The Charm School (37 page)

PART III

The Russian is a delightful person till he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental, he is charming. It is only when he insists on being treated as the most easterly of western peoples instead of the most westerly of easterns that he becomes . . . difficult to handle.

—Rudyard Kipling

22

The background music on the tape deck in Alevy’s apartment was the Red Army Choir singing patriotic songs.

Hollis asked, “Could you change that?”

“Sure.” Alevy opened the door on the sideboard and stopped the tape. “Sometimes I play things they like to hear too.”

Hollis looked out the window toward a ten-story apartment building across the street. The top floor was where the KGB manned its electronic gadgets aimed at the embassy compound. He wondered just how much they saw and heard.

“Tina Turner or Prince?”

“Whatever turns you on, Seth.”

Alevy put the Prince tape on and hit the play button. “That should send them to their vodka bottles.” He turned to Hollis. “So to pick up where we left off, what are those three hundred American fliers doing in that prison to earn their keep? To keep from being shot?”

“Let’s back up a minute,” Hollis said. “If we know that American POWs are being held at that place, why isn’t our government doing something about it?”

Alevy poured brandy into his coffee. “We didn’t
know
until Friday night.”

“You people knew
something
before then.”

“What were we supposed to do about it? If the president made discreet inquiries or demands of the Soviet government, they would say, ‘What are you talking about? Are you trying to wreck the peace again?’ And you know what? They’re right. And if the president got angry and made a
public
accusation, he would have to recall our ambassador, kick their ambassador out, and cancel the summit and arms talks. And we still wouldn’t have a shred of evidence. And the world would be pissed off at us again. This guy they’ve got in the Kremlin gets good press, Sam. He says he wants to be our friend.”

Hollis observed, “Then he shouldn’t let his K-goons kill and harass Americans.”

“Interesting point,” Alevy conceded. “And that’s part of the complexity of the problem we face. This new guy has inherited three hundred American POWs. But it’s the
KGB
who runs that camp. How much has the KGB told him about the camp? How much have they told him about what
we
know about the Charm School? For that matter, we’re not telling our government much, are we, Sam? The KGB may be looking to hand the Kremlin an embarrassing and serious problem at the last possible moment. The KGB and the Soviet military have pulled that stunt before. They don’t want peace with the West.”

“Don’t your people sabotage peace initiatives?”

“Not too often.” Alevy gave a sinister laugh. “How about your folks at the Pentagon?”

Hollis replied, “No one’s hands are clean.”

“And you personally, Sam?”

“Peace with honor,” Hollis replied. “How about you? You’re no fan of the Soviets or of détente.”

Alevy shrugged. “I’m just giving you the party line. I do what they tell me. They tell me not to embarrass the Soviet government with revelations that they might be holding American citizens as prisoners.” Alevy sprawled on the couch. “So I don’t. Then Burov moves the camp or just shoots all those airmen.”

Hollis said, “That’s why we have to move fast, Seth.”

Alevy stared up at the ceiling. “Right. Those men would be dead right now, if it weren’t for Dodson. Dodson is living evidence, and Dodson is on the loose. So Burov has the Charm School and its population on hold. If Burov gets Dodson before we do . . . I keep waiting for Dodson to show up here.”

Hollis said, “I keep thinking about the thousand missing fliers and the three hundred we know are in the Charm School. I suppose there were more, but through attrition . . . natural causes, suicide, executions . . . Three hundred. I think it’s up to us, Seth, to save them. Screw the diplomats.”

Alevy regarded Hollis a moment, then spoke. “You know, Sam, in the two years I’ve been working with you, I never understood where you were coming from.”

“Good.”

“But now I’ve got a handle on you. You’re willing to break the rules on this one, risk your career, world peace, and your very life to get those fliers out. Cool Sam Hollis, Colonel Correct, is a wild jet jockey again, ready to bomb and strafe anything in his way.” Alevy smiled. “Yet everyone still thinks you’re a team player and I’m the rogue. They don’t know what I know about you. That could be useful. Welcome to my world, Sam Hollis.”

