“ ‘A lovely man,’ ” Stas muttered. “He’ll go back. Half the people here will go back to Tbilisi, Moscow, Leningrad. What’s crazy is that we, of all people, know better. We’re the ones who tell the truth. But we’re Russian, so we like lies, too. Right now we’re in a state of special confusion. We had a head of the Russian section, very competent, highly intelligent. He was a defector like me. About ten months ago he went back to Moscow. Not just to visit; he redefected. A month later, he’s a spokesman for Moscow appearing on American television, saying how democracy is alive and well, the Party is a friend of the market economy, the KGB is a guarantor of social stability. He’s good; he should be, he learned here. He makes such a believable case that people at the station wonder: are we performing a real service or are we fossils of the cold war? Why don’t we all march home to Moscow?”

“Do you believe him?” Arkady asked.

“No. All I have to do is look at someone like you and ask, ‘Why is this man running?’ ”

Arkady left the question in the air. He said, “I thought I was going to see Irina.”

Stas pointed to the lit red lamp above the door and ushered Arkady into a control booth. An engineer with a headset sat at the faint illumination of his console; otherwise, the booth was silent and dark. Arkady sat in back, below the turning reels of a tape recorder. Needles danced on volume meters.

On the other side of soundproof glass, Irina was at a padded hexagonal table with a central microphone and overhead light. Across from her sat a man in an intellectual’s black sweater. Saliva sprayed like stoker’s sweat when he talked. He joked, laughing at his own humor. Arkady wondered what he was saying.

Irina’s head was slightly to one side, the pose of a good listener. Her eyes, in shadow, showed as deep-set reflections. Her lips, slightly open, held the promise of a smile, if not the smile itself. It was not a flattering light. The man’s forehead bunched in muscles, his brows two hedgerows over the pits of his eyes. But the light flowed over Irina’s even features and outlined in gold the corona of her cheek, her loose strands of hair, her arm. Arkady remembered the blue line that used to be under her right eye, a result of interrogation; the mark was faint now and she seemed flawless. An ashtray and a glass of water stood in front of her and the subject of her interview. She said a few words and the effect was like blowing on coals. At once the man became even more animated, waving his hand like an ax.

Stas leaned across the console and turned on the sound.