The place had not been used for a year or more, and they threw open all the windows, then set about dusting surfaces and sweeping floors. It was partly furnished, and they started a list of things they would bring next time: a radio, a samovar, a bucket.

“I could come here with Grigor on Friday mornings in the summer,” Nina said. She was washing pottery bowls in the sink. “You could join me on Friday night, or Saturday morning if you have to work late.”

“You wouldn’t mind being here on your own at night?” said Dimka as he scrubbed ancient grease off the kitchen range. “It’s a bit lonely.”

“I’m not nervous, you know that.”

Grigor cried for his lunch, and Nina sat down to feed him. Dimka took a look around outside. He would have to erect a fence at the bottom of the garden, he saw, to prevent Grigor falling into the stream. It was not deep, but Dimka had read somewhere that a child could drown in three inches of water.

A gate in a wall led to a larger garden beyond. Dimka wondered who his neighbors were. The gate was not locked, so he opened it and went through. He found himself in a small wood. Exploring, he came within sight of a larger house. He speculated that his dacha might once have been the home of the gardener at the big house.

Not wanting to intrude on someone’s privacy, he turned back—and came face-to-face with a soldier in uniform.

“Who are you?” said the man.

“Dmitri Dvorkin. I’m moving into the little house next door.”

“Lucky you—it’s a jewel.”

“I was just exploring. I hope I haven’t trespassed.”

“You’d better stay on your own side of that wall. This place belongs to Marshal Pushnoy.”

“Oh!” said Dimka. “Pushnoy? He’s a friend of my grandfather.”

“Then that’s how you got the dacha,” said the soldier.

“Yes,” said Dimka, and he felt vaguely troubled. “I suppose it is.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

George’s apartment was the top floor of a high, narrow Victorian row house in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. He preferred this to a modern building: he liked the proportions of the nineteenth-century rooms. He had leather chairs, a high-fidelity record player, plenty of bookshelves, and plain canvas blinds at the windows instead of fussy drapes.

It looked even better with Verena in it.

He loved to see her doing everyday things in his home: sitting on the couch and kicking off her shoes, making coffee in her bra and panties, standing naked in the bathroom brushing her perfect teeth. Best of all he liked to see her asleep in his bed, as she was now, her soft lips slightly parted, her lovely face in repose, one long, slender arm thrown back to reveal the strangely sexy armpit. He leaned over her and kissed her armpit. She made a noise in her throat but did not wake up.

Verena stayed here every time she came to Washington, which was about once a month. It was driving George crazy. He wanted her all the time. But she was not willing to give up her job with Martin Luther King in Atlanta, and George could not leave Bobby Kennedy. So they were stuck.