The Charm School Read online

  The internal phone rang. She turned from the window and answered it. “Rhodes.”

  “Hello,” the male voice said. “Today is the first day of Sukkot.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I’ve been invited to a party in Sadovniki. Religious dissidents. You might enjoy it.”

  “I’m D.O. tonight.”

  “I’ll get you switched.”

  “No… no, thanks, Seth.”

  “Is it completely and finally over?”

  “I think so.”

  “Will you take a polygraph on that?”

  “I have to finish a press release now.”

  “Well, at least you won’t be able to get in trouble tonight. Think about it, Lisa.”

  She didn’t know if Seth Alevy meant about them or the party. She replied, “Sure will.”

  “Good night.”

  She hung up, slipped off her shoes, and put her feet on the desk. Holding the bourbon in her lap, she lit a cigarette and contemplated the acoustical-tile ceiling. The new American embassy, she reflected, sitting on ten acres of bad bog land about equidistant between the Moskova River and the old embassy on Tchaikovsky Street, had been more than a decade in the building. The work had been done mostly by a West German firm under subcontract to an American concern in New York. If the Soviet government was insulted by this snub to socialist labor and building expertise, they never expressed it verbally. Instead they’d indulged themselves in petty harassments and bureaucratic delays of monumental proportions, which was one of the reasons the project had taken about five times as long as it should have.

  The other reason was that each slab of precast concrete that the Soviets had supplied to the building site had been implanted with listening devices. After the bugging scandal broke, there followed the Marine guards’ sexual scandals at the old embassy, and the subsequent charges and counter-charges between Moscow and Washington. The American diplomatic mission to the Soviet Union had been in a shambles for over a year, and the whole mess had been making front-page news back in the States. The image of the Secretary of State conducting business in a trailer out on Tchaikovsky Street was rather embarrassing, she thought.

  According to Seth Alevy’s sources, the Russians had a big laugh over the whole thing. And according to her own personal observations, the American diplomats in Moscow felt like fools and had for some time avoided social contact with other embassies.

  Eventually, a little belated Yankee ingenuity and a lot of Yankee dollars had put things right in the new embassy. But Lisa Rhodes knew there was a good deal of residual bitterness left among the American staff, and it influenced their decision-making. In fact, she thought, whatever goodwill there had been between the embassy people and their Soviet hosts was gone, replaced by almost open warfare. The State Department was now seriously considering making a clean sweep of the entire staff, replacing the two hundred or so able and experienced men and women with less angry diplomats. She hoped not. She wanted to continue her tour of duty here.

  Lisa Rhodes shook the ice in her drink. She closed her eyes and exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke at the ceiling.

  She thought of Seth Alevy. Being involved with the CIA station chief in Moscow was not the worst thing for her career. He could pull strings to keep her in Moscow even if State ordered her home. And she did love him. Or once loved him. She wasn’t sure. But somehow, being involved with him meant being involved with his world, and she didn’t like that. It wasn’t what she wanted to do with her career or her life. It was also dangerous. Being in Moscow was dangerous enough by itself.

  3

  “Russian efficiency,” said the voice again.

  Greg Fisher did not turn, did not breathe.

  “American?”

  Fisher found himself nodding in the dark.

  “I’m over here.”

  Fisher turned slowly toward the voice. He could make out the figure of a man standing among the pine boughs on the far side of the road. The man was tall, heavily built, and wore matching dark clothing that looked like a uniform.

  The man stepped onto the road, and Fisher saw in his right hand the glint of steel. A gun. Fisher took a step back.

  The man spoke as he walked. “Name’s Dodson. Yours?”

  “Fisher.” He cleared his throat. “Gregory. American.” Fisher thought that if he had a serial number he’d give him that too. “Who are you?”

  “Keep it down.” The man stopped a few feet from Fisher.

  Fisher swallowed and inquired, “Tourist?”

  The man smiled without humor. “Resident.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are you lost, Fisher?”

  “Very.”

  “Alone?”

  Fisher hesitated, then replied, “Yes… .” He saw now that the steel was not a gun but a knife. The man was about fifty years old with short, dark hair and eyes that glinted like the steel in his hand. There was something—blood, maybe—smeared on his chin.

  Dodson said, “You might just be a graduate student.”

  “I am. Was. Yale. Business school.”

  Dodson smiled again. “No. I mean…” He regarded the Pontiac Trans Am, its engine running and its headlights on. “No… I think you’re the real thing.”

  Fisher was confused, but he nodded. He took a deep breath and looked cautiously at the man. It was not a uniform but a blue warm-up suit with red piping. The man wore running shoes. Unreal, he thought.

  Dodson slipped the knife into a scabbard beneath his waistband, then pointed at the Trans Am. “You drive that from Yale?”

  “Yeah. Sort of. From Le Havre.”

  “Amazing.”

  “Yeah. Well, I have to get going. Not supposed to be driving after dark. Hey, nice meeting you.” Fisher glanced at his car but didn’t move toward it.

  A dog barked again, and Dodson motioned Fisher toward the car. Dodson got in the passenger side and closed the door quietly. Fisher got behind the wheel. Dodson said, “I have to put some distance between me and this place.”

