Charm School v1_0

by Nelson DeMille

  Lisa put her hand on his shoulder.

  “That son of a bitch! He knows. He knows the difference between right and wrong, between good and evil, and he chooses wrong and evil. Evil is an industry here. He has a family to support. Do you believe what you just heard? I thought I'd heard it all. Jesus Christ.”

  Lisa said, “Let's walk. Come on, Sam. Walk it off.” They continued along the road. Lisa said, “Tomorrow… will there be trouble? A revolt?”

  “I don't know. I do know that six hundred unarmed men and women have no chance against two hundred armed Border Guards.”

  “But could you use this to spark a revolt?” “Maybe… as far as the people here are concerned, we just dropped in from heaven with God's last commandment. But… is it right to incite a revolt that will end in a massacre?”

  They walked slowly up the road toward the VFW hall, which was all alight for the party. Lisa asked, “What are we going to do about the interrogation, Sam? We both have two strikes before we even walk in there.”

  “We seem to be running out of time and space, don't we?”

  Hollis thought of the secrets he had to protect. He had to protect Surikov in the event Surikov had not gotten out of the country yet. He had to protect the fact that the three thousand graduates of the Charm School were about to be blown and swapped for Burov's three hundred Americans. He had to keep Burov thinking that Alevy had no plans to try to grab a few Americans out of here to show the world. But he could no longer stall Burov, and Burov would get what he needed from Hollis through drugs, clubs, electric shock, or just the polygraph paper. Then Burov would evacuate the camp, and the KGB would alert its three thousand agents in America. Then that would be the end of the operation and the last of America's MIAs would finally and forever be lost.

  Lisa stayed silent as they walked. Finally, she said, “Nina Sturges and Mary Auerbach.”

  “Who?”

  “The two American women who killed themselves here.”

  Hollis didn't reply.

  “Sam… tomorrow we are going to watch eleven good men and women die in a horrible way. Then we are going to be interrogated for weeks. We may not ever leave that building back there. You know that.”

  Again Hollis said nothing.

  Lisa said softly, “I've been thinking… if we went to bed tonight… and just kept on sleeping… together… you and I… forever. Wouldn't it be better? In each other's arms?” She added, “They used the propane heater…”

  He looked at her. For the first time since he'd met her he felt totally responsible for her fate. But now she was trying to take her destiny and his destiny into her own hands. He said to her, “There have been a lot of sunrises I haven't looked forward to. But we'll see this one. Together. I don't want to hear any more of that.”

  I'm sorry… I don't want to do it without you … but it's going to be such a long night.

  “Maybe we'll find the answers in the long night.”

  * * *

  PART V

  It doesn't do to leave a live Dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

  —J.R.R. Tolkien

  37

  Seth Alevy put on his trench coat, took his attache case, and left his room on the twelfth floor of the hotel located within the complex of new buildings called the Center for International Trade.

  He stepped out into the large marble lobby, which he noted was crowded, mostly with Western and Japanese business people.

  As he crossed the lobby, he heard a loud shout and turned quickly toward it. At the far end of the lobby, two men in expensive-looking suits rushed toward a burly-looking man and grabbed him, pushing him against a stone pillar. One of the two men shouted in Russian, “We are CIA! Yuri Sergunov, you are under arrest!”

  The burly man, Sergunov, delivered a vicious judo chop to the neck of one of the men, who crumpled to the floor. The second CIA man drew his gun, but Sergunov got to his first and fired twice into the CIA man, who dropped to the mauve carpet, blood spreading across his white shirt.

  A few people at that end of the lobby screamed and ran as Sergunov sprinted toward the glass doors, brandishing his pistol. He knocked over a doorman, and Alevy saw him disappear into the night.

  Someone yelled, “Stoi!”

  The action in the roped-off section of the lobby stopped. The CIA man who had been judo-chopped stood and shouted, “Can't you explain to that cretin how to fake a chop? He nearly broke my neck.”

  A man standing next to Alevy inquired, “Do you speak English?”

  “Yes.”

  The man said in a British accent, “They ought to announce these things, don't you think?”

