“I told you. Something’s happened to them. I just had a feeling in my gut, Mama, when Nik—when the person told me that he was sure he saw them in the back seat of a KGB car this morning, on the way to school. And then Kip never came to class, and he never came to lunch, and Oleg in second form said that Jack never came to class either. So after lunch I left—”

“You left school. In the middle of the day! What were you thinking, Marina?”

“I was worried! And I got to the apartment and the door was unlocked, Mama, and nobody was inside but everything was messy, like it had been searched.”

Marina pauses. She seems out of breath, not from exertion but from emotion and from speaking too much and too fast. Now she waits for her mother to say something.

What on earth is Lyudmila going to say to her?

“Tell me, Marina. Why do you care so much about young Dubinin?”

Another pause crackles down the secure line. Only it’s not so secure, is it? A line is only as secure as the connection at the other end, and the Dubinins’ telephone is, of course, bugged. Lyudmila realizes this fact the same way a snowball hits your chest—hard and cold, enough to break your ribs. She wants to bite off her tongue. If only she weren’t so occupied by the operation—if only Marina didn’t surprise her like this—she should have grasped the danger instantly. Probably Vashnikov is listening this second!

Luckily, Marina was like any eleven-year-old girl when it came to discussing these matters with her mother.

“Mama, I don’t care about him. He’s just a boy at my school. But—”

“Never mind,” Lyudmila says hastily. “We’ll speak of it tonight, when you’re home from school.”

“I’ve already left school, and I’m not going back. I’m not doing anything until you tell me what’s going on.”

Lyudmila attempts a laugh. “Darling, so dramatic! Nothing’s going on. I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation. Didn’t his mother have a new baby? Maybe they’ve gone to the hospital today.”

“Mama—”

“In any case, I’m at the office now, as you know. I can’t speak about any personal matters.”

Marina makes a tiny noise that might be disgust or understanding—who can tell with a girl that age? And why in the name of reason has her daughter developed a fascination with this particular boy? What contrary fate placed the two of them together at the same school to begin with? Lyudmila feels a headache coming on. Her fingers flex to grasp one of the cigarettes she gave up during the war, when cigarettes were needed for the soldiers at the front. She stares at the bare gray-white walls, the speckled linoleum that covers the floor.