“And occasionally,” Stas said, “we’re killed. We open a letter bomb or get jabbed with the tip of a poisoned umbrella, or drink ourselves to death. Even so, at one time we were heroes.”

Laika stretched like a sphinx in the middle of the floor. Arkady couldn’t see the dog’s eyes as much as feel their force. Her ear might turn toward the sound of a particularly noisy car on the street four stories down, but her focus remained on him. He said, “You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

“I do because you’re different. You aren’t a dissident. You saved Irina, but everyone wants to save Irina, that’s not necessarily a political act.”

“It was more personal,” Arkady admitted.

“You stayed. People who knew Irina knew about you. You were the ghost. She tried to reach you once or twice.”

“Not that I know of.”

“What I’m trying to say is that we made a sacrifice to be soldiers on the right side. Who knew that history was going to change? That the Red Army would end up as camps of beggars in Poland? That the Wall was going to fall? They thought the Red Army was a danger? Now they’re worried about two hundred and forty million Russians eating their way to the English Channel. Radio Liberty isn’t quite the front line anymore. We’re not jammed, we have correspondents now in Moscow, we regularly interview people in the Kremlin.”

“You won,” Arkady said.

Stas killed the bottle and lit a cigarette. His narrow face was wan, his eyes two bright matches. “Won? Then why only now do I feel like an émigré? Say you leave your native land because you were forced out, or because you thought you could help more from the outside than in. Democrats of the world applaud your noble effort. But it wasn’t because of any effort of mine that the Soviet Union dropped to its knees and stretched out its long neck. It was history. It was gravity. The battle isn’t in Munich, it’s in Moscow. History has marooned us and gone in a different direction. We don’t look like heroes anymore; we look like fools. Americans look at us—not Michael and Gilmartin, they’re concerned about their jobs and keeping the station alive—but other Americans read headlines about what’s happening in Moscow and look at us and say, ‘They should have stayed.’ It doesn’t matter whether we were forced out or risked our lives or wanted to save the world; now Americans say, ‘They should have stayed.’ They look at someone like you and say, ‘See, he stayed.’ ”

“I didn’t have a choice. I made a bargain. They’d only leave Irina alone if I stayed. Anyway, that was long ago.”

Stas peered into his empty glass. “If you’d had the choice, would you have left with her?”