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Leona guessed, was lecturing at Columbia, his degrees behind him. He was said to be an instructor who each hour inspired rapture anew by a consciously thespian manner of teaching political science as if it were a dramatic combat between us and them. She liked him. Martin liked him. And Melissa, thank God, was probably in love with him, though Scott had a wife, and Leona Fuller, despite her long exposure to the young, still had difficulties with the looseness of that kind of tie. She and Martin, despite his long, now-dead affair with Tarasova, had remained an indivisible coupling, though they no longer spent the nights in each other’s arms. Other people’s bonds were children who grew away; theirs was the work, her thoughts enmeshed in his like threads in cloth. She was the coauthor of his life.
    At Leona’s right sat Ed Porter, who, though only twenty-four, had three degrees and was the brightest of the lot, a dimpled ferret who went after small facts that turned out to be the last pieces of the puzzle. Unlike the others, he seemed street-smart, something the Fullers themselves had never been. Ed was short, perhaps no more than five-seven or so, with tousled brown hair in the style one has come to accept among young people, not unattractive, not unkempt, what they call natural and some call wild. His hands as well as his face were quite freckled. He wore the standard uniform for his age, jeans and a sweater, though the tan sweater looked as if it might have been of camel’s hair or cashmere, and Leona had long suspected what Ed had never acknowledged, that he came from a family that was very rich. Ed, unlike the others who had published only in learned journals, had written a book that had been well received. It was called Lenin’s Grandchildren , and dealt with the lives of the Latin American and African revolutionaries of the last thirty years. But what mattered most to Leona was that when Sniffer, their Methuselah of a cocker spaniel, died, their friends conveyed their regrets with the special care one took with people who had no children, but it was Ed Porter who Leona had found sitting in the yard, rocking the dead dog in his arms.
    Barry Heskowitz, who sat on Leona’s left, was not one of the acolytes Leona cared for. A heavy-set young man with curly black hair, and eyes that were constantly busy, he had acquired the habit of compliments. He would admire Leona’s dress, or a bouquet of flowers she had arranged; he would tell Martin, who rarely looked to see what tie he was putting on, that his tie was perfect for his suit. Leona had little patience with such sycophants. Martin liked to be congratulated on his perceptions, not his ties—but he’d made an exception for Barry because the young man, still working for his master’s, understood the historic origins of Soviet intransigence better than any student he’d had in a long time.
    Melissa was arguing that the most important member of the Politburo to track carefully was what she called the Gletkin, the pure Soviet man unsusceptible to the negotiating wiles of the West.
    “If that’s the case,” Ed Porter interrupted, “we should have paid more attention to Suslov than to Khrushchev or Brezhnev, but Suslov died and your contention goes up in smoke.”
    Martin raised his right hand slightly from the table, a sign they all knew meant he was about to speak. “The gods, for those who believe, took care of Suslov by removing him. They have less time for studying these men than we have. Therefore, we always need to know who the backup man is. Sometimes the next-in-line for any ideological role is not only a standby, but an assassin.”
    *
    After dinner, the talk continued in the living room, advancing in waves of contention, and then receding as the ocean does when it cannot push the shore. At one point Leona Fuller said, “We should know more about their women.” Only Melissa did not smile.
    Shortly after eleven Barry excused himself. “I live in the West