“My ‘employer’ is the Soviet State.”

“Yes?” Wimpe did say “is the model,” not “will be.” Surprising they could have got this far, if indeed they did—being of such different persuasions and all. Wimpe, however, being far more cynical, would have been able to admit more of the truth before starting to feel uncomfortable. His patience with Tchitcherine’s Red Army version of economics may have been wide enough. They did part amiably. Wimpe was reassigned to the United States (Chemnyco of New York) shortly after Hitler became Chancellor. Tchitcherine’s connection, according to the garrison gossip, ceased then, forever.

But these are rumors. Their chronology can’t be trusted. Contradictions creep in. Perfect for passing a winter in Central Asia, if you happen not to be Tchitcherine. If you are Tchitcherine, though, well, that puts you in more of a peculiar position. Doesn’t it. You have to get through the winter on nothing but paranoid suspicions about why you’re here… .

It’s because of Enzian, it’s got to be damned Enzian. Tchitcherine has been to the Krasnyy Arkhiv, has seen the records, the diaries and logs from the epical, doomed voyage of Admiral Rozhdestvenski, some still classified even after 20 years. And now he knows. And if it’s all in the archives, then They know, too. Nubile young ladies and German dope salesmen are reason enough to send a man east in any period of history. But They would not be who or where They are without a touch of Dante to Their notions of reprisal. Simple talion may be fine for wartime, but politics between wars demands symmetry and a more elegant idea of justice, even to the point of masquerading, a bit decadently, as mercy. It is more complicated than mass execution, more difficult and less satisfying, but there are arrangements Tchitcherine can’t see, wide as Europe, perhaps as the world, that can’t be disturbed very much, between wars… .

It seems that in December, 1904, Admiral Rozhdestvenski, commanding a fleet of 42 Russian men-o’-war, steamed into the South-West African port of Lüderitzbucht. This was at the height of the Russo-Japanese War. Rozhdestvenski was on route to the Pacific, to relieve the other Russian fleet, which had been bottled up for months in Port Arthur by the Japanese. Out of the Baltic, around Europe and Africa, bound across the whole Indian Ocean and then north along the final coast of Asia, it was to be among the most spectacular sea voyages of history: seven months and 18,000 miles to an early summer day in the waters between Japan and Korea, where one Admiral Togo, who’d been lying in wait, would come sailing out from behind the island of Tsushima and before nightfall hand Rozhdestvenski’s ass to him. Only four Russian ships would make it in to Vladivostok—nearly all the rest would be sunk by the wily Jap.