Danuta stepped into the kitchen and returned with a fragrant bowl of zupa ogórkowa, the sour cucumber soup that Tanya loved. “So what will happen?” Tanya asked as she tucked in. “Will there be real elections?”

“No,” said Marek.

“Maybe,” said Danuta. “The latest proposal is that two-thirds of the seats in parliament should be reserved for the Communist Party, and there should be free elections for the remainder.”

Marek said: “So we would still have phony elections!”

Danuta said: “But this would be better than what we have now! Don’t you agree, Tanya?”

“I don’t know,” said Tanya.

• • •

The spring thaw had not arrived, and Moscow was still under its duvet of snow, when the new Hungarian prime minister came to see Mikhail Gorbachev.

Yevgeny Filipov knew that Miklós Németh was coming, and he buttonholed Dimka outside the leader’s office a few minutes before the meeting. “This nonsense must be stopped!” he said.

These days, Filipov was looking increasingly frantic, Dimka observed. His gray hair was untidy, and he went everywhere in a rush. He was now in his early sixties, and his face was permanently set in the disapproving frown he had worn for so much of his life. His baggy suits and ultra-short haircut were back in fashion: kids in the West called the look retro.

Filipov hated Gorbachev. The Soviet leader stood for everything Filipov had been fighting against all his life: relaxation of rules instead of strict party discipline; individual initiative as opposed to central planning; friendship with the West rather than war against capitalist imperialism. Dimka could almost sympathize with a man who had wasted his days fighting a losing battle.

At least, Dimka hoped it had been a losing battle. The conflict was not over yet.

“What nonsense in particular are we talking about?” Dimka said wearily.

“Independent political parties!” Filipov said as if he were mentioning an atrocity. “The Hungarians have started a dangerous trend. Jaruzelski is now talking about the same thing in Poland. Jaruzelski!”

Dimka understood Filipov’s incredulity. It was, indeed, astonishing that the Polish tyrant was now talking of making Solidarity a part of the nation’s future, and of allowing political parties to compete in a Western-style election.

And Filipov did not know it all. Dimka’s sister, in Warsaw for TASS, was sending him accurate information. Jaruzelski was up against the wall, and Solidarity was adamant. They were not just talking, they were planning an election.

This was what Filipov and the Kremlin conservatives were fighting to prevent.

“These developments are highly dangerous!” Filipov said. “They open the door to counterrevolutionary and revisionist tendencies. What is the point of that?”

“The point is that we no longer have the money to subsidize our satellites—”

“We have no satellites. We have allies.”

“Whatever they are, they’re not willing to do what we say if we can’t pay for their obedience.”

“We used to have an army to defend Communism—but not anymore.”

There was some truth in that exaggeration. Gorbachev had announced the withdrawal from Eastern Europe of a quarter of a million troops and ten thousand tanks—an essential economy measure, but also a peace gesture. “We can’t afford such an army,” said Dimka.