Behind the set was Tommy’s desk, covered by newspapers, coffee rings and machine-gun bullets used as paperweights. In the middle drawer were soft pencils, staplers, memo pads, paper clips. In the side drawers, Russian-English and German-English dictionaries, cowboy paperbacks, heavier books on military history, manuscripts and rejection letters. There was not even a phone jack for a fax.

Arkady returned to the file room and asked the woman at the file cards, “Did Tommy have a fax when he worked at Program Review?”

“Possibly. The Review section is in a different part of town. He could have used one there.”

“How long was he here?”

“A year. I wish we had a fax here. That’s one of the executive perks. Privileges,” she said brightly, as if describing awards. “We do have information here. Anything about the Soviet Union. Any subject.”

“Max Albov.”

She took a deep breath and played with the bows on her collar. “Well, that’s close to home. Okay.” She started away, stopped. “Your name is?”

“Renko.”

“You’re visiting?”

“Michael.”

“Then …” She lifted her hands. The sky was the limit.

Max was a vein of gold that seemed to work its way through cabinet after cabinet of microfiches. Arkady sat at the enlarger and scrolled through years of Pravda, Red Star and Soviet Film describing Max’s career in cinema, his treacherous defection to the West, his service with Radio Liberty—the CIA’s mouthpiece of disinformation—his pangs of conscience, his return to the motherland and his recent incarnation on American television as a respected journalist and commentator.

An early item in Soviet Film caught Arkady’s attention. “For director Maxim Albov, the most important part of the story is the woman. ‘Get a beautiful actress, light her properly and your film is already halfway a success.’ ”

His films, however, had all been of the action variety, extolling the daring and sacrifices of the Red Army and border guards against Maoists, Zionists and mujaheddin.

Another item read, “One effect of an Israeli tank on fire was particularly difficult because the film crew didn’t have the blasting caps or plastic explosives they had requested. The successful shot was improvised by the director himself.

“Albov: ‘We were filming outside Baku, near a chemical complex. Filmgoers don’t know that my initial schooling was in chemistry. I was aware that by combining seemingly innocent ingredients we could create a spontaneous explosion without a fuse or a cap. Since the question was timing we tested forty or fifty samples before filming, which we did with a remote camera behind a Plexiglas screen. It was a night shot and the effect when the Israeli tank erupts into flame is spectacular. Hollywood couldn’t do better.’ ”