—Tonight. He’s in the city for two days. Tomorrow he’ll be taken on a tour of the city. In the evening he’s giving a concert. Your job is to make sure nothing goes wrong.

Leo was shocked. They’d been given so little time to prepare. Cautiously, he channelled his concerns into the question:

—He arrives tonight?

—You are not the only team to be given this assignment. It was a late whim of mine to ask you to be involved. I have a good feeling about you, Demidov. It would be understandable for our guest, finding himself under such scrutiny at home, to question his loyalty to our nation. I want my best people working on this.

Kuzmin gave Leo’s shoulder a small squeeze, intended to convey both confidence in his abilities and the gravity of his assignment.

—His love for our country must be protected at any cost.

Moscow

House on the Embankment

2 Serafimovich Street - Next Day

Leo’s was one of three teams working independently to ensure Austin’s itinerary went according to plan. The danger was not to his life, but to his high opinion of the State. To that end, the principle of three overlapping teams, each tasked with the same objective, was to inject a competitive element into the operation as well as factoring in redundancy – should one team fail another team would pick up the slack. The extraordinary precautions underscored the importance of his visit.

They’d been given the use of a car. It was only a short drive from the Lubyanka Square, the headquarters of the secret police, to Serafimovich Street and the exclusive residential complex where Austin was staying. It had been expected that he’d take a room in the Moskva Hotel, on the fifteenth floor with a view over Red Square, but he’d declined, stating his desire to stay in one of the communal housing projects, preferably with another family if there was a spare bedroom. He wanted to be:

Neck deep in reality.

The request had caused great anxiety since their role was to e that Austin was shown a projected vision of Communist society, a representation of its potential, rather than the reality of that society as it stood now. A principled idealist, Leo reconciled the dishonesty by rationalizing that the Revolution was still very much a work in progress. The time of plenty was only a few years away. Right now, a spare bedroom was unheard of in a city suffering from a chronic housing shortage. As for the idea of living with a Russian family: it was too much of a risk. Aside from the conditions, which were typically cramped, they might speak out of turn. Creating an idealized family for the benefit of Austin was too difficult to stage-manage at this short notice. Mr Austin had only requested the change on the way from the airport.