The other man was much younger, and kept looking around the courtroom as if he was trying to find his bearings. If these two were the counsel for the state and for the defense, it wasn’t difficult for Harry to work out which of them would be representing him.

Finally, the door behind the platform opened so the principal actors could make their entrance: three of them, one woman and two men, who took their seats behind the long table on the center of the stage.

The woman, who must have been about sixty and had fine gray hair tightly pinned up in a bun, could have been a retired headmistress. Harry even wondered if this had once been her classroom. She was clearly the most senior person present because everyone else in the room was looking in her direction. She opened the file in front of her and began to read out loud. Harry silently thanked his Russian tutor for the hours she’d spent making him read the Russian classics before getting him to translate whole chapters into English.

“The prisoner”—Harry had to assume she was referring to him, although she had not once acknowledged his presence “recently entered the Soviet Union illegally”—Harry would have liked to take notes, but he hadn’t been supplied with a pen or paper so he would have to rely on his memory, assuming he would even be given the chance to defend himself—“with the sole purpose of breaking the law.” She turned to the jury and did not smile. “You, comrades, have been selected to be the arbiters of whether the prisoner is guilty or not. Witnesses will come forward to assist you in making that judgement.”

“Mr. Kosanov,” she said, turning to face counsel, “you may now present the State’s case.”

The older of the two men seated on the front bench rose slowly to his feet.

“Comrade commissioner, this is a straightforward case that should not trouble the jury for any length of time. The prisoner is a well-known enemy of the State, and this is not his first offense.”

Harry couldn’t wait to hear what his first offense had been. He soon found out.

“The prisoner visited Moscow some five years ago as a guest of our country and took cynical advantage of his privileged status. He used the opening speech at an international conference to mount a campaign for the release of a self-confessed criminal who had previously pleaded guilty to seven offenses against the State. Anatoly Babakov will be well known to you, comrade commissioner, as the author of a book about our revered leader, Comrade Chairman Stalin, for which he was charged with seditious libel and sentenced to twenty years’ hard labor.