Hollis made no reply.

Alevy said, “Think of the downside of your goal. Let’s say we got those men out, through negotiations or otherwise. Christ, can you imagine three hundred middle-aged American POWs landing at Dulles airport on a flight from Moscow? Do you know what kind of public outrage that would produce?”

“Yes, if my outrage is any gauge of American public opinion.”

“Right. Scrap the summit, the arms talks, trade, travel, the Bolshoi, the works. We might have our honor intact, but I wouldn’t give odds on the peace.”

“What are you saying, Seth? Washington doesn’t want them home?”

“You figure it out.” Alevy got up and poured more coffee and brandy from the sideboard. He shut off the tape. “What do you want to hear?”

“In the last two years I’ve heard every piece of music written since 1685. I really don’t care anymore.”

“How about bagpipes? Listen to this. The Scots Highland Regiment. A limey at the U.K. embassy gave me this one. He says the Russians hate the sound of bagpipes.” Alevy put on the tape of pipes and drums, and the regiment swung into “The Campbells Are Comin’.”

Alevy said, “Let’s return to the question of
why
these fliers are still in Soviet hands. After they were wrung dry by the Red Air Force and GRU, why did the KGB come in and co-opt the place?”

Hollis sipped on his coffee. “Mental labor. A sort of think tank. A KGB think tank. An extension course of the Institute of Canadian and American Studies.”

“Something like that,” Alevy replied. “But a little more sinister.”

“Meaning?”

“We think those POWs are causing us damage, God forgive them. So our concern is not purely humanitarian. If it were, then you’d be correct in your cynical assumption that we’d just as soon let them rot in order to save détente. Fact is, Sam, our concern—my company’s concern—is very deep and has to do with urgent matters of national security.” Alevy walked toward Hollis and said, “To put it bluntly, we think that fucking prison camp is a training school for Soviet agents who talk, look, think, act, and maybe even fuck like Americans. Do you understand?”

Hollis nodded. “I know that. I’ve known that from the beginning. A finishing school, graduate school, charm school . . . whatever.”

“Right. If our theory is correct, a graduate of that place is indistinguishable from a man born and raised in the good old U.S. of A. When an agent leaves there, he has a South Boston accent like Major Dodson or maybe a South Carolina accent or a Whitefish, North Dakota, accent. He can tell you the name of Ralph Kramden’s wife and beat you at Trivial Pursuit. See?”

“Whitefish is in Montana, Seth.”

“Is it?”

“Who played shortstop for the 1956 Dodgers, Seth?”

Alevy smiled grimly. “Phil Rizzuto.” He waved his arm. “Anyway, I can’t be one of them.”

“Why not?”

“My company doesn’t let you in just because you talk the talk. They want to interview mothers, fathers, and high school teachers. Point is though, most private companies just want to see documentary evidence that you were born, educated, and so forth.” Alevy grinned. “But it was a good question. You’ll be asking it again.” Alevy added, “You’ve met a graduate of the Charm School.”

“The man in Fisher’s room. Schiller.”

“Yes. Was he perfect?”

“Chillingly so.” Hollis thought a moment. “So you think these . . . graduates of this school have entered American life, in America?”

“We believe so. They might not work for my company, but they could work for contractors we hire, and they could live next door to me in Bethesda or empty the trash in CIA headquarters. They could install my telephone and audit my taxes. They can go to computer schools or other technical schools and could most probably join the military.” He looked at Hollis. “Who
did
play shortstop for the 1956 Dodgers?”

“Howdy Doody.”

“Bang, you’re dead.” Alevy poured brandy into his empty coffee cup. “Want anything?”

Hollis could see that Alevy was fatigued, high on caffeine, and low on alcohol. Hollis went to the sideboard and poured the last of the coffee. He said, “So they quack like a duck, look like a duck, and even lay eggs like a duck. But they ain’t ducks.”

