Charm School v1_0

by Nelson DeMille

  “You've made your point. I apologize. Do what you have to do.”

  “Thank you. I will. Well, so much for bad business. The good news is that the microfilm was an incredible counter-intelligence coup. Three thousand agents. My God, Sam, that's the biggest single catch in history. And now with those Russian Americans in our hip pocket, we can tackle the problem of the Charm School itself.”

  “A trade?”

  Alevy nodded. “Three thousand of theirs for three hundred of ours. It's a possibility. And we have you to thank for that. You did it, Sam. I think you got your people home.”

  “But I thought there were people in Washington who didn't want them home.”

  “We'll work on that. You have some clout yourself now. When you get to D.C., you're going to be treated like a conquering hero. No parades, of course. Very quiet. But the top CIA people and your people in the Pentagon are going to present you with some awards. Real awards. And, you're going to have an interview with the President, and don't be surprised if he pins a general's star on you. I just got that over the wire. I'd like to be there if you don't mind.”

  “Fine.”

  “You outdid me this time, Sam.”

  “Surikov just fell into my lap, Seth. You know that as well as I do.”

  “Don't be modest. Well… a personal note… on the subject of Lisa, all I can say is that I'm glad it was you and not some Foreign Service wimp.”

  Hollis didn't reply.

  “Good luck. I wish you both happiness.”

  “Thank you.” Hollis put out his hand. “And thanks for showing me around.”

  Alevy took his hand. “We'll meet again, in a better place than this.”

  Hollis turned and walked toward the diplomatic wing. He said to himself, “That would be just about anyplace, Seth.”

  Hollis also had the impression that Alevy did not think there was a better place. The truth was that Seth Alevy liked it here, or more accurately, needed to be here. He needed to breathe Moscow air and smell Moscow river fog. He needed the KGB, and in some perversely reciprocal arrangement they needed him, or they'd have had him expelled or killed long ago.

  Possibly Seth Alevy was a living legend at the Lubyanka, and his stature increased the self-worth of his adversaries. But now their macabre dance of death and destiny was drawing to an end.

  The further thought occurred to him that what Seth Alevy was saying about the Charm School wasn't computing. If three thousand Russians were heading east and three hundred Americans were heading west, and that balanced the equation, then what was in it for Seth Alevy? Answer: zero. So back to the problem.

  * * *

  29

  A man in a heavy overcoat opened the outside door to the diplomatic lounge and looked at Lisa and Hollis. “Pan Am. Frankfurt. Follow, please.”

  Hollis and Lisa put on their coats and picked up their overnight bags.

  Bert Mills came up to them. “I'll go with you.”

  Hollis said, “No need.”

  “I have orders.”

  Hollis, Mills, and Lisa walked past the Border Guard with the submachine gun and followed the Russian with the overcoat outside, down a set of steps where a small airport bus waited on the tarmac. A fine powdery snow sifted down from a softly overcast sky, and a wan sun peeked through, casting a sickly yellow haze over the snowy tarmac. They boarded the bus, on which they were the only passengers, and the driver headed out a taxiway where they saw a mammoth 747 bearing the blue and white markings of Pan Am.

  Mills said, “Look at that. Look at that.”

  Hollis said, “Looks good, guys.”

  Mills said, “Let's switch identities, Sam.”

  “Can I go back to the embassy and sleep with your wife?”

  Mills laughed. “Sure. I'll wire her from Frankfurt.”

  Lisa muttered, “Pigs.”

  As they got closer to the plane, Hollis noticed four Border Guards around it with submachine guns.

  They pulled up to the boarding stairs and got out of the bus. Mills said, “I'll hang around awhile. But I think you're home free.” He shook hands with Hollis and said, “It's been a pleasure working with a pro.” He also took Lisa's hand. “Safe trip.”

  Hollis and Lisa went up the stairs and were met by a smiling woman who said in a twangy voice, “Hi, I'm Jo, your flight attendant in Clipper Class. How're you folks this morning?”

  Hollis noticed that she was deeply tanned, something he hadn't seen in a while. He replied, “Just fine, Jo. You?”

