People were yelling and screaming. The radio reporter was babbling into his microphone: “Senator Kennedy has been shot! Senator Kennedy has been shot! Is that possible? Is that possible?”

Several men jumped on the gunman. Someone was shouting: “Get the gun! Get the gun!” George saw Bill Barry punch the shooter in the face.

George knelt by Bobby. He was alive, but bleeding from a wound just behind his ear. He looked bad. George loosened his tie to help him breathe. Someone else put a folded coat under Bobby’s head.

A man’s voice was moaning: “God, no . . . Christ, no . . .”

Ethel pushed through the crowd, knelt beside George, and spoke to her husband. There was a flicker of recognition in Bobby’s face, and he tried to speak. George thought he said: “Is everyone else all right?” Ethel stroked his face.

George looked around. He could not tell whether anyone else had been hit by the volley of bullets. Then he noticed his own forearm. The sleeve of his suit was ripped and blood was seeping from a wound. He had been hit. Now that he noticed, it hurt like hell.

The far door opened, and reporters and photographers from the press room burst through. The cameramen mobbed the group around Bobby, shoving each other and climbing on the stoves and sinks to get better shots of the bleeding victim and his stricken wife. Ethel pleaded: “Give him some air, please! Let him breathe!”

An ambulance crew arrived with a stretcher. They took Bobby by the shoulders and feet. Bobby cried weakly: “Oh, no, don’t . . .”

“Gently!” Ethel begged the crew. “Gently.”

They lifted him onto the stretcher and strapped him in.

Bobby’s eyes closed.

He never opened them again.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

That summer Dimka and Natalya painted the apartment, with the sun shining through the open windows. It took longer than necessary because they kept stopping for sex. Her glorious hair was tied up and hidden in a rag, and she wore an old shirt of his with a frayed collar; but her shorts were tight, and every time he saw her up a ladder he had to kiss her. He pulled down her shorts so often that after a while she just wore the shirt; and then they had even more sex.

They could not marry until her divorce was finalized, and for the sake of appearances Natalya had her own tiny apartment nearby, but unofficially they were already embarking on their new life together in Dimka’s place. They rearranged the furniture to Natalya’s liking and bought a couch. They developed routines: he made breakfast, she cooked dinner; he polished her shoes, she ironed his shirts; he shopped for meat, she for fish.

They never saw Nik, but Natalya began to establish a relationship with Nina. Dimka’s ex-wife was now the accepted lover of Marshal Pushnoy, and spent many weekends with him at his dacha, hosting dinners with his intimate friends, some of whom brought their mistresses. Dimka did not know how Pushnoy arranged matters with his wife, a pleasant-looking elderly woman who always appeared at his side on formal state occasions. During Nina’s country weekends, Dimka and Natalya looked after Grisha. At first Natalya was nervous, never having had children of her own—Nik hated kids. But she quickly became fond of Grisha, who looked a lot like Dimka; and, not surprisingly, she turned out to have the usual maternal instincts.