She looked Nina up and down with the unapologetic curiosity of old people. “You look well,” she said, and Dimka wondered why her tone of voice sounded a little odd.

Nina took it as a compliment. “Thank you, so do you. Where did you get that dress?”

Katerina led them into the living room. Dimka remembered coming here as a boy. His grandmother had always given him belev candy, a traditional Russian kind of apple confection. His mouth watered: he would have liked a piece right then.

Katerina seemed a little unsteady in her high-heeled shoes. Grigori was sitting in the easy chair opposite the television, as always, though the set was off. He had already opened a bottle of vodka. Perhaps that was why Grandmother was wobbling a little.

“Birthday greetings, Grandfather,” said Dimka.

“Have a drink,” said Grigori.

Dimka had to be careful. He would be no use to Khrushchev drunk. He knocked back the vodka Grigori gave him, then put the glass down out of Grandfather’s reach, to avoid a refill.

Dimka’s mother was already there, helping Katerina. She came out of the kitchen carrying a plate of crackers with red caviar. Anya had not inherited Katerina’s stylishness. She always looked comfortably dumpy, whatever she wore.

She kissed Nina.

The doorbell rang and Uncle Volodya came in with his family. He was forty-eight, and his close-cropped hair was now gray. He was in uniform: he might be called to duty at any moment. Aunt Zoya followed him, approaching fifty but still a pale Russian goddess. Behind her trailed their two teenagers, Dimka’s cousins, Kotya and Galina.

Dimka introduced Nina. Both Volodya and Zoya greeted her warmly.

“Now we’re all here!” said Katerina.

Dimka looked around: at the old couple who had started it all; at his plain mother and her handsome blue-eyed brother; at his beautiful aunt and his teenage cousins; and at the voluptuous redhead he was going to marry. This was his family. And it was the most precious part of everything that would be lost today if his fears came true. They all lived within a mile of the Kremlin. If the Americans fired their nuclear weapons at Moscow tonight, the people in this room would all be lying dead in the morning, their brains boiled, their bodies crushed, their skin burned black. And the only consolation was that he would not have to mourn them because he, too, would be dead.

They all drank to Grigori’s birthday.

“I wish my little brother, Lev, could be with us,” said Grigori.

“And Tanya,” said Anya.

Volodya said: “Lev Peshkov is not so little anymore, Father. He’s sixty-seven years old and a millionaire in America.”

“I wonder if he has grandchildren in America.”

“Not in America, no,” said Volodya. Red Army Intelligence could find out this sort of thing easily, Dimka knew. “Lev’s illegitimate son, Greg, the senator, is a bachelor. But his legitimate daughter, Daisy, who lives in London, has two adolescents, a boy and a girl, about the same age as Kotya and Galina.”