The KGB had still existed, although uncertainly, when she’d tried to reach him: if she hadn’t headed its First Chief Directorate it would have been impossible for her to have tried at all. It didn’t exist any more: not, at least, by name or with the omnipotence with which it had once operated. But his service did and there would still be regulations against his coming to Moscow. But knowing him as well as she believed she did, Natalia knew regulations would not have stopped him. So if she had reached him there was only one conclusion: he didn’t want to see her again. Ever. And wasn’t interested in his child. She’d made a mistake, like she’d made a mistake with the first man to let her down, which she’d compounded by marrying him. Not a good comparison, she told herself, as she had on many previous memory trips. Her second trusting attempt had for all the obvious impossible barriers stopped short of marriage, although that had once been another fantasy, and had most certainly not been the disaster of the first. She had Sasha around whom her life revolved and with whom she was complete, without the need for anyone or anything else.

Or was she?

As if on cue, Aleksai Popov came into the Leninskaya apartment, the brightly wrapped package high above his head for the game Sasha recognized at once, leaping and jumping around his legs in the futile attempt to reach it before he knelt, solemnly to offer it to her.

It was a battery-operated cat that waddled and emitted a purring growl and got the biggest scream so far from Sasha who, unprompted, threw her arms around the man for the thank-you kiss.

Popov disentangled himself to come up to Natalia, kissing her lightly on the cheek: they were still very careful in front of the child.