Digby just stares at her. He has the most remarkable eyes, a color so intensely blue it’s difficult to look away. A good thing Lyudmila is so hardened by years of practice at interrogation. Oh, the pathetic pleas she’s heard, the weeping and distress! You simply have to imagine yourself as a rock, millions of years old, impervious to wind and sea and sun and the intensely blue eyes of traitors to the revolution. You have to remember the great ideal for which you’re fighting.

“You’re going to send them to the camps, anyway, aren’t you? Whatever I say, whatever I reveal to you, you’re going to have me shot and they’re going to disappear into the gulag. Whatever I—”

Digby stops in the middle of his sentence and looks to the door in surprise. Lyudmila’s seen this trick before, however. She doesn’t flinch. Only when a small, dry gasp penetrates the air behind her does she turn her head to glance over her shoulder.

A girl stands there, all by herself. She’s wearing a rumpled school uniform and an expression of horrified shock. It actually takes Lyudmila a second or two to recognize that it’s Marina.

She starts to rise from the chair. “Marina! How did you—”

A guard appears behind her daughter and grabs her by the arm. Marina turns her head and bites his hand—kicks him—he snatches her arm and bends it behind her back and shoves her to the ground.

“Comrade! Let the girl go this instant! What’s the meaning of this?”

The guard has his knee in the middle of Marina’s back. He looks up, panting, and says, “This girl just shot the guard outside the prison hut, Comrade! She was trying to free the prisoners!”

THE GENERAL STANDS BY the window and stares at the rising sun. He clasps his arms behind his back. Lyudmila can see how furious he is by the tic of one finger against the back of the other hand.

“I did not wish to allow this facility to be used for KGB purposes,” he says. “The locals are not happy about our presence here to begin with. I agreed, because one does not refuse requests from Moscow Centre.”

“Your loyalty has been noted.”

“Has it?” He turns his head. His face blazes pink. “Why could this affair not have been handled in one of the detention centers near Moscow?”

“For strategic reasons—”

“Luckily the bullet missed his heart by a couple of inches. As it is, I must write a report on the incident. This is very grave, Ivanova. Very grave.”

“Don’t worry about the report.”

“I don’t worry about it with respect to myself, Ivanova. I’ve written such reports before. They are inconvenient, but my career has survived worse. No. The trouble is the child. There are witnesses. I can’t obscure the facts.”