What was Dimka supposed to say? Yes? No? She’s my lover?

Natalya looked defiant. “I’m not a typist,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” said Nina. “I know exactly what you are.”

That jibe was rich, Dimka thought, coming from the woman who had slept with a fat old general in order to get a dacha. But he did not say so.

Natalya looked haughty and handed him an official-looking envelope.

He tore it open. It was from Alexei Kosygin, the reforming economist. He had a strong power base so, despite his radical ideas, he had been made chairman of the Council of Ministers in the Brezhnev government.

Dimka’s heart leaped. The letter offered him a job as aide to Kosygin—here in Moscow.

“How did you manage this?” he said to Natalya.

“Long story.”

“Well, thank you.” He wanted to throw his arms around her and kiss her, but refrained. He turned to Nina. “I’m saved,” he said. “I can stay in Moscow. Natalya has got me a job with Kosygin.”

The two women stared at one another, each hating the other. No one knew what to say.

After a long pause, one of the removal men said: “Does that mean we have to unload the truck?”

• • •

Tanya flew Aeroflot to Siberia, touching down at Omsk on the way to Irkutsk. The plane was a comfortable Tupolev Tu-104 jet. The overnight flight took eight hours, and she dozed most of the way.

Officially, she was on assignment for TASS. Secretly, she was going to look for Vasili.

Two weeks ago Daniil Antonov had come to her desk and discreetly handed her the typescript of “Frostbite.” “New World can’t publish this after all,” he had said. “Brezhnev is clamping down. Orthodoxy is the watchword now.”

Tanya had shoved the sheets of paper into a drawer. She was disappointed, but she had been half prepared for this. She said: “Do you remember the articles I wrote three years ago about life in Siberia?”

“Of course,” he said. “It was one of the most popular series we ever did—and the government got a surge of applications from families wanting to go there.”

“Maybe I should do a follow-up. Talk to some of the same people and ask how they’re getting on. Also interview some newcomers.”

“Great idea.” Daniil lowered his voice. “Do you know where he is?”

So he had guessed. It was not surprising. “No,” she said. “But I can find out.”

Tanya was still living at Government House. She and her mother had moved up a floor into the grandparents’ large apartment, after the death of Katerina, so that they could look after Grandfather Grigori. He claimed he did not need looking after: he had cooked and cleaned for himself and his kid brother, Lev, when they were factory workers before the First World War and living in one room in a St. Petersburg slum, he said proudly. But the truth was that he was seventy-six, and he had not cooked a meal nor swept a floor since the revolution.