The Charm School

1

“You are already staying in Smolensk two days, Mr. Fisher?” she asked.

Gregory Fisher was no longer confused or amused by the peculiar syntax and verb tenses of English as it was spoken in this part of the world. “Yes,” he replied, “I’ve been in Smolensk two days.”

“Why don’t I see you when you arrive?”

“You were out. So I saw the police — the militia.”

“Yes?” She leafed through his papers on her desk, a worried look on her face, then brightened. “Ah, yes. Good. You are staying here at Tsentralnaya Hotel.”

Fisher regarded the Intourist representative. She was about twenty-five years old, a few years older than he. Not too bad looking. But maybe he’d been on the road too long. “Yes, I stayed at the Tsentralnaya last night.”

She looked at his visa. “Tourism?”

“Right. Tourizm.”

She asked, “Occupation?”

Fisher had become impatient with these internal control measures. He felt as if he were making a major border crossing at each town in which he was obliged to stop. He said, “Ex-college student, currently unemployed.”

She nodded. “Yes? There is much unemployment in America. And homeless people.”

The Russians, Fisher had learned, were obsessed with America’s problems of unemployment, homeless people, crime, drugs, and race. “I’m voluntarily unemployed.”

“The Soviet constitution itself guarantees each citizen a job, a place to live, and a forty-hour work week. Your constitution does not guarantee this.”

Fisher thought of several responses but said only, “I’ll ask my congressman about that.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.” Fisher stood in the middle of the office with pale yellow walls.

The woman folded her hands and leaned forward. “You are enjoying your visit in Smolensk?”

“Super. Wish I could stay.”

She spread his travel itinerary over her desk, then energetically slapped a big red rubber stamp across the paperwork. “You visit our cultural park?”

“Shot a roll of film there.”

“Yes? Do you visit the Local History Museum on Lenin Street?”

Fisher didn’t want to push his credibility. “No. Missed that. Catch it on the way back.”

“Good.” She eyed him curiously for a few moments. Fisher thought she enjoyed the company. In fact, the whole Smolensk Intourist office had a somewhat forlorn look about it, like a Chamber of Commerce storefront in a small Midwestern town.

“We see not many Americans here.”

“Hard to believe.”

“Not many from the West. Buses from our Socialist brother countries.”

“I’ll spread the word around.”

“Yes?” She tapped her fingers on the desk, then said thoughtfully, “You may travel anywhere.”

“Excuse me?”

“An American is telling me this. Everyone is getting passport. Thirty bucks. Two, three, four weeks.”

“Could take longer. Can’t go to Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, few other places.”

She nodded absently. After a few moments she inquired, “You are interested in socialism?”

Fisher replied, “I am interested in Russia.”

“I am interested in your country.”

“Come on over.”

“Yes. Someday.” She looked down at a printed form and read, “You have the required first aid kit and tool kit in your automobile?”

“Sure do. Same ones I had in Minsk.”

“Good.” She continued, “You must stay on the designated highways. There are no authorized overnight stops between here and Moscow. Night driving in the countryside is forbidden for foreign tourists. You must be within the city of Moscow by nightfall.”

“I know.”

“When you reach Moscow, you must report directly to the Intourist representative at the Hotel Rossiya where you are staying. Before you do this, you may stop only for petrol and to ask directions of the militia.”

“And to use the tualet.”

“Well, yes of course.” She glanced at his itinerary. “You are authorized one small detour to Borodino.”

“Yes, I know.”

“But I would advise against that.”

“Why?”

“It is late in the day, Mr. Fisher. You will be hurrying to Moscow before dark. I would advise you already to stay in Smolensk tonight.”

“I am already checking out of my hotel. Yes?”

She didn’t seem to notice his parody of her English and said, “I can arrange for another room here. My job.” She smiled for the first time.

“Thank you. But I’m sure I can make Moscow before dark.”

She shrugged and pushed the paperwork toward him.

“Spasibo.” Fisher stuffed it in his shoulder satchel. “Da svedahnya,” Greg Fisher said with a wave.

