‘Victor Ivanovich,’ greeted Malik, not moving.

‘Vasili Dmitrevich,’ responded Kazin. He did not rise from his high-backed seat.

They remained motionless, each looking expressionlessly at the other. It was Malik who moved, limping uninvited further into the room. There was a stiff-backed seat near the desk but Malik ignored it, making much of bringing one of the leather chairs from the conference area and lowering himself heavily into it.

‘I did not seek the transfer,’ announced Malik at once.

Kazin said nothing.

‘And there’s no feeling left, about what happened before.’

Why was the lying bastard even bothering! Kazin said: ‘Comrade Chairman Chebrikov explained the idea to me: an experimental division from which a permanent decision could be made.’

He’d made concessions enough, Malik decided. By rights Kazin should be the supplicant, not him. Malik said: ‘So there has to be a working arrangement, difficult though it might be.’

You can’t begin to imagine the difficulties I am going to create, thought Kazin. Stiffly he said: ‘Comrade Chairman Chebrikov defined the responsibilities, too.’ And allocated you Afghanistan, Kazin thought: he could not have devised the trap better himself. The division of the First Chief Directorate between them was not going to be the demotion that everyone would regard it as being: it was going to be the opportunity for which he’d dreamed, all these years. His chance: the chance he was not going to miss.

‘Olga’s dead,’ said Malik, in another abrupt announcement.

‘I know,’ said Kazin. Like I know the very day and the very year and the very cemetery plot in which she is buried: the plot I have discreetly visited so often and from which I have so often cleared the wind-flustered leaves and so often tidied the stones and where I have held so many one-sided conversations. One-sided conversations where ‘why’ had been the most frequently uttered word, the most frequently uttered question.