The Charm School by Nelson DeMille
He came to Alevy’s door and rang the bell.
Alevy showed him in, and Hollis hung his topcoat on a coat tree in the foyer, then followed Alevy up the stairs. “Snowing,” Alevy observed.
They came up into the living room. Hollis had never been in Alevy’s place, and he was surprised at its size, not to mention its appointments. The apartment was done in the most opulent Russian antiques he’d ever seen outside of a museum. In addition to the furnishings, there were oil paintings on the walls, two Samarkand rugs on the floor, porcelain and lacquer pieces on every polished wood surface. A huge silver samovar sat gleaming in front of the window. Hollis commented, “Not bad for a mid-level political affairs officer.”
Alevy hit a wall switch and background music filled the room, providing sound cover. The music was an orchestra of massed balalaikas playing folk tunes. Alevy responded, “My company pays for this. Nothing comes out of the diplomatic budget here.”
“Good. I wouldn’t want to think the rest of us are counting paper clips so you can go into competition with the Winter Palace.”
“Have a seat.” Alevy went to a carved mahogany sideboard. “Scotch, right?”
“Right.” Hollis sat in a plush, green velvet armchair. “The Pentagon doesn’t understand civilian perquisites like your company does.”
Alevy handed him a drink. “So join my company. We’d be happy to have you.”
“No, thanks. I want to get back to flying. That’s what I want out of this mess.”
“Well,” Alevy said, “my company has jet aircraft too. But I think that would be a waste of your real talent.”
“What is my real talent?”
“Espionage,” Alevy answered. “You’re better at it than you probably think.” He raised his glass. “To your safe return home.” They drank.
Hollis set his glass down atop a silver coaster on the end table. He said, “I think flying is my area of expertise.”
Alevy settled into a facing chair of black lacquer. “Flying may be your love, but the shrapnel in your ass makes me question your expertise.”
Hollis smiled. “I dodged sixteen missiles, but all anyone remembers is the seventeenth.”
“Life’s a bitch, Sam. Look, I didn’t call you here to recruit you. But it’s an offer. Consider it.”
“Sure.”
Alevy said, “I don’t invite many people here.”
Hollis looked over the room. Lisa, of course, had been one of those who were invited. He could appreciate how a Russophile could be seduced in such a settling.
Alevy said, “I can explain this stuff to you because you’re in the business.”
“Interior decorating?”
“No, intelligence. This stuff is worth about a million. There’s even a Fabergé egg and czarist dinnerware and so forth. Anyway, this junk is tied into how we pay our Soviet assets. You’ve heard of the commission shops where Soviet citizens can bring family heirlooms and other items of unspecified origins.”
“I’ve recently heard about that.”
“Well, I can’t go into details, but this quirk in the Soviet system gives us an opportunity to channel money here and there. Okay?”
“You don’t owe me an explanation.”
“Nevertheless, you got one. But that’s got a top secret classification.”
Hollis considered a moment, then said, “Lisa has a low security clearance.”
“I never told her what I just told you. I told her this stuff was from our pre-Revolution embassy.” He looked at Hollis. “One of my people happened to see you coming out of the antique shop on Arbat. So I thought something she said might have piqued your curiosity.” Alevy stood and made himself another drink. With his back to Hollis he said, “This is what you call awkward. Right? I mean, the same woman and all. You’re sitting here thinking that Lisa and I probably did it on that ten-foot couch, and you’re probably right.”
Hollis didn’t respond.
Alevy continued, “And you’ve discovered that you like her, so you’ve decided you don’t like me.”
“We’ve always gotten along.”
“Right. I could decide I don’t like you. Because I still care for her, and I’d like to have her back.”
“She’s leaving,” Hollis said.
“True. Anyway, I wanted to clear the air about that.”
“Then stop blowing smoke.”
“Right. The air is not clear. But we have to accomplish a few things, you and I, before you leave. So let’s get professional.”
“Accomplish what?”
“Well, a report on Borodino. Now that we’re alone we can drop the posturing we do in front of Banks and Lisa.”
“Speak for yourself, Seth.”
“Another drink?”
“No.”
“Follow me.” Alevy opened a narrow door in the hallway, and Hollis expected to see a closet but instead found himself shown into a dark windowless room, about twelve feet square, with padded walls. The room was lit by the glow of a five-foot video screen. “This is my little safe room. A few electronic gadgets. Just enough to do homework. Have a seat.” He motioned toward a chair. Hollis sat.
Alevy took a seat beside him and swiveled his chair toward the video screen. He picked up a remote control device from the table and pressed a button. The screen flashed to a photo of a man in his thirties wearing the uniform of an Air Force officer. Alevy said, “Major Jack Dodson. Missing in action since November eleventh, 1970. Last seen by his wingman, ejecting from a damaged Phantom over the Red River Valley between Hanoi and Haiphong. This witness said he appeared unhurt. However, Dodson never showed up on Hanoi’s lists of POWs. Now we think we know where he disappeared to.”
“My copilot, Ernie Simms, similarly disappeared.”
“Yes, I know that.”
The picture of Dodson disappeared, replaced by another man. It took Hollis a few seconds to recognize Ernie Simms.
