The Charm School (42 page)

He raised his glass. “Let me be the first, before your soiree begins, to wish you both the best of luck in your careers and personal happiness.”

They touched glasses and drank.

Banks remained standing and said to Lisa, “I was telling Sam, I was a diplomatic brat, like he’s an Air Force brat.”

“I didn’t know that, Charles. No one here knows much about you, to be frank.”

“Well, some people do. I’ve spent my life in diplomatic posts and in fact, my father, Prescott Banks, was with the first post-Revolution diplomatic mission here in 1933. I was eight at the time, and I remember Moscow a bit. It was a grim place then.” He smiled. “I know, I know. Anyway, I met Stalin when I was about ten, I guess.”

“How fascinating,” Lisa said. “Do you remember him?”

“I remember he smelled of tobacco. My father told me jokingly that I was going to meet the czar of all the Russias. Then when I was introduced to him at his apartment in the Kremlin, I told him he didn’t look like the czar of all the Russias. Stalin laughed, but my mother nearly fainted.”

Hollis smiled. “You weren’t always so smooth, were you?”

Banks chuckled. “No, that was my first diplomatic faux pas.” He shook the ice in his drink, then said, “Well, then, the first order of business . . .” He looked around the room. “A bit of music would be nice.”

Lisa nodded and went to a tape player on the shelf. “They’ve packed my stereo. Here’s a few tapes. Charles, do you know Zhanna Bichevskaya, the Joan Baez of Russia?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about contemporary Russian music. I’m sure it will be fine for our purposes.”

“Right.” Lisa put the tape in and hit the play button. A soft guitar, then a beautiful, clear Russian voice filled the room. Lisa said, “Her songs make me melancholy. I’ve tried to get her on a tour of America, but the bastards won’t let her out of the country. I can’t even speak to her. I don’t know where she lives or much about her, except I love her voice. I assume she’s politically unreliable.”

Banks said, “She does have a lovely voice. At least they let her sing.”

They all moved nearer the tape player, and Lisa adjusted the volume. Hollis said, “I think that’s about right. Go on, Charles.”

Banks cleared his throat. “Yes, first thing. You both disappeared the other day for some time, and there was some fear here and in Washington that you’d met with foul play. Therefore, the ambassador has requested that you stay inside the compound until you are both driven to the airport by security personnel, Monday morning. That will not cause you any hardship, I trust.”

Hollis replied, “No, it won’t, since I’m not taking orders from the ambassador. Lisa and I intend to go to church in the city on Sunday.”

Banks replied in an impatient tone, “Why do you want to provoke them and expose yourself and Lisa to danger?”

“Surely, Charles,” Hollis said in a baiting tone, “you don’t think the Soviet government or its organs of State Security would make an attempt on our lives even as our diplomats are discussing a new era of Soviet-American friendship?”

Banks replied coolly, “Not the Soviet government, perhaps, but I can’t fathom what the KGB is up to, and neither can you. We have a similar problem right here with Mr. Alevy, whose organization seems to be pursuing its own foreign policy. In fact, if the KGB and the CIA have one thing in common, it’s their desire to wreck any rapprochement between their respective governments.”

“That’s a very strong statement,” Hollis observed.

“Nevertheless it’s what the diplomatic community believes.”

“Charles, I don’t like it when the diplomatic community here or anywhere tries to take the moral high ground. My work and Seth Alevy’s work may not be to your liking or your superiors’ liking. But it is, unfortunately, necessary work. And there is an implied understanding that the Foreign Service will provide support services to the intelligence personnel within the mission. No one in my office or Alevy’s has ever asked anything of you more than room and board and an atmosphere of cooperation and understanding. We have never compromised the diplomatic personnel here. Whoever takes over from me has a tough enough job, and he deserves your respect if not your sympathy.”

Banks set his drink down on a bookshelf. “Personally, I agree with you. The world has changed since the days when the only spies in an embassy were a few Foreign Service people known unofficially as State Department Intelligence. However, the ambassador’s fear in this current problem . . . the fear of the White House itself, if you want to know the truth . . . is that one of you—you, Seth Alevy, the naval attaché, the Army attaché, or any of the people who work for you—will seize on this current Fisher and Dodson business as a tool to wreck the diplomatic initiatives. Enough said.”

