Of course, Kurbsky actually knew all that, but he kept up the subterfuge.

“But there must be a man in your life, a woman like you.”

She wasn’t offended in the slightest. “Yes, there is such a man.”

“Then he must count himself lucky.”

He poured another vodka, and she said, “What about you?”

“Good heavens, no. The occasional relationship, but it never lasts. I’m a very difficult man, but then, I’ve had a difficult life. You know about me?”

“A bit. Your aunt raised you, right?”

“Svetlana was everything. I loved her dearly, but life in Moscow under Communism was difficult. When I was seventeen, she got a chance to travel with a theater group to London -she was an actress-and she met a professor named Patrick Kelly, a good man. For once she had found something for herself, so she refused to return to Moscow, stayed in London and married him.”

“How was it you managed to join her?”

“That was my father. As a KGB colonel, he had influence. He arranged for me to visit Svetlana, hoping she’d change her mind.”

“And your sister?”

“Tania was at high school and only fifteen. She’d never been close to Svetlana, and so she stayed with my father. There were servants, a couple living in my father’s house, to care for her.”

“And where did the London School of Economics come in?”

He grinned, looking different, like a boy. “I always had a love of books and literature, so I didn’t need to study it. I found a new world at the LSE. Svetlana and Kelly had a wonderful Victorian house in Belsize Park, and they felt I should fill my time for a few months, so I took courses. Sociology, psychology, philosophy. The months stretched out.”

“Two years. What made you return to Moscow?”

“News from home, bad news. Over fifty-five thousand dead in Afghanistan. Too many body bags. Brokenhearted mothers revolting in the streets. Student groups fighting with the police. Tania was only seventeen, but up to her neck in it. Pitched battles, riot police, many casualties.” He paused, his face bleak. “And Tania among them.”