The camp was a bit military, with tents pitched in ruler-straight rows and a curfew at ten thirty, but it had a swimming pool and a boating lake and loads of girls, and a week there was a privilege much sought after.

Dimka felt he deserved a holiday. The Vienna Summit had been a victory for the Soviet Union, and he shared the credit.

Vienna had actually begun badly for Khrushchev. Kennedy and his dazzling wife had entered Vienna in a fleet of limousines flying dozens of stars-and-stripes flags. When the two leaders met, television viewers all over the world saw that Kennedy was several inches taller, towering over Khrushchev, looking down his patrician nose at the bald top of Khrushchev’s head. Kennedy’s tailored jackets and skinny ties made Khrushchev look like a farmer in his Sunday suit. America had won a glamour contest that the Soviet Union had not even known it was entering.

But once the talks began, Khrushchev had dominated. When Kennedy tried to have an amiable discussion, as between two reasonable men, Khrushchev became loudly aggressive. Kennedy suggested it was not logical for the Soviet Union to encourage Communism in Third World countries, then protest indignantly about American efforts to roll back Communism in the Soviet sphere. Khrushchev replied scornfully that the spread of Communism was a historic inevitability, and nothing that either leader did could stand in its way. Kennedy’s grasp of Marxist philosophy was weak, and he had not known what to say.

The strategy developed by Dimka and other advisers had triumphed. When Khrushchev returned to Moscow he ordered dozens of copies of the summit minutes to be distributed, not only to the Soviet bloc, but to the leaders of countries as far away as Cambodia and Mexico. Since then Kennedy had been silent, not even responding to Khrushchev’s threat to take over West Berlin. And Dimka went on holiday.

On the first day Dimka put on his new clothes, a checked short-sleeved shirt and a pair of shorts his mother had sewn from the trousers of a worn-out blue serge suit. “Are shorts like that fashionable in the West?” Valentin said.

Dimka laughed. “Not as far as I know.”

While Valentin was shaving, Dimka went for supplies.

When he emerged he was pleased to see, right next door, a young woman lighting the small portable stove that was provided with each tent. She was a little older than Dimka, he guessed twenty-seven. She had thick red-brown hair cut in a bob, and an attractive scatter of freckles. She looked alarmingly fashionable in an orange blouse and a pair of tight black pants that ended just below the knee.

“Hello!” Dimka said with a smile. She looked up at him. He said: “Do you need a hand with that?”

She lit the gas with a match, then went inside her tent without speaking.

Well, I’m not going to lose my virginity with her, Dimka thought, and he walked on.

He bought eggs and bread in the store next to the communal bathroom block. When he got back there were two girls outside the next tent: the one he had spoken to, and a pretty blonde with a trim figure. The blonde wore the same style of black pants, but with a pink blouse. Valentin was talking to them, and they were laughing.