Wherever they’re going, it’s not along some road. The truck sways and dives. In her mind, Iris returns to Long Island Sound and a sailboat under the hot sun. The terror of a vessel she can’t control, obeying natural laws she can’t predict. She hears an unfamiliar voice speaking Russian, a girl’s voice, and she remembers the other prisoner, the school friend of Kip’s—what was her name? How did she get here? It’s all part of the dream, maybe.

The truck stops with a jerk. A pair of guards appear at the back and shout at them to get down, file out, line up. The Russian girl shouts back at them. But they don’t have any choice—the guards carry fearsome rifles, which they point to the girl, then Kip, then Ruth. They have the decency not to point at Iris. One by one, everyone crawls across the bed of the truck and jumps to the ground below. Ruth goes before Iris. She hands the baby to somebody, leaps down, and holds up her arms to help Iris. Ruth is so strong, she catches Iris without a stagger.

Iris gives her the bag with the soiled diapers. Because what does she have to lose? If something happens to them, the bag will be thrown away. Nobody will look inside a baby’s soiled diaper. And maybe the bag will survive even if she does not. Maybe someone will come looking for her, and find this bag, forgotten in the mud. You never know.

The guards shout some more.

“What are they saying?” Ruth asks.

“They want us to follow them.”

Ruth puts her arm around Iris’s waist and walks with her at the end of the line. They’re walking on hard sand, by the feel of it. Iris can almost hear the rushing of the sea in her ears, unless it’s her imagination again. The voices bark in Russian to hurry along. They travel some hundred yards or so, then a guard orders them to stop and line up. They stop and line up. Iris turns to face the guards. There are two of them, holding their rifles, and a woman who stands a few feet away. The KGB woman. She stares at them coldly, one by one, ending with the girl.

“Where’s Fox?” Ruth shouts at her. “Where’s Digby?”

“This is not your concern,” the woman says, in perfect English. “After a thorough investigation, you have been found to have committed treason against the Soviet people. The penalty for this crime is death—”

“I hate you!” the girl screams.

The woman turns her head and stares at the girl. Not long, a few seconds only, during which not a murmur interrupts the cool, dark silence of twilight.