The conversation’s become morbid, and the wine turns sour in my mouth. “What about your daughters? Are any of them married?”

“Yes, Elvira and Renata, they marry nice Italian boys. I have two grandchildren, girl and boy.”

I lift my glass. “Cheers to that, anyway.”

“And my little Donna, she is spending summer in Russia with my parents, near Sochi. You know Sochi?”

“It’s by the Black Sea, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Is beautiful there, like resort. She will come home tanned and happy, with Russian boyfriend.” He shakes his head. “Is terrible burden, children. Always they take your heart with them, wherever they go.”

“I wouldn’t know. But my sister has a fourth on the way, I hear.”

“Ah, yes.” He stubs out the cigarette. “Let us talk about your sister for a minute.”

The waiter returns at that instant and refills the wine. Orlovsky orders fish; I order lamb. When he departs, Orlovsky lights another cigarette and says, in an undertone, “I have spoken to person who can help you.”

“Someone at the embassy?”

“You understand, you cannot simply dance into Moscow and find your sister and dance home again. Do you know what is the KGB?”

“It’s the Soviet spy agency, isn’t it?”

“Is more than that. Is everywhere. When you step off airplane—no, before. When you buy ticket to Moscow, they are watching. Listening. You go nowhere, see nothing, say nothing that KGB does not know.”

“Then I’ll just have to find a way around them.”

Orlovsky lays his palm on the table. His eyes blaze, although he keeps his voice at the same low monotone, so we might be speaking of the weather. “Oh, you are so clever! Like me, you believe you can outsmart fate—you can outsmart KGB. You know nothing! They will kill anybody—innocents—because to KGB man, all is in service to revolution, to world communism. So you find sister—by some miracle of God—so you visit sister? They take sister to Moscow Centre. They do interrogation—KGB interrogation, they study how to do this, they are scientific—they maybe even torture her, if they want confession. Maybe they take her son, they say we will kill your son unless you confess.”

“That won’t happen. I’m an American citizen, I’ll go to the US consulate and kick up such a fuss—”

“This is your plan? Your plan to cause major diplomatic incident? You think Soviets care what American newspapers think? I tell you now, they will lie. They will say, oh, this woman is spy—she is agent of American intelligence. They will insist on their lies until gullible people of America—yes, gullible people of entire world believe them. Ruth Macallister, she is terrible spy, she is guilty one. Then what happens? You disappear. Nobody ever know what happen to you.”

“That’s not true. The United States would never let that happen to one of its citizens.”