  “Actually, there's a sign over there.”

  “It's in Russian.”

  “It's a Russian movie,” Alevy pointed out.

  “Can you read that?”

  “A bit. Something about asking our indulgence while a film scene is being shot.”

  “What sort of film? Looked like a cops and robbers.”

  “It's a spy movie,” Alevy replied. “The fellow who escaped was probably the hero. A KGB man, I'd guess.”

  “You don't say. That's a different slant on things.”

  “This is Russia,” Alevy reminded him.

  “Who were the other two chaps, then? Not MI-6,1 hope.”

  “No. CIA.”

  “Ah.” The Englishman thought a moment. “It seemed the CIA men were trying to arrest the KGB fellow. They can't do that in Russia.”

  “It would be good if they could. But this is supposed to be America. Mosfilm uses this place as their American locale. I've seen this hotel in ten movies already.”

  The Englishman laughed. “Don't the Russians get tired of seeing the same place?”

  “The Russians, my friend, don't get tired of anything but work.”

  “Right you are. Well, this is something to tell everyone back home. You know, I just stepped off the lift, and I was a bit taken aback for a moment. A man can get paranoid in this country.”

  “Why is that?” Alevy asked.

  The man didn't respond.

  The director was setting the scene again as the CIA man changed into a clean shirt for a retake.

  The Englishman said, “This sort of thing is not in the best of taste, if you think about it. I mean, almost everyone here is Western. It's somewhat offensive.”

  “It's their country.”

  “Yes, but really, this is an expensive hotel. We don't need this sort of thing here. Americans being shot and all that. Though I don't suppose anyone would know that if they didn't speak a bit of Russian.”

  “Art imitates life,” Alevy said.

  “I always thought it was the other way around. Well, I must be going. Good evening.”

  Alevy watched the scene begin to unfold again, but decided he didn't want to see the CIA man take two more shots in the gut, so he turned and left.

  He made his way to the shopping arcade, a thickly carpeted concourse with six specialized Beriozkas fronting on it. In the windows of the Beriozkas were decals of American Express, Eu-rocard, and five other major world credit cards, and the glass was clean.

  Alevy walked into the store called Jewelry Store and examined a string of amber beads. Four well-dressed Japanese businessmen browsed together through the elegant shop. An American man next to Alevy said to the woman with him, “If the masses could see this place, they'd revolt again.”

  Alevy took the beads, brought them to the counter, and presented a Eurocard issued under the name of Thornton Burns. The salesgirl placed the necklace in a satin box and slid the box into a colorful paper bag. She smiled and said in English, “Have a good evening,” but Alevy had the impression she was reading from a sign over his left shoulder.

  He went out into the concourse past the window of a store called For Men and Women that sold an odd combination of Russian furs, embroideries, china, and cut glass. He glanced at his watch and saw it was nine-thirty. The Beriozkas would be closing soon. He passed
by the shops marked “Radio Goods” and “Bookstore” and turned into a downward-sloping passage to the food store.

  Even at this hour, he noted, the small supermarket was crowded with guests of the hotel, plus diplomats and their spouses from every embassy in Moscow, ranking Party officials with access to hard currency, and black marketeers who were using Western currency at the risk of doing two to five in Siberia.

  The market was well-stocked with European canned goods, meat and fish, Soviet hothouse vegetables, and tropical fruits, most of which Muscovites had never seen outside of a book or movie. Alevy noticed that a new shipment of pineapples, still in crates marked “Nicaragua,” was disappearing fast into a dozen carts.

  Alevy purchased some Swiss candy bars, American bubble gum, and Finnish hard candies. He paid for the items in American dollars and went back to the concourse, where he found the Intourist service desk located behind a glass wall. He placed his passport, visa, and airline tickets on the desk and said in English, “I would like to confirm my helicopter connection to Sheremetyevo and my flight to Helsinki.”

  The attractive blond woman glanced at the papers on her desk and replied snippily in excellent English, “Yes, everything is all right. What is there to confirm?”

  “I know how well everything runs in this country, but I want to be certain about my arrangements.”