“Drive safely,” she replied, adding, “Be cautious, Mr. Fisher.”

Fisher walked out into the cool air of Smolensk, considering that last cryptic remark. He took a deep breath and approached a crowd of people surrounding his car. He sidled through the throng. “Excuse me, folks….” He unlocked the door of his metallic blue Pontiac Trans Am, smiled, gave a V-sign, slipped inside the car, and closed the door. He started the engine and drove slowly through the parting crowd. “Da svedahnya, Smolenskers.”

He proceeded slowly through the center of Smolensk, referring to the map on the seat beside him. Within ten minutes he was back on the Minsk — Moscow highway, heading east toward the Soviet capitol. He saw farm vehicles, trucks, and buses but not a single automobile. It was a windy day, with grey clouds scudding past a weak sun.

Fisher saw that the farther east he drove, the more advanced the autumn became. In contrast to the bustling agricultural activity he’d seen in East Germany and Poland at the same latitudes, the wheat here had been harvested on both sides of the highway, and the occasional fruit orchards were bare.

Greg Fisher thought about things as the landscape rolled by. The restrictions and procedures were not only annoying, he concluded, but a little scary. Yet, he’d been treated well by the Soviet citizens he’d met. He’d written home on a postcard to his parents, “Ironically this is one of the last places where they still like Americans.” And he rather liked them and liked how his car literally stopped traffic and turned heads wherever he went.

The Trans Am had Connecticut plates, had cast aluminum wheels, a rear deck spoiler, and custom pin-striping; the quintessential American muscle car, and he thought that nothing like it had ever been seen on the road to Moscow.

From the backseat of the car came the aroma of fruits and vegetables given him by villagers and peasants wherever he’d stopped. He in turn had given out felt-tip pens, American calendars, disposable razors, and other small luxuries he’d been advised to bring. Greg Fisher felt like an ambassador of goodwill, and he was having a marvelous time.

A stone kilometer post informed him that he was 290 K from Moscow. He looked at the digital dashboard clock: 2:16 P.M.

In his rearview mirror he saw a Red Army convoy gaining on him. The lead vehicle, a dull green staff car, pulled up to his bumper. “Hey,” Fisher mumbled, “that’s called tailgating.”

The car flashed its headlights, but Fisher could see no place to pull off the two-lane road bordered by a drainage ditch. Fisher speeded up. The 5-liter, V-8 engine had tuned-port fuel injection, but the local fuel didn’t seem to agree with it, and the engine knocked and backfired. “Damn it.”

The staff car was still on his tail. Fisher looked at his speedometer, which showed 110 kph, twenty over the limit.

Suddenly the staff car swung out and pulled alongside him. The driver sounded his horn. The rear window lowered, and an officer in gold braid stared at him. Fisher managed a grin as he eased off the gas pedal. The long convoy of trucks, troop carriers, and cars passed him, soldiers waving and giving him the traditional Red Army “Ooo-rah!”

The convoy disappeared ahead, and Greg Fisher drew a breath. “What the hell am I doing here?” That was what his parents wanted to know. They’d given him the car and the vacation as a graduation gift after completing his MBA at Yale. He’d had the car shipped to Le Havre and spent the summer touring Western Europe. Heading into the East Bloc had been his own idea. Unfortunately the visa and auto permits had taken longer than expected, and like Napoleon and Hitler before him, he reflected, his Russian incursion was running about a month too late into the bad season.

The landscape, Fisher noticed, had a well-deserved reputation for being monotonous and infinite. And the sky seemed to be a reflection of the terrain: grey and rolling, an unbroken expanse of monotony for the last eight days. He could swear the weather changed from sunshine to gloom at the Polish border.

The excitement of being a tourist in the Soviet Union, he decided, had little to do with the land (dull), the people (drab), or the climate (awful). The excitement derived from being where relatively few Westerners went, from being in a country that didn’t encourage tourism, where xenophobia was a deep-rooted condition of the national psyche; a nation that was a police state. The ultimate vacation: a dangerous place.

