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village, and from the darkened compartment they could see that a local festival was in progress; a bonfire in the public square, cattle wearing garlands, Hitler Youth in shorts holding swastika banners hung lengthwise down long poles, like Roman fasces.
    Bloch stared intently at the scene. “At last,” he said pensively, “they are back in the Middle Ages.” He turned his attention to Szara. “Forgive me, comrade journalist, I am General Y I. Bloch. I don't think we've ever spoken, but I read your work when I have a moment, so I know who you are. Do I need to tell you who I am? ”
    “No, comrade General. I know you are with the special services.”
    Bloch acknowledged Szara's awareness as a compliment: a knowing smile, a brief inclination of the head, at your service.
    “Tell me,” the general said, “is it true you've been away from Moscow for a time? Several months?”
    “Since late August,” Szara said.
    “No easy life—trains and hotel rooms. Slow steamships. But foreign capitals are certainly more amusing than Moscow, so there are compensations. No? ”
    This was a trap. There was a doctrinal answer, something to do with building socialism, but Bloch was no fool and Szara suspected a pious response would embarrass them both. “It's true,” he said, adding, “though one gets tired of being the eternal stranger,” just in case.
    “Do you hear the Moscow gossip? ”
    “Very little,” Szara said. A loner, he tended to avoid the Tass and Pravda crowd on the circuit of European capitals.
    Bloch's face darkened. “This has been a troubled autumn for the services, surely you've heard that much.”
    “Of course I see the newspapers.”
    “There is more, much more. We've had defections, serious ones. In the last few weeks, Colonel Alexander Orlov and Colonel Walter Krivitsky, who is called general in the European press, have left the service and sought refuge in the West. The Krivitsky matter has been made public, also the flight of the operative Reiss. As for Orlov, we'll keep that to ourselves.”
    Szara nodded obediently. This had quickly become a very sensitive conversation. Orlov—a cover name within the service, he was in fact Leon Lazarevich Feldbin—and Krivitsky—Samuel Ginsberg— were important men, respectively NKVD and GRU officials of senior status. The Ignace Reiss affair had shocked him when he read about it. Reiss, murdered in Switzerland as he attempted to flee, had been a fervent idealist, a Marxist/Leninist in his bones.
    “Friends?” Bloch raised an eyebrow.
    “I knew Reiss to say hello to. No more than that.”
    “And you? How does it go with you? ” Bloch was concerned, almost fatherly. Szara wanted to laugh, had the services been panicked into kindness?
    “My work is difficult, comrade General, but less difficult than that of many others, and I am content to be what I am.”
    Bloch absorbed his answer and nodded to himself. “So you march along,” he said. “There are some,” he continued pensively, “who find themselves deeply disturbed by the arrests, the trials. We cannot deny it.”
    Oh cannot we? “We've always had enemies, within and without. I served in the civil war, from 1918 to 1920, and fought against the Poles. It isn't for me to judge the operations of state security forces.”
    Bloch sat back in his seat. “Very well put,” he said after a time. Then his voice softened, just barely audible above the steady rumble of the train. “And should it come your turn? Then what?”
    Szara could not quite see Bloch's face in the shadow of the seat across from him, the countryside was dark, the light from the corridor dim. “Then that is how it will be,” Szara said.
    “You are a fatalist.”
    “What else?” They lingered there a moment too long for Szara. “I have no family,” he added.
    Bloch seemed to nod at that, a gesture of agreement with a point made or a confirmation of something he believed. “Not married,” he mused. “I would have guessed