  “What place?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Turn it around. Kill the lights.”

  “Right.” Fisher pulled the Trans Am up into the turnaround, backed out, and headed down the narrow road.

  “Cut the engine and coast.”

  Fisher glanced at his passenger, then put the transmission in neutral and shut off the engine. The car rolled down the slope he’d come up. “Hard to see the road.”

  “Where are you heading, Greg?”

  “Moscow.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Oh… well, I guess I can drop you off… .” Fisher felt his head beginning to swim. “I mean—”

  “Where are we?”

  “Russia.”

  “Yes, I know. How far are we from Moscow?”

  “Oh, about a hundred kilometers.”

  Dodson nodded to himself. “Closer than we thought.”

  Fisher considered the big man sitting beside him. Resident. How far are we from Moscow? You might just be a graduate student. Clearly the man was nuts. Fisher said tentatively, “Someone after you?”

  “Depends if they know I’m gone yet.”

  “Oh.” Fisher stared out the windshield. “Getting harder to see.”

  “Peripheral vision is better at night. Try it.”

  “Yeah?” Fisher moved his eyes slightly and found that indeed he could see better. “Learn something every day.”

  “Yes. Escape and evasion,” Dodson said. “They teach you that course at Yale?”

  “No.” The road began to wind, and Fisher found himself gripping the wheel, tugging it left and right to try to make it respond without the power steering.

  Dodson picked up a handful of maps and brochures from the console between them. “Can I borrow some of these?”

  “Sure. Help yourself. Take them all.”

  Dodson opened the glove compartment and sorted though the maps by the dim light. “Where are we in relation to Moscow?”

  �
�West. A little north. We’re near Borodino. That’s where I got a little lost.”

  “Borodino. The battlefield.”

  “Right. I have to try to find the Minsk–Moscow highway. This road isn’t even on the map.”

  Dodson nodded. “No, it wouldn’t be.”

  Occasionally branches brushed either side of the Pontiac, and Fisher jerked the wheel the opposite way. The car went off the road to the right, and he felt the two tires sink into the sandy shoulder. The car slowed and he tugged at the wheel until he got the tires back on the blacktop and continued down the gradual slope.

  Fisher turned his head slightly toward Dodson. As he tried to sort out the dark images in his peripheral vision, he focused now and then on his passenger. He saw the man running his fingers over the dashboard, then touching the rich leather on the side panels—like he’d never sat in an American car before, Fisher thought. Like a Russian.

  They sat in silence as the car continued down the ridge line. The pine trees thinned toward the base of the slope, and Fisher was able to see better.

  The night had become very still, he noticed, and bright twinkling stars shone down between scattered clouds. He hadn’t been in the Russian countryside at night, and the deep, dark quiet surprised him. Spooky.

  Through an opening in the trees, he saw the rolling fields below. The moon broke through a cloud and revealed a dozen polished obelisks standing like shimmering sentries over the dead. “Borodino.”

  Dodson nodded.

  Fisher thought he saw something in his rearview mirror. Dodson noticed and looked back through the rear window.

  Fisher ventured, “Someone following us?”

  “I don’t see anything.” He added, “They’re searching on foot, because they think I’m on foot.”

  “Right.”

  “I wish you hadn’t left that tire mark in the sand, however.”

  “Sorry.” Fisher thought a moment, then added, “This mother can outrun anything in the USSR.” He smiled in spite of himself.

  Dodson smiled in return.

  Fisher found the car slowing as the slope flattened. He said, “Who’s after you? What did you do?”

  “Long story.”

  Fisher nodded. “Fucked-up country.”

  “Amen.” Dodson studied an Intourist highway map, then slipped it into his side pocket. “You have a city map of Moscow?”

  “Under your seat.”

  Dodson found the folded map and opened it.

  Fisher said, “It’s all in Russian. You know Russian?”

  “Hardly a word. Everything was in English. That was rule number one.”

  Fisher began to ask something, then thought better of it.

  Dodson studied the map. “I did read in American newspapers that there was a new American Embassy somewhere near the Moskva River, but the articles weren’t too specific. I don’t see it here.”

  “It’s near the Kalinin Bridge. You want to go there?”

  “Ultimately.”

  “Okay… we have to cross that bridge on my way to the Rossiya.”

  “That’s where you’re staying?”

  “Right. I can drop you off at the embassy.”

  “I wouldn’t get past the Soviet militia at the gates.”

  “Why not?”

  “No passport,” said Dodson. He looked at Fisher a moment, then said, “Let me see your passport.”

  Fisher hesitated, then drew his passport from the inside pocket of his windbreaker.

  Dodson took it, studied it and the visa stapled to it by the light of the glove compartment, then handed it back.

  They were nearly out of the pine forest now. Ahead lay copses of bare birch, a few lonely poplars, and the fields of Borodino. A hundred meters beyond the base of the ridge, the Pontiac came to a gradual halt. Fisher looked at Dodson, waiting for instructions.

  Dodson said, “If they catch us together, they’ll shoot you.”

  Fisher felt his mouth go dry.

