“I’ve been talking to the attorney general, Bobby Kennedy—a Harvard graduate, as you know.”

“I hope you told him that his handling of what happened in Alabama was a national disgrace.”

West smiled regretfully. “Not in those words, not quite. But he and I agreed that the administration’s response was inadequate.”

“Very. I can’t imagine he . . .” George trailed off as he was struck by a thought. “What does this have to do with decisions about my future?”

“Bobby has decided to hire a young black lawyer to give the attorney general’s team a Negro perspective on civil rights. And he asked me if there was anyone I could recommend.”

George was momentarily stunned. “Are you saying . . .”

West raised a warning hand. “I’m not offering you the job—only Bobby can do that. But I can get you an interview . . . if you want it.”

Jacky said: “George! A job with Bobby Kennedy! That would be fantastic.”

“Mother, the Kennedys have let us down so badly.”

“Then go to work for Bobby and change things!”

George hesitated. He looked at the eager faces around him: his mother, his father, his grandmother, his grandfather, and back to his mother again.

“Maybe I will,” he said at last.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Dimka Dvorkin was abashed to be a virgin at the age of twenty-two.

He had dated several girls while at university, but none of them had let him go all the way. Anyway, he was not sure he should. No one had actually told him that sex should be part of a long-term loving relationship, but he sort of felt it anyway. He had never been in a frantic hurry to do it, the way some boys were. However, his lack of experience was now becoming an embarrassment.

His friend Valentin Lebedev was the opposite. Tall and confident, he had black hair and blue eyes and buckets of charm. By the end of their first year at Moscow State University he had bedded most of the girl students in the Politics Department and one of the teachers.

Early on in their friendship, Dimka had said to him: “What do you do about, you know, avoiding pregnancy?”

“That’s the girl’s problem, isn’t it?” Valentin had said carelessly. “Worst comes to the worst, it’s not that difficult to get an abortion.”

Talking to others, Dimka found out that many Soviet boys took the same attitude. Men did not get pregnant, so it was not their problem. And abortion was available on demand during the first twelve weeks. But Dimka could not get comfortable with Valentin’s approach, perhaps because his sister was so scornful about it.

Sex was Valentin’s main interest, and studying took second place. With Dimka it had been the other way around—which was why Dimka was now an aide in the Kremlin and Valentin worked for the Moscow City Parks Department.

It was through his connections in Parks that Valentin had been able to arrange for the two of them to spend a week at the V. I. Lenin Holiday Camp for Young Communists in July 1961.