The Charm School (17 page)

Lisa nodded. “You hear and read about this, but you have to see it to believe it.”

Hollis pointed. “Do you see that rise over there? Beyond that is a pine forest in which is hidden a very sophisticated phased-array radar site that is the command center for all the Soviet antiballistic missile silos around Moscow. For the price of that installation, half the peasants in this region could be put in decent farmhouses with indoor plumbing and central heat. Guns or butter. Some societies can’t afford both.”

She nodded. “Half our national budget and sixty percent of theirs . . . incredible wealth sunk into missile silos.”

“The current optimistic theory in Washington is that we’re spending them to death.” He added, “Forget what I said about the location of that ABM site.”

She nodded distractedly.

They drove on in silence for some time before she spoke again. “In my work I meet Russians who understand the contradictions in their system. They like us, and they would like to build grain silos instead of missile silos. But the government has made them believe the missiles are necessary because we want to conquer them.”

“Well, they’re right. You make a distinction between the people and the government here. But I think people get the kind of government they deserve. In this case, probably better.”

“That’s not true, Sam. The Russians may not understand democracy, but in some curious way they are passionately devoted to
svoboda
—freedom.”

Hollis shrugged.

“I always thought that communism is an historical fluke here. It won’t make it to its hundredth birthday.”

Hollis replied dryly, “I’d hate to think what these people will come up with next.”

“Are you really so hard-line, or are you just giving me a hard time?”

“Neither. I’m just processing information. That’s what I was told to do here.”

“Sometimes I think I’m the only person in the embassy who is trying to find some good here, some hope. It’s so damned depressing being around cynics, hawks, oily diplomats, and paranoics.”

“Oh, I know. Look, if we’re going to be friends, let’s cool the politics.”

“Okay.”

Again they lapsed into silence. The sky had become gloomy again, and drops of rain streaked across the windshield. There was a sense of quiet oppressiveness in the air, a greyness that entered through the eyes and burrowed its way into the brain, heart, and soul. Lisa said, “Out here, on the plains, I think I understand that legendary Slavic melancholy.”

“Yes, but you ought to see the endless fields of giant sunflowers in the summer. They take your breath away.”

She looked at him. “Do they?” Lisa thought that statement told her more about Sam Hollis than Hollis had intended. “You’ll have to show me in the summer.”

“Okay.”

“I wish I had a camera.”

“I’ll stop at the next camera store.”

“Okay.” She looked at her watch. “Are we going to get to the morgue on time?”

“If it’s closed, someone will open it.” Hollis suddenly cut the wheel, and the Zhiguli angled off onto a dirt track, fishtailing and throwing up a cloud of dust.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” Hollis took the car around the far side of a
kochka,
one of the small knobby knolls that added small terrain relief to the plains that swept west from Moscow. He brought the Zhiguli to a halt out of sight of the road. Hollis reached back, opened the briefcase on the rear seat, and took out a pair of binoculars, then got out of the car. Lisa followed, and they climbed the grassy knoll to the top. Hollis knelt and pulled Lisa down beside him. He focused the binoculars down the long straight road and said, “I think we’re alone.”

Lisa replied, “In the States men say, ‘Do you want to go someplace where we can be alone?’ Here they say, ‘I think we’re alone’ or ‘I think we have company.’”

Hollis scanned the skies, then the surrounding fields. He stood and Lisa stood also. Hollis handed her the binoculars. “Take a look over there.”

She focused on the eastern horizon. “Moscow . . . I can see the spires of the Kremlin.”

Hollis stared out over the harvested farmland. “It was just about here.”

“What was?”

“This is about how far the German army got. It was this time of year. The German recon patrols reported what you just said. They could see the spires of the Kremlin through their field glasses.”

Lisa looked at him curiously.

Hollis seemed lost in thought for a time, then continued, “The Germans figured the war was over. They were this close. Then God, who probably didn’t care much for either army, tipped the scales toward the Reds. It snowed early, and it snowed heavy. The Germans were freezing, the panzers got stuck. The Red army got a breather, then attacked in the snow. Three and a half years later the Russians were in Berlin, and the world has not been the same since.”

