Irritating. Alarming, in a way. But also surely not much of a threat if he was so unskilled.

It was the other man that had Zivon’s every nerve buzzing. That one he’d nearly missed. Nearly. But once he’d picked up on him, he had the unsettling suspicion that the fellow had been shadowing him ever since he stepped foot out of his flat.

Had he not been so exhausted, perhaps he would have noticed the accomplished one sooner. But he’d only slept about an hour. He kept reliving the raid. The confrontation with Fyodor and Nabokov—who had ordered him to report to the embassy at eight this morning. The kiss. The look on Lily’s face when he told her about Alyona.

The look on her father’s when he told him in no uncertain terms that his attentions were no longer welcome and he was to desist calling on her.

That, combined with these sudden tails, painted a rather dreadful picture. He had fallen out of favor with the Admiralty. The question was why. What had happened in the last day or two to change everything?

He’d reported as ordered to the embassy, ready to lay all of his cards, metaphorical and physical, on the table. He’d brought both of the fake passports, his own and Evgeni’s, now without his brother’s photo; the English identification papers Admiral Hall had supplied to him; and an abbreviated but truthful version of the events that had led him here.

Nabokov hadn’t looked particularly impressed. If anything, he looked more dubious when Zivon finished than when he took his seat.

“You are clearly overreacting,” he had said only ten minutes ago. “The soviets, they will be dealt with soon enough, I am certain. I am sorry, of course, for their violence against your betrothed, but to flee here, to work for the British?” A doleful shake of the head. “I fear you will regret that hasty decision when order is restored in Russia and you are no longer welcome home. You know well everyone will view you as a turncoat.”

Zivon had bristled at the word hasty. He had stayed in Russia as long as he could. So long that Alyona had paid the price. He had weighed every possible decision and each path before he decided on this one, and he’d made the decision not for himself but for his people. His country. His czar.

Who was Nabokov, who hadn’t even stepped foot on Russian soil in a decade, to judge him? To tell him whether he had overreacted? He hadn’t been there. He hadn’t seen the fighting, the mobs, the chaos. Hadn’t had to wonder whether the Bolsheviks would be better or worse than the Trudoviks who had first seized power from the czar.

Worse. So much worse.