Zivon bowed a greeting to the priest. “Zdravstvuyte.” The Russian hello felt at home on his tongue, despite the fact that he’d not spoken it for weeks. “I am well. And you?”

The man smiled, revealing white teeth nestled behind his beard. “Very well, thank you.” He reached out a hand. “I do not believe we have met. Father Evgeny Smirnov.”

The name made Zivon’s chest go tight. Evgeni. Zhenya. A loss he still couldn’t fully wrap his heart around. Zivon shook the father’s hand, careful to keep the grief from his voice. “Zivon Marin.”

“Ah!” Father Smirnov’s eyes lit, and he kept ahold of Zivon’s fingers. “The one Fyodor and Kira mentioned! I have been hoping you would visit us soon. It is not the hour for Mass, of course, but if you wish confession—or perhaps conversation?”

His priest had been waiting for him. Before they’d even been introduced. Somehow, knowing that made Zivon’s shoulders sag. “Conversation first, I think.”

The priest patted with his free hand the fingers he still held in his other, then released him entirely. “Of course. Follow me.” He led him through the sanctuary with its green-painted dome and into a small chamber that looked to be part office, part reception room. “Please. Be comfortable.”

Zivon smiled and chose a chair. “Mr. Suvorov mentioned me?”

“He did, yes. He was quite pleased that an old friend had made his way to London. A linguist, are you not?”

It seemed the safest thing to claim to be. And it was, after all, what he’d been before the war. He nodded. “I understand you have several among you here?”

Smirnov chuckled. “We have found it to be quite a benefit, yes. Not only because we serve a combination of Russian and Greek parishioners, but we have also then been able to create and distribute studies and booklets in English, and even in Spanish. A great need has been met around the world from our home here in London.”

He’d learned as much when he first reached England and had looked up the church. But he nodded as if it were news. “I apologize that I have not come before now. It has been . . . a trying few months.”

“Well can I imagine.” The priest had taken a seat in a chair adjacent to Zivon’s. He leaned onto the arm, eyes shining. “But you strike me as the sort of man who knows that it is in the most trying of times that we most need to come.”

“I do. It is just . . .” He sighed and nudged his spectacles up so he could rub at the bridge of his nose. “Before I left Russia, it had got to the point that I could not tell who to trust, what friends may be ready to turn me in to the soviets. I could not be certain it would be different among the Russians here.”