  She looked at him a moment, then replied a bit more civilly, “I know that your helicopter is already here, Mr. Burns. It leaves in fifteen minutes. Go to the lobby and see the bell captain. I haven't heard of any problem with your Finnair flight.”

  “Thank you.” Alevy gathered his passport, visa, and tickets, slipping them into his trench coat. He walked back to the lobby and spotted his luggage, which had been taken from his room. The film crew was wrapping up the shoot, and a porter was trying to get the blood off the carpet.

  Alevy approached the bell captain. “Helicopter?” He made a whirling motion with his finger. “Helicopter?” he said more loudly, remembering that Americans had a reputation of shouting English to foreigners in the belief that if it was loud enough the natives would understand it. “Hel-i-cop-ter!”

  “Ah, vertolet” The bell captain pointed through the glass doors to a small white Aeroflot bus.

  “Swell.” Alevy pointed to his bags and showed the man his hotel bill with his room number on it.

  The bell captain nodded and called a bellboy over, saying to the boy in Russian, “You didn't think the American was going to carry his bags twenty meters, did you? Be nice to him, and he may take you to America in his suitcase.”

  Alevy smiled vacuously at the bell captain and gave him a ruble.

  The man touched his cap and said, “Da svedahnya,”

  “Good-bye,” Alevy said, and followed the bellboy toward the doors where the doorman wished him a pleasant journey, making Alevy think that indeed some of them were getting it right.

  Alevy boarded the Aeroflot minibus and nodded to three other men who were seated. The bellboy stowed Alevy's overnight bag and suitcase in the rear of the bus. Alevy held on to his attache case. The driver started the bus.

  The man across the aisle from Alevy said to him, “American?”

  “Yes.”

  The man smiled. “Hey, can you believe helicopter service in Moscow? They didn't have this when I was here five years ago.”

  The man behind Alevy added, “I can't believe this hotel. It was nearly up to standards.”

  They all laughed.

  The fourth man, in front of Alevy, looked back at the other three. “Did you men see that cops and robbers movie they were shooting there in the lobby?”

  They all nodded. Alevy said, “It was actually a CIA-KGB caper. Silly Hollywood kind of stuff. Never hear about that in real life.”

  The bus pulled away from the circular driveway, and the four men, all Americans, exchanged small talk about their stay in Moscow. It turned out that they were all taking the 10:45

  Finnair flight to Helsinki, the last flight to the West until morning.

  The man in front of Alevy said he was a frequent traveler to Moscow and added, “I always feel good when I get clear of this place. I've kissed the tarmac at Helsinki so many times my lips are getting black.”

  They all smiled in recognition.

  The bus took them around the west side of the hotel to a concrete helipad near the International Exhibition Hall, close by the Moskva embankment road. An Mi-28 helicopter sat on the floodlit pad, its turbojet engine warming. Alevy regarded the white helicopter a moment. Rather than landing skids, it sat on wheels like most Soviet helicopters. It had four main rotor blades, sitting atop two four-hundred horsepower Izotov turbine engines. The Mi-28 saw service in the Soviet military, as it did with Aeroflot as a transporter of VIPs. It was fast, comfortable, and reliable. Or so he'd been told. Like all Soviet aircraft, this one had a NATO code name, and as with all helicopters, the code name began with H. The code names were supposed to be meaningless. He hoped so. The Mi-28 was called The Headstone.

  The bus stopped ten meters from the helicopter, and the four Americans carried their own luggage off, the bus driver helping them with their bags of Beriozka items.

  The pilot opened the cabin door and took the luggage, stowing it in the narrow space behind the last two seats. The four Americans tipped the bus driver in rubles and climbed aboard the helicopter.

  Alevy sat directly behind the pilot and noted that the copilot's seat was empty as was usually the case on these short hops to the airport.

  The other three men settled into the remaining seats. One of them, the frequent Moscow traveler, commented, “At this hour we could make Sheremetyevo by taxi in thirty minutes. The Russkies probably think we're nuts to spend this kind of money to make it by chopper in ten.”

