“Of course I have looked at your records, Comrade. I have examined every word, believe me. You’ve been an exemplary citizen, by all appearances. But there is also this. Discovered in the diplomatic bag of the American embassy in Moscow.”

“You opened a diplomatic bag?”

“You know this is sometimes necessary, Dubinin. Don’t play innocent.”

“I have never in my life opened the diplomatic bag of another country.”

“Then you have been derelict in your duty.” The woman picks up the slip of paper before her and lays it before him.

ALL RIGHT, SO HE’S lied to this woman. But he’s only lied because he doesn’t really know the truth, and it seems stupid to muddy the waters with speculation.

Sitting in that hospital waiting room with Ruth’s husband—Ruth was married to Sumner Fox, of all people, the Sumner Fox, he just couldn’t get his head around that—he had craved a drink very badly. He hadn’t wanted to get Iris pregnant again, God no, not after Claire’s birth—but she had begged him and he was only a man, after all, and there it was, another baby, sapping the strength from his wife and possibly sapping her life as well.

The funny thing is, he’s never loved Iris more than he has since they came to Moscow. He might almost say that he never really loved her until Moscow—had never appreciated all the beautiful qualities inside his wife because he was too busy drinking, obsessed with himself and his own agony and the guilt and secrecy that tore his guts apart. Also, in Moscow there was no Nedda. No dazzling unpredictable bitch to pour his vanity into. Just her sublime creature, Iris, to whom he was actually married—who, in this newly discovered perfection, took on all the qualities he once imagined existed only in such great works of art as they had examined in their first moments together. You might say he’d gone from one extreme to another, from hardly appreciating Iris at all to idealizing her as a goddess.

Which made it all the more bewildering when, after leaving the hospital almost with relief at three o’clock in the afternoon to retrieve the children from school, he came home to discover a world he did not understand.

He knew at once that someone had searched the apartment. Among the first things you learned as a covert operative, you figured how to detect the signs of intrusion. Sometimes it was easy, as when the searchers didn’t bother to hide their intentions and just ransacked the place. Other times they covered their tracks exquisitely well, so the subject wouldn’t know he was under suspicion.