Natalya fell silent. No one around the table had an answer to that.

Except Dimka.

“Comrade Khrushchev has a solution,” he said.

They all looked at him in surprise.

He went on: “At this morning’s meeting, the first secretary will propose making an offer to the United States.” There was dead silence. “We will dismantle our missiles in Cuba—”

He was interrupted by a chorus of reaction around the table, from gasps of surprise to cries of protest. He held up a hand for quiet.

“We will dismantle our missiles in exchange for a guarantee of what we have wanted all along. The Americans must promise not to invade Cuba.”

They took a few moments to digest this.

Natalya was the quickest to get it. “This is brilliant,” she said. “How can Kennedy refuse? He would be admitting his intention to invade a poor Third World country. He would be universally condemned for colonialism. And he would be proving our point that Cuba needs nuclear missiles to defend itself.” She was the smartest person at the table, as well as the prettiest.

Filipov said: “But if Kennedy accepts, we have to bring the missiles home.”

“They will no longer be necessary!” Natalya said. “The Cuban revolution will be safe.”

Dimka could see that Filipov wanted to argue against this but could not. Khrushchev had got the Soviet Union into a fix, but he had devised an honorable way out.

When the meeting broke up, Dimka at last managed to grab Natalya. “We need a minute to discuss the wording of Khrushchev’s offer to Kennedy,” he said.

They retreated to a corner of the room and sat down. He gazed at the front of her dress, remembering her little breasts with their pointed nipples.

She said: “You have to stop staring at me.”

He felt foolish. “I wasn’t staring at you,” he said, though it was obviously not true.

She ignored that. “If you keep it up even the men will notice.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help it.” Dimka was downcast. This was not the intimate, happy conversation he had foreseen.

“No one must know what we did.” She looked scared.

Dimka felt as if he were talking to a different person from the cheerfully sexy girl who had seduced him only the day before yesterday. He said: “Well, I’m not planning to go around telling people, but I didn’t know it was a state secret.”

“I’m married!”

“Are you planning to stay with Nik?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“Do you have any children?”

“No.”

“People get divorced.”

“My husband would never agree to a divorce.”

Dimka stared at her. Obviously that was not the end of the matter: a woman might get a divorce against her husband’s will. But this discussion was not really about the legal situation. Natalya was in some kind of panic. Dimka said: “Why did you do it, anyway?”

“I thought we were all going to die!”

“And now you regret it?”

“I’m married!” she said again.