“Precisely! The people who are coming today are the families who were left behind. They’re stragglers, not leaders. This is not a moral judgment, merely an analysis of characteristics.”

Irina said, “Not only families.”

“No, no. Former colleagues I haven’t seen for twenty years are popping up everywhere.”

“Friends.”

“Friends?” It was a category he hadn’t considered.

Smoke had collected at the light and turned it into a nimbus around Irina. It was her contrast that was arresting. A mask with full mouth and eyes, dark hair cut severely but gently touching her shoulders. She glowed like ice.

Irina said, “It can be embarrassing. They’re decent people and it’s so important to them to see you.”

The professor hunched forward, eager to commiserate. “You’re the only one they know.”

Irina said, “You don’t want to hurt them, but their expectations are fantasies.”

“They’ve lived in a state of unreality.”

“They’ve thought about you every day, but the fact is that too much time has gone by. You haven’t thought of them for years,” Irina said.

“You’ve lived a different life, in a different world.”

“They want to pick up where you left off,” Irina said.

“They’d smother you.”

“They mean well.”

“They’d take over your life.”

“And who knows anymore where you left off?” Irina said. “Whatever it was is dead.”

“You have to be friendly but stern.”

“It’s like seeing a ghost.”

“Threatening?”

“More pathetic than threatening,” Irina said. “You just have to wonder, after all this time, why do they come?”

“If they listen to you on the radio, I can just imagine the fantasies.”

“You don’t want to be cruel.”

“You’re not,” the professor assured her.

“It just seems … it seems to me that they actually would be happier if they stayed in Moscow with their dreams.”

“Irina?” the sound engineer said. “Let’s retape the last two minutes. Please remind the professor not to get close to the microphone.”

The professor blinked, trying to look into the booth. “Understood,” he said.

Irina twisted her cigarette into the ashtray. She took a drink of water, long fingers around the silvery glass. Red lips, white teeth. Cigarette bright as a broken bone. The interview started again at Pavlov.

Shamefaced, Arkady sank as far into his chair and as deep into shadow as he could go. If shadow were water he would have drowned happily.

The phone in the booth rang exactly at five.

“Federov here,” Arkady said.

“This is Schiller at the Bayern-Franconia Bank. We spoke this morning. You had some questions about a firm called TransKom Services.”

“Thank you for calling back.”

“There is no TransKom in Munich. No local bank knows it. I spoke to several state offices and no TransKom is registered in Bavaria for workers’ insurance.”

“It sounds like you’ve been thorough,” Arkady said.

“I think I’ve done all your work for you.”