Hollis turned and watched the sun sinking in the western sky. His back to Lisa, he said as if to himself, “Sometimes I try to understand this place and these people. Sometimes I admire what they’ve done, sometimes I’m contemptuous of what they can’t do. I think, though, that they’re more like us than we care to admit. The Russians think big, like we do, they have a frontier spirit, and they take pride in their accomplishments. They have a directness and openness of character unlike anything I’ve encountered in Europe or Asia, but much like I remember in America. They want to be first in everything, they want to be number one. However, there can only be one number one, and the next number is two.”

Hollis walked down the knoll and got into the car. Lisa followed and slid in beside him. Hollis pulled back onto the road and continued along the Minsk–Moscow highway. An occasional produce truck passed, going in the opposite direction toward Moscow. Hollis noted idly that the potatoes looked small and the cabbages were black. He saw no other vegetables, no poultry, livestock, or dairy products. He supposed that was worth a short report, though his discovery was already common knowledge to the housewives of Moscow.

Lisa glanced at Hollis from time to time. She would have liked to draw him out on what he’d said on the knoll, but she knew better. A man such as Hollis, she understood, was capable of occasional bursts of speech from the heart but did not want it to become dialogue. Instead she rolled down the window. “Smell that.”

“What?”

“The earth. You don’t smell that in Moscow.”

“No,” he replied, “you don’t.”

She looked out the window at the Russian countryside, listened to the stillness of the late autumn, smelled the dank, rich earth. “This is it, Sam. Russia. Not Moscow or Leningrad.
Russia.
Look at those white birches there. See the small leaves, all red, yellow, and gold. Watch what happens when a breeze comes along. See that? What could be more Russian than that—tiny colored birch leaves blowing across a grey sky, across a lonely landscape? It’s so desolate, it’s beautiful, Sam. The Kremlin can’t change this. It’s immutable, timeless. My God, this
is
it. This is
Russia
!”

Hollis glanced at her as she turned to him, and their eyes met. He looked back out the windshield and for the first time
felt
the presence of the land.

She said with growing excitement, “Look at the smoke curling out the chimneys in that village. The clouds are gathering in the late afternoon. The fires are lit against the dampness. Tea is brewing, potatoes and cabbage are boiling. Father is mending a fence or a plow in the drizzle. The black mud clings to his felt boots. He wants his tea and the warmth of his cabin. I can see horsemen, I can hear balalaikas, I see lonely birch log churches against the purple horizon. . . . I can hear their clear bells pealing over the quiet plains. . . .” She turned to him. “Sam, can’t we stop in a village?”

He replied softly, “I think you might be disappointed.”

“Please. We won’t have this opportunity again.”

“Maybe later . . . if there’s time. I promise.”

She smiled at him. “We’ll find time.”

They continued on in companionable silence, two people in a car, traveling west into the setting sun, cut off from the embassy, the city, the world, alone.

Hollis glanced at her from time to time, and they exchanged smiles. He decided he liked her because she knew what she liked. At length he said, “I give that kid credit. I hope he had the thrill of a lifetime.”

“What do you know about him? His family, home, how he died.”

Hollis told her what little he knew.

She said simply, “They murdered him.”

They drove past small villages, collective farms, and state farms. About halfway to Mozhaisk she asked, “Is this going to be dangerous?”

“Very.”

“Why me?”

“I had the impression you think this stinks. I thought you might want to follow through on your convictions.”

“I’m . . . not trained.”

“But you’re a spy groupie.” He smiled. “You thought East Berlin was exciting. This is a chance to mix it up a bit.”

“You’re baiting me, Colonel.” She poked him in the side good-naturedly. “You didn’t even know I was a spy groupie before you decided to ask me.”

“Good point. You see, you’re thinking like an intelligence officer already.” Hollis checked his watch, the odometer, and his rearview mirror.

She asked, “Hollis, are you one of those men who bait liberated women? I’m not one of those women who think that women can do everything a man can do.”

“This is neither a sociological experiment nor a personal matter, Ms. Rhodes. I think you can be helpful and you are good cover.”

“Okay.”