Hollis poured more scotch into Banks’ glass and handed it back to him. “I’m afraid I have to have the last word on that, Charles. You’re afraid of us troglodytes, but I want to remind you that many of the fruits of hard-won military and intelligence victories, paid for in blood, were lost by the State Department and the Foreign Service. I fought a war, and my father fought a war, and your father . . . well, I know the name Prescott Banks. I want to remind you of the sterling performance of the State Department at Yalta and Potsdam, when your forebears gave Stalin everything but the west lawn of the White House. That’s why we’re in the goddamned mess we’re in now.”

Banks’ ruddy face turned even redder. He took a long breath, then sipped on his drink. “That was not our finest hour. My father regretted his role in that in his later years.”

Lisa poured more scotch for everyone and said, “I know that the past is prologue for the future, but you old duffers are talking about things that happened before I was born.”

Banks said, “Well, more recent news then. As you know, Gregory Fisher’s parents have had an autopsy performed on their son. We’ve received information on the results of that autopsy.”

“And?” Lisa asked.

“The medical examiner’s report states that the injuries were not the immediate cause of death.”

“What,” Lisa asked, “
was
the cause of death?”

“Heart failure.”

Hollis observed, “Heart failure is the cause of all deaths. What caused the heart to fail?”

“Partly trauma. But mostly alcohol. Mr. Fisher had a deadly amount of alcohol in his blood and brain tissue.”

“The KGB introduced the alcohol before death,” Hollis said, “through a stomach tube. The perfect poison, because nearly everyone takes it now and then.”

Banks seemed uncomfortable with this type of talk. “Really? Is it possible to do that?” He looked at Hollis as though he were discovering a new species of human being. “That’s terrible.”

Lisa said, “So, we have no evidence that could be used in a court of law or in a diplomatic note of protest if anyone considered such a course of action?”

“That’s correct,” Banks replied.

Lisa asked, “Do you believe that Greg Fisher was murdered?”

Banks considered a moment. “The circumstantial evidence seems to point in that direction. I’m no idiot, Lisa, and neither is the ambassador.”

“That’s reassuring.” She added, “I do appreciate your position.”

Banks smiled tightly. “Do you? Let me tell you that I personally admire your sense of integrity and moral courage. And
entre nous
, the ambassador is similarly impressed. However, I’m here to restate to you in the strongest possible terms that if either of you so much as breathes a word of this incident back in the States, you will both be unemployed and unemployable and perhaps subject to legal action. Is that clear?”

Hollis moved closer to Banks. “I don’t think you or anyone outside the Pentagon is in a position to tamper with my military career.”

“On the contrary, Colonel. And as for Miss Rhodes, while you have the option of a private career in journalism, you might find it more difficult than you think to ever be accredited to cover any agency of the United States government.”

She put her drink down. “I think, Charles, that you’ve been in the Soviet Union too long. We don’t make threats like that in
my
country.”

Banks seemed somewhat abashed. “I apologize . . . I’m passing on information.”

There were a few moments of awkward silence, then Banks extended his hand. “I’ll see you both at your farewell party.”

Lisa took his hand. “You probably will, if you come. We have to be there.” She smiled. “I like you, Charlie.” She kissed his cheek.

Banks smiled awkwardly, then took Hollis’ hand and said, “The least free people in a free society are people like us who have a sworn duty to defend the constitution.”

“It’s one of the ironies,” Hollis agreed.

After Banks had left, Lisa commented, “He hit us with the carrot and tried to make us eat the stick.”

“He’s having a rough time of it.”

“Who isn’t these days?”

25

Sam Hollis gave his uniform a quick once-over, then strode into the large diplomatic reception hall.

The protocol of a farewell party didn’t require that he or Lisa stand in a receiving line, nor was there a head table, which suited him fine. Protocol did demand however, that, as a married man whose wife was temporarily out of town, he arrive without a woman. Lisa had gone on ahead, and he saw her across the room, talking to some people from her office.

