‘How disappointing if you’ve come here to be tedious, Nicolas. The one thing you never were was boring. But now you, with everything you have, somehow feel the need to stick up for a few Hymies in Odessa?’

‘I’m going to expose it as a lie.’

‘You needn’t bother. The Tsar already knows it’s a forgery. He’s had the whole affair looked into. They all know it’s made up. Anyone who cares to examine it can find out the truth. But the thing about a work like this one is that those who believe don’t care about the facts. It doesn’t have to be true, because it feels true. That’s the lesson you’ve never learned as an author. How hard you are on people, expecting them to grasp little nuances and details, boring them with your history lessons, fussing over your overworked sentences.’ Rachkovsky lets his features drop into the slack face of a dullard, tongue protruding from his lips as he inscribes a word in the air with the glowing tip of his cigarette. ‘Just one idea is all you need. Mine’s unstoppable: a black-hat baddie with a yarmulke and side curls rubbing his hands as civilisation burns.’

‘Yours is a calumny against the Jews which is causing bloodshed.’

Rachkovsky smiles. ‘Mine is a calumny against the Jews which is preventing bloodshed. We are witnessing the death struggle between order and anarchy. You don’t have the wit to grasp this, but if killing my own mother would secure stability in Russia for another ten years, I’d be morally obliged to do it. You should be thanking me for this book. In fact, you should be doing all you can to shore up the Tsar because if history shows anything, it’s that the Jews will suffer the most if he goes. Right now, His Imperial Majesty is the only force capable of holding back the Black Hundreds—’

‘Murderers who’ve been inspired to kill by your book!’

‘You and I both know that collateral damage is as inevitable as it is regrettable.’

Nicolas replies with a curse too filthy to print.

Rachkovsky’s unperturbed. ‘What are you going to do? Attack me with your book? Bore me to death with talk of “interfaith dialogue”? Make us all join hands and sing “Hare Krishna”?’

‘You’re a liar, an embezzler and a murderer!’ shouts Nicolas, with commendable, but slightly hysterical, vehemence.

Rachkovsky lifts a brass mouthpiece from the cradle on his desk. ‘Show my guest out, please.’ With an expression of bored distaste he grinds his cigarette out in the crematorium of his ashtray. ‘Just think of this: if I believed you posed any real threat to me or my work here, I would destroy you and your family without a second thought, starting with your feckless firstborn, Alexander, who’s racked up such terrible gambling debts. Wouldn’t your moneylender father be horrified about that? Dear me, from the look on your face, this is unexpected news.’

‘Tokonoma.’