“It’s no more than the truth. I’m not leaving.” Then he added: “Unless, of course, you go with me.”

She stared at him. Was he making a serious suggestion? She was frightened to ask. She looked out of the window at the snowflakes whirling in the lamplight.

Vasili said: “Twenty years, and we’ve never even kissed.”

“True.”

“Yet still you think I’m a heartless Casanova.”

In truth she no longer knew what to think. Had he changed? Did people ever really change? She said: “After all this time, it would be a shame to spoil our record.”

“And yet I want to, with all my heart.”

She changed the subject. “Given the chance, would you defect to the West?”

“With you, yes. Not otherwise.”

“I always wanted to make the Soviet Union a better place, not leave it. But after the defeat of Solidarity I find it difficult to believe in a better future. Communism could last a thousand years.”

“It could last longer than me or you, at least.”

Tanya hesitated on the brink. She was surprised by how much she wanted to kiss him. And more: she wanted to stay here, talking to him, on this couch in this warm apartment with those snowflakes falling outside the window, for a long, long time. What a strange feeling that was, she thought. Perhaps it was love.

So she kissed him.

After a while, they went into the bedroom.

• • •

Natalya was always first with the news. She came to Dimka’s office in the Kremlin on Christmas Eve looking anxious. “Andropov is not going to be at the Politburo meeting,” she said. “He’s too ill to leave the hospital.”

The next Politburo meeting was scheduled for the day after Christmas.

“Damn,” said Dimka. “That’s dangerous.”

Strangely, Yuri Andropov had turned out to be a good Soviet leader. For the previous fifteen years he had been the efficient head of a cruel and brutal secret service, the KGB. And now, as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he continued to repress dissidents ruthlessly. But within the party he was astonishingly tolerant of new ideas and reforms. Like a medieval Pope who tortured heretics yet discussed with his cardinals arguments against the existence of God, Andropov talked freely to his inner circle—which included both Dimka and Natalya—about the shortcomings of the Soviet system. And the talk led to action. Gorbachev’s brief was extended from agriculture to the entire economy, and he produced a program to decentralize the Soviet economy, taking some of the power of decision away from Moscow and giving it to managers closer to the problems.

Unfortunately Andropov fell ill shortly before Christmas 1983, having been leader for barely a year. This worried Dimka and Natalya. Andropov’s stick-in-the-mud rival for the leadership had been Konstantin Chernenko, who was still number two in the hierarchy. Dimka feared that Chernenko would take advantage of Andropov’s illness to regain the ascendancy.

Now Natalya said: “Andropov has written a speech to be read out.”