The Charm School by Nelson DeMille
“You look like you can take care of yourself. You know, my father was stationed on Long Island in the mid-fifties. Mitchel Air Force Base. I vaguely remember it.”
“Yes. It’s closed now.”
“I know,” Hollis replied. “What’s become of the place?”
“It’s been parceled out to Hofstra University and a community college. Part of the land was used to build the coliseum where the Islanders play. Do you follow hockey?”
“No. Like my parents, I’m not much of an American. It’s ironic, considering I’ve devoted my life to the service of my country. I’m a patriot, but I’m not plugged into the pop culture. For years I thought Yogi Bear and Yogi Berra were the same person.”
Lisa smiled. “So you wouldn’t pass the friend-or-foe test if someone asked you who plays center field for the Mets? You couldn’t pass for the American that you are.”
“No, I’m afraid I’d be shot on the spot.”
Lisa poured the last of the wine into their glasses. She looked at Hollis. “Well, now we know something about each other.”
“Yes. I’m glad we had a chance to talk.”
The food arrived, and Hollis inquired, “What the hell is this?”
“That’s dovta, a soup made of sour milk and rice. This cuisine is similar to Turkish. It’s somewhat complex, with more depth than Slavic cuisine. And the shit on the chipped blue plate is called gulubtsy.” She laughed.
Hollis smiled and helped himself. They ate in silence. More plates of spiced food arrived. They washed the meal down with weak Moscow beer. Hollis glanced at his watch.
She noticed and asked, “Do you have time to see the Train of Mourning?”
“The what?”
“The actual engine and coach that brought Lenin’s body back to Moscow. It’s on display at Paveletsky Station.”
“Oh, that train. I’ll pass.”
“Just kidding anyway. I don’t really go to places like the Marx-Engels museum either,” Lisa said. “I think it’s a joke how they try to create a secular religion in place of the one they destroyed. But if you are free this afternoon, perhaps we can do something.”
“Sure. How would you like to take a ride in the country?”
“Don’t joke.”
“No joke,” Hollis replied.
“Where? How?”
“I have to go to Mozhaisk on official business. I have a pass with your name on it.”
“Do you? I’d love to go. What sort of business?”
“Bad business, Lisa. Gregory Fisher is in the Mozhaisk morgue.”
Lisa stopped eating and stared down at the table for some time. She cleared her throat and said, “Oh, God, Sam. That poor boy… .”
“Do you still want to go?”
She nodded.
The proprietress brought strong Turkish coffee and honey balls. Hollis had the coffee. Lisa sat silently. She lit a cigarette and said to Hollis, “Was he… trying to escape or what…?”
“No. They say he was heading toward Moscow. They say he had a car accident before the Borodino turnoff. They say he never got to the Rossiya.”
“They’re lying.”
“Be that as it may, it’s their country. I’ll brief you in the car. But I want you to understand now that if you come with me, I can’t guarantee your safety.”
“Safety?”
“I think the KGB is satisfied that they’ve contained the problem. They probably don’t think they have to engineer another accident. On the other hand, they’re not logical in the way we understand logic, therefore they’re not predictable.”
She nodded.
Hollis added, “They know you took Fisher’s call, and they know your name is on the pass. That shouldn’t make you a target, but you never know what they’ve talked themselves into. Still want to go?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why are you going, Sam? Anybody from the consular section could go.”
“I’m going to snoop around. You know that.”
“And that’s why I’m wearing dark, casual clothes and why you have a gun in an ankle holster.”
“That’s right.”
“Well… I’ll help you snoop. I enjoy your company.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Also, I guess I feel I was in at the beginning of this… you know?”
“Yes.” He stood and put six rubles on the table. “Well, the food wasn’t so bad. The place has ambience and no electronic plumbing like at the Prague or the other top twenty. Two and a half stars. Send a letter to Michelin.”
She stood. “Thanks for being such a good sport. My treat next time.”
“Next time I pick.”
“Can you top this for ambience?”
“You bet,” Hollis said. “I know a KGB hangout.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“Neat. Take me.”
They left the restaurant, and Hollis found himself in an agreeable frame of mind for the first time in a long while.
Part II
Scratch a Russian, and you will wound a Tartar.
—Napoleon Bonaparte
9
Sam Hollis and Lisa Rhodes came out of Arbat Street into the square of the same name. They walked past the statue of Gogol toward the star-shaped pavilion of the Arbatskaya metro station on the far side of the square. The Prague Restaurant was to their left, where a long line of people still waited for their lunch. On the north side of the square was Dom Svyazi, a glass and concrete post office and telephone exchange. Lisa said, “That’s where the church of Saint Brois used to stand, and over there was the seventeenth-century church of Saint Tikhon. The communists demolished both of them. I have old pictures though.”
“Are you trying to publish a book or draw up an indictment?”
“Both.”
They entered the metro pavilion and jostled their way through the crowd toward the escalators. At the last moment Hollis took Lisa’s arm and led her toward the opposite doors of the pavilion. They came back out onto the square behind a fountain. She said, “What are you doing?”
