“Vasili Yenkov’s sentence is up, but he hasn’t come back to Moscow.”

Dimka’s face hardened. He loved Tanya, she knew, but he disagreed with her politics. “Yenkov did his best to undermine the government I work for. Why would I care what happens to him?”

“He believes in freedom and justice, as you do.”

“That kind of subversive activity just gives the hard-liners an excuse to resist reform.”

Tanya knew she was defending herself, as well as Vasili. “If it were not for people like Vasili, the hard-liners would say everything was all right, and there would be no pressure for change. How would anyone know that they killed Ustin Bodian, for example?”

“Bodian died of pneumonia.”

“Dimka, that’s not worthy of you. He died of neglect, and you know it.”

“True.” Dimka looked chastened. In a softer voice he said: “Are you in love with Vasili Yenkov?”

“No. I like him. He’s funny and smart and brave. But he’s the kind of man that needs a succession of young girls.”

“Or he was. There are no nymphets in a prison camp.”

“Anyway, he is a friend, and he’s served his sentence.”

“The world is full of injustice.”

“I want to know what has happened to him, and you can find out for me. If you will.”

Dimka sighed. “What about my career? In the Kremlin, compassion for dissidents unjustly treated is not considered admirable.”

Tanya’s hopes rose. He was weakening. “Please. It means a lot to me.”

“I can’t make any promises.”

“Just do your best.”

“All right.”

Tanya felt overcome by gratitude, and kissed his cheek. “You’re a good brother,” she said. “Thank you.”

• • •

Just as the Eskimos were said to have numerous different words for snow, so the citizens of Moscow had many phrases for the black market. Everything other than life’s most basic necessities had to be bought “on the left.” Many such purchases were straightforwardly criminal: you found a man who smuggled blue jeans from the West and you paid him an enormous price. Others were neither legal nor illegal. To buy a radio or a rug, you might have to put your name down on a waiting list; but you could leap to the top of the list “through pull,” by being a person of influence and having the power to return the favor; or “through friends,” by having a relative or pal in a position to manipulate the list. So widespread was queue-jumping that most Muscovites believed no one ever got to the top of a list just by waiting.

One day Natalya Smotrov asked Dimka to go with her to buy something on the black market. “Normally I’d ask Nik,” she said. Nikolai was her husband. “But it’s a present for his birthday, and I want it to be a surprise.”

Dimka knew little about Natalya’s life outside the Kremlin. She was married with no children, but that was about the extent of his knowledge. Kremlin apparatchiks were part of the Soviet elite, but Natalya’s Mercedes and her imported perfume indicated some other source of privilege and money. However, if there was a Nikolai Smotrov in the upper reaches of the Communist hierarchy, Dimka had never heard of him.