She sent Jerry a peremptory Come here! gesture. When he did, she said, “Go with Georgi Pavlovich here. He will take you to the ambassador.” To Georgi Pavlovich, she added in Russian, “He speaks our language.”

“I’ll remember,” the man in the black suit said, also in Russian. He switched to English for Jerry: “You will come with me, please.”

“Thanks.” Jerry came.

They went up two flights of stairs. Halfway up the second, the Russian said, “It is unusual for ambassador to see someone who comes in off street.” He nodded to himself, savoring the word. “Unusual, yes.” Jerry didn’t say anything.

The ambassador’s office struck Jerry as being halfway between a business executive’s and a professor’s at an Ivy League university. Everything on the desk was modern as next week. The bookcases were wooden, though, and many of the books in Russian, English, and French looked old. Another portrait of Brezhnev, smaller than the one downstairs, hung above them.

Anatoly Dobrynin was about fifty-five, with a wide bald dome, and what was left of his hair curly and gray. Jerry knew he must have seen him on television, but hadn’t remembered what he looked like. Beside him sat a younger, foxy-faced man with reddish hair. The man in the black suit murmured to the ambassador, probably warning that Jerry knew some Russian. Dobrynin nodded. Jerry’s guide disappeared, closing the door behind him.

After shaking hands, Dobrynin said, “This is Major Bronstein. He is assistant military attaché here.” Studying Jerry, the ambassador went on, “You know some … extraordinary things.”

“Yes, sir. I’m afraid I do,” Jerry agreed.

After a glance at his boss for permission, Major Bronstein said, “What we need to hear is. how do you know them?” His English held almost no accent.

Jerry’s stomach knotted. This is where the treason starts, he thought. But it wasn’t, not really. He’d convinced himself it wasn’t. The CIA would have a different opinion, of course. He said, “I was on the Glomar Explorer when we raised the Midlothian object. The other name for that, the newer name, is Humpty Dumpty.”

“We have hints of this, but only hints,” Bronstein said. He looked like somebody Jerry knew or had seen, but Jerry couldn’t think of who. He continued, “What is this Midlothian object?”

“For one thing, it’s what sank your submarine, the K-129, in 1968.” Jerry opened the envelope he’d got back from Tim Ishihara. He took out the photo of Humpty Dumpty in the Glomar Explorer’s moon pool and slid it across the ambassador’s desk to Dobrynin and Bronstein. “For another, it’s this. It’s a spaceship—not a human spaceship—that lay three miles under the Pacific for I have no idea how long, till it came to life when it sank your sub. The United States was looking for the K-129 when we found Humpty Dumpty right next door.”