  “Or worse, they’ll send you to where I just escaped from. So we’re going to part company here. I’m going cross-country to Moscow. You’re going to find the highway and drive there. You’re going to the embassy. I’m going to figure out what to do when I get to Moscow. I may try to contact you at the Rossiya. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “I may try to contact the embassy by phone. I need all the rubles and kopeks you’ve got on you.”

  Fisher took out his wallet and removed the one-, five-, and ten-ruble notes. “About a hundred and fifty.”

  Dodson took the notes.

  Fisher found seventy-five kopeks in his pocket and handed them over.

  “Can’t promise I’ll pay you back.”

  Fisher shrugged. Fisher didn’t care if he never saw the money or Dodson again. Especially if it meant getting shot. He thought he should have listened to the Intourist lady and stayed in Smolensk.

  Dodson glanced back in the rear of the car. “You going to open a farm stand?”

  “Huh…? Oh, no. Gifts. You can take what you need.”

  “You have candy? Packaged food?”

  “Candy in the plastic bag back there. Some peanuts. Snacks.”

  Dodson leaned back and retrieved the bag with the name and address of a West Berlin Konditorei stamped on it. “Last outpost of junk food, right, kid?”

  Fisher forced a smile. “Right.”

  “Okay, listen to me, Greg Fisher. I am going to tell you something, and you are going to listen like you never listened to a prof at Yale. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “My name is Major Jack Dodson. I am an American Air Force officer.”

  Fisher nodded. “Air Force.”

  “I am—I was—a POW. I was shot down over North Vietnam in 1973.”

  Fisher looked at Dodson. “Jesus… you’re an MIA!”

  “Not anymore, kid. Listen. I have been held here in Mrs. Ivanova’s Charm School since 1974—”

  “Where?”

  “That’s what we call it. Don’t interrupt. I am going to give you some important details. You will get to the embassy before I reach Moscow. I may never reach Moscow. But you will. You will ask to speak to a defense attaché, preferably the Air Force attaché. Got that? Attaché.”

  “Yes. Attaché.”

  Dodson studied Fisher for a long moment, then said softly, “I don’t know what fate brought us together on this lonely road, Greg Fisher, but I think it was God’s will.”

  Fisher simply nodded.

  “I am going to tell you a very strange story now. About the Charm School.” Dodson spoke and Fisher listened without interruption. Fifteen minutes later Dodson said, “You make sure they understand you and believe you. There are a lot of men whose lives depend on you as of this moment, Mr. Fisher.”

  Fisher stared through the windshield with unfocused eyes.

  “Are you a patriot, Mr. Fisher?”

  “I guess… I mean in the last few weeks…”

  “I understand. You’ll do what you have to do.”

  “Yes.”

  Dodson reached out and took Fisher’s hand, which was limp and wet. “Good luck, and as we used to say on the flight line, God speed.” Dodson opened the door and left quickly.

  Fisher sat motionless for a few seconds, then looked out the passenger side window. Major Dodson was gone.

  Gregory Fisher felt very alone. In a moment of crystal clarity, he completely grasped the meaning and the consequences of the secret that had just been revealed to him, and an awful fear suddenly gripped him, a fear unlike any he had ever known in his short, sheltered life. “This one’s for real.”

  * * *

  Gregory Fisher got his bearings from the Kutuzov obelisk shining in the moonlight. He found the lane flanked by the monuments to the Russian regiments, then spotted the white limestone museum, and within a minute he was on the poplar-lined road heading toward the iron gates.

  Approaching the gates, he saw they were now closed. “Oh, for Christ’s sake—
” He hit the accelerator, and the Trans Am smacked the gates, flinging them open with a metallic ring that brought him out of his trancelike state. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  Fisher pressed harder on the accelerator as he negotiated a series of shallow S-turns. Coming out of a long turn, he saw the old Moscow road dead ahead. He cut sharply left onto it with squealing tires.

  Fisher snapped on his headlights and saw the signpost he’d passed earlier. He made a hard right into the farm lane that led back to the main Minsk–Moscow highway. “Should have taken this road the first time. Right? Did I need to see Borodino? No. Saw War and Peace once… . Read War and Peace too… that’s all I needed to know about Borodino… .”

  His chest pounded as the Pontiac bumped over the potholed pavement. He could see lights from distant farm buildings across the flat, harvested fields. He had an acute sense of being where he wasn’t supposed to be, when he wasn’t supposed to be there. And he knew it would be some time before he was where he was supposed to be: in his room at the Rossiya—and longer still before he was where he wanted to be: in Connecticut. “I knew it.” He slapped his hand hard on the steering wheel. “I knew this fucking country would be trouble!” In fact, despite his nonchalance of the last eight hundred miles, he had felt tense since he’d crossed the border. Now a neon sign flashed in his head: NIGHTMARE. NIGHTMARE.

  The straight farm road seemed to go on forever before his headlights picked out a string of utility poles, and within minutes he was at the intersection of the main highway. “Okay… back where we started.” He turned quickly onto the highway and headed east toward Moscow.

  He saw no headlights coming at him and none in his rear mirror, but he still had to resist the urge to floor it. As he drove he realized there were towns and villages ahead, and if there were police in any of them, he would be stopped and questioned.