The Charm School (30 page)
“Did you tell Sam Hollis to stay away from me?”
“No, I wouldn’t—”
“Are you lying to me?”
“No. But to be honest with you, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get invol—”
“Don’t fuck around with my life, Seth.”
“Just calm down.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay. Sorry.”
“Look, if he’s done a disappearing act on you . . . Anyway,
I
still love you. Why don’t we talk—”
I
still love you. Why don’t we talk—”
“We talked.”
“I should really be angry. What happened out there in that village?”
“It’s in my report.”
“Lisa—”
“I have to go. Bye, Seth.” She hung up. “Damn men.”
Lisa looked at her watch, saw it was five
P
.
M
., and poured herself a bourbon. She pulled a press release toward her and worked on it without knowing what she was writing.
P
.
M
., and poured herself a bourbon. She pulled a press release toward her and worked on it without knowing what she was writing.
A few minutes later Kay Hoffman walked in and took her favorite seat on the hot-air register. “Ah. You ever try this?”
Lisa didn’t reply and went back to the press release.
Kay Hoffman picked up a just-arrived copy of the previous day’s
Washington Post
and scanned it, then glanced at Lisa. “You all right?”
Washington Post
and scanned it, then glanced at Lisa. “You all right?”
“Yes.”
“Monthly blues?”
“No.” Lisa struck out a line of the typed copy. She reflected on her job in the United States Information Service. She wrote news releases, but she was also the resident Russophile, responsible for cultural affairs. She arranged for Soviet cultural missions to tour the States. They sent the Bolshoi, and the U.S. sent Van Halen.
Lisa Rhodes loved Russian poetry in its original language, and Pasternak moved her deeply. She was an expert on icons, enjoyed Russian ballet, traditional Russian cooking, and folk art. She thought she understood the mysticism in the Russian soul—the unsevered link between the Russian race, the land, and the Orthodox church. And since Yablonya, she thought she felt her own Russianness more.
She sometimes thought of herself as a thin rope bridge between two iron superstructures. But if the Americans and Soviets were determined not to understand each other, that was their problem. One day they’d blow themselves and the rest of the earth into oblivion. Then the two cultures would be similar.
She made a few more notes on her press release. She usually wrote two releases—one for America, one in Russian for the Soviet news service, Tass. Tass used what they wanted without attribution. In that respect, at least, the Soviet and American press were alike. She looked up at Kay. “Do I have to be nice to Van Halen or to the audience?”
Kay glanced up from her newspaper. “Oh . . . are you still working on that? That has to go out today. Just sound up.”
“Where do you get your orders from?”
“I don’t get orders, Lisa. Only direction.”
“From
where
?”
where
?”
“High up.”
“Someday I’m going to write what I want. What I really saw here.”
“Some day you can. But today you write what you’re told.”
“That’s what some
apparatchik
is being told at the Tass office tonight.”
apparatchik
is being told at the Tass office tonight.”
“Maybe. But we won’t shoot you if you don’t do what we say. So don’t tell me we are no different from them.”
“No, I meant . . . there’s more to the story. The whole idea of the Russian youth enthralled by Western pop culture. Every kid there was dressed in blue jeans. They were shouting in English, ‘Super,’ ‘Beautiful, baby.’ It was . . .” She thought a moment. “It was surreal is what it was. But was it revolution?”
Kay Hoffman stared at her awhile, then said, “If it was, that is
not
what you will write about.”
not
what you will write about.”
Lisa went back to her press release.
Kay went back to her newspaper.
Lisa thought,
But what was it? What is going on here?
Questions such as that, however, were not within the purview of the USIS. Working for the USIS was like working for the Ministry of Truth; when the party line changed, you changed with it.
But what was it? What is going on here?
Questions such as that, however, were not within the purview of the USIS. Working for the USIS was like working for the Ministry of Truth; when the party line changed, you changed with it.