Neither man spoke for a while, then Alevy said, “I don’t know if he’s here in Russia, Sam.”
Hollis did not respond.
Alevy added, “We can’t refight the war, but sometimes we get a chance to make a little change in the present to make the past better.”
Hollis looked at Alevy in the blue light but said nothing.
Alevy shut off the video screen, and they sat in the dark room in silence. Alevy said, “There’s more to this slide show. But now it’s your turn to do show-and-tell. Borodino. You’re on, Sam.”
“Lisa and I will be assigned together if that’s what we decide we want. That’s the quid pro quo.”
Alevy kicked off his shoes and propped his feet on an electronic console. He unwrapped a stick of gum and popped it in his mouth. “Well… I suppose that’s easier to do than convincing her that justice will be done.”
Hollis stared into the darkness of the room, then began, “We went north of Borodino Field. There’s a ridge line covered with pine trees there.” Hollis related the story of their excursion, telling Alevy what he saw and what he deduced about the place.
Alevy listened intently, then asked. “More like a prison than a restricted area?”
“Definitely. A local Gulag.”
“KGB Border Guards?”
“Yes.”
“Wearing the standard winter uniform? Olive drab, red piping?”
“Yes.”
“Soft caps or helmets?”
“Soft caps. Why?”
“AK-47’s?”
“Yes. I also saw a guy in the half-track with a long rifle and scope. It could have been one of those SVD sniper rifles. The Dragunov. You know it?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you want to know all that? As if I didn’t know.”
Alevy said nothing.
Hollis remarked, “You’re crazy.”
“Oh, I know that.” Alevy continued his questioning. “You saw no Red Air Force people, signs, or markings?”
“None.”
“Okay, so when you got back to your offic
Hollis tapped his fingers on the armrest. Sharing military secrets, saying them aloud, did not come easy to him, but he thought the time had come. “I discovered that this area is off limits to civilian aircraft overflights.”
“So’s ninety percent of this country.”
“Right. I also found an old survey of Red Air Force bases that my office did about fifteen years ago. The file was labeled Borodino North for want of a Russian name. Lacking an airfield, the survey termed it a ground school, perhaps a survival course, though the area is largely benign farmland. Even the forest is a piece of cake. But that’s all the report said.”
Alevy nodded. “We had no interest in the area until recently. But when I got interested, I had some people poke around there. It had been a Red Air Force installation about fifteen years ago according to local memory. That jibes with your old survey. But then the uniforms started to change to KGB and to civilian attire. The personnel inside the installation have virtually no contact with Borodino village, Mozhaisk, or the surrounding countryside, according to the locals. They helicopter back and forth, presumably to Moscow. Conclusion: Top secret stuff. Personnel have Moscow privileges and so forth.” Alevy looked at Hollis. “Okay, your turn.”
Hollis replied, “I found some old SR-71 photos. But these were taken in 1974 or ’75 at eighty thousand feet with cameras that don’t have the resolution that your recon satellites do now.”
“What did the photo analysts say about those shots?” Alevy asked.
“Well, Air Force Intelligence was only looking for things that interested them. They concluded that the installation, which seems to cover about three hundred hectares, a little more than a square mile, had no military significance in a tactical or strategic sense. That’s where my file ends on Borodino North. Case closed.”
Alevy asked, “What do you think the place is?”
“Mrs. Ivanova’s Charm School,” Hollis replied.
“And what,” Alevy asked, “is Mrs. Ivanova’s Charm School?”
“You tell me. And if you have pictures, and I guess you do, let’s see them.”
Alevy hit the remote switch again, and the screen brightened to show a slow-motion aerial view of farmland. Alevy said, “The recon satellite is passing from northeast to southwest. Very nice, sunny summer day. That’s wheat there. Let’s move in a little.” The image on the screen zoomed in to a close-up of a man on a red tractor pulling a load of hay. “Now there’s the Moskva River coming up.”
The picture seemed to be taken at about two thousand feet, Hollis thought, though the satellite could have been a hundred miles above the earth.
Alevy continued, “All right, you see the beginning of the pine forest. Now you see what you saw from the ground—a cleared ring about fifty meters in depth, and if you look closely you can see the concentric rings of barbed wire. There… see the watchtower.” Alevy stopped the tape and focused even closer. “The Border Guard chap in the tower is scratching his ass, and unbeknownst to him, the eye in the sky is recording it for posterity.”
Hollis asked, “When was this taken?”
“This past June. Okay, moving toward the center of the installation—we see more pine trees and not much else. But hold on here—” He stopped the tape again. “Now look at the top of the screen. That clearing is a helipad. See the way the grass is blown by the rotor blades, and see the chopperskid indents on the ground?”
“No.”
“Well, neither do I. But that’s what the photo analysts told me. Okay, move on a few seconds, and there we see just a piece of a structure, a log cabin, but you won’t see much else because of the evergreen cover. The Soviets like to use their pine forests as cover from our satellites. One day this whole fucking country will be hidden under the evergreens. Okay, now you see the beginning of Borodino Field, then the old Minsk–Moscow road, then the new Minsk–Moscow highway. Pretty nifty, huh? The Soviets must shit when they think about our satellites.” Alevy shut off the video. “That’s it.”
