—As you know, tonight we’re performing a concert at the United Nations Headquarters. The world’s press will be there. The most important diplomats will be there. We want you to be there too. We tried to arrange for you and your wife to have official tickets but the organizers blocked us. So I am here to ask you to wait outside, on the street, to give one of your speeches, if you feel up to it, to show that you have not been silenced. When the concert is finished, a few of the Soviet students will exit through the main doors. We will surround you, cheering and clapping. This moment will be the photograph that defines the whole trip. Everyone in the United States will be reminded of the injustice done to you. Please, Mr Austin, tell me you’ll be there. This is our way of doing mething for you.

Carried away with the energy of her plea, Elena placed a hand on his arm.

Same Day

Osip Feinstein crouched on the rooftop of the block opposite Jesse Austin’s apartment. If the Russian girl hadn’t turned up, the job of persuading Jesse would have fallen to him and he doubted very much he would’ve succeeded. With his camera he’d followed the events in the apartment, taking photographs of the two of them together: the young girl and the singer, a man who could’ve been living in a penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park instead of this slum. He was doped up on a drug far more toxic and powerful than opium, addicted to righteous ideology. Osip clicked the camera, shooting the scene before him. The last photograph would be the most incriminating – her frail white hand on his big black arm, the rumpled bed sheets in the background.

Manhattan

Hotel Grand Metropolitan - 44th Street

Same Day

As Raisa entered the lobby, twenty sets of eyes landed on her: American secret-police agents pretending to be guests, lounging on sofas and chairs, sipping coffee, following her – their eyeline skimming the rim of their cup and the tops of their newspapers. From the UN Headquarters she’d been driven back to the hotel and left unsupervised for no longer than it took her to step from the car to the revolving doors of the Grand Metropolitan. At the elevator she half expected one of the officers to step in with her. Contemplating the security around the hotel, she found it excessive, so many officers to guard over schoolchildren. The elevator doors closed. Raisa said:

—Twentieth floor, please.

Without turning around the man operating the elevator gave a small nod. She was certain he was an agent despite being dressed in hotel livery. She studied his peculiar uniform, red with white trim down the legs. He was an unlikely looking spy, and she wondered if her anxieties were running away with her. She was seeing spies everywhere.