Vietnam would be a severe test.

On stepping out of the plane, Dimka was assailed by a warm, wet atmosphere unlike anything he had experienced. Hanoi was the ancient capital of an ancient country, long oppressed by foreigners, first the Chinese, then the French, then the Americans. Vietnam was more crowded and more colorful than any place Dimka had ever seen.

It was also split in two.

Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh had defeated France in the anticolonial war of the fifties. But Ho was an undemocratic Communist, and the Americans refused to accept his authority. President Eisenhower had sponsored a puppet government in the south, based in the provincial capital of Saigon. The unelected Saigon regime was tyrannical and unpopular, and was under attack by resistance fighters called the Vietcong. The South Vietnamese army was so weak that now, in 1965, it had to be propped up by twenty-three thousand American troops.

The Americans were pretending that South Vietnam was a separate country, just as the Soviet Union pretended that East Germany was a country. Vietnam was a mirror image of Germany, though Dimka would never dare say that aloud.

While the ministers attended a banquet with North Vietnamese leaders, the Soviet aides ate a less formal dinner with their Vietnamese opposite numbers—all of whom spoke Russian, some having visited Moscow. The food was mostly vegetables and rice, with small amounts of fish and meat, but it was tasty. There were no female Vietnamese staffers, and the men seemed surprised to see Natalya and the two other Soviet women.

Dimka sat next to a dour middle-aged apparatchik called Pham An. Natalya, sitting opposite, asked the man what he hoped to get from the talks.

An replied with a shopping list. “We need aircraft, artillery, radar, air defense systems, small arms, ammunition, and medical supplies,” he said.

This was exactly what the Soviets were hoping to avoid. Natalya said: “But you won’t need those things if the war comes to an end.”

“When we have defeated the American imperialists our needs will be different.”

“We would all like to see a smashing victory for the Vietcong,” said Natalya. “But there might be other possible outcomes.” She was trying to broach the idea of peaceful coexistence.

“Victory is the only possibility,” said Pham An dismissively.

Dimka was dismayed. An was stubbornly refusing to engage in the discussion for which the Soviets had come here. Perhaps he felt it was beneath his dignity to argue with a woman. Dimka hoped that was the only reason for his obstinacy. If the Vietnamese would not talk about alternatives to war, the Soviet mission would fail.

Natalya was not easily deflected from her purpose. She now said: “Military victory most certainly is not the only possible outcome.” Dimka found himself feeling proud of her gutsy persistence.

“You speak of defeat?” said An, bristling—or at least pretending to bristle.

“No,” she said calmly. “But war is not the only road to victory. Negotiations are an alternative.”