“Don’t you dare speak to me like that. One more smart-ass remark and you’re on a plane home.”

Cam did not want to be sent home. He backed off. “I apologize. But I’d still like to know the reasons for your denial, if I may.”

“You have what we call ‘close and continuing contact’ with her, don’t you?”

“Of course. I told you that myself. Why is it a problem?”

“Statistics. Most of the traitors we catch spying against the United States turn out to have relatives or close friends who are foreigners.”

Cam had suspected something like this. “I’m not willing to give her up for statistical reasons. Do you have anything specific against her?”

“What makes you think you have the right to cross-examine me?”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“I warned you about wisecracks.”

They were interrupted by another agent, Tony Savino, who approached with a sheet of paper in his hand. “I’m just looking at the acceptance list for this morning’s press conference,” he said. “Tanya Dvorkin is coming for TASS.” He looked at Cam. “She’s the woman who spoke to you at the Egyptian embassy, isn’t she?”

“She sure is,” Cam said.

Keith said: “What’s the subject of the press conference?”

“The launch of a new, streamlined protocol for Polish and American museums to loan each other works of art, it says here.” Tony looked up from the paper. “Not the kind of thing to attract TASS’s star writer, is it?”

Cam said: “She must be coming to see me.”

• • •

Tanya spotted Cam Dewar as soon as she walked into the briefing room at the American embassy. A tall, thin figure, he was standing at the back like a lamppost. If he had not been here, she would have sought him out after the press conference, but this was better, less noticeable.

However, she did not want to look too purposeful when she approached him, so she decided to listen to the announcement first. She sat next to a Polish journalist whom she liked: Danuta Gorski, a feisty brunette with a big toothy grin. Danuta was a member of a semi-underground movement called the Defense Committee that produced pamphlets about workers’ grievances and human rights violations. These illegal publications were called bibula. Danuta lived in the same building as Tanya.

While the American press officer was reading out the announcement he had already given them in printed form, Danuta murmured to Tanya: “You might want to take a trip to Gdansk.”

“Why?”

“There’s going to be a strike at the Lenin Shipyard.”

“There are strikes everywhere.” Workers were demanding pay rises to compensate for a massive government increase in food prices. Tanya reported these as “work stoppages,” for strikes happened only in capitalist countries.

“Believe me,” said Danuta, “this one could be different.”

The Polish government was dealing with each strike swiftly, granting pay rises and other concessions on a local basis, keen to shut down protests before they could spread like stains on a cloth. The nightmare of the ruling elite—and the dream of dissidents—was that the stains would join up until the cloth was entirely a new color.