  “Real good. You folks traveling together?”

  “Yes,” Lisa replied.

  Jo looked at a boarding manifest. “You're our DPLs, right?”

  “Right,” Hollis replied. “That's why we got the private bus and the bodyguard.”

  Lisa poked him in the ribs.

  Jo smiled and said, “Clipper Class is right up that little spiral staircase there. Can I help you with your bags?”

  “That's all right,” Hollis replied.

  “How long you folks been here?”

  “About two years,” Lisa replied.

  “My Lord! I'll bet you're happy to be going home.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I'm sure glad we can help get you there.”

  Hollis realized it had been a while since he'd had service with a smile, and it was sort of jarring. He said, “I'm glad too.”

  “Make yourselves at home up there. Soon as the boarding buses get here, I'll be up.”

  Hollis led the way up the spiral staircase into the business section located in the dome of the 747. They hung their coats and stowed their bags in a closet, then took two seats near the front. There were two backward-facing seats across from them.

  The domed cabin seemed eerily quiet, and Hollis had the fleeting thought that the 747 was a sham and Jo was a graduate of the Charm School. He laughed.

  “What's funny?”

  Hollis took her hand. “I think this place finally got to me.”

  “Well, the timing is good.”

  The cockpit door opened, and a man in a blue uniform came through it. “Hi. I'm Ed Johnson, the captain. Colonel Hollis and Ms. Rhodes?”

  “Right.”

  Johnson looked around the empty cabin, then leaned over with his hands on the armrest. “I have a message from the embassy in Bonn saying you folks got into a little scrape here.”

  Hollis nodded.

  “They were just advising the crew to keep an eye on things. I don't have any particulars except what I read in the papers.”

  “That's about all of it.”

  “You Air Force, Colonel?”

  “Right.”

  “Flew what?”

  “F-4's mostly.”

  “Nice.”

  Johnson and Hollis talked airplanes for a while, and Lisa flipped through that week's Time. Johnson went back to the cockpit, and Lisa observed, “You sounded like you were interested in a subject for a change.”

  “I'm only interested in sex, sports, and religion.”

  “Have you come to any decisions about flying?”

  “I don't think the decision is mine to make.”

  “But would you go back if you could?”

  “I don't know. I know that the last aircraft I piloted came down without me in it. Yet… sometimes I can still feel the controls in my hands and feel the engines spooling up, and the vibrations through the airframe, full power, then the dash down the runway, rotate, climb out… you understand?”

  “I guess if you put it that way, I do.” Lisa went back to her magazine, then looked up again. “I always feel like a stranger in my own country when I go home on leave.”

  Hollis replied, “It takes a few weeks to get into sync with any country, including your own.”

  “I know.” She added, “You know, Sam, I almost feel like Moscow and the embassy was home and I'm heading to a strange country. I miss my apartment and my office, my friends. I miss Moscow. I think I'm going to cry again.”

  “I un
derstand.” And he did, because he felt an inexplicable twinge of nostalgia himself. Though why he should feel that for a country that had almost killed him was a mystery. But he'd felt that for Vietnam too. He supposed there were some countries that in a perverse way alerted your senses and put you on full throttle every day. And whatever came afterward was just cruise control. “It's a common emotion. You make good friends on hardship tours. Sort it out.”

  She wiped her eyes with a tissue. “Sorry.”

  The passengers started to board, and Hollis could hear footsteps on the stairs. Mike Salerno was the first person up the stairs, and he sat in one of the seats facing them. He said, “You guys get boarded before first class.”

  “One of the lesser perks,” Hollis replied. “How did you get up here so fast?”

  “Pushed and shoved. I'm a reporter.”

  Lisa asked, “Are you going home for good?”

  “No, I put in for two weeks' therapeutic leave.”

  On the tarmac below, Hollis saw two men in brown overcoats standing in the snow, speaking to two armed men who wore the green overcoats of the KGB Border Guards.

  Lisa looked at her watch. “I hope this snow doesn't delay the takeoff.”