  Another man replied, “They're learning how to part us from our greenbacks. Ten more years and you'll see hard currency strip joints on Gorky Street.”

  Everyone laughed.

  The helicopter lifted vertically over the Trade Center complex, and Alevy looked down at the handsome buildings below: the fifteen-story hotel, the taller office buildings, and the trade exhibition halls. “A true window to the West,” he said. “To the world. Even the Soviet paranoia about everything Western seems to be missing from the place.”

  No one replied.

  Alevy leaned forward and examined the helicopter instrument panel, its gauges and radios alight in a faint red glow. He said to the pilot, “Do you speak English?”

  The pilot glanced back as he swung the helicopter north toward Sheremetyevo. “Chto?”

  “Anglüski?”

  “Nyet.”

  Alevy nodded and sat back in his seat. He said to the other men, “Fuel gauge reads full.”

  The man sitting beside Alevy, Captain Ed O'Shea, nodded. “As I said, Seth, it's a regulation so that all aircraft, even civilian craft, are always ready for instant mobilization if the balloon goes up.”

  “Good rule,” Alevy remarked. So far, so good, he thought. One pilot, full tanks. He and two of the other Americans with him, Hollis' aide, O'Shea and Alevy's deputy station chief, Bert Mills, had flown out to Helsinki during the past week, then come back to Moscow individually, with new passports and forged Soviet visas, checking into the Trade Center. They were officially out of the country, and there would be few problems for the embassy if things went bad.

  The man behind Alevy, Bill Brennan, who had come directly from his convalescent leave in London, said, “I want to thank you for giving me a chance to even the score.”

  Alevy replied, “I thought you'd be getting bored in London.” He added, “They did a lousy job on your nose.” Alevy looked out the window and saw Sheremetyevo coming up on the port front. “Well, gentlemen, are we ready?”

  They all answered in the affirmative. Bert Mills, in the rear seat beside Brennan, leaned forward and said to Captain O'Shea, “Now that you've seen it, can you fly it from the copilot's chair?”

  O'Shea
replied, “Tricky, but we'll give it a shot.”

  “Okay,” Alevy said, “here goes.” Alevy took a chloroform pad from his pocket, ripped open the foil envelope, and reached around the pilot's face, clamping the pad over his mouth as O'Shea jumped forward into the copilot's seat and grabbed the controls of the wobbling craft.

  The pilot thrashed around, kicking the control pedals and yanking on the collective pitch stick. The helicopter began tilting dangerously as O'Shea fought for control. He shouted, “Get him out of there!”

  Alevy stood and ripped the pilot's headphones off, then with Brennan's help pulled the pilot up and over the seat, dropping him on the floor of the cabin. The pilot groaned, then lay still.

  Alevy took a deep breath and leaned forward. “Okay, Captain. The seat is yours.”

  “Right.” O'Shea rose carefully from the copilot's seat. “Hold on.” He cut the throttle, and the helicopter began to drop. O'Shea vaulted sideways into the pilot's seat, grabbing at the controls as his feet found the antitorque pedals. The dropping craft yawed and rolled, then steadied as O'Shea got control. He opened the throttle, and the helicopter began to rise. “Okay, okay.”

  Alevy crossed over to the copilot's seat as Bert Mills and Bill Brennan moved forward into the middle seats. Alevy asked O'Shea, “Well, is it as easy to fly as it looks?”

  O'Shea smiled grimly. “This is a bitch. I haven't flown rotary-wing in ten years.” He added, “The main rotor in Soviet choppers turns the opposite of Western rotary-wing. So the rudder pedals are opposite.”

  “Is that why we're zigzagging all over the place, Captain?”

  “Yeah. Takes a while to get used to.” O'Shea pointed to a switch. “What does that say?”

  Alevy leaned forward and read the Russian switch plate. “Svet… light… moving… landing.”

  “Controllable landing light,” O'Shea said. He switched it off. “I saw the pilot hit it a few minutes ago. We don't need that.” O'Shea pushed the cyclic control stick to port and worked the antitorque pedals to keep the craft in longitudinal trim, swinging the helicopter west, away from Sheremetyevo, away from