Yet, his hand did not tremble as he held the cigarette, and his face might have been carved from marble as he calmly waited for the doctors’ verdict. After all, Fyedorenko was not given to any outward display of emotion. If he had been, he would have disappeared long ago, like so many others. His coarse peasant’s face had long since acquired the bland and amiable expression of the polished diplomat. He was known for it. Once Bulgarov, who loved to drink and tell dirty jokes, had jeered at his impassivity.

“You’re a damned bookkeeper. Do you have blood in your veins or what? You wouldn’t have lasted five minutes with those young hotheads who stormed the Winter Palace with us that cold morning,” Bulgarov had said, sloshing the vodka from his glass as he gestured with it towards Fyedorenko.

“Fyedorenko has no emotions, didn’t you know?” the old man had remarked archly. “He is like a statue. Da, and like a statue he will survive us all,” the old man muttered and his gaze suddenly pierced Fyedorenko, turning his heart to ice.

But that had been long ago, before Bulgarov had been sent to that labor camp in the Urals where they didn’t bother to put up a fence, because no one could make it across the snow without freezing to death anyway. The old man had been right about him. He had survived them all, even the old man.

But the old man had grown soft in his dotage. “Since nuclear war is unthinkable, our only alternative is coexistence with the West,” he used to say. When the Old Guard purists objected, the old man had responded, “We will nibble away at the West, bit by bit. The fat capitalist capon is more easily devoured by an army of mice than a single gulp of the bear.”

Fyedorenko had something else entirely in mind.

If only the old man would die now, Fyedorenko thought, and found himself clenching his fists. He guiltily looked around the salon. The room was located in the old Arsenal building in the Kremlin and was a part of the apartment the old man had taken when he had suffered his first heart attack. It was decorated in the massive marble style filled with the overstuffed furniture favored by senior Party officials. Now it seemed still and empty, so early in the morning. The only sound was the quiet ticking of the old Regency clock, covered with the gilt of the period. Once it had belonged to Alexandra, the last Tsarina. Fyedorenko carefully wiped his damp palms on his trousers. Imagine if any of the others waiting in the antechamber outside had seen it, he mused wryly. Comrade Fyedorenko clenching his fists! Unheard of! They would be gossiping about it for days. It was the waiting, making him nervous.