“Like I could use a nice bath and a rest.”

“Some tea?”

“That would be lovely. I’ll pour so you can have a look around. Where are those bellboys with our luggage?”

“Elevator must be slow,” says Fox. He starts to move around the room, examining walls and objects and windows. I sit on the sofa but I don’t pour any tea. I stare at the pot and the cups and the creamer. Instead of the delicate pale roses and leaves of an English tea service, they’re painted in vivid lapis with gold rims.

I wonder what kind of tea service Iris has. I wonder what she looks like now. I wonder what she’ll say to me, whether she still hates me, whether she wrote that letter in ink or bile. For the first time, I consider why Iris would reach out to me, of all people, when she needed help. What on earth made her think I would answer the summons? Yet I did.

Fox arrives back into the room.

“Something the matter?” he says softly.

I shake my head. He approaches me, anyway, and sits on the sofa by my side. The springs gasp and settle. He takes one of my hands and folds it between his own, and he speaks in a low, husky lover’s whisper, so the microphones won’t pick up his words.

“Don’t be afraid. I won’t fail you, Ruth.”

I swallow back a laugh. Sumner Fox, fail me? That thought hasn’t crossed my mind in days. The man can speak a dozen languages, for God’s sake. He survived a Japanese prison camp.

But I nod anyway. It’s easier than telling him what I’m really afraid of.

He says, a little louder, “Let me pour you some tea, sweetheart.”

WE HAVE DINNER DOWNSTAIRS with a couple of undersecretaries from the American embassy whose unenviable job it was to smooth out the diplomatic details of our visit. I can’t be certain whether they’re in the know—initiated, to use the jargon—although I suspect not, because they talk without irony about facilitating understanding between the two countries at this sensitive time and so on. Lay it on thick. Even assuming the KGB is listening in, they seem awfully earnest. Everyone except Fox drinks too much. We part in the lobby at one in the morning. When they disappear into the revolving door, Fox leads me by the hand to the elevator, as if he isn’t sure I can find it on my own.