The government has made a few rhetorical nods to the environmental cause, for example by promising to protect the embattled sturgeon, the fish that produces caviare.
For their part, the Iranians would be happy if they were allowed to export, say, their carpets or caviare to America.
Last month it confessed that it had served beef, caviare and salami that was as much as nine months past its sell-by date, after falsifying labels.
Kravitz turns up again as an old St Urbain's acquaintance of the hero, Jacob Hersh, rich now and drinking Veuve Cliquot and eating a double portion of caviare with a side order of chopped onion and egg to kill the taste of the caviare.
During a refuelling stopover in Moscow on the way home from a gruelling trip to Asia, his foreign-policy guru lost his temper and called a German soldier an "arsehole" for apparently refusing to serve him caviare.
In those days someone might, on a winter evening, have a go at borscht; now it could be Simon Hopkinson's sophisticated and exquisite Jellied beetroot consommé with sour cream and chives (plus caviare if you want and can).
Her letters to the children are more candid, and it is she who notes the plugholes without plugs, the gargantuan lunches of "death-dealing" portions – fried eggs, vodka, cherry brandy, blinis and sour cream, pickled eggs, smoked fish, caviare, more vodka.
