Straight ahead the silhouette of St. Basil’s stood like a crowd of turbaned Moors backlit by the all-night floodlights of the square. In shadow at the stone base of the cathedral were about a hundred soldiers from the Kremlin barracks in full field gear with radio packs and submachine guns.

Red Square itself rose as a vast hill of cobblestones. To the left, the Kremlin was illuminated, bricks nearly white, with swallowtail battlements that were grace notes on a fortress that seemed to stretch as far as the Chinese Wall. The spires above the gates looked like churches that had been captured, roped, dragged from Europe and erected as trophies to a czar, topped now by ruby stars. Shimmering in upturned lights, the Kremlin was midway between reality and dream, an immense, oppressive vision. From the gate at Spassky Tower a black sedan issued like a bat and flitted across the stones. Far off, at the head of the square, a four-story banner for Pepsi covered the façade of the Army Museum. To his right the classical stone face of GUM, the world’s largest and emptiest department store, shrank into the dark. From the roof of GUM and from the Kremlin wall, cameras constantly monitored the square, but no floodlights were bright enough to penetrate the valley of shadow in its center, where he stood. No individual here would be more than a blip on a gray screen. The sheer size of scale and awesome vacuum of the square didn’t so much uplift the soul as both hide it and suggest how inconsequential it was.

Except for one soul. When Lenin lay dying, he begged for no memorials. The mausoleum Stalin built for him was a vengeful pile of crypts, a squat ziggurat of red and black under the battlements of the Kremlin wall. Empty tiers of white marble flanked it, the area where dignitaries would sit for the May Day parade. Lenin’s name was inscribed in red letters above the door of the tomb. At the door, two honor guards, boy sergeants with white gloves and faces as pale as waxworks, swayed with fatigue.

Ordinary traffic was barred from the square, but as Arkady turned away from the tomb a black Zil rolled out of Cherny Street and, racing at official speed, crossed in front of GUM toward the river and sank into the dark around St. Basil’s. Tires squealed, a sharp sound of protest that reverberated the length of the square.