Strategic Air Command had moved its alert status to DEFCON 3—Defense Condition Three, ready to start a nuclear attack in fifteen minutes.

On balance, what was the likeliest outcome of all this?

With a heavy heart, George said: “Yes, Mom. I think there will be war.”

• • •

In the end the Presidium ordered all Soviet missile ships still on their way to Cuba to turn around and come home.

Khrushchev reckoned he lost little by this, and Dimka agreed. Cuba had nukes now; it hardly mattered how many. The Soviet Union would avoid a confrontation on the high seas, claim to be a peacemaker in this crisis—and still have a nuclear base ninety miles from the USA.

Everyone knew that would not be the end of the matter. The two superpowers had not yet addressed the real question, what to do about the nuclear weapons already in Cuba. All Kennedy’s options were still open, and as far as Dimka could see, most of them led to war.

Khrushchev decided not to go home tonight. It was too dangerous to be even a few minutes’ car journey away: if war broke out he had to be here, ready to make instant decisions.

Next to his grand office was a small room with a comfortable couch. The first secretary lay down there in his clothes. Most of the Presidium made the same decision, and the leaders of the world’s second-most powerful country settled down to an uneasy sleep in their offices.

Dimka had a small cubbyhole down the corridor. There was no couch in his office: just a hard chair, a utilitarian desk, and a file cabinet. He was trying to figure out where would be the least uncomfortable place to lay his head when there was a tap at the door and Natalya came in. She brought with her a light fragrance unlike any Soviet perfume.

She had been wise to dress casually, Dimka realized: they were all going to sleep in their clothes. “I like your sweater,” he said.

“It’s called a Sloppy Joe.” She used the English words.

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know, but I like how it sounds.”

He laughed. “I was just trying to figure out where to sleep.”

“Me, too.”

“On the other hand, I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep.”

“You mean, knowing you might never wake up?”

“Exactly.”

“I feel the same.”

Dimka thought for a moment. Even if he spent the night awake, worrying, he might as well find somewhere to be comfortable. “This is a palace, and it’s empty,” he said. He hesitated, then added: “Shall we explore?” He was not sure why he said that. It was the kind of thing his lady-killer friend Valentin might come out with.

“Okay,” said Natalya.

Dimka picked up his overcoat, to use as a blanket.

The spacious bedrooms and boudoirs of the palace had been inelegantly subdivided into offices for bureaucrats and typists, and filled with cheap furniture made of pine and plastic. There were upholstered chairs in a few of the larger rooms for the most important men, but nothing you could sleep on. Dimka began to think of ways to make a bed on the floor. Then, at the far end of the wing, they passed along a corridor cluttered with buckets and mops and came to a grand room full of stored furniture.