The Charm School by Nelson DeMille
“Do they? Christ, what a place.”
“Could there be anyone’s luggage in your closet?”
“Hell, no. I paid extra for a fucking single, and there’s no one here. Hey, is he with that American Express group? Did you see that little Intourist guide they have? Christ, she looked edible. Maybe your friend is talking politics with her.” He laughed. “Well, see ya at the Bolshoi.” The man closed the door.
Hollis stood there a moment, then walked back to the elevators. The dezhurnaya was gone. Hollis went behind her desk and found the drawer full of propusks. He flipped through them but could not find one with 745 on it. How did Schiller get the key to 745 without turning in his propusk?
Hollis took the elevator down to the lobby, which was deserted. He went to the front desk and rang the bell. The clerk appeared at the door behind the counter. Hollis said in Russian, “What room is Gregory Fisher in?”
The clerk shook her head. “Not here.”
“Who is in room seven forty-five?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“Is there an Intourist representative here?”
“No. Tomorrow morning at eight. Good evening.” She turned and disappeared into the inner office. He looked toward the foyer and saw there was a different doorman on duty. “People are disappearing left and right, before my very eyes. Amazing country.”
Hollis thought a moment. Several possibilities came to mind, including the possibility that this was all a KGB provokatsiya, a ruse to draw him into some sort of compromising situation. But if they wanted to entrap him, there were less elaborate schemes. If they wanted to kill him, they’d just pick a morning he was jogging along the Shevchenko Embankment and run him over.
Hollis thought about Fisher’s voice, the words, the very real fright in his tone. “Fisher is real.” But Hollis had to prove that Fisher had reached this hotel alive and had fallen into the hands of the KGB. For if he could prove that, then what Fisher had said about Major Jack Dodson was probably true.
Hollis reached over the clerk’s counter and took her telephone. He dialed 745 and let the phone ring a dozen times then hung up. “Not good.”
Hollis looked around. He realized he was alone and exposed. They could take him anytime they wanted now.
He walked quickly across the lobby, his footsteps echoing on the stone floor. He entered the dark passage that led to the Beriozka shop, drew his knife, and slid into the phone booth that Fisher must have used. Hollis thought that if the Rossiya was causing people to disappear, it might be a good idea if he proved that he had reached the Rossiya alive. He inserted a two-kopek piece and dialed the embassy. The Marine duty man answered, and Hollis asked to be put through to the duty office. Lisa Rhodes answered quickly.
Hollis asked, “Have you heard from our friend?”
“No. Isn’t he there?”
“Apparently not.”
There was a silence, then she said, “Are you returning here?”
“That is my plan.”
“Do you need assistance?”
Hollis did, but he did not want this thing to escalate. He, Seth Alevy, and the other men and women in their profession had been made to understand by the ambassador that their shenanigans were their own business and should never embarrass the diplomatic mission. Hollis continued in that cryptic and stilted way they all spoke over the telephone. “Have my car and driver returned yet?”
“No. Isn’t he with you?”
“No, I let him go on. I thought he should be back there by now.”
“I’m sure he’s not. Could he have had an accident or a breakdown?”
“He could very well have. You may be hearing from the authorities on that.”
“I see.” She drew a deep breath. “Can I send transportation for you?”
“No. I’ll find public transportation. Is your friend back from his party yet?”
“He should be here within minutes. Do you want him to join you?”
“No need for that,” Hollis replied.
“Can he call you there?”
“No. But I may call you again.”
“What shall we do here if I don’t hear from you?”
“Let him make that decision when he arrives.”
“All right.” She added, “I’ve replayed that tape we both like. It sounds realistic.”
“Yes. I’ve thought about that. I’ll do what I can to find the original.”
“Good luck.”
Hollis hung up and went back down the dark corridor, knife in hand. He reached the lobby and slipped the knife under his jacket. “Well, if I don’t make it back, the ambassador can raise a little stink about it.” His estranged wife, Katherine, would get his pension and life insurance. He kept meaning to write to his lawyer in Washington to change his will. The complications inherent in international matrimonial problems were endless. “Endless.” There were times when he wished he were in his old F-4 Phantom with nothing more to worry about than MiGs and missiles converging on his radar screen.
Hollis considered the evidence. Fisher’s phone call to the embassy had tipped the KGB, but they would have needed time to react. “Therefore Fisher made it to the lounge.”
Hollis took the elevator back up to the top floor and went to the lounge. He ordered a Dewar’s and soda at the service bar and said to the bartender in Russian, “Have you seen my friend yet?”
“No. I’m sorry. Three dollars.”
Hollis paid him.
A well-dressed man next to Hollis thrust his glass toward the bartender and said with a British accent, “Gin and tonic—Gordon’s and Schwepps. Slice of lemon this time, spasibo.”
Hollis said to the man, “They’ve been out of lemons since the Revolution.”
The Englishman laughed. “What a place this is, eh, Yank?”
“Different.”
“Bloody right. Here on holiday, then?”
“Business.”
