So she and Marina make their way to school together. Lyudmila watches her daughter swing confidently—too confidently!—through the iron gates and then the doors themselves. Sometimes she hails a friend, which startles Lyudmila. These friends—who are they? How is it possible that Marina daily enters a world to which Lyudmila doesn’t belong? Naturally she’s seen all their parents’ files. She knows their histories intimately. But it’s not the same as friendship. How does Marina trust all these friends? How can she be so worldly and yet so innocent of human nature? It falls to Lyudmila to keep her safe. Lyudmila carries the burden of suspicion for both of them. Today Lyudmila stands a few extra seconds outside the school, even after Marina disappears inside. In a week, the term will end and Marina will go off to youth camp for the first time, and for some reason Lyudmila wants to hold on to this moment, to these last few days of Marina’s last school year before the state starts to pull her away from Lyudmila and turn her into a good Soviet citizen.

Then she turns and makes her way to the familiar concrete block that houses Moscow Centre. Ordinarily she spends this time reviewing the day ahead, sinking her mind into the vast complex machinery of her job, but today—today of all days!—she can’t seem to focus herself on the HAMPTON case, which has obsessed her so exclusively for the past month. Instead she thinks of the day she took Marina to nursery for the first time—the chasm that opened up in her chest at the sight of those round blue uncomprehending eyes watching her go. She remembers how she arrived at her desk that morning to discover the news, delivered in a few spare words on a slip of telegram, that Marina’s father had died of dysentery in the Siberian labor camp to which he had been sentenced, just three days before he was due to be furloughed out to the army in its last-ditch defense of Moscow against the Wehrmacht.

NOW LYUDMILA SITS AT her desk and gathers her papers. She’s set up a secure operations room in the basement, taking care to ensure that nobody else knows where it is except for a single secretary named Anna Dubrovskaya. She doesn’t exactly trust Dubrovskaya, either, but Dubrovskaya’s proved loyal on many occasions in the past—even under what you might call duress—so Lyudmila designates her as deputy while she’s out of her regular office. It will have to do.

At eight o’clock precisely, the telephone rings on the table in the operations room. Lyudmila lifts the receiver. The line is secure, or at least as secure as Lyudmila can possibly ensure. On the other end is an operative at a telephone in one of the safe houses Lyudmila maintains for operations such as this one.

“Ivanova,” she snaps.