‘Is the ground not good enough for you?’ He interrupted her again. ‘Would you like us to put you on a rocket too? Spend untold millions of rubles so you can satisfy your curiosity?’

She couldn’t resist the bait. ‘I think it would make more sense to send scientists into space than someone who was chosen because he was short enough to fit in the cockpit.’

Zukolev slammed his hands down on the desk again. ‘Major Gagarin is a hero of the Soviet Union!’

Yuri Gagarin was Zukolev’s second idol after Stalin, though his affinity for Russia’s most celebrated cosmonaut was primarily based on their shared first name. Valera knew this, and while she also knew better than to ever say anything critical about Stalin to Zukolev, Gagarin was a nerve she was happy to pinch to put him off balance.

Zukolev sighed deeply and squeezed the bridge of his nose with his fat thumb and forefinger, dramatically transforming in a moment from irate dictator to disappointed father. He pushed his chair back—it dragged loudly under his weight—and walked round his desk.

‘We are a small part of a great family,’ he said, raising his arms as if gesturing to the whole of the Soviet Union. The gold buttons on his jacket struggled to stay fastened. ‘I want you to be happy, Irina. I want people to understand your genius. We must work together, to make life better for all of us, to protect each other from our enemies.’

He got closer and closer to her until Valera could see nothing but his large stomach and feel his sweet, heavy breath on her. His hand hovered over her shoulder, then drifted over to her face. She looked up at him before his palm could cup her chin and force her head upward. He met her stare, his eyes pleading. She could see the blood-red flesh of berries stuck between his teeth.

‘But I can’t protect you, or Ledjo,’ he said, ‘if you keep asking for things without giving anything back.’

It was a threat, and it didn’t work. Valera had spent her whole life being threatened. Her family history was intimately connected with the darker side of the Soviet Union. Her father, a celebrated linguist who specialised in early Asian languages, had been killed in the Great Purge when Valera was eight years old, accused of being a spy for Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist China. Her mother, a gifted chemist, starved to death in the siege of Leningrad five years later. Valera herself only barely survived to see the city liberated. She was not a happy child of Mother Russia, and she was immune to intimidation.

‘You cannot just keep experimenting,’ Zukolev continued. ‘Moscow is demanding results. And we must provide them.’