When Stas lit the cigarette for her, Ludmilla leaned forward and closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were on Arkady. “A visitor from Moscow?” she asked.

Stas said, “No, the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

“The DD likes to know who comes in and out of the station.”

“Then he should be honored,” Stas said.

Ludmilla gave Arkady a last sweep of her eyes and went out the door, leaving a vapor trail of suspicion.

Stas rewarded himself and Arkady with cigarettes. “That was our security system. We have cameras and bulletproof glass, but they don’t compare to Ludmilla. The DD is our deputy director for security.” He looked at his watch. “At two steps a second, thirty centimeters a step, Ludmilla will reach his office in exactly two minutes.”

“You have security problems?” Arkady asked.

“The KGB blew up the Czech section a few years ago. Some of our contributors have died from poisoning and electrocution. You could say we have anxiety problems.”

“But she doesn’t know who I am.”

“Undoubtedly she has seen the identification you left at the desk. Ludmilla knows who you are. She knows everything and understands nothing.”

“I’ve put you in a difficult situation, and I’m in the way of your work,” Arkady said.

Stas patted the bulletins. “Because of these? This is the daily budget of wire-service reports, newspapers and special monitoring reports. I’ll also talk to our correspondents in Moscow and Leningrad. From this flood of information, I will distill about a minute of truth.”

“The newscast is ten minutes long.”

“I make up the rest.” He added quickly, “Only joking. Let’s say I pad. Let’s say I don’t want to put Irina in the position of telling the Russian people that their country is a rotting corpse, a Lazarus beyond resurrection, and that they should lie down and not even try to get up.”

“You’re not joking now,” Arkady said.

“No.” Stas leaned back to release a long sigh of smoke; he actually wasn’t much wider than a bent chimney pipe, Arkady realized. “Anyway, I’ve got all day to trim the budget, and who knows what newsworthy disasters will happen between now and airtime?”

“The Soviet Union is fertile ground?”