“Don’t worry,” says Fox. “If something had gone wrong, they’d have sent the doctor who speaks English.” He stands up. “Wait here. I’ll go telephone Digby and tell him the news.”

The nurse has already turned to march back to the doors. I consider calling after her, but what’s the point? Instead I slump back in the chair and stare at the clock. Somewhere in this building there’s probably a window, where you can look out into the brilliant sunshine that is Moscow at nine o’clock on an evening in early July, and see all the people walking outside, all the lives going on and on—women who have given birth and recovered, baby boys who’ve grown up into old men.

Fox returns. “No answer. I’ll try again in a few minutes. Congratulations on the nephew, by the way. I don’t think I said that before. It’s the best kind of news.”

A nephew. What do I want another nephew for? I want my sister.

“Thank you.”

He picks up my hand.

“Tell me about the war,” I say.

“Why?”

“I want to hear how you survived.”

There’s a beat or two of silence. I sense him glancing around, assessing our surroundings. But Kedrov is gone. There are no watchers nearby, just four or five people scattered around the nearby chairs, wearing their pale, anxious hospital faces—the kind of expression you can’t possibly fake. For the first time, nobody’s listening.

“I was in the South Pacific,” he says quietly. “Naval intelligence.”

“I thought you were a pilot.”

“No, that was the cover story. I was running some local agents out of Manila. Plane went down on our way to a drop, but I wasn’t flying it. Floated on a rubber raft for a couple of weeks before a Japanese patrol boat picked us up. First they sent me to an interrogation camp.”

“Is that where you got all those scars?”

“Some of them, I guess. But I was used to getting beat up in football. I didn’t care much about getting hurt. The hunger was harder. Thirst. You would eat the bugs in your cell. You would lick the dew from the rocks. You had to work all day and eat maybe a bowl of rice.”

“How could you stand it?”

“You just did. At first, I used to lie there at night and think about everything I would eat when I got back. I had it all planned out. I’d take my wife out to dinner at some hotel, seven or eight courses, soup to nuts, and when we were done eating . . .”

“Yes?”