“Me too.” The man’s drink came without the lemon, and the bartender asked for three pounds. Hollis moved away from the service bar, and the Englishman followed. The man said, “They haven’t had cocktail waitresses since the Revolution either. You fetch your own drinks here, and they make their own exchange rates as they go along. Three dollars, three pounds, all the same to them. But I think my gin cost me more than your whiskey.”
“Try giving him three lire next time.”
The man laughed. “They’re not that bloody stupid. Name’s Wilson.”
“Richardson,” Hollis replied.
They tipped their glasses toward each other. “Cheers.”
Wilson said, “Did I hear you speaking Russian there? Spasibo and pozhalusta. Which is which?”
“Spasibo is ‘thank you,’ pozhalusta is ‘please.’”
“Oh, I’ve been getting it backwards. How do you get the bartender’s attention?”
“Call out Komitet.”
“Komitet?”
“Right. That should get his attention. Have you been in here awhile?”
“About an hour, I suppose. Why?”
“I’m looking for a friend of mine. American, in his twenties, blue jeans and windbreaker.”
“‘Windcheater,’ you mean?”
“Yes, windcheater.”
“I think I did see him. No one dresses in this benighted country. Damned Reds ruined everything. No manners either, and no style here, if you know what I mean. Of course I don’t fault you for wearing a leather jacket if no one else dresses.”
“Did you notice if he was speaking to anyone?”
Wilson looked around the lounge. “Saw him sitting over there somewhere. Yes, speaking to someone.”
“Who?”
“Ah, now I remember. See those two? Nicely dressed. Frogs, I think. They dress well if nothing else. Had a young chap with them. Could be your fellow. The lad had a few too many, and two people from the hotel helped him out. The boy became a bit… belligerent, I suppose you’d say. They hurried him off. I don’t think they would m
“When was this?”
“About fifteen—twenty minutes ago.”
“Thanks.” Hollis moved through the cocktail tables and sat in an armchair across from the man and woman. “May I?”
The man grunted in reply.
Hollis asked, “Do you speak English?”
The man shook his head.
“And you, madame?”
She looked at him. “A little.”
Hollis leaned across the table and spoke softly and distinctly. “I am looking for a friend, an American, a young man. I understand he had a drink with you earlier.”
The woman glanced at the man beside her before replying, “Yes.” She added in good English, “He was ill. He was aided to his room.”
“This young man told you his name?”
“Yes.”
“Fisher?”
“Yes.”
“Did he seem… agitated? Worried?”
The woman did not reply but nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Did he tell you what was worrying him?”
The man stood and said to the woman, “Allons.”
She remained seated and said to Hollis, “He did not say. But he said they may come for him. He knew. I think the drink was… what…?”
“Drugged.”
“Yes.” She stood. “My husband wishes to go. There is no more I know. I am sorry.” She stood.
Hollis stood also and said to the woman, “You understand, madame, this is a matter of some concern to the authorities here. They know he spoke to you and are curious about what he told you. You may be in danger. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
The Frenchman walked away impatiently. The woman lingered a moment, and Hollis looked her in the eye. “What else?”
Her eyes met his. “Are you the attaché?”
“Yes.”
“He said you would come. He said to tell you some things that he did not say to you on the telephone.” The woman thought a moment, then recited quickly, “Dodson told him it was once a Red Air Force school. Now it is a KGB school. There are almost three hundred Americans.”
“Three hundred? He said three hundred?”
She nodded.
Hollis found himself holding the woman’s arm in a tight grip. “What else did Mr. Fisher say?”
“Nothing. He became ill… . They came for him. A Russian spoke to us in English, asking what the young man was saying. My husband replied in French, saying we spoke no English and could not understand the Russian or the young man.”
“Did the Russian believe your husband?”
“I think so.”
Hollis released her arm. “Then perhaps you will be all right. But take the precaution of contacting your embassy. Tonight. In person. Not on the telephone. Then leave the country immediately.”
“I understand.”
“Good. Thank you, madame.”
She smiled weakly. “The boy borrowed from me two kopeks… he seemed a nice sort… and now… now he is… what? Dead?”
Hollis didn’t reply.
She shook her head. “What times we live in.” She walked away.
Hollis finished his drink, then made his way out of the lounge and into the corridor. He went to the south wing of the hotel and took the elevator down to the Zaryadye Cinema, which had just let out. Hollis mixed with the crowd in the lobby and exited the door that faced the Moskva River embankment. He followed a group down a flight of stairs that led to a passageway under the road.
Hollis walked through the long, tiled tunnel, watching his breath mist in the cool air, listening to the echoing footsteps around him. A few of the Russians glanced curiously at him. He recalled a time two years before when he’d first come to Russia. He’d had occasion to walk this underpass at night and had been impressed by the discovery that there was not a scrap of litter on the floor, nor a line of graffiti on the walls. Moreover, the citizens of Moscow walked without fear. He was still impressed, but two years had given him a broader perspective. The streets and subways were immaculate, but little else was. There was no fear of street crime, not because there was none, but because it wasn’t reported in the news. This was a society that thrived on good news, most of it manufactured.
