No one came.

He went to the visa-and-registration department. He told them about his visit to the U.S. embassy, his wish to become a citizen.

They didn't seem to know what to do with him.

Out on the street a small boy figured him for American, asked for a stick of gum. Subzero cold. Broad-backed women shoveling snow. He was struck for the first time by the immensity of the secret that swirled around him. He was in the midst of a vast secret. Another mind, an endless space of snow and cold.

Lenin and Stalin lay together in an orange glow at the bottom of a stone stairway. It was one of the few sights he'd seen.

He was down to twenty-eight dollars.

He wrote in Russian in his notebook. I have, he has, she has, you have, we have, they have.

Two men came to his room before seven the next morning. He stood barefoot in his flannel trousers and pajama tops, studying their moves. He didn't think it was Grandfather Frost and his head elf. The room was theirs now. He wasn't sure how they'd taken it over so fast but he knew he felt like an intruder, some kind of bungling tourist. It was his fault they had to get up so early.

They weren't dressed like the officials he'd met. They weren't Intourist people or collectors of overdue bills. One of them wore a black car-coat and dark glasses like a gangster on the Late Show. The other guy was older, in snow boots, going quietly bald.

It was this second man who gestured for Oswald to sit on the bed. He said his name was Kirilenko.

Oswald said, "Lee H. Oswald."

The man nodded, smiling faintly. Then he sat in the chair, in his coat, facing Oswald, his right hand dangling between his knees.

Lee volunteered the following.

"My passport is with the U.S. embassy. I surrendered it to them as a sample of no longer wanting to be a citizen. As I told them flatly."

The man nodded one more time, eyelids falling shut.

"Do you know what organization I represent?"

Oswald gave a half-smile.

"Committee for State Security. We believe you've been trying to contact us in your own way. Not fully knowing how perhaps. You understand we're wary of all attempts to contact us. A nervous habit. With luck we'll get over it someday."

Kirilenko had light blue eyes, silvery stubble, the beginning of a sag to his lower jaw. He was stocky and wheezed a little. There was a slyness about him that Oswald took to be an aspect of friendliness. He seemed to be talking to himself half the time the way a middle-aged man might drift lightly through a dialogue with a child, to amuse himself as much as the boy or girl.

"Tell me. How do you feel?"

"Some diarrhea for a while."

Nodding. "Are you happy to be here? Or it was all a mistake. You want to go home."

"I feel fine now. Very happy. It's all cleared up."

"And you want to stay if this is what I understand."

"To be a citizen of your country."

"You have friends here."

"No one."

"There is your family in America."

"Just a mother."

"Do you love her?"

"I don't wish to ever contact her again."

"Sisters and brothers."

"They don't understand the reasons for my actions. Two brothers."

"A wife. You are married."

"No marriages, no children."

The man leaned still closer.

"Girlfriends. A young woman, you lie in bed and think of her."

"I left nothing behind. I had no quarrels with anyone."

"Tell me. Why did you cut your wrist?"

"Because of disappointment. They wouldn't let me stay."

Nodding. "Did you feel, in all seriousness, you were dying? I'm rather curious to know, personally."

"I wanted to let someone else decide. It was out of my hands."

Nodding, eyelids falling shut. "You have funds, or they will send funds from home?"

"I am down to almost nothing."

"Good warm clothes. You have boots?"

"It's a question of being allowed to stay. I'm ready to work. I have special training."

Kirilenko seemed to let that pass.

"Where would you work? Who would give you work?"

"I was hoping the state. I am willing to do whatever necessary. Work and study. I would like to study."

"Do you believe, I wonder, in God?"

"No."

Smiling. "Not even a little? For my personal information."

"I consider it total superstition. People build their lives around this falsehood."

"On your passport, why do I have the impression you crossed out the name of your hometown?"

"It's completely behind me was the reason for doing that. Plus I didn't want them contacting relatives. Which the press did anyway. But I didn't take their phone calls or answer their telegrams."

"Why did you tell your embassy you would reveal military secrets?"

"I wanted to make it so they had to accept my renouncing my citizenship."

"Did they accept?"

"They said it's a Saturday and they close early."

"Your unlucky day."

"They said, 'Come back and we'll do what we can.' '

"I think I'm enjoying this talk."

"I didn't give them the satisfaction of reappearing. I wrote them my position instead."

"And these secrets, which you've carried all this way."

"I was in Atsugi."

Nodding.

"Which is a closed base in Japan."

"We'll talk further. I wonder, though, if these secrets become completely useless once you announce your intention to reveal them."

This last remark was delivered directly to the other KGB man, who leaned against the window frame smoking. Kirilenko made it sound like a scholarly aside. He leaned close to Oswald once more.

"Tell me: The scar is healing well?"

"Yes."

"You can stand the cold? The cold isn't too ridiculous?"

"I'm getting used to it."

"The food. You eat the food they serve here? Not so bad, is it?"

"It's only the hospital food that wasn't good. Like any hospital."

He looked down to see if his pajamas were sticking out of his trousers. He was wearing his pajama bottoms under his suit pants because he'd hurried to answer the knock at the door.

"What about the Russian people? I'm personally curious to hear what you think of us."

Lee cleared his throat to answer the question. The question made him happy. He'd anticipated being asked, sooner or later, and had an answer more or less prepared. Kirilenko waited patiently, appearing to enjoy himself, as if he knew exactly what Oswald was thinking.

Oswald was thinking, This is a man I can trust completely.

Factory smoke hung fixed in the distance, tall streamers absolutely still in the iced blue sky. He rode with Kirilenko in the rear seat of a black Volga. The city was stunned, dream-white. He tried to figure out the direction they were taking by keeping an eye out for landmarks but after he sported the main tower of Moscow University nothing looked familiar or recallable. He saw himself telling the story of this ride to someone who resembled Robert Sproul, his high-school friend in New Orleans.

It was Eisenhower and Nixon who killed the Rosenbergs.

The room was twelve by fifteen with an iron bed, an unpainted table and a chest of drawers in a curtained alcove. Down a dark hall was a washbasin and beyond that a toilet and small kitchen. Kirilenko said something to the other man, who left for a moment, returning with a squat chair, which he set by the table. They gave Oswald a questionnaire to fill out on his personal history, then another on his reasons for defecting, then another on his military service. He wrote all day, eagerly, going well beyond the scope of specific questions, scribbling in the margins and on the reverse side of every form. The chair was too low for the table and he wrote for extended periods standing up.

In the evening he had a short talk with Kirilenko. They talked about Hemingway. The older man was the one who sat on the bed this time, still in his bulky coat, remembering lines from Hemingway stories.