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Katinka took out her notebook and a pencil, her hands shaking a little. “Hercules Alexandrovich…” She turned too many pages at once, dropped the pencil, picked it up, lost her place, all while intensely aware of his eyes—an astonishing cornflower blue—scanning her.

She had never met such an important man. The marshal had known every Soviet leader from Lenin to Andropov. The provincial modesty of the doctor’s daughter from Beznadezhnaya, the life-preserving urge bred into every Soviet citizen to avoid officials, Muscovites and especially secret policemen, and the dangers of power itself—all of these dueled within her. She remembered the story that Roza Getman had told her in London and was just about to ask the marshal about it when he asked her a question.

“How old do you think I am?”

“I know how old you are,” she replied, deciding to pretend to be more confident that she felt. “The same age as the century.”

“Pravilno! Right!” The marshal laughed. “Not bad then for ninety-four, eh?” Katinka noticed that his Georgian accent was still strong despite many decades in Moscow. “Do you know I can still dance? Mariko!” The middle-aged woman appeared in the doorway with a tray of tea. “This is my daughter, Mariko; she looks after me.” Katinka thought that the old marshal had much more life in him than his daughter. “Put on the lezginka, dear!”

Mariko put the tray on the table by the window and then changed the CD in the corner.

“Don’t overdo it, Father,” she said. “Your breathing is already bad. No smoking! And don’t scald yourself, the tea is hot.” She glanced at Katinka, then stomped out of the room.

As the wild strings and pipes of the lezginka rang out, Marshal Satinov stood up, bowed and then adopted the lithe pose, hands on hips, one foot sideways, the other on the tips of the toes, of the Caucasian dancer. Katinka acknowledged, as he presumably hoped she would, that he was still trim and elegant. He danced a few steps, then sat down again, smiling at her. “Now…Katinka…Vinsky…have I got your name right? You’re a historian?”

“I’m writing a doctorate on Catherine the Second’s legal program for Academician Beliakov.”

“You’re a beautiful scholar, eh? A flower of the provinces!” Katinka blushed, pleased that she had dressed up in her good skirt, an example of fine Soviet fashion with pyramidal spangles and a high slit. “Well, I’m a piece of Soviet history myself. I should be in a museum. Ask whatever you want while I catch my breath.”

“I’m working on a specific project,” she began. “Does the name Getman mean anything to you?”

The blue eyes focused on her again suddenly, expression neutral.

“The rich banker…how do they say nowadays? An oligarch.”

“Yes, Pasha Getman. He’s employed me to research his family.”

“Family genealogy for the new rich? I’m sure the Princes Dolgoruky or Yusupov did the same thing in Tsarist times. Getman isn’t an unusual name; Jewish naturally. From Odessa, I’d guess, but originally Austrian Galicia, Lvov probably, intelligentsia…”

“You’re right. They’re from Odessa, but do you know the Getman family personally?”

There was a sharp, wintery silence. “My memory’s no longer what it was…but no, I don’t think so,” Satinov said at last.

Katinka made a note in her book. “Pasha Getman’s mother inspired this project of family history.”

“Using his money.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, with money, you might find out something. But the name means nothing to me. Who is she trying to find?”

“Herself,” said Katinka, watching him carefully. “Her maiden name was Liberhart. Does that name ring any bells, Marshal?”

A shadow crossed Satinov’s face. “I just can’t place it…I’ve met so many people in my life, you understand, but the names…” He sighed and shifted in his chair. “Tell me some more.”

Katinka took a deep breath. “Pasha Getman’s mother is called Roza. All she knows about her origins is this: a professor of musicology at the Odessa Conservatoire and his wife, also a teacher, adopted her in the late thirties. Their name was Liberhart, Enoch and Perla Liberhart. They had been unable to have children of their own so they adopted this five-year-old child. She was fair-haired so they called her the Silberkind—the silver child.”

“What about before?” asked Satinov.

“Roza remembers fragments of a life before the adoption,” Katinka said, thinking of their recent conversations in the bracing air of a London spring. “The laughter of a beautiful woman in a cream suit and a blouse with a pretty white collar, handsome men in Stalinka tunics, games with other children, journeys and train stations, and then the adoption…”

“A common story in those days,” interrupted Satinov. “Children were often lost and resettled. In the building of a new world, there were many mistakes and tragedies. But is it possible she’s imagined this story? That happens a lot too, especially now that the newspapers are digging up all this misery again and printing such lies.” The blue eyes teased her obliquely, cynically.