Gregory Fisher turned on his car radio but couldn’t find the Voice of America or the BBC, both of which seemed to come in only at night. He listened for a while to a man talking in a stentorian voice to the accompaniment of martial music, and he could pick out the words “Amerikanets” and “agressiya” being repeated. He snapped off the radio.

The highway had become wider and smoother as he left Tumanovo, but there were no other indications that he was approaching the great metropolis of Moscow. In fact, he thought, there was a singular lack of any visible commercial activity that one would associate with the twentieth century. “I’m having a Big Mac attack.”

He put a Russian language tape in the deck, listened, and repeated, “Ya-plo-kho-syebya-choo. I feel ill. Na-shto-zhaloo-yetyes? What’s the matter with you?”

Fisher listened to the tape as the Trans Am rolled along the blacktop highway. In the fields women gleaned grain left by the reapers.

Ahead he saw the silhouette of a village that was not on his map. He’d seen villages such as this one strung along the highway, and he’d also seen clusters of more modern buildings set back at the end of wide lanes, which he took to be state farms. But no solitary farmhouses. And the villages weren’t exactly picture-postcard quality.

In contrast, throughout Western Europe, every village had been a delight, each turn in the road revealed a new vista of pastoral loveliness. Or so it seemed now. In some superficial ways, he realized, rural Russia was not unlike rural America; there was little that was quaint or historical in either heartland, no castles or chateaux, few messages from the past. What he saw here was a functional if inefficient agribusiness, whose headquarters was in Moscow. “I don’t like this,” he said.

Fisher was in the village now. It consisted mostly of log cabins, izbas, whose doors, window frames, and flower boxes were all of the same blue. “People’s Paint Factory Number Three is overfilling quota on blue paint number two. Yes?” The entire village stretched along both sides of the highway for a half kilometer or so, like some elongated Kozy Kabin motel in the Adirondacks. He saw a few elderly people and children digging root vegetables from their kitchen gardens in the small fenced-in front yards. An old man was forcing mortar into the chinks between two logs of an izba while a group of children were gleefully terrorizing a flock of chickens.

Everyone stopped, turned, and watched as the metallic blue Trans Am rolled by. Fisher gave a cursory wave and began accelerating as soon as he passed the last cabin. He glanced over his right shoulder and saw a glimpse of the sun hanging lower on the southwest horizon.

Some half hour later he turned off the highway onto a smaller parallel route that had once been the principal western road out of Moscow. In a few minutes he found himself on the outskirts of Mozhaisk, 128 kilometers from Moscow, and he slowed to the urban speed limit. His Intourist guidebook informed him this was a thirteenth-century town of old Muscovy, but there weren’t any signs of antiquity evident in the plain concrete and wooden buildings. His map showed a monastery somewhere in the area, and he saw the spire of the Cathedral of St. Nicholas, but he didn’t have the time or the inclination to sightsee. There was a flip side to being an American in a Pontiac Trans Am in deepest, darkest Russia. There were limits to the amount of attention one could comfortably take.

He continued through Mozhaisk, affecting a nonchalance behind the wheel, avoiding the stare of the State motor policeman directing traffic through the only major intersection.

Finally, with the town behind him, he saw what he was looking for, a petrol station, the petrol station, on the eastern end of Mozhaisk, marked by a picture of a pump. He pulled onto the immaculate, white concrete and stopped beside a yellow pump. A man in clean blue overalls sat in a chair outside a white concrete-block building reading a book. The man peered over the book. Fisher got out of the car and approached him. “How’s business?” Fisher handed him Intourist coupons for thirty-five liters of 93-octane. “Okay?”

The man nodded. “Oo-kay.”

Fisher went back to his car and began pumping gas. The man followed and looked over his shoulder at the meter. Fisher did not wonder why all petrol stations were self-service if the attendant stood there watching you. Fisher had stopped wondering about such things. He hit thirty-five liters, but the tank wasn’t full, so he squeezed in another four liters before he put the hose back. The attendant was peering inside the Pontiac now and didn’t seem to notice.

Fisher got into his car, started the big engine, and raced the motor. He lowered the electric windows and handed the attendant a packet of postcards from New York City. “Everyone is being homeless there. Yes?”