Hollis added, “And good company.”

“Thank you.”

The small Zhiguli was one of the few private cars on the highway, but Hollis knew it would attract far less attention than an American Ford with diplomatic plates. He knew too that he and Lisa could pass for Ivan and Irina out for a weekend drive. The embassy watchers, Boris, Igor, and company, sitting in their cars outside the embassy gates, had by now realized that Hollis had given them the slip again. They were probably very upset with him, and their bosses were very upset with them. Everyone was upset. Except Fisher. Fisher was dead.

She said, “I guess you can tell I’m not as sprightly and scintillating as I was at lunch.”

“Well, hearing of a death, even of someone you didn’t know, is upsetting.”

“Yes, that, and—”

“You’re a bit nervous.”

“That too—”

“And you’ve discovered I’m not as interesting as you first thought.”

“On the contrary. May I speak? I was going to say that I’m worried about this whole mess. I mean, I was sitting in my office last night, before Greg Fisher’s call, thinking that we’re getting it together with them again.
Glasnost
and all that. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“I said to myself, ‘Please, God, no more Afghanistans, no KAL airliners, no Nick Daniloffs this time.’”

“That’s like praying for an end to death and taxes.”

“But why does it always have to be
something
? This thing is going to ruin it all again, isn’t it? We’ll be kicking out each other’s diplomats and staff again, canceling cultural and scientific exchanges, and heading further down that fucking road to the missile silos. Won’t we?”

Hollis replied, “That’s not my area of concern.”

“It’s
everybody’s
area of concern, Sam. You live on this planet.”

“Sometimes. Once I was high above it, sixty thousand feet, and I’d look around and say, ‘Those people down there are
nuts.
’ Then I’d look into the heavens and ask, ‘What’s the big plan, God?’ Then I’d come in and release my bombs. Then I’d dodge missiles and MiGs and go home and have a beer. I didn’t get cynical or remorseful. I just got narrowed into my little problem of dropping my bombs and getting my beer. That’s the way it is today.”

“But you talked to God. You asked Him about the big plan.”

“He never answered.” Hollis added, “For your information, however, the word still seems to be détente. Think peace. Subject to change without notice.”

She pulled a pack of Kents from her bag. “Mind?”

“No.”

“Want one?”

“No. Crack the window.”

She lowered the window and lit up.

Hollis cut off the highway onto a farm road and continued at high speed, churning up gravel as the Zhiguli bounced along a narrow lane.

She asked, “Why did you leave the highway?”

Hollis referred to a sheet of paper in his hand and made a hard left onto another road, then a right. He said, “A Brit some years ago fortunately charted back routes to bypass a lot of major towns around Moscow. This route bypasses Mozhaisk. No road names, just landmarks. Look for a dead cow.”

She smiled despite her growing anxiety. She said, “You’re committing an itinerary violation.”

“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

“We’re going to Borodino, I suppose.”

“That’s correct.” Hollis continued to navigate the intersecting farm lanes. He passed an occasional truck or tractor and waved each time. He said to Lisa, “The damned linkage does stick, but the car handles alright. They’re Fiats, you know, and this one handles like its Italian cousin. Good trail cars.”

“Men. Cars. Football. Sex.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.”

They crossed the Byelorussian railroad tracks, and a short time later Hollis saw the utility poles of the old Minsk–Moscow road and the town of Mozhaisk in the distance. “Well, we got around Mozhaisk. I wonder if Boris and Igor are pacing up and down Main Street waiting for us.”

“Who are Boris and Igor?”

“Embassy watchers.”

“Oh.”

Hollis crossed the main road and continued on the farm roads. Within fifteen minutes he intersected the poplar-lined road to Borodino Field and turned onto it. Ahead he saw the stone columns and towering gates that led to the battlefield. The gates were closed, and as they drew near they could see the gates were chained.

Lisa said, “I think these outdoor exhibits and such close early this time of year.”

“That’s what I counted on.” Hollis swung the Zhiguli between two bare poplars and into the drainage ditch. He followed the ditch that skirted the gates, then cut back onto the road and proceeded toward the museum. “You’ve never been here?”