“Because you trusted me. You never imagined in a million years I would play such a mean, dirty trick on you.”

“So I ask you, Ruth. Who’s worse, you or him? Who’s really using me to fill some hole inside?”

Ruth blinked and turned around to close and lock the lid of the steamer trunk. She wore a white linen shirt tucked into the beige linen trousers. A silk scarf secured her hair in a ponytail. She looked like she’d just stepped out of a fashion shoot for a travel magazine. When she straightened and turned bravely back to Iris, only her pink eyes gave her away.

“So are you coming with me, or not?”

“I’m going to have a baby,” Iris told her.

“You don’t say.”

Iris folded her arms across her chest. Ruth glanced to the shuttered window and back to Iris, and it reminded her of the time Sasha stood in her bedroom, not quite certain of her, and the same confidence she felt then returned to her now.

“You’re making a mistake,” Ruth said. “You can still come home with me. We’ll find a way. You and me, Iris. You still have a chance.”

“Actually, I like my chances here.”

“Then you really are an idiot.” Ruth picked up her pocketbook and slung it over her shoulder. “So long, then.”

“So long.”

Ruth dragged her steamer trunk into the hallway and shut the door. Iris heard her call for the taxi driver—bark instructions—bang bang bang as the poor trunk made its way to the courtyard. Then nothing, not even the roar of an engine. Just the smell of vinegar and wood, the smell of an empty apartment.

Iris sat down on the lid of her trunk and waited for Sasha to arrive.

Two

I am really two people. I am a private person and a political person.

Of course, if there is a conflict, the political person comes first.

—Kim Philby

Lyudmila

JUNE 1952

Moscow

Sometimes it seems to Lyudmila that her work is futile. No matter how many traitors she unmasks, no matter how many acts of subversion, no matter how many instances of heresy to the great faith, a hundred more spring to life before her eyes. There’s always some note out of tune in this Soviet chorus, some person who puts his own self-interest ahead of the interest of the state. Sometimes it’s the very person who sings the best and the loudest.

Trust no one.