The attendant flipped slowly through the cards. Fisher put a Bruce Springsteen tape in the deck, popped the clutch, and left six feet of rubber on the white concrete. He made a tight, hard U-turn and accelerated up the road. “Surreal. Really.”

He rolled up the windows and lost himself in the music.

Fisher pressed on the gas pedal until he was well past the speed limit. “Haven’t seen a traffic cop in the last thousand miles. They never heard of radar here.”

He thought about the Rossiya Hotel in Moscow. That would be his first decent accommodation since Warsaw. “I need a steak and scotch whiskey.” He wondered what he was going to do with the fruits and vegetables in the rear seat.

Another thought popped into his mind. “Avoid sexual entanglements.” That was what the embassy man in Bonn had told him when he’d gone there to pick up his Soviet visa, and so far he’d avoided it, though not by much in Warsaw. Still, he had fifteen pairs of panty hose and a dozen tubes of lip gloss. “We’ll see what shakes out at the Rossiya.”

Fisher kept looking for a sign directing him back to the main highway. “The sun has riz, and the sun has set, and here we is in Roosha yet.”

Greg Fisher pulled off to the side of the deserted road. A stone kilometer post read 108 K, and an arrow pointed back to the main highway via a one-lane road with crumbling blacktop. An arrow to the left pointed toward a rising road in better condition. The sign was in Cyrillic, but he could make out the word “Borodino.” He looked at his dashboard clock: 4:38. Impulsively he accelerated, swinging onto the Borodino road, heading west into the setting sun.

He didn’t know what he expected to see at Borodino, but something told him it was a not-to-be-missed opportunity. In June he had stood on the beach at Normandy and had been moved by what had happened there. Similarly, he thought, he would like to see the place where Napoleon and Kutuzov had faced off, where fifty years later Leo Tolstoy had stood and pondered his epic, War and Peace. Fisher thought perhaps he owed the Russians at least that before he entered Moscow.

The road curved gently and rose gradually. Poplars flanked either side, and Fisher found it pleasant. He drove slowly through a set of stone pillars with open iron gates. The road crested a small hill, and he saw spread before him Borodino Field, where Napoleon’s Grande Armée met the Russian army led by Field Marshal Kutuzov. The road led down to a small parking area beyond which was a white limestone building with a red-tiled roof and a neoclassical portico. On either side of the portico were wings in which were set arched French windows. Two old, muzzle-loading cannons flanked the entranceway. This building, Fisher knew from his Intourist booklet, was the Borodino museum. He rummaged through his tapes and found Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.” He slid in the tape, turned up the volume, and got out of the car, leaving the door open. The overture reverberated over the quiet battlefield, and a flock of wild geese took to the air.

Fisher mounted the steps of the museum and tried the doors, but they were locked. “Typical.” He turned and looked out at the grass-covered fields and hillocks where a quarter-million French and Russian soldiers met on a September day in 1812, the French intent on taking Moscow, the Russians on defending it. For fifteen hours, according to his guidebook, the two sides fired at each other, and in the evening the Russians withdrew toward Moscow, and the French were in possession of Borodino Field and the little village of the same name. A hundred thousand men lay dead and wounded.

In the distance Fisher saw the memorial to the French soldiers and officers who fought there in 1812, and further away was a newer monument dedicated to the Russian defenders who tried to stop the Germans in this same place in 1941. Fisher noted there was no monument to the Germans.

Greg Fisher was suddenly overcome by a sense of history and tragedy as he gazed out over the now peaceful fields, deathly still in the autumn dusk. The cold east wind blew tiny birch leaves over the granite steps where he stood, and the cannon of Tchaikovsky’s overture boomed over the quiet countryside. “Russia,” he said softly to himself. “Rodina—the motherland. Bleeding Russia. But you made them all bleed too. You gave them death in seven-digit numbers.”

