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I reached into my pocket, hauled out the ring, and thrust it at him.

“Put it on,” I said. “Put it on me. Now.”

His hands were shaking. He took my left hand in both of his, and I watched them, the long pale fingers with the fine tremor in the tendons, as he slid the ring onto my finger. It fit, of course. It sat there gleaming, cool and heavy, and the garnet caught the light and made a small red star.

“I love you, baby,” said Maksim.

I slapped him.

I didn’t mean to. It was a reflex, an open-handed swat, on the arm, out of pure embarrassment. He blinked. Then he began to laugh. It was a helpless, rusty, disbelieving laugh, the laugh of a man who has been struck by a bolt of joy, and it grew and grew until he had to put his hand on the wall.

“Come here,” he said.

“No.”

“Come here. “

I went. He pulled me against his chest and I put my face in his neck and sobbed like an idiot. He held me. He kissed my hair. He rocked me, slowly, and murmured something soft and Russian, and I heard the door creak open behind me.

Neither of us moved.

“Alexander.”

It was my father.

We froze. I lifted my head. He stood in the doorway in his gray suit, one hand on the frame, looking at us: at his son, at the ring on my finger, at the tall pale man who held me. His face was, for once, entirely without expression.

“Mr. Volkov,” said my father. “If you would come to my office.”

“Now?” I said.

“Now.”

“Dad, wait, I—”

“Alexander.” He did not look at me. “Stay here.”

Maksim kissed my forehead.

“Do not worry,” he murmured. “I am very good with fathers.”

“You’ve never met one.”

“I have met a great many. I have outlived all of them.”

He followed my father out. I stood in the middle of my old bedroom, in my inside-out trousers, with a ring on my finger and my heart in my mouth, and listened to their footsteps go away down the hall.

Chapter 34

MAKSIM

The Black Card

The office of Richard Pendleton is a room designed by a man who has never wished to be liked.

It sits at the back of the ground floor, past the library, behind a pair of heavy oak doors. It has a great desk of black walnut, walls of leather-bound ledgers, and a window that looks onto the forbidden lawn. On the mantel stands a clock of the sort that ticks with a slow, sonorous, inescapable dignity, like a judge tapping a gavel.

He shut the door behind us. He walked around the desk. He sat.