Both men sat in the semidarkness awhile. Alevy said, “We did spectrum and infrared analysis on the pine forest. There are heat sources and such down there. Vehicles, people, lots of small structures, and a few larger ones, mostly wood, we think, scattered about in that square mile. Population anywhere from four to eight hundred hot bodies, though the place could hold more. In fact, it probably did once.”
Hollis said, “There are about three hundred American POWs there.”
Alevy looked at him quickly. “How do you know that?”
“The French woman told me. Fisher told her, Dodson told him.”
Alevy nodded. “We contacted her in Helsinki, but she wasn’t talking.” Alevy asked, “Anything else?”
“What you already know. Former Red Air Force school, now a KGB school.”
Alevy rubbed his chin. “Three hundred?”
Hollis nodded.
“Jesus Christ.”
“That was my general reaction.”
Alevy looked at Hollis. “Am I thoroughly briefed now?”
“You are. Am I?”
Alevy said, “Well, you can guess the rest, Sam. These are not defectors, of course, but POWs from ’Nam. They were given to the Russians by the North Vietnamese, probably in payment for those neat surface-to-air missiles that knocked you guys down. They got the product of their missiles. Live American fliers. Quid pro quo.”
Hollis nodded.
Alevy continued, “There are… what? A thousand fliers still unaccounted for? The North Viets thought of them as nothing more than POWs to be beaten, starved, and paraded in front of news cameras. The Russians thought of them as a valuable resource for the Red Air Force.”
Hollis stood. “Yes, and they opened a Red Air Force training school with their potential enemy as instructors. We always suspected that.”
Alevy asked, “Would these American pilots have been of real military value? What’s your professional opinion on that?”
Hollis replied, “I’ll tell you a military secret because I like you. The Israelis in the past have given us captured, Soviet-trained Egyptian and Syrian pilots. Using drugs and hypnosis, we were able to reproduce a good deal of the Soviet Air Force jet fighter school curriculum.”
“Okay, but what good would that do as the aircraft and tactics change?”
“Not much if you haven’t engaged the enemy during a particular period of time. The hardware and tactics change, as you say.”
“So,” Alevy asked, “what are those Vietnam-era pilots doing there now, Sam? They were used to train MiG pilots fifteen, sixteen years ago. Now they’re useless. Why not dispose of them? What good are they now? That is the question. Do you know the answer?”
“I’ll think about it.”
The telephone rang, and Hollis said, “That might be for me.”
Alevy waved his hand toward the phone, and Hollis picked it up. “Hollis.”
Captain O’Shea said, “Burov.”
“Put him through.” Hollis said to Alevy, “The phantom of the Mozhaisk morgue.”
Alevy advised, “Be nice.” He stuck a plug tap in his ear and listened.
Burov’s voice came on the line. “Colonel Hollis?”
“Speaking.”
Burov’s tone was cordial. “How are you this evening?”
“Real good. How are you?”
“I meant to call earlier during business hours. But I’m still involved with that messy double murder I told you about. Am I interrupting your dinner?”
“No, we dine at eight here in little America. I was just watching a spy satellite tape of the Soviet Union.”
Burov laughed. “What a coincidence. I was just listening to some taped conversations emanating from your embassy.”
“Small electronic world. When can I see Major Dodson at the Trade Center?”
“Well, I spoke to him, and he’s very reluctant to meet anyone from your embassy.”
“Hi
“He sees no point in it.”
“The point is to see if he’s alive and well and wants to remain in the Soviet Union.”
“That’s affirmative on all counts,” Burov replied.
Hollis was somewhat surprised at Burov’s American military jargon. He said, “It’s not that I don’t trust a colonel of the KGB, but how about the photo with the Pravda?”
“That I can show you.”
“Unretouched. I want the photograph and the negative.”
“I can’t do that. For your eyes only.”
“Then keep it.”
“I don’t know what more I can say, Colonel Hollis.”
“You can say yes.”
“I’ll talk to Major Dodson again.”
“Will you? What if I told you that Major Dodson is here, in this embassy, and that he has told us a most incredible story?”
Alevy whispered to Hollis, “Don’t push it.”
Burov skipped a beat, then replied, “That’s not possible, Colonel. I just spoke to the man twenty minutes ago.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, if he’s there, put him on the phone.”
Hollis replied, “I may put him on TV in a few days.”
Burov’s tone was controlled but anxious. “I’ll get back to you on the whole question of Major Dodson.”
“Swell. Where can I contact you, Colonel Burov?”
“You may call Lefortovo and leave a message.”
“Do you have a home number where I can reach you on weekends?”
“I’m afraid not. Just call Lefortovo. We’re open day and night.”
“Not Mozhaisk or Borodino?”
“No, I work here.”
“In what directorate?”
“That’s not important for you to know.”
“Do you have a first name?”
“Petr.”
“Very Christian. I’ll bet your parents were Christians.”
Burov replied stiffly, “None of that concerns you.”
“All right, Petr.”
“Don’t try to bait me, Hollis. I already owe you one.”