Dimka heard only Khrushchev’s half of the conversation. Whatever Brezhnev was saying, it caused the leader to say: “Why? . . . On what issue? . . . I’m on vacation, what could be so urgent? What do you mean, you all got together? . . . Tomorrow? . . . All right!”

After he hung up, he explained. The Presidium wanted him to return to Moscow to discuss urgent agricultural problems. Brezhnev had been insistent.

Khrushchev sat thoughtfully for a long time. He did not dismiss Dimka. Eventually he said: “They haven’t got any urgent agricultural problems. This is what you warned me of six months ago, on my birthday. They’re going to throw me out.”

Dimka was shocked. So Natalya had been right.

Dimka had believed Khrushchev’s reassurances, and his faith had seemed justified in June, when Khrushchev came back from Scandinavia and the threatened arrest did not take place. At that point, Natalya had admitted that she no longer knew what was happening. Dimka assumed the plot had come to nothing.

Now it seemed that it had merely been postponed.

Khrushchev had always been a fighter. “What will you do?” Dimka asked him.

“Nothing,” said Khrushchev.

That was even more shocking.

Khrushchev went on: “If Brezhnev thinks he can do better, let him try, the big turd.”

“But what will happen with him in charge? He doesn’t have the imagination and energy to drive reforms through the bureaucracy.”

“He doesn’t even see much need for change,” the old man said. “Maybe he’s right.”

Dimka was aghast.

Back in April he had considered whether to leave Khrushchev and try for a job with another senior Kremlin figure, but he had decided against it. Now that was beginning to look like a mistake.

Khrushchev became practical. “We’ll leave tomorrow. Cancel my lunch with the French minister of state.”

Beneath a thundercloud of gloom Dimka set about making the arrangements: getting the French delegation to come earlier, ensuring the plane and Khrushchev’s personal pilot would be ready, and altering tomorrow’s diary. But he did it all as if in a trance. How could the end come so easily?

No previous Soviet leader had retired. Both Lenin and Stalin had died in office. Would Khrushchev be killed now? What about his aides?

Dimka asked himself how much longer he had to live.

He wondered if they would even let him see little Grigor again.

He pushed the thought to the back of his mind. He could not operate if he were paralyzed by fear.

They took off at one the following afternoon.

The flight to Moscow took two and a half hours, with no change of time zone. Dimka had no idea what awaited them at the end of the trip.

They flew to Vnukovo-2, south of Moscow, the airport for official flights. When Dimka got off the plane behind Khrushchev, a small group of minor officials greeted them, instead of the usual crowd of top government ministers. At that point, Dimka knew for sure that it was all over.