“We’re not taking the metro to the embassy.”
“Oh… don’t we have to pick up a car?”
“Follow me. Walk quickly.”
Hollis moved rapidly toward the east side of the square. Lisa followed. They passed a number of kiosks and cleaved through lines of people queued up for kvass, soft drinks, and ice cream. Lisa said, “Where are we going?”
He took her wrist and pulled her up to a black Zhiguli parked with its engine running at the curb in front of the Khudozhestvennyi Art Cinema. “Get in.”
Hollis went to the driver’s side, and a man whom Lisa recognized from the embassy got out immediately. Hollis slid behind the wheel, and the man closed the door. The man said, “Full tank, linkage is a bit sticky, your briefcase is in the backseat. Luck.”
“Thanks.” Hollis threw the Zhiguli into gear and pulled out into Kalinin Prospect, then made a sudden U-turn and headed west. He looked in his rearview mirror.
Lisa said nothing.
Hollis accelerated up the broad avenue and within two minutes crossed Tchaikovsky Street, then crossed the Moskva River over the Kalinin Bridge and passed the Ukraina Hotel, continuing west on Kutuzov Prospect. A few minutes later they drove by the Borodino Panorama and left the inner city at the Triumphal Arch. Hollis accelerated to fifty kilometers per hour. He commented, “How many cities of eight million people can you get clear of in ten minutes? Moscow is a driver’s paradise.”
Lisa didn’t respond.
Hollis reached under his seat and pulled out a black wool cap and a dark blue scarf. He put the cap on and handed Lisa the scarf. “A babushka for madam. Please try it on.”
She shrugged and draped the scarf over her head, tying it at her throat. She finally said, “I saw this in a movie once.”
“A musical comedy?”
“Yes.”
Some minutes later they
“Is it?”
“Where is this car from?”
“The Intourist Hotel. Rented and paid for with an American Express card.”
She said in a sarcastic tone, “Then you’ve provided them with hard currency to use against us in Washington. Some spy.”
“It was only forty dollars. A K-man could barely buy a defense worker lunch.”
Again she shrugged.
Hollis observed, “Moscow is getting too big for the KGB. Too much Western influence. Rental cars, AMEX, a couple of Western banks. It’s easier for us to operate now.”
“You sound like him.”
“Who?”
“Seth. Very narrow perspective.”
“I know.” Hollis could sense that her good mood had become subdued. Probably, he thought, she was nervous as well as upset over Fisher’s death.
Hollis thought too that bringing an amateur along, an innocent, might not be the brightest thing he’d done all week. But in some vague way he felt it would be good for her. Alevy had understood that. And from the standpoint of pure tradecraft, a woman who had no known intelligence connections was good cover. If Alevy and Hollis had applied for the passes together, the KGB would have called for an armored division to follow them.
Hollis realized that he was thinking like Alevy. How else could he explain the logic of asking Lisa Rhodes to take a drive with him from which she might not return alive? He said aloud, “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“For sounding like Seth.”
She smiled. “Boy, that’s a loaded one.”
He didn’t respond.
Lisa looked out the window and said thoughtfully, “If Greg Fisher came in from Smolensk and Borodino, this is the road he took.”
“Yes, it was.”
“He drove right by the embassy.”
“I know.”
They crossed the Outer Ring highway, and Lisa informed him, “There used to be signs on this road reading ‘Forward to Communism.’ But I suppose the authorities realized the unfortunate imagery of that slogan on a road that goes in circles.”
Hollis smiled. “You’re a good guide. I’ll speak to Intourist about a weekend job for you.” Hollis pulled a piece of flimsy greyish paper from his pocket and handed it to her. “Your pass.”
She glanced at the red Cyrillic letters and the Foreign Ministry stamp, then stuffed it in her bag. “It’s only good until midnight.”
“We’ll be there and back before then.”
“I thought we could stay in the country overnight.”
Hollis did not reply immediately, then said, “I don’t have a toothbrush.”
Lisa smiled at him, then turned her attention to the countryside. A small village of about two dozen houses sat starkly in an open field. Rough fences sectioned off garden plots from poultry and swine, and mud paths connected dilapidated dwellings to outhouses. The cottages were roofed with corrugated sheet metal, and she imagined that a hard rain must drive the inhabitants crazy. She wondered, too, how they kept the heat in when the windchill factor got to fifty or sixty below. “Unbelievable.”
He followed her gaze. “Yes. It’s striking, isn’t it? And fifteen kilometers back is the capital of a mighty nuclear power.”
“This is my first trip into the country.”
“I’ve been around a bit, and it gets worse when you head east toward the Urals or north toward Leningrad. Over half the rural population is ill-housed, ill-clothed, and ill-fed, though they grow the food.”
Lisa nodded. “You hear and read about this, but you have to see it to believe it.”
