Tanya met him secretly once a month.

Each time he would bring her the latest installment of the book he was working on, written in the small, neat handwriting he had developed in Siberia to save paper. She would type it for him, correcting his spelling and punctuation where necessary. At their next meeting she would hand him the typescript for review and discuss it with him.

Millions of people around the world bought Vasili’s books, but he never met any of them. He could not even read the reviews, which were written in foreign languages and published in Western newspapers. So Tanya was the only person with whom he could discuss his work, and he listened hungrily to everything she had to say. She was his editor.

Tanya went to Leipzig every March to cover the book fair there, and each time she met with Anna Murray. She always came back with a present for Vasili from Anna—an electric typewriter, a cashmere overcoat—and news of even more money piling up in his London bank account. He would probably never get to spend any of it.

She still took careful precautions when meeting him. Today she got off the bus a mile from the rendezvous, and made sure she was not being followed while she walked to the café, called Josef’s. Vasili was already there, sitting at a table with a vodka glass in front of him. On the chair beside him was a large buff envelope. Tanya waved casually, as if they were acquaintances meeting by chance. She got a beer from the bar, then sat opposite Vasili.

She was happy to see him looking so well. His face had a dignity he had not possessed fifteen years earlier. He still had soft brown eyes, but nowadays they were keenly perceptive as often as they twinkled with mischief. She realized there was no one, outside her family, whom she knew better. She knew his strengths: imagination, intelligence, charm, and the gritty determination that had enabled him to survive and keep writing for a decade in Siberia. She also knew his weaknesses, the main one of which was an irresistible urge to seduce.

“Thanks for the tip about Stavropol,” she said. “I’ve done a nice piece.”

“Good. Let’s just hope the whole experiment doesn’t get stamped on.”

She handed Vasili the last episode, typed out, and nodded at the envelope. “Another chapter?”

“The last.” He gave it to her.

“Anna Murray will be happy.” Vasili’s new novel was called First Lady. In it the American president’s wife—as it might be, Pat Nixon—gets lost in Moscow for twenty-four hours. Tanya marveled at Vasili’s power of invention. Seeing life in the USSR through the eyes of a well-meaning conservative American was a richly comic way to criticize Soviet society. She slipped the envelope into her shoulder bag.

Vasili said: “When can you take the whole thing to the publisher?”

“As soon as I get a foreign trip. At the latest, next March, in Leipzig.”