Chapter 1

Leningrad, June, 1929

The summons arrived on Tuesday. Report to the People’s Commissariat of Posts and Telegraphs, 9 Pochtamtskaya Street, room 214, for a technical consultation on shortwave antennas. Signed: Prokhorenko, head of the technical department. Calls like this came two or three times a year, and Misha went without enthusiasm whenever it was his turn. Usually it meant explaining, in the simplest possible terms, something the office had failed to understand from a memorandum.

On Thursday he put on his gray jacket, checked that his pencil and notebook were in his pocket, and at eleven in the morning climbed the steps of the Commissariat. On the tram, just in case, he had repeated to himself the wavelengths and antenna sizes for the twenty-five-, thirty-one-, and forty-meter bands. Prokhorenko liked to begin conversations with tabular values: not because they mattered, but because they could be memorized, which allowed him to put the other person in his place immediately.

At the entrance stood a doorman, an old man in livery that had survived both empire and revolution. Misha showed him the summons.

“Which room?”

“Two-fourteen.”

“Ah...” The doorman looked at him a little more closely. Then he said:

“Straight ahead, stairs, second floor, to the right.”

Misha said “thank you” and went on. On the stairs he thought: probably imagined it. On the second floor there was a corridor with high ceilings, room 214 at the end. He knocked.

The office was ordinary. A desk, two armchairs, a window onto the courtyard. In the courtyard stood a birch tree, dusty and summer-worn.

Misha stopped for a second.

The man behind the desk was not Prokhorenko. Prokhorenko was fat, short of breath, with papers in the artistic disorder of a man who was always in a hurry and never on time. This one was thin, neat, in a gray suit. On the desk lay a single folder, closed, unmarked. Beside it stood two glasses of tea in metal holders. One was near the master of the office, the other closer to the empty chair.

“Mikhail Sergeyevich? Come in, sit down. Tea?”

Misha sat. Took the glass. Had a sip.

The tea was good. Real tea, loose-leaf.

“Comrade Prokhorenko is occupied today,” the man said. “I decided I would speak with you myself. My questions are general, not technical.” He smiled carefully. “Human questions.”

Misha placed his pencil and notebook on the desk.

The questions were general. Human.

About work: did he like it, was it interesting, were his living conditions satisfactory. Misha answered plainly. The work was interesting, the living conditions were ordinary Leningrad conditions, he had no complaints.

About colleagues: who was clever, who was diligent. Misha named two people who had recently published interesting papers.

“And who, perhaps, is not entirely loyal?” The last word sounded incidental, as if he were asking about the weather.

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought of my colleagues in that sense.”

“I see.”

The man nodded. Looked at the folder, which he still had not opened.

“And how did Dmitry Yevgenyevich work? Ivanov. Your immediate superior.”

Misha set down the glass and shrugged.

“As scientific secretary. Planning, reporting, allocation of resources.”

“Were you close?”

“Professionally. He signed reports, approved materials.”

“Notice anything strange? Before his departure.”

Before his departure.

At CRL, the Central Radio Laboratory, they said before his assignment. The assignment had been in June. Ivanov had not returned.

“No,” Misha said. “Nothing special.”

“Mood, conversations, perhaps meetings with someone unfamiliar.”

“I didn’t notice.”

The man nodded. Opened the folder, leafed through it. Closed it with the air of having decided something.

“Now, you, Mikhail Sergeyevich,” he said, and his tone changed: it became warmer, softer, almost friendly. “You are one of ours.”

Misha did not understand at once.

“I mean, you are with us. On the right side. It is visible in how you work, how you conduct yourself. People like you are our support. Dmitry Yevgenyevich, incidentally, was also considered support. And then things turned out as they did. It happens.”

A pause.

“But I am confident that will not happen with you.”

Misha said nothing.

“Here is a telephone number.”

The man slid a card across the desk. A letter and four digits. No name, no title. Misha remembered that his interlocutor had never introduced himself.

“Call if there is anything interesting. Or if there isn’t—just so I know all is well with you.”

Misha took the card. Put it into the inside pocket of his jacket. Said “all right,” because he had to say something.

“Good.”

The man smiled once more and stood. Misha stood too. The handshake was dry, brief.

“Thank you for coming by, Mikhail Sergeyevich. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

A pause.

“Good-bye.”

When Misha came out of the building, the sun stood straight above the roofs. He squinted, paused on the steps, then walked—not home and not to work, but forward, toward St. Isaac’s Square.

Summer Leningrad was going about its business. A tram thundered over the cobblestones. A boy ran past with a newspaper, shouting something about the five-year plan. At the bakery on the corner there was a queue.

Misha walked and felt that he wanted to wash his hands.

He rounded St. Isaac’s, looked back, and came out onto the embankment. He leaned on the granite. On the water, against the current, a tug was pulling a barge.

He took the card out of his pocket. Held it in the wind. Put it back.

It seemed he had not agreed to anything. Or had he? He had said “all right” when asked to call. He had nodded a couple of times. Not once had he objected or asked a question.

A woman with a baby carriage passed by. On the far side of the embankment a man smoked by the parapet. He had been standing there for a while. Misha watched him for a second or two. Then turned back to the water.

He pushed away from the granite and walked. He did not want to go to work. He did not want to go home either. He reached Gorokhovaya Street, stood on the corner, then finally turned homeward.

Tanya was at home. Borya was asleep. From behind the wall came the voice of Zinaida Lvovna, the neighbor.

“You’re early,” Tanya said.

“The consultation ended quickly.”

He sat at the table. Tanya looked at him. Said nothing.

They ate supper in silence. The tea was their own, third brewing. Misha cupped the glass in his hands. It was lukewarm, cloudy, odorless.

“How did it go?” Tanya asked.

“Fine. Antennas.”

Tanya nodded and asked no more.

Behind the wall, Zinaida Lvovna turned on the radio. The announcer reported an overfulfillment of the cast-iron plan.

Tanya put the child to bed, then lay down herself. Misha stood by the chair on which his jacket hung. Until that morning he had been a husband, a father, an engineer at CRL. That morning he had been thinking that Oleynikov had promised to put his name on the next report as one of the authors—and had not—and that Misha meant to ask him about it, and had not. Yesterday he and Tanya had argued about whether to send Borya to the nursery or wait until he was three. The day before yesterday, about whether to fix the kitchen tap himself or call a plumber. Last year, the move from Nizhny to Leningrad together with the laboratory. These had been his concerns. Yesterday’s.

Today he had learned that he was also a line in someone else’s folder.

He lay down beside Tanya and stared at the ceiling. On the ceiling was an old water stain, shaped like a map of a country that did not exist and wanted nothing from him.

The jacket hung on the chair. In the inside pocket lay the card.

In her sleep, Tanya moved closer.

Misha closed his eyes.

The tea had been good.