“Aren’t you going to get in trouble for bringing me in?”

Stas shrugged. “You’re one more Russian. The station is full of Russians.”

“What if I meet an American?” Arkady asked.

“Ignore him. That’s what we all do.”

The hall had a thick American carpet instead of a Soviet runner. At a half-march, half-limp, Stas led him by display cases that illustrated stories Radio Liberty had reported to the Soviet Union: Berlin airlift, Cuban missile crisis, Solzhenitsyn, invasion of Afghanistan, Korean airliner, Chernobyl, Baltic crackdown. All the photographs were captioned in English. Arkady felt he was gliding through history.

If the halls were tidy and American, Stas’s office had the anarchy of a Russian repair shop: desk and rolling chair, anonymous furniture wearing a shawl, wooden filing cabinet, huge audiotape splicer and armchair. This was the bottom layer. The desk was covered by a manual typewriter, word processor, telephone, water glasses and ashtrays. On the shawl were two electric fans, two stereo speakers and a second computer monitor. A portable radio and spare computer keyboard stood on the cabinet. On the tape player were reels of tape, both loose and rolled. Everywhere—on desk, windowsill, cabinet, armchair—towered unsteady, ominous stacks of newsprint. A wall telephone drooped from an accordion extender. At a glance, Arkady knew that apart from the typewriter and desk phone, not a single item worked.

He leaned over the desk to admire pictures on the wall. “Big dog.” It was the same dark and hairy beast who rode in the dashboard frame. Here Laika had been captured by the lens in a car, savaging a snowman, sprawled across Stas’s lap. “What breed?”

“Rottweiler and Alsatian. Usual German personality. Make yourself comfortable.” He cleaned newspapers off the armchair and followed Arkady’s eyes around the room. “Well, they gave us all this electronic shit with useless software. I disconnected it, but I keep it around because it makes the bosses happy.”

“Where does Irina work?”

Stas closed the door. “Down the hall. The Russian section of Radio Liberty is the largest. There are also sections for the Ukrainians, Belorussians, Baltics, Armenians, Turkics. We transmit in different languages for different republics. Then there’s RFE.”

“RFE?”

Stas folded himself into the desk chair. “Radio Free Europe, which serves Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Rumanians. Liberty and RFE employ hundreds of people in Munich. The voice of Liberty to our Russian audience is Irina.”

He was interrupted by a scratch at the door. A woman with bristling white hair, white brows and a black velvet bow waddled in with a handful of bulletins. Her body had gone to fat, but she scrutinized Arkady’s pinched suit with the slow-rolling eyes of an aged coquette.

“Cigarette?” Her voice was lower than Arkady’s.

From a drawer stuffed with cartons, Stas opened a fresh pack for her. “Ludmilla, you are always welcome.”