—Wherever it is we’re going.

—Yes, it will get us there. I hope!

The official laughed. Austin did not. He disliked this man. Already the plans were unravelling.

Moscow

Grocery Store No. 1, - Yeliseyev’s Grocery Store

Tverskaya 14 - Same Day

Grocery Store No. 1 was the most exclusive shopping experience the city had to offer, open only to the elite. The walls were ornate, adorned with gold leaf. The pillars were marble, the tops decorative and intricate – flourishes that befitted a palace. Regal settings for tins of food, polished and stacked with labels facing forward, fresh fruit arranged in patterns, spirals of apples, hills of fat potatoes. Several days had been spent preparing the store. Each aisle overflowed with stock, the storerooms had been pillaged and everything had been brought forward, meticulously displayed. The end result was a venue that Leo immediately recognized as an entirely inappropriate choice for their guest, fundamentally misunderstanding the audience it was intended for. This store didn’t represent a model for a new society – it embodied the past, a Tsarist-era snapshot of exuberant wealth. Yet the gaggle of party officials beamed at Austin, as if expecting him to applaud. They had let vanity get in the way of identifying what their guest truly wanted, presenting him with ostentation, abiding by the calculation that the more they showed him, the more he’d be impressed. Their profound fear of being seen as poor and shabby in relation to their American foes had blinded them.

Leo paused beside tins of pea soup stacked in a pyramid formation. He’d never seen food arranged this way and wondered why a person would be impressed by such a display. Austin passed the pyramid, looking at it with disdain, while surrounded by a clump of officials keenly pointing towards exotic fruits that Leo couldn’t name. In an attempt to integrate this excess with the ideology of Communism, the shoppers, all MGB agents, had been selected from across the age spectrum, dressed in plain clothes and scuffed shoes, as though Grocery Store No. 1 were for everyone – the elderly grandmother and the young working woman alike. The staff meanwhile – men for the meat counter, women for the fruit aisle – had been instructed to smile as Austin passed them by, their faces following him as if he were the sun and they were flowers turning into his light. There were more shoppers outside, offstage, shivering in the snow, entering at apparently random intervals in order to maintain the impression of people coming and going.

Austin’s expression grew increasingly sour. He was no longer speaking. His hands were deep in his pockets, his shoulders slumped, while all around him customers behaved like a flock of magpies, swooping from aisle to aisle, picking up anything that caught the light. Leo glanced in one shopping basket to see three red apples, a single beetroot and a tin of processed ham, an unlikely set of requirements for any shopping excursion.