At the moment, Soviet-American relations were on the verge of a breakthrough. Thus all this cultural activity was a precursor to the diplomatic activity. Her orders—her directions—were to be positive, upbeat. Think peace.
Those had been her orders some years back, before Nicholas Daniloff, an American correspondent, had been arrested by the KGB on a trumped-up spy charge. Then new orders came down: cancel all cultural exchanges. And so it went, in an Orwellian about-face, in mid-sentence, the word processors ceased churning out puff pieces and began issuing terse sentences of canceled events. But for the moment, puff was required. Though now there was the Fisher affair. She said to Kay Hoffman, “I don’t appreciate you writing that press release about Fisher’s death and you putting my name on it.”
Kay shrugged. “Sorry. Orders.” She asked, “What
did
happen to that Fisher boy?”
did
happen to that Fisher boy?”
“Exactly what you said in my press release.”
“I guess I deserved that.”
“Maybe I should resign over that.”
Kay stayed silent, then said, “I don’t think you need bother.”
“Meaning what?”
“Forget it.”
Lisa finished her cigarette and lit another. Her tour of duty was four years. She had less than two to go. As a Foreign Service Officer, she was assigned overseas duty somewhat as a military officer was. In fact, her rank of FSO-6 was roughly equivalent to an Army captain. Her title was Deputy Public Affairs Officer. Kay Hoffman was the PAO. They had six FSPs—five women and one man—working for them. It was all very exciting, very boring; very easy, very trying.
Kay looked up from her newspaper. “Are you all right?”
“No one is all right here,” Lisa replied. “This is what State calls a hardship tour. Do you think the Soviet government is insulted by that?”
Kay smiled grimly. “They don’t give a damn. This whole fucking country is on a lifetime hardship tour, and the government put them there.” Kay added, “It helps if you have a lover.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Yes, it does. Did I ask you what happened to that political affairs guy? Seth.”
As she gathered her things and contemplated another lonely evening, she thought of Seth Alevy. Embassy romances, she thought, were partly a result of enforced intimacy. There had been talk of marriage, of career conflicts, of two world-traveling spouses on different assignments. They both agreed it wouldn’t work unless one of them resigned from service. And there it ended. She answered, “That was nothing.”
“It must have been something, Lisa. You practically moved into his place.”
“Embassy life is like living in a small town, isn’t it, Kay?”
“Yes. Population: two hundred seventy-six at last count. Didn’t mean to be nosy. Just concerned.”
“I know.” She smiled. “I’ll take a Russian lover. That will complete my understanding of the Russian psyche.”
“They’re awful lovers.”
“How do you know?”
Kay winked. She threw down her newspaper and stood. “My ass is hot and so am I. I’m going to the bowling alley lounge. Come along. The Marines are bonkers over you.”
“No, thanks. I have a headache.”
“Okay. See you at breakfast.” Kay Hoffman went to the door, then said, “Rumor has it that you and that air attaché, Hollis, ran off for the weekend.”
“Nonsense. We went to take care of Gregory Fisher’s remains. Everyone here is so small-minded.”
Kay Hoffman laughed and left.
Lisa stood in the quiet room and stared at the telephone.
Sam Hollis answered the ringing telephone in his office. “Hollis.”
She imitated a male bass voice. “
Hollis.
” She asked, “Can you say hello?”
Hollis.
” She asked, “Can you say hello?”
“Hello, Lisa.” Hollis looked at the wall clock. It was five-thirty, and he hadn’t spoken to her since he’d left Alevy and Banks Sunday afternoon. “How are you?”
“I feel used. You’re supposed to call or have flowers delivered or some damned thing.”
“They don’t deliver flowers—”
“What a bumpkin!”
“Look, I’m not good at this. I’m a married man. Don’t get around much.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“Well, then you heard wrong. Can I buy you a drink?”
“No.”
“Oh . . . sorry—”
“I want dinner. Tonight. Out of the compound.”
Hollis smiled. “Meet you in the lobby. Half an hour?”
“Thirty-five minutes.” She hung up.
