He summoned up all his strength and managed to pull himself up onto one of the benches. He didn’t want them to think he was broken. He began to study the layout of the room more carefully. On the right of the stage were twelve chairs, in two straight lines of six. A man who wasn’t in uniform but wore a gray, ill-fitting suit that any self-respecting tramp would have rejected was placing a single sheet of paper on each of the chairs. Once he’d performed this task, he sat down on a wooden chair opposite what Harry assumed was the jury box. Harry took a closer look at the man and wondered if he was the clerk of the court, but he just sat there, clearly waiting for someone to appear.

Harry turned around to see more green uniforms wearing heavy greatcoats standing at the back of the room, as if waiting for the prisoner to try to escape. If only one of them had heard of Saint Martin, he might have taken pity and cut his coat in half to share it with the freezing man from another country.

As he sat there waiting, waiting for he knew not what, Harry’s thoughts turned to Emma, as they had done so often between stolen moments of sleep. Would she understand why he couldn’t sign the confession and allow them to hammer another nail into Babakov’s coffin? He wondered how her own trial was progressing, and felt guilty for not being by her side.

His thoughts were interrupted when a door on the far side of the room swung open and seven women and five men entered and sat in their allocated places, giving the distinct impression this wasn’t the first time they had performed the task.

Not one of them as much as glanced in his direction, which didn’t stop Harry staring at them. Their blank faces suggested they had only one thing in common: their minds had been confiscated by the State, and they were no longer expected to have opinions of their own. Even in that moment of darkness, Harry reflected on what a privileged life he’d led. Was it possible that among these blank-faced clones there was a singer, an artist, an actor, a musician, even an author, who had never been given the opportunity to express their talent? Such is the lottery of birth.

Moments later, two other men entered the room, made their way to the front bench and sat down, facing the stage, with their backs to him. One of them was in his fifties, far better dressed than anyone else in the room. His suit fitted, and he had an air of confidence that suggested he was the sort of professional even a dictatorship requires if a regime is to run smoothly.