“No, they ain’t, Sam. They’s red foxes. In the chicken coop. Or if you prefer, Satan in the sanctuary.”

“How many do you think have graduated that place?”

“When the school was first started, there were probably more Americans—let’s call them instructors. The Charm School, as an offshoot of the Red Air Force school, has been in existence maybe twelve to fifteen years. The Charm School course would have to take at least a year. Probably a one-on-one situation. The little Red student assimilates the sum total of the American’s knowledge, personality, accent, and so forth.”

“The invasion of the body snatchers,” Hollis said.

“Precisely. So the school may once have had the capacity to graduate several hundred agents a year. But we assume some of the Russkies flunked out, and we assume some of the American instructors flunked in the ultimate sense, and also we don’t think the KGB undergraduate schools here in Moscow or in Leningrad could supply that many qualified students to the graduate school—that’s what we called it. But Major Dodson called it Mrs. Ivanova’s Charm School, and that’s from the horse’s mouth. I guess the Americans there call it that as a joke. We still don’t know what the Russians call it. Probably Spy School Five. Anyway, we can’t be sure all of the graduates were infiltrated into the States. So to answer your question, I would guess maybe fifteen hundred to two thousand. Maybe more.”

“You mean there may be as many as two thousand Russian agents in America posing as Americans?”

“Posing is not the word,” Alevy said. “They
are
Americans. The earlier graduates have been there nearly fifteen years. Long enough to have realized the American dream—with a little help from their friends. Long enough to have married and have kids in Little League. Long enough to be in positions to do real harm.”

“And none of them has been caught?”

Alevy shook his head. “Not that I know of. No one was even looking until recently. And what do we look for? Someone who drinks tea from a glass and writes his
k
’s backward?”

“Someone who is caught spying.”

“They probably don’t spy in the conventional sense. Their people are probably divided into several categories: sleeper agents, agents in place, agents of influence, and so forth. Their covers are perfect, and they never draw attention to themselves. Even if we nabbed one spying, we’d be hard-pressed to prove the guy was born and raised in Volgograd, as long as he stuck to his legend.”

“If you attached electrodes to his balls and jolted him until he spoke Russian, you’d know.”

“You know something? I don’t think the guy would speak Russian. And even if he exposed himself, what good would it do? He’s not part of a cell or a ring. He’s got to be on his own if this thing is going to work for them.”

“But he’s got to have a control officer, Seth. Someone in the Soviet embassy in D.C. or the UN delegation in New York or the consulate in San Francisco. What good is he if he’s really on his own? How does he deliver his work product? They’re not going to trust clandestine radios or drop sites.”

“No. He’s got to hand over his product and make oral reports. So he goes on foreign vacations like other Americans. Maybe he even takes one of these package tours to Moscow. As far as we can figure, all agent contact is made overseas.”

Hollis walked to a tall curio cabinet. The shelves contained small figurines in porcelain and bisque, eighteenth-century ladies in low-cut gowns and goldilocks curls, and gentlemen in knickers and wigs. They could be Frenchmen or Englishmen of the same period, Hollis thought, but there was something about them that was not quite right, not quite like the real thing you’d see in a London antique shop. Hollis opened the cabinet and took out a six-inch statuette of a man in riding livery. He said, “What is it, Seth? The Tartar influence? The Kazak influence? Why aren’t they exactly like us? I know they can look Scandinavian or Germanic, like Burov, but it’s something more than genetic. It’s a whole different soul and psyche, an ancestral memory; it’s the deep winter snow, and Mongols sweeping over the steppe, and always feeling like they’re inferior to the West and getting shafted by Europe and Cyrillic letters and Slavic fatalism and an off-brand Christianity and who the hell knows what else. But whatever it is, you can spot it, spot
them
, like an art expert can spot a forgery across the room.” He looked at the figure in his hand and threw it to Alevy. “You understand?”