Olga was standing on a small dais beside a lectern, looking out into the hall with a smile on her face. When the laughter died away, she said: “And then I said: ‘Franz, why have you got both gloves on the right hand?’ He looked at Willem, blushed and shouted: ‘Well, damn me, so that was your hand!’ ”

The audience laughed until it groaned. It guffawed, chuckled, grunted, and squealed. It had obviously been a very funny story—but I’d only caught the very end.

There’s nothing more pathetic than a man who has heard the end of a joke and starts asking plaintively: “What was that about, what was it? What happened at the beginning?”

“And what did Willem say?” someone shouted out from the hall.

Olga was apparently expecting this question and she had the answer ready.

“Willem lowered his eyes sheepishly and replied: ‘Yes, Herr Franz, but it wasn’t my hand.’ ”

The audience collapsed in paroxysms of laughter, even louder than before. I sighed, slumped against the wall, and waited.

It took a couple of minutes for order to be restored. After that Olga, evidently considering that she had the audience eating out of the palm of her hand, announced: “And now meet our guest, Senior Police Sergeant Dmitry Pastukhov!”

This was getting more and more interesting! Mentally congratulating myself on taking up the strategically correct position by the door, I squatted down on my haunches. And when Olga stepped down off the dais, clapping her hands, my old, if rather superficial, acquaintance Dmitry Pastukhov mounted it with an embarrassed expression on his face.

“Hello,” Dmitry said, with a smile that was awkward but basically friendly and sincere. “I am very pleased, I really am, to have been invited here.”

The audience suddenly burst into applause.

“Of course, I’m not Franz, and I’m not Willem,” Pastukhov continued, encouraged by this approval. “But a job’s a job, in any country at any time. Right? So ask what you like, and I’ll answer—only don’t forget, I’m a senior sergeant, not some high-up . . .”

“Why have you been stuck as a sergeant for so long?” a young girl from the research department piped up from the audience.

“If I’d known you were going to invite me to speak, I’d have become a general!” said Pastukhov, laughing the question off. He didn’t seem very keen to discuss the leisurely progress of his career.

But the audience was in a friendly mood. Alisher was the first to get up and ask a question.

“Dima—may I call you Dima?”

“Of course!”