The reception hall was an elegant, modern wing off the chancery building, with tall windows, walls of Carrara marble, and three large contemporary chandeliers of stainless steel hanging from the high ceiling. The floor was parquet, which for some reason the Russians equated with elegance, hence its choice for the hall.

Of the approximately three hundred men and women living in the compound, nearly all had been invited, and Hollis guessed that most of them had shown up. He would have been flattered by such a Saturday night turnout for him in London or Paris, but in Moscow you could get five hundred Westerners to a Tupperware party if you had music and food.

Hollis assumed that the staffers whose turn it was to use the Finnish dacha for the weekend had wisely done so. Missing also was most of the thirty-man Marine contingent. Some had duty, but the rest, Hollis figured, were in a nearby foreign-residents apartment house where they had somehow secured a suite of rooms that they called
Studiya 54
. Hollis understood it was mostly disco, drinking, and
devitski
, the latter being an infraction of the rules. But since the great sex-and-spy scandal, the Marine Corps had concluded that though their men were made of iron, their libidos were not. The
Studiya 54
gatherings were actually encouraged so as to keep the Marines and Russian women in one place. Unknown to any of them, but known to Hollis, four of the Marine guards were actually Marine counterintelligence officers. It struck him that the world was full of professional snoops, and it was sad that Americans didn’t even trust Americans anymore.

Hollis noticed that round tables had been placed along the walls, but most people were standing in groups, glasses in hand. There was a long buffet table against the far wall where a few people helped themselves. Early in his tour of duty, Hollis had been advised that if he went to an embassy reception where Russians were present, he should not stand near the buffet table when the food was uncovered, or he would be trampled.

Hollis glanced at his watch. The party had been in progress about an hour, and he figured everyone was three drinks ahead of him by now. He scanned the room to see where the bar had been set up and saw James Martindale, the protocol officer, making his way toward him.

“Hello, Sam.”

“Hello, Jim.” Hollis had a perverse liking for the man despite his inane job and decorous manner.

Martindale announced, “We have a nice turnout for you, Colonel.”

“I see that. I’m very flattered. I would have thought everyone would rather have seen the changing of the guard at Lenin’s tomb.”

Martindale seemed to miss the humor and continued, “You understand, I hope, that we did not invite any Soviet air force personnel with whom you’ve become acquainted, nor any other Soviet officials because of the circumstances under which you are leaving.”

Hollis thought that was self-evident. “You didn’t want to feed them, did you?”

“Also I did not send invitations to certain other embassies so as not to put them in an awkward position.”

“You’re a very sensitive man.”

“However, I did extend verbal and informal invitations to your friends and counterparts in the British, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand embassies.”

“We Anglo-Saxons have to stick together against the Slavic hordes.”

“Yes. And some other NATO military attachés will drop in to say good-bye.”

“You mean my spy friends from the rest of Christiandom? I hope you invited the Irish.”

“I did. It’s best to keep this sort of thing informal so as not to give the host country the impression that we are insulting them.”

“But we
are
, Jimbo. Do you think I’d have
any
party if I’d been kicked out of England or Botswana?”

“Well, from the strict standpoint of protocol—”

“Where’s the bar?”

“In the far corner there. Also I’ve invited the thirty or so American resident press people and their spouses as a courtesy. Most of them will stop by, but they are not to talk business.”

“Good thinking.”

“I explained to Ms. Rhodes all of what I’ve just told you, and she understands.”

“Was I supposed to wear sackcloth and ashes?”

“No, this is business dress.”

“May I go to the bar now?”

“I’d like to take this opportunity to extend to you my best wishes and my appreciation for the work you’ve done here.”

“Thank you. I—”

“This was the best I could do under the circumstances.” He waved his arm around the room.

“Look, I didn’t get caught buggering a militiaman. I just got caught spying. No big—”

“The ambassador and his wife will put in an appearance of course, but they should not be detained as they have another engagement.”