“A different kind of fireworks on Capitol Hill, as the House Committee on Un-American Activities and combative congressman Kenneth Welles continued the probe into Communist subversion in our State Department. In the box again, Undersecretary Walter Kotlar, named by Soviet spy Rosemary Cochrane as one of the members of an alleged Washington ring.”

He felt Nora move beside him and covered her hand to keep her still as the screen filled with his father walking down a corridor to the hearing room, wearing the familiar hat and herringbone coat. The reporters were more animated now, battering him with questions, as if they had finally thawed out from their morning vigil in the cold. Then he was seated at a polished table, several microphones in front of him, facing a long dais filled with men in suits who kept turning to whisper to aides who sat behind them like shadows, away from the lights.

The man at the center, surprisingly young, was taller than the others, with a thick football player’s neck bursting out of a suit that stretched across his wide shoulders like a padded uniform.

“Mr Kotlar, in 1945 you were a member of the American delegation that attended the Yalta Conference, were you not?”

“Yes.”

“In that capacity did you offer views on the political future of the countries of Eastern Europe?”

“No. My views were not solicited.”

“But you are Czechoslovakian, are you not?”

“No, sir, I am an American.”

“Well, Mr Kotlar, that’s fine. I meant by origin. Would you tell the committee where you were born?”

“I was born in what was then Bohemia and is now part of Czechoslovakia,” Nick’s father said, but the carefulness of his answer had the odd effect of making him seem evasive. “I came to this country when I was four years old.”