Yet the average citizen’s own observations told him one thing, and the government told him another. Predictably, Soviet men and women developed frayed circuitry, jerking along through life believing neither their senses nor the newspapers, neither in themselves nor their leaders, neither in God nor their fellow man. It was a nation of illusion, delusion and collusion, a Potemkin village on a national scale, a place where men and women could disappear without a trace, and all evidence of their ever having existed would disappear with them. “I tried, Fisher. I tried.”
Hollis came to the end of the tunnel. He ascended the stairs and went out onto the pedestrian walk of the Moskvoretsky Bridge, over which he and Brennan had driven nearly an hour before. He walked about twenty yards onto the bridge and stopped. A fog rose off the Moskva below, and the ruby red stars of the Kremlin towers glowed spectrally through the mist. There may have been a fine rain falling, but Hollis had never been able to distinguish Moscow’s mist from its drizzle, and it didn’t matter.
Hollis turned up the fleece collar of his leather jacket. Moscow by night, Hollis had discovered, was unlike any other great city he’d lived in. You could walk the streets and squares of Moscow until dawn, as he’d done a few times, and never meet with an adventure or a misadventure. There were no public bars, no discos, no prostitutes, no street people, no nightlife. No all-night markets, no midnight movies, no midnight mass, no midnight anything. Most of the city was quiet by ten P.M., shut down by eleven, and the last taxis disappeared by twelve. All public transportation ceased at one A.M., and after that you were on your own, which was to say you were stranded.
There was one class of citizen, however, who stayed out until the last possible moment; and one of them, a young man of about eighteen, now approached Hollis. He carried a nylon Adidas bag and wore a cheap synthetic leather coat of three-quarter length. He had on American jeans, but his shoes were definitely Soviet. He spoke in good English with exceeding politeness. “Excuse me, sir, do you have a cigarette?”
“No, do you?”
“Yes.” The young man gave Hollis a Marlboro, lit it for him, and lit one for himself. The boy looked up and down the bridge. Hollis noticed a few other black marketeers observing the action. The youth said, “My name is Misha. I am pleased to meet you.” They smoked awhile. Hollis threw his unfinished cigarette off the bridge. Misha’s eyes followed it, then he turned to Hollis. “Do you see this end of the square?” Misha’s gesture took in the south end of Red Square, bordered by the Kremlin Wall, the back of St. Basil’s, the Rossiya, and the Moskva River. “That is where the German, Matthias Rust, landed his aircraft. I was here that day. What a sight it was.”
Hollis nodded. Rust’s landing spot had become part of the unofficial tour of Red Square. The average Muscovite, usually cynical by nature, had been captivated by the young man’s flight. The Soviet court gave him four years. Hollis, as an air attaché, had been inconvenienced by the fallout from that flight when some of his better contacts in the Red Air Force and Air Defense Ministry had been sacked. Nevertheless, as a pilot, Hollis could appreciate the young flier’s daring. Hollis thought that he would like to try something insane like that one day.
Misha said, “He flew for peace.”
“So did Rudolph Hess.”
Misha shrugged. “No politics. Economics. Do you have anything to trade?”
“Perhaps. What do you have, Misha?”
“I have unpressed black caviar. Three hundred grams. Very excellent. It is sixty dollars in the Beriozka. But I would trade it for a carton of American cigarettes.”
“I have no cigarettes on me.”
Misha looked around again, then said
“It is against the law for us to deal in currency.”
Misha backed away. “Excuse me.”
Hollis grabbed his arm. “Have you been on the bridge all night?”
“A few hours… .”
“Did you see an American car on the embankment road about two hours ago?”
Misha drew on his cigarette. “Perhaps. Why?”
“It’s none of your business why.” Hollis pressed Misha against the bridge rail. “Do you want to make forty dollars, or do you want to swim in the river?”
Misha said, “I didn’t see the car myself. A friend told me he saw it. On the embankment road about two hours ago.”
“What sort of car?”
“He thought it was a Pontiac Trans Am. It had a rear spoiler. Dark color.”
“How did your friend know it was a Trans Am?”
“Magazines. You know. I give three dollars American or fifteen rubles for Car and Driver. Same for Track and—”
“Did your friend see where the car went?”
“The Rossiya.” Misha added, “Then a strange thing happened. They hurried over to the Rossiya to see the car and to talk to the driver who they saw in the car—a young man—maybe American. But as they got to the Intourist wing, they saw the car going up Razin Street, away from the Rossiya, with two older men.”
“Two Russians?”
“Two Russians.” Misha hesitated, then said, “The type with closed faces. You know what I mean?”
“Yes. Did you or your friends notice anything else unusual tonight?”
“Yes. About an hour ago. I myself and everyone here saw a blue Ford Fairlane going very fast over the bridge. A cop was chasing it, but the bastard never had a chance. Those Fords can move on the straightaway. The American embassy uses them. Are you from the embassy? Was that your car?”
Hollis turned and walked back toward the underpass. Misha followed. They went down the steps, and Hollis handed Misha two twenty-dollar bills. Hollis said, “I’ll take the caviar.”
Misha reluctantly took the tin of caviar from his gym bag and handed it to Hollis. Misha said, “I’ll give you three more tins and an ancient Russian cross for your jacket.”