I wait for him to say something more, but he stares out the window and holds me gingerly in his arms, as if I’m a mannequin. He’s warm and taut, and I haven’t slept more than four hours in the past forty-eight, and for a moment there I nearly doze off, even though my brain hums like a live wire. I start to step back but he draws me close again.

“How soon can she be ready to go, do you think?”

“I don’t know. She’s just had surgery. Probably lost a lot of blood. I don’t know if they gave her a transfusion or anything or how much pain she’s in.”

“Find out, all right? I have everything we need. Whenever you give the signal, we can start.”

My heart thuds against my ribs—so hard, I imagine Fox feels it, too. He holds me snug, so our words stay within the glow of our mutual warmth. I turn my head a few inches, so I can see my sister and her children, who are still making a terrible ruckus, though she tries to shush them. But it’s a merry ruckus. It’s the family kind of ruckus that seems loud and contentious when you’re in the middle of it, but when it’s gone, you miss it like you miss the sun when it slips down the other side of the world.

FOX SOMEHOW MANEUVERS JACK and Claire to the window to take in the glorious sights of Moscow through a dirt-streaked pane of glass. Iris gives the baby to Kip. I lean over her to adjust a blanket. “Fox wants to leave as soon as possible.”

“Damn,” she says.

I sit back down and look at her, and she looks at me, and it seems she understands exactly what’s happened without my having to say a word. Like she’s been expecting this—their cover blown. She nods at me, a soundless Yes.

“Are you sure?” I murmur.

“I don’t think we have a choice.”

I stand up. “All right. Act One, the bossy American woman.”

POOR KEDROV. HE HAS the soul of a diplomat, not a KGB man. I lay into him with my best hue and cry.

“I want my sister out of this hospital immediately. It’s barbaric. She needs a natural setting, where she can rest and recover in peace.”

He answers me soothingly. “With respect, Mrs. Fox, best place for new mother is hospital.”

“Oh? And by what authority do you—a man—presume to tell me—a woman—what’s best for a new mother? Are you a doctor? Are you a mother?”

“Mrs. Fox, is impossible. She is too delicate to be moved.”

“But not too delicate to give birth to a ten-pound baby, which is something I doubt you could have accomplished, Mr. Kedrov, let alone survived.”

“Mrs. Fox, please—”