The car slows and stops. My heart might pound right out of my chest. Iris’s hand grips my wrist. Every instinct screams at me to duck back inside, into the shadows of the waiting room, but I force myself to remain just outside the entrance, under the shallow portico—visible if you’re looking for me.

An eternity passes before the driver’s door opens and a man steps out. He wears a dark suit and a fedora atop his dark hair. He closes the door and turns to face us. His big shoulders strain the jacket of his suit, the sleeves of which stop a couple of inches above each wrist.

My knees start to buckle. I have to lock them to stay upright, and even then I wobble. But the man’s already started forward from the car. He climbs the steps two at a time. I catch the flash of his pale eyes before I hand Iris off to him. He guides her carefully down the steps to the waiting car. I follow them, cradling Gregory in both arms.

“It’s going to be all right,” I tell my nephew. “We’re going to be just fine.”

Lyudmila

JULY 1952

Moscow

When the secure telephone rings in Lyudmila’s basement operations room, the caller is not the person Lyudmila expects.

“It’s your daughter, Comrade Ivanova,” says Anna Dubrovskaya, a little warily.

“My daughter! She’s supposed to be in school!” The astonished words pop out before Lyudmila can stop them, and this failure of self-control shocks her further. She takes a deep breath and says, more calmly, “Connect her, please.”

“Mama?” comes Marina’s voice.

“It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, Marina. Where are you?”

“I’m at Kip Dubinin’s apartment,” she says.

Lyudmila’s so stunned, she thinks at first that she didn’t hear Marina correctly. She thinks maybe she’s heard certain words echoing from her own head, because she’s so deeply immersed in this operation that she can’t tell the difference between what’s outside her head and what’s inside. “What did you say?” she gasps.

“Kip Dubinin. Mama, you have to help me. He and his brother never came to school today, and somebody said he saw them drive by in some kind of KGB car early this morning—”

“Who said that?”

“It doesn’t matter—”

“Yes, it does!” Lyudmila thunders.

“Well, I won’t tell you!” Marina says, in her calm, defiant voice that reminds Lyudmila of Dmitri.

Lyudmila grinds her teeth together. It’s a bad habit and she’ll reprimand herself later, when she’s finished with this daughter of hers—when she’s cooled her mind and encircled these strange, impossible pieces of information and brought them under control. “Why,” she says coldly, “are you at the Dubinins’ apartment when you are supposed to be at school?”