—I don’t believe that’s likely. The Soviets have never been very effective at penetrating the CIA. If you do nothing, if you don’t react, they will presume you to be dead and nothing will happen to your daughters. I’m sure of that.

But Leo knew better how the KGB functioned: he knew their mindset. He remembered how he would have behaved as an ambitious young agent. Shaking his head, feeling sick with fear at the danger he’d put his daughters in, he said:

—I don’t have much time.

Same Day

Leo sat in silence over dinner, picking at the food he’d cooked. The threat to his daughters would be carried out even though they were innocent. During Stalin’s reign it was established that the son was tainted with the father’s guilt. A single crime, a single allegation, could bring about the ruin of an entire family, the toxin of suspicion travelling along bloodlines. Times had changed only so far. This mode of thought remained within the mindset of the KGB, an organization that had always preferred its agents to marry other agents, structuring itself like a dynasty of operatives distinct from the ordinary citizen. This was part of the reason they had always opposed his marriage to Raisa. If Leo did not surrender, his daughters would be arrested, detained in the worst conditions. The KGB’s malice would be impersonal, procedural and utterly predictable. Just as it did not matter that his daughters were innocent, it did not matter that they could not be sure if Leo was alive. The Soviet intelligence network in the United States was weak, certainly compared with the European cells of agents. However, they had within their means an easy way of flushing Leo into open. So much had depended upon them presuming he was dead. That plan had failed.