Tanya did not know what would happen. No one did. Never in her life had she heard so much talk of change, liberalization, and freedom. But the Communists were still in control in the Soviet bloc. Was the day coming nearer when she and Vasili could reveal their secret, and tell the world the true identity of the author Ivan Kuznetsov? In the past such hopes had always ended up crushed beneath the caterpillar tracks of Soviet tanks.

As soon as Tanya arrived in Warsaw, she was invited to dinner at the apartment of Danuta Gorski.

Standing at the door, ringing the bell, she remembered the last time she had seen Danuta, being dragged out of this very apartment by the brutish ZOMO security police in their camouflage uniforms, on the night seven years ago when Jaruzelski had declared martial law.

Now Danuta opened the door, grinning broadly, all teeth and hair. She hugged Tanya, then led her into the dining room of the small apartment. Her husband, Marek, was opening a bottle of Hungarian Riesling, and there was a plate of snack-size sausages on the table with a small dish of mustard.

“I was in jail for eighteen days,” Danuta said. “I think they let me out because I was radicalizing the other inmates.” She laughed, throwing back her head.

Tanya admired her guts. If I were a lesbian I could fall for Danuta, she thought. All the men Tanya had loved had been courageous.

“Now I’m part of this Round Table,” Danuta went on. “Every day, all day.”

“It is really a round table?”

“Yes, a huge one. The theory is that no one is in charge. But, in practise, Lech Wałesa chairs the meetings.”

Tanya marveled. An uneducated electrician was dominating the debate on the future of Poland. This kind of thing had been the dream of her grandfather the Bolshevik factory worker Grigori Peshkov. Yet Wałesa was the anti-Communist. In a way she was glad Grandfather Grigori had not lived to see this irony. It might have broken his heart.

“Will anything come of the Round Table?” Tanya asked.

Before Danuta could answer, Marek said: “It’s a trick. Jaruzelski wants to cripple the opposition by co-opting its leaders, making them part of the Communist government without changing the system. It’s his strategy for staying in power.”

Danuta said: “Marek is probably right. But the trick is not going to work. We’re demanding independent trade unions, a free press, and real elections.”

Tanya was shocked. “Jaruzelski is actually discussing free elections?” Poland already had phony elections, in which only Communist parties and their allies were allowed to field candidates.

“The talks keep breaking down. But he needs to stop the strikes, so he reconvenes the Round Table, and we demand elections again.”

“What’s behind the strikes?” Tanya said. “I mean, fundamentally?”

Marek interrupted again. “You know what people are saying? ‘Forty-five years of Communism, and still there’s no toilet paper.’ We’re poor! Communism doesn’t work.”

“Marek is right,” said Danuta again. “A few weeks ago a store here in Warsaw announced that it would be accepting down payments for television sets on the following Monday. It didn’t have any TVs, mind you, it was just hoping to get some. People started queuing on the Friday beforehand. By Monday morning there were fifteen thousand people in line—just to put their names on a list!”