  Hollis noticed that only six more people had come into the Clipper Class section, which could hold about fourteen passengers. There was a middle-aged couple sitting near the staircase whom Hollis could hear speaking with British accents and four German businessmen sitting across the aisle in the other facing seats. One of them had spoken to Jo in English.

  Jo went to the front of the cabin and announced without a PA microphone, “There'll be a few minutes' delay until we get clearance. The weather is slowing up takeoffs. Soon's we get airborne, we'll get the free drinks moving.” She turned to the four Germans. “Okay, gentlemen?”

  The one who spoke English nodded to her and translated for the other three.

  Hollis stood, went to the back of the small dome, and looked out the window. Their bus was still there, and Bert Mills was leaning against it. One of the men in a brown coat walked over with an armed Border Guardsman and had some words with Mills. Mills pulled out his diplomatic passport and shook it at the KGB men. Hollis could see that the bus driver was getting agitated, probably never having seen anyone argue with a gentleman of the Komitet. Mills didn't speak much Russian, which was probably an advantage in that situation, Hollis thought. Mills was pointing to the ground at his feet, and Hollis could imagine him saying, “I'm staying right fucking here until that plane leaves.”

  Finally the KGB man in the brown coat said something to the bus driver, and the bus moved off, leaving Mills on the snowy taxiway, a half kilometer from the terminal. The KGB man smirked, turned, and went back to his car. Mills made an uncomplimentary gesture with his middle finger, then stood with his hands in his pockets. The KGB man watched him from the car. Hollis went back to his seat.

  Lisa asked, “Everything all right?”

  “Yes.”

  Salerno commented, “You guys jumpy? Don't blame you.” Hollis read that morning's International Herald Tribune. Salerno read a pulp detective novel featuring a character named Joe Ryker, NYPD, and Lisa had exchanged her Time for Vogue. She said to Hollis, “If we're going to live in the States, I'll need clothes like this.”

  He glanced at her magazine. “Maybe we should live someplace else.”

  She commented, “I could have bought a black sable coat here for ten thousand and resold it in the States for forty.”

  Hollis mumbled something behind his newspaper.

  “What's holding us up?”

  “Weather.” Hollis heard the engines spool up, then wind down.

  Jo came out of the cockpit and said, “Cleared for takeoff. Seat belts, please. No smoking.” She rattled off the preflight safety regulations, then took an empty seat. The 747 began to move.

  As the aircraft rolled down the taxiway, Hollis saw Bert Mills waving, and Hollis waved back. The aircraft lumbered to the runway and turned onto it. The engines roared, the aircraft strained against its brakes, then began its race down the snowy concrete. No one spoke. The 747 nosed up, and the wheels bumped into their wells. Salerno said, “Airborne.”

  The big aircraft began its climb over the white knobby hills northwest of Moscow. Lisa said, almost to herself, “Da svedahnya.”

  Salerno snorted, “Good riddance. For two weeks.”

  Lisa looked out the window at the snow-dusted landscape. She saw the Minsk—Moscow highway to the south, the tiny villages that dotted the open fields, and the dark green pine forests that covered much of the countryside. Her eyes followed the Moskva River west toward Mozhaisk and Borodino. The aircraft rose into the cloud cover, and she turned from the window. “I'll never see this place again.”

  Salerno commented, “Lucky you.”

  Hollis said to him, “She likes Russia.”

  Salerno grumbled, “Easy to say when you lived in decent housing and shopped in the embassy commissary. Try living like a Russian. I did for a story.”

  “All right,” Lisa said. “We all know that. But you can like the people without liking the system.”

  “The people are the system. The KGB is made up of Russian people.”

  “You sound like him.” She pointed at Hollis.

  Hollis turned the page of his newspaper. “I don't even know what you two are talking about. Who are these Russians?”

  Salerno laughed. “I love it, Sam.” Salerno looked at Lisa. “Listen, Lisa, I've been on assignment in a half dozen countries. I found good and bad in all of them. But this place is beyond hope.”

  Lisa let out a breath of exasperation.

  Salerno added, “Well, maybe you can appeal your nonperson status. The Soviets sometimes rehabilitate people for reasons known only to themselves.”

