To my mother, Dorothy Weinberg, the equal of any mom in this novel…

That no one ever guessed that Boris Bronsky was nothing more than an unimportant member of the Russian State Department was directly attributable to sixty-three red Xs. The marks were engraved next to the names of those who incurred the wrath of the Soviet premier or the secretary of the Communist Party, The imposing list of his victims served as a grim warning to leave Boris Bronsky strictly alone. In a country where spies spied on spies spying on spies, Boris retained astonishing autonomy. He worked independently, without supervision, without interference, without controls.

Thus, on June 6, when Boris entered a dark alley of a disreputable section of Paris, no member of any secret organization followed. Not that Bronsky ever worried about such matters. He was, in fact, incredibly naive about the inner workings of the KGB and the Secret Service. It never once occurred to him that his own organization would monitor his movements. He probably would have been even more astonished to learn of the nine agents who had disappeared without a trace trying to keep pace with him over the years. But Boris was a man with absolutely no imagination. That, and his total lack of ambition, was why he had been chosen for this position in the first place a quarter of a century before.

His predecessor, Nikoli Valda, equally notorious in his time, had chosen Boris as his protégé after reviewing the records of hundreds of civilian employees working for the KGB. Valda never confided to his young assistant how he had made his choice. Many years later, Boris concluded it was because he was a man of simple tastes, not easily bored. Which was actually closer to the truth than he realized. For though he was respected by a few, feared by many, Boris Bronsky lacked ambition. And that, considering the power he wielded, was all-important.