It’s an advantage, he said. You’re invisible to them. If we split up, they’ll run after me, not you. They’ll figure I’ve got the football, because what kind of man hands off the football to a woman?

The rabbit. The football. Whatever it is, it’s sitting right next to me. Hiding in plain sight, while the watchers watch someone else.

I settle back against the seat and close my eyes. “It figures,” I mutter.

But I don’t fall asleep. I just lie there staring at my eyelids and pray that Fox knows what he’s doing.

AS THE TRAIN GATHERS speed, out of the Moscow suburbs and onto the vast western plains, I keep an eye out for KGB watchers. We have lunch in the dining car, but among the other passengers I see nobody who takes much notice of us. Iris doesn’t eat much. She looks a little pale, but what do I know about the aftermath of childbirth? She says she feels fine, just tired as you might expect. Outside the window, the landscape rolls by, green fields and hills, speckled by lakes. The clouds break up a little, exposing a pure blue sky. Sometimes we come to some village or town, gray and spent. I don’t know much about this part of the world, but it seems to me that the land has been trampled on somehow, that that past half century has left the people exhausted.

Only Kedrov eats heartily. He recommends various dishes for us, points out features in the landscape as we rattle westward. Riga is about six hundred miles away, a full day’s journey. Occasionally I spot a car or a truck, trundling down some road, or a horse and cart, and I send out a prayer for Fox.

We return to the compartment. I pull out a cheap paperback novel from my pocketbook and pretend to read, while Iris, holding Gregory, leans against my shoulder and falls asleep. Gently I pry the baby loose from her arms. He doesn’t even stir, just collapses against my own weary bones as if he belonged to me. The sun inches ahead of us. Kedrov’s eyelids droop.

Behind us, Fox has either succeeded or has not—drives with the children in a KGB car along some highway behind us or does not.

Is alive or is not.