“I’ll have to talk to my superiors,” said Mets, and he turned away.

Dimka made his voice harsh. “Don’t be long,” he barked. “The next person you see from the Kremlin may not be the boy who makes the tea.”

Mets went down a staircase. Dimka shuddered: everyone knew the basement contained the interrogation rooms.

A moment later Dimka and Daniil were joined in the lobby by an older man with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He had an ugly, fleshy face with an aggressively jutting chin. Daniil did not seem pleased to see him. He introduced him as Pyotr Opotkin, features editor in chief.

Opotkin looked at Dimka with eyes screwed up to keep out the smoke. “So, your sister got herself arrested at a protest meeting,” he said. His tone was angry, but Dimka sensed that underneath it Opotkin was for some reason pleased.

“A poetry reading,” Dimka corrected him.

“Not much difference.”

Daniil put in: “I sent her there.”

“On the day she got back from Siberia?” said Opotkin skeptically.

“It wasn’t really an assignment. I suggested she drop by sometime to see what was going on, that’s all.”

“Don’t lie to me,” said Opotkin. “You’re just trying to protect her.”

Daniil raised his chin and gave a challenging look. “Isn’t that what you’re here to do?”

Before Opotkin could reply, Captain Mets returned. “The case is still under consideration,” he said.

Opotkin introduced himself and showed Mets his identity card. “The question is not whether Tanya Dvorkin should be punished, but how,” he said.

“Exactly, sir,” said Mets deferentially. “Would you like to come with me?”

Opotkin nodded and Mets led him down the stairs.

Dimka said in a quiet voice: “He won’t let them torture her, will he?”

“Opotkin was mad at Tanya already,” Daniil said worriedly.

“What for? I thought she was a good journalist.”

“She’s brilliant. But she turned down an invitation to a party at his house on Saturday. He wanted you to go, too. Pyotr loves important people. A snub really hurts him.”

“Oh, shit.”

“I told her she should have accepted.”

“Did you really send her to Mayakovsky Square?”

“No. We could never do a story about such an unofficial gathering.”

“Thanks for trying to protect her.”

“My privilege—but I don’t think it’s working.”

“What do you think will happen?”

“She might be fired. More likely, she’ll be posted somewhere disagreeable, such as Kazakhstan.” Daniil frowned. “I must think of some compromise that will satisfy Opotkin but not be too hard on Tanya.”

Dimka glanced at the entrance door and saw a man in his forties with a brutally short military haircut, wearing the uniform of a Red Army general. “At last, Uncle Volodya,” he said.

Volodya Peshkov had the same intense blue-eyed stare as Tanya. “What is this shit?” he said angrily.

Dimka filled him in. As he was finishing, Opotkin reappeared. He spoke obsequiously to Volodya. “General, I have discussed this problem of your niece with our friends in the KGB and they are content for me to deal with it as an internal TASS matter.”