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one family member.
    Iona Radek. Cousin. Executed
    Leo recognized a technique. The dates of the denunciations were haphazard, many falling in one month and then nothing for several months. The chaotic spacing was deliberate, hiding careful calculation. Denouncing his cousin had almost certainly been strategic. Moskvin needed to make sure it didn’t look as if his loyalty to the State stopped at his family. To suffuse his list with credibility the cousin had been sacrificed: protection from the allegation that he only named people who didn’t matter to him personally. A consummate survivor, this man was an improbable suicide.
    Checking the dates and locations of where Moskvin had worked, Leo sat back in surprise. They’d been colleagues: both of them employed at the Lubyanka seven years ago. Their paths had never crossed, at least not that he could remember. Leo had been an investigator, making arrests, following suspects. Moskvin had been a guard, transporting prisoners, supervising their detention. Leo had done his utmost to avoid the basement interrogation cells, as if believing the floorboards shielded him from the activities that went on below, day after day. If Moskvin’s suicide was an expression of guilt, what had triggered such extreme feelings after all this time? Leo shut the folder, turning his attention to the second file.
    Robert Eikhe’s file was thicker, heavier, the front cover stamped
CLASSIFIED
, the pages bound shut as if to keep something noxious trapped inside. Leo unwound the string. The name seemed familiar. Glancing at the pages he saw that Eikhe had been a Party member since 1905—before the revolution—at a time when being a member of the Communist Party meant exile or execution. His record was impeccable: a former candidate for the Central Committee Politburo. Despite this, he’d been arrested on 29 April 1938. Plainly, this man was no traitor. Yet Eikhe had confessed: the protocol was in the file, page after page detailing his anti-Soviet activity. Leo had drafted too many pre-prepared confessions not to recognize this as the work of an agent, punctuated with stock phrases—signs of the in-house style, the template to which any person might be forced to sign their name. Flicking forward, Leo found a declaration of innocence written by Eikhe while imprisoned. In contrast to the confession, the prose was human, desperate, pitifully heaping praise on the Party, proclaiming love for the State, and pointing out with timid modesty the injustice of his arrest. Leo read, hardly able to breathe:
    Not being able to suffer the tortures to which I was submitted by Ushakov and Nikolayev—especially by the former, who utilized the knowledge that my broken ribs have not properly mended and caused me great pain—I have been forced to accuse myself and others.
    Leo knew what would follow next.
    On 4 February 1940 Eikhe had been shot.

    R AISA STOOD , watching her husband. Engrossed in classified files, he was oblivious to her presence. This vision of Leo—pale, tense, shoulders hunched over secret documents, the fate of other people in his hands—could have been sliced from their unhappy past. The temptation was to react as she’d done so many times before, to walk away, to avoid and ignore him. The rush of bad memories hit her like a kind of nausea. She fought against the sensation. Leo was not that man anymore. She was no longer trapped in that marriage. Walking forward, she reached out, resting a hand on his shoulder, appointing him the man she’d learned to love.
    Leo flinched at her touch. He hadn’t noticed his wife enter the room. Caught unawares, he felt exposed. He stood up abruptly, the chair clattering behind him. Eye to eye, he saw her nervousness. He’d never wanted her to feel that way again. He should have explained what he was doing. He’d fallen into old habits, silence and secrets. He put his arms around her. As she rested her head on his shoulder, he knew she was peering down at