—The discussions have already taken place. We’ve decided what you must do.

—Then I’d counsel that those demands be aligned with my skills.

The man scratched his chest through his shirt then looked at his nails, surprisingly long, and spotlessly clean.

—Something very important is about to happen. For it to succeed two things need to be done. You were given a camera. Let me show you what I was given.

The man placed a gun on the table.

Airspace over New York City

Same Day

The cloud cover parted as neatly as if a hand had pulled back a theatrical curtain revealing New York City to the audience circling in the sky. The Hudson River split like a tuning fork around the narrow island of Manhattan, on which the fabled skyscrapers were so neat and numerous that the city appeared as a geometric creation composed entirely of straight lines. Raisa had expected New York to be vast, even from the sky, a colossus of steel, with eight-lane roads and cars in ant-like lines that stretched for miles. Regarding the United States for the first time, she found herself holding her breath, an adventurer who’d finally reached a place of lore and legend – comparing myth with reality. This was not only her first glimpse of America, it was her first time in an airliner, the first city she’d ever seen from the sky. The moment was dreamlike although Raisa had never actually dreamt of coming here. Her dreams, modest as they were in scope, had always been confined within the borders of the USSR. The prospect of visiting America had never crossed her mind. Of course, she’d speculated about the nation vilified by her government, posited as their greatest enemy, a society upheld as an example of corruption and moral degeneracy. She’d never believed these assertions outright. Occasionally it had been necessary as a teacher to repeat the statements, striking a tone of anger and outrage, fearful her students would denounce her if she moderated the descriptions of the United States. Yet whether she believed them or not, these lies must have influenced her. This city and this country were a concept, not a real place, an idea controlled by the Kremlin. The Soviet media was only allowed to publish photographs of soup kitchens, lines of the unemployed, juxtaposed beside images of the vast homes of the rich, men whose stomachs strained against the cut of their bespoke suits. After years of mystery, the city was sprawled beneath her, fully exposed, like a patient on a surgical table, ready for her without comment or qualifications, without the accompaniment of a polemical propaganda narration.

Suddenly fearful that she’d made a mistake in bringing her daughters to this strange new world, Raisa regarded Elena, beside her, peering through the small window as the airliner circled.

—What do you think?

Elena was so excited she didn’t hear the question. Raisa tapped her shoulder, suggesting: