The consulate was an eight-story building on Seidlstrasse. A wood-paneled waiting room had chairs of bright chrome and black leather. Behind bulletproof glass was a reception desk with three television monitors. Federov slid Arkady’s passport on a tray under the glass to a receptionist who looked Russian almost to her fingertips, which were long and polished like mother-of-pearl. When she started to push a book out, Federov blocked the tray and said, “He doesn’t have to sign.”

He led Arkady onto the elevator and up to the third floor, down a corridor of small offices, past a conference room with boxes and chairs still wrapped in blocks of plastic packing, and showed him through a metal door with a plaque that said in German CULTURAL AFFAIRS. Inside was a man with gray hair, a good Western suit and a frown. There were only two chairs in the room and he nodded for Arkady to take the other one.

“I’m Vice-Consul Platonov. I know who you are,” he told Arkady. He didn’t offer to shake hands. “That’s all,” he said to Federov, who could have been smoke, he was gone so fast.

Platonov had the forward hunch of a chess player. He looked like a man with a problem, something nasty but not too large, something he could resolve in a day or two. Arkady doubted this was his usual office. The walls still gave off the tang of fresh paint. A wide-angle photograph of Moscow at sunset leaned against the near wall. Against the far wall were posters: dancers of the Bolshoi and Kirov, treasures of the Kremlin Armory, a cruise boat on the Volga. The only other furnishings were a folding table, a phone and an ashtray.

“What do you think of Munich?” Platonov asked.

“It’s beautiful. It’s very rich.”

“It was rubble after the war, worse than Moscow. That says a great deal about the Germans. You speak German?”

“A little.”

“But you do speak German?” Platonov seemed to think he had a confession.

“In the Army I was stationed for two years in Berlin. I was monitoring Americans, but I did pick up some German.”

“German and English.”

“Not well.”

Platonov was in his mid-sixties, Arkady guessed. A diplomat since Brezhnev? That took a man of both rubber and steel.

“Not well?” Platonov folded his arms. “Do you know how many years it has taken us to open a Soviet consulate here? This is the industrial capital of Germany. These are the investors we need to reassure. We’re not even finished moving in and we have an investigator from Moscow? Are you after someone on the consulate staff?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. Usually we’re ordered back to Moscow before we get bad news,” Platonov said. “I asked if you were actually KGB, but they don’t even want to see you. On the other hand, they’re not stopping you.”

“That’s decent of them.”