There would be watchers on the airplane, he went on. The driver who guided us around Moscow in an official car would report back to Moscow Centre. There would be watchers in the lobby of the luxury hotel where we would stay—a hotel designed expressly for visits from foreigners, of course. The hotel room itself would be bugged—the telephone, naturally, but also the bedroom and the bathroom, the closet, maybe even the bed. We could not risk a single candid conversation, in other words. We would have to speak in code instead. So if I mentioned my aunt Vivian, for example, that would mean I thought I had been poisoned. (Apparently the Soviet intelligence service was fond of poison.) If one of us made a reference to elephants, that meant we should abort whatever activity we were attempting. Foreign language not being a strength of mine, I abandoned my attempts to learn some rudimentary Russian and focused my mind on memorizing this code instead, because Fox told me it would likely save our lives at some point, when something went wrong. As it would. Something always went wrong.

Above all, we must act at all times as if we were a married couple, recently wed. According to the story put forth by the US diplomatic service, in arranging for our visit together, we met each other at a New Year’s party six months ago at the Yale Club, where Fox was given some kind of award for athletic accomplishment for the glory of the university. (That last part is actually true.) That night, we fell madly in love and married quietly in May—a marriage certificate was duly submitted to the Russian authorities, to demonstrate that Fox’s presence was on the up-and-up—in a small weekend ceremony in Newport, Rhode Island, close family only. This was because Fox had been married before, another fact that turned out to be genuine.

“You’re not serious,” I said.

“No, it’s true.”

“So what’s the story?”

He put on that granite expression of his. “We married right after college. I went away to fight in the war and didn’t return for years. She fell in love with someone else.”

“That’s not very nice.”

“At one point, they told her I was dead,” he said grudgingly, as if this was a piece of information he didn’t like to share.

I stared at him a moment, trying to think of any question I had a right to ask.

“Did you have any children?” I said finally.

He shook his head. “No.”

And apparently this was all I need to know about that, because he wouldn’t reveal any more, other than her name: Constance.

“Well, that’s ironic,” I said.