’s simple, this flying business, until it comes to landing. With Mount Aragats no longer visible on the port side, Alogrin tells me to land, and then I just cut the burner and tug a little at the flaps, which seems to work at first but the descent soon begins to gather terrible pace. There’s nothing around for miles but when I try to hit the burners again to soften the descent it’s too little, and way, way too late. We hit the ground with tremendous force and I cannot move. Broken ankles, perhaps. And it soon gets hot under the silk. Alogrin seems fine and his fast footfalls soon fade to nothing. I am alone and will probably die here.

□ □ □ □ □

I awake to the sound of a vehicle, and Armenian voices. One belongs to some kind of doctor. I try to communicate but nobody replies. I see sunlight again and feel pressure on the pain in my leg. The others begin folding up the silk and packing away. I feel an injection. I sleep.

□ □ □ □ □

I am sipping vodka on platform two of Yerevan station. My crutches lean against the wall beside me. The clock beneath Stalin’s face says nine-twenty a.m. It’s okay. My doctor says it’s okay. Anyway, we’re not the only ones doing it.

“You’ll be met at Moscow,” says Vasiliev, “there will be a room for you at the Metropole. You shall rest there a couple of days.”

“And then what? A knock at the door? Gas through the keyhole?”

Vasiliev smiles and shakes his head. “No questions will be asked. Malenkov is still in government, you know? There is a… flexible attitude to him. If your work here turns out to have any value…, well, you will be safely back in England by then.”

“And what do I tell MI6?”

The visa says ‘journalist’. “Do they like western journalists in Moscow?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “You’ll work that out. The point is, you will get back to Britain. Speaking of which, I have something for you.” He reaches into the inside pocket of his linen suit jacket, “A new passport. With visa. Alogrin thinks it will be more…, how do you say?… ‘up your road’?”

The visa says ‘journalist’. “Do they like western journalists in Moscow?”

“It depends what kind. Here,” reaches into the other side of his suit, “You’ll need these for your assignment.” I can read only the numbers in the dates and the two words of English on each ticket: WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS. “Alogrin told me to tell you he is sorry, for bringing you into this.”

I light a Dominant and inhale deeply. “Tell him it’s fine,” I say.

“Going back, there should be room for you on the team plane, though you’ll need to smooth that over yourself…. Your press pass…. And some roubles.” A whistle sounds at a distance, “That will be your train. I’ll help you.” We sip the last of the vodka together before I grab my crutches and Vasiliev helps me to my feet. The locomotive steams slowly in and all I can think about is Billy Wright and the inimitable Peter Broadbent, though they will go on to lose to Spartak and the trip home will not be anything like as simple as my doctor has led me to believe.