  Hollis said, “Who are the Soviets?”

  Salerno laughed again. “Look, Lisa, I understand you have mixed feelings. But bottom line, you're feeling a little easier already. Right? That place”—he jerked his thumb toward the window— is tense. Paranoia incorporated. Soon as you leave, you breathe normal. I've seen it on other flights out of here—tourists and business people—smiling, giddy. Do you know that the pilot announces when we cross into West German airspace? What does that tell you?

  Hollis yawned.

  Lisa picked up a magazine.

  Salerno said, “I'll tell you something else I learned about that Fisher business.”

  Neither Hollis nor Lisa responded.

  Salerno went on. “I found out from his parents that he was booked at the Rossiya, so I went there on the hunch that he'd actually gotten to Moscow. And guess what? I found an English tourist who remembered the car parked in front of the Rossiya with Connecticut license plates.”

  Lisa lowered her magazine. Hollis asked, “What do you think that means, Mike?”

  “I'm not sure. What do the people in the embassy think it means?”

  Hollis replied, “How can I tell you that, if we're hearing this for the first time?”

  Salerno leaned forward. “You know damned well that Fisher got to the Rossiya. Fact is, guys, he called the embassy from the hotel. Spoke to you, Lisa.”

  Lisa asked, “How do you know that?”

  “You got a leak. So how are the people there going to handle this? What is Seth Alevy's office making of this?”

  Hollis replied, “Seth Alevy is a political affairs officer and has nothing to do with the Fisher business.”

  “Come on, Sam.”

  Hollis thought a moment. He couldn't conceive of how that call from Fisher to the embassy was leaked. Only he, Lisa, Alevy, Banks, and the ambassador knew of it. Although it might have been the Marine who took the call. Hollis said, “I'll discuss this with you after we're out of the USSR.”

  Salerno said, “You're on an American aircraft at twenty thousand feet and climbing.”

  “Nevertheless, it will keep until Frankfurt.”

  Jo came by with champagne, and they ea
ch took a glass. Salerno held out his glass. “Na zdorovie.”

  They drank, and Hollis commented, “Your accent is terrible.”

  “Is it? I seem to get by.”

  “Where did you learn your Russian?”

  “Berlitz.”

  “Ask for your money back if you can't even pronounce a standard toast.”

  Salerno said, “Sam, can I talk to you in private a minute? Nothing to do with the Fisher business. Promise.” He motioned toward two empty seats.

  Hollis replied, “Lisa Rhodes is a representative of the United States government. She has a secret clearance. You can talk right here.”

  Salerno nodded. “No offense. Okay. Listen, I heard something weird. I heard that you guys were holding an American in the embassy. I don't know if this guy is supposed to be a spy, or if he was somebody who got into trouble in Moscow and made it into the embassy, or both. It was a very strange story.”

  “Sounds strange,” Hollis agreed.

  Lisa took a cigarette from her bag. “Mind if I smoke? Mike, you smoke. Go ahead.”

  “Yeah.” Salerno took a pack of Marlboros from his pocket and lit one. “Come on, guys. Give me a break on this one. You holding someone in the embassy? I know you got underground cells there. Someone, one of the service people, tipped me.” He drew on his cigarette. “Says there's at least one American in an isolation cell. Maybe two.”

  Hollis studied Salerno a moment. He wondered if Salerno was fishing for the Kellums or for Dodson. He wondered, too, where this man got his information. Salerno didn't know it yet, but Frankfurt was as far as he was going for a while.

  Lisa said to Salerno, “That's absurd.”

  Salerno replied, “No, it's not. And I heard too that this guy in the isolation cell is also wanted by the KGB. He's either one of theirs or a defector or something like that. But they want him.”

  Hollis noticed that the fingers in which Salerno was holding his cigarette kept moving in a habitual way to straighten the cigarette to keep it from sagging. But since it was an American cigarette, it did not sag, giving Hollis the impression that Mike Salerno sometimes smoked cigarettes that did sag. Hollis said, “You two enjoy your nicotine, don't you?” He asked Salerno, “You smoke the local brands?”