Hollis pointed. “Do you see that rise over there? Beyond that is a pine forest in which is hidden a very sophisticated phased-array radar site that is the command center for all the Soviet antiballistic missile silos around Moscow. For the price of that installation, half the peasants in this region could be put in decent farmhouses with indoor plumbing and central heat. Guns or butter. Some societies can’t afford both.”
She nodded. “Half our national budget and sixty percent of theirs… incredible wealth sunk into missile silos.”
“The current optimistic theory in Washington is that we’re spending them to death.” He added, “Forget what I said about the location of that ABM site.”
She nodded distractedly.
They drove on in silence for some time before she spoke again. “In my work I meet Russians who understand the contradictions in their system. They like us, and they would like to build grain silos instead of missile silos. But the government has made them believe the missiles are necessary because we want to conquer them.”
“Well, they’re right. You make a distinction between the people and the government here. But I think people get the kind of government they deserve. In this case, probably better.”
“That’s not true, Sam. The Russians may not understand democracy, but in some curious way they are passionately devoted to svoboda—freedom.”
Hollis shrugged.
“I always thought that communism is an historical fluke here. It won’t make it to its hundredth birthday.”
Hollis replied dryly, “I’d hate to think what these people will come up with next.”
“Are you really so hard-line, or are you just giving me a hard time?”
“Neither. I’m just processing information. That’s what I was told to do here.”
“Sometimes I think I’m the only person in the embassy who is trying to find some good here, some hope. It’s so damned depressing being around cynics, hawks, oily diplomats, and paranoics.”
“Oh, I know. Look, if we’re going to be friends, let’s cool the politics.”
“Okay.”
Again they lapsed into silence. The sky had become gloomy again, and drops of rain streaked across the windshield. There was a sense of quiet oppressiveness in the air, a greyness that entered through the eyes and burrowed its way into the brain, heart, and soul. Lisa said, “Out here, on the plains, I think I understand that legendary Slavic melancholy.”
“Yes, but you ought to see the endless fields of giant sunflowers in the summer. They take your breath away.”
She looked at him. “Do they?” Lisa thought that statement told her more about Sam Hollis than Hollis had intended. “You’ll have to show me in the summer.”
“Okay.”
“I wish I had a camera.”
“I’ll stop at the next camera store.”
“Okay.” She looked at her watch. “Are we going to get to the morgue on time?”
“If it’s closed, someone will open it.” Hollis suddenly cut the wheel, and the Zhiguli angled off onto a dirt track, fishtailing and throwing up a cloud of dust.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” Hollis took the car around the far side of a kochka, one of the small knobby knolls that added small terrain relief to the plains that swept west from Moscow. He brought the Zhiguli to a halt out of sight of the road. Hollis reached back, opened the briefcase on the rear seat, and took out a pair of binoculars, then got out of the car. Lisa followed, and they climbed the grassy knoll to the top. Hollis knelt and pulled Lisa down beside him. He focused the binoculars down the long straight road and said, “I think we’re alone.”
Lisa replied, “In the States men say, ‘Do you want to go someplace where we can be alone?’ Here they say, ‘I think we’re alone’ or ‘I think we have company.’”
Hollis scanned the skies, then the surrounding fields. He stood and Lisa stood also. Hollis handed her the binoculars. “Take a look over there.”
She focused on the eastern horizon. “Moscow… I can see the spires of the Kremlin.”
Hollis stared out over the harvested farmland. “It was just about here.”
“What was?”
“This is about ho
Lisa looked at him curiously.
Hollis seemed lost in thought for a time, then continued, “The Germans figured the war was over. They were this close. Then God, who probably didn’t care much for either army, tipped the scales toward the Reds. It snowed early, and it snowed heavy. The Germans were freezing, the panzers got stuck. The Red army got a breather, then attacked in the snow. Three and a half years later the Russians were in Berlin, and the world has not been the same since.”
Hollis turned and watched the sun sinking in the western sky. His back to Lisa, he said as if to himself, “Sometimes I try to understand this place and these people. Sometimes I admire what they’ve done, sometimes I’m contemptuous of what they can’t do. I think, though, that they’re more like us than we care to admit. The Russians think big, like we do, they have a frontier spirit, and they take pride in their accomplishments. They have a directness and openness of character unlike anything I’ve encountered in Europe or Asia, but much like I remember in America. They want to be first in everything, they want to be number one. However, there can only be one number one, and the next number is two.”
Hollis walked down the knoll and got into the car. Lisa followed and slid in beside him. Hollis pulled back onto the road and continued along the Minsk–Moscow highway. An occasional produce truck passed, going in the opposite direction toward Moscow. Hollis noted idly that the potatoes looked small and the cabbages were black. He saw no other vegetables, no poultry, livestock, or dairy products. He supposed that was worth a short report, though his discovery was already common knowledge to the housewives of Moscow.
Lisa glanced at Hollis from time to time. She would have liked to draw him out on what he’d said on the knoll, but she knew better. A man such as Hollis, she understood, was capable of occasional bursts of speech from the heart but did not want it to become dialogue. Instead she rolled down the window. “Smell that.”