Hollis called his aide, Captain O’Shea, on the intercom. “Ed, get me a Moscow cab at the gate in forty-five minutes.”
“How about a car and driver instead?”
“No, it’s personal.”
“Personal or not, let me get you a staff car.”
“A taxi will be fine.” Hollis hung up and went to the window. His office faced east into the heart of the city, and the Kremlin towers offered a magnificent view at night, all alight like perfect jewels in an ordinary setting. “Moscow.” Not old by European standards, it had begun in the twelfth century as a trading post with wooden stockade walls on the slight rise where the Kremlin now stood. It was a nothing town on a nothing river in the middle of a nothing forest. And except for trees, snow, and mud, there were no natural resources. The place had been burned to the ground and put to the sword by a dozen armies, and instead of fading into oblivion like a thousand other villages, it came back, each time bigger and just a little stronger. With nothing going for it, it had become the center of an imperial empire, then a communist empire. The Third Rome, as it was sometimes called, but unlike Rome on the Tiber, Moscow was all shade and shadow, a city of somber moods whose citizens drifted in a void of moral weightlessness.
“It’s the people,” Hollis decided. That was its one resource: Muscovites. Tough, stubborn, conniving, cynical bastards. And the city was a magnet, a mecca for every like-minded bastard in the Soviet Union. Hollis admired the bastards.
He went into the men’s room, straightened his tie, and combed his hair. “Burov.” Burov was no local Mozhaisk gendarme. He was a Muscovite by choice if not by birth. Furthermore Burov was somewhere directly involved with the Charm School. Hollis didn’t know how he knew that. But he knew.
Hollis got his topcoat and walked unannounced into Alevy’s corner office down the hall. Hollis pulled the heavy drapes closed and turned on the tape player. Bob Dylan sang “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Hollis pulled a chair up close to Alevy and said softly, “Burov.”
Alevy nodded. “That’s our only name and face, isn’t it?”
“We want to draw Burov out, right? To get a fix on this guy and see if he’s more than the phantom of the Mozhaisk morgue. Call Lefortovo restaurant. Make a dinner reservation for two in my name.”
Alevy stayed silent for a while, then said, “Long shot.”
“Not really. The embassy listeners are keyed for my name. Even if Burov is somewhere around Mozhaisk, he can be in Moscow within two hours.”
“Who are you taking to dinner?”
“Not you.”
Alevy smiled wryly. “Okay. But if Burov shows and he wants to do more than talk, I’d be hard-pressed to bail you out in Lefortovo.”
“I didn’t need you to bail me out of Mozhaisk either.”
“I think you’re pushing your luck, Colonel. Not to mention our friend’s luck.”
Hollis stood. “I’ll put it to her straight, and she can decide.”
Alevy stood also. “Sam, remember the lecture you gave me about helping Soviet Jews? Let me give you the same advice about possible American fliers. Make sure it’s worth your life. Or at least make sure someone can pick up the ball after you’re gone. In other words, fill me in on what you know before they kill you.”
“If I did that, Seth, you wouldn’t be so worried about my safety.”
“My, aren’t we thinking like a paranoid spy? Hey, did you find out where Gogol’s grave is?”
“I’m not even convinced he’s dead.” Hollis left Alevy’s office and took the elevator down to the ground floor of the chancery. The big open lobby was filled with embassy men and women leaving work. Some of them waited for spouses, children, or friends; some walked to the rear of the building toward the quad, a short commute home. A few people reboarded the elevators for the ride down to the recreation areas. A few men and women, always in groups of two or more, walked toward the gate, into the city of Moscow and a night of sightseeing or something more interesting.
In some ways, Hollis thought, the scene before him resembled any highrise office lobby at quitting time. But on closer inspection, one knew that this was something quite different. These men and women, despite their respective job or rank, shared lives within the citadel walls, shared common bonds and experiences, problems, sorrows, and joys. They were three hundred Americans in a city of eight million Russians.
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