Fisher walked slowly back to his car. It was much colder now, and a chill passed through his body. He shut the door and turned the tape lower as he drove slowly on the lanes, past the black granite obelisk honoring Kutuzov, past the common grave of the Soviet Guardsmen who fell in action in 1941, past the monument dedicated to the Grande Armée of 1812, and past the dozens of smaller markers dedicated to the Russian regiments of both 1812 and 1941. In the deepening dusk Fisher fancied he could hear the muted sounds of battle and the cries of men. I’m too hard on them, he decided. They got shafted bad. Screwed by the West once too often.

He had lost track of time, and it had become noticeably darker. He tried to retrace his route through the low hills and clusters of birch trees, but he realized he was lost.

Fisher found himself going upgrade in a towering pine forest and reluctantly continued on the narrow, paved lane, looking for a wide place to turn around. He put on his headlights, but they revealed only walls of dark green pine on either side. “Oh, Christ Almighty….”

Suddenly the head beams illuminated a large wooden sign attached to a tree, and Fisher stopped the car. He stared out the windshield at the Cyrillic lettering and was able to make out the familiar word STOP. The rest of the sign was incomprehensible except for the also familiar CCCP. Government property. But what wasn’t these days? “Do I need this?” He thought he detected a quaver in his voice, so he said more forcibly, “I don’t need this crap. Right?”

As he sat considering what to do next, he noticed what appeared to be a small opening in the trees off the right shoulder. The opening lay beyond the sign, and he didn’t want to pass the sign with the car, so he took a flashlight from under his seat and got out. He walked the ten meters to the opening. It was a graveled patch, not five meters square, but obviously meant as a turnaround, a means of allowing the unwary motorist to obey the sign. “Russian efficiency.” He kicked at the crushed stone and decided it would be all right. He turned back toward his car, then froze.

Over the hum of the engine he heard branches rustling. He remained motionless and breathed through his nose, noticing the resinous scent of the trees. The air was cold and damp, and he shivered in his windbreaker. He heard it again, the brushing of pine boughs, closer this time. The headlights attracted a deer, he thought. Right. He took a step toward his car. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked — an unfriendly bark, he decided.

The glare of his headlights blinded him, and he shielded his eyes as he walked in long strides the ten meters back toward his car; one, two, three, four, five—

“Russian efficiency,” said a voice a few feet to his right.

Fisher felt his knees go weak.

2

Lisa Rhodes noted it was five o’clock, and she poured a shot of bourbon into her paper Coke cup. She walked to the window of her office in the Press Attaché’s section of the American embassy. The seventh-floor windows faced west and looked over the Moskva River. Across the river rose the Ukraina Hotel, a twenty-nine-story structure of bombastic Stalinist architecture that fronted on the Taras Shevchenko Embankment.

The district that was contained within the loop across the Moskva had been one of the poorer quarters of nineteenth-century Moscow. Extensive razing and building under the Soviets had transformed it into a cleaner if less interesting place. In the two years since she’d been in Moscow, she’d seen not only wooden structures demolished, but magnificent stone mansions and churches destroyed. The government seemed to consult no one regarding these matters. Somewhere, she assumed, was a master plan for changing the face of Moscow, but the citizens who lived in the city had never been asked their opinion. “What a screwed-up social contract they’ve got here,” she said aloud.

Spanning the river below was the Kalinin Bridge, connecting into Kutuzov Prospect, which ran west alongside the Ukraina Hotel and continued on, becoming the Minsk — Moscow highway. She followed the road with her eyes until it disappeared into the pale sinking sun over the flat horizon. “Russia….” An immense and inhospitable expanse, more suitable for wild horsemen and ruminants, an unlikely place to find a powerful empire of Europeans and their cities. Certainly, she thought, the most frozen empire that ever existed; a civilization whose roots seemed tenuously sunk into the thin soil like the fragile white birch.

The internal phone rang. She turned from the window and answered it. “Rhodes.”

“Hello,” the male voice said. “Today is the first day of Sukkot.”

“Is that so?”

“I’ve been invited to a party in Sadovniki. Religious dissidents. You might enjoy it.”

“I’m D.O. tonight.”

“I’ll get you switched.”

“No… no, thanks, Seth.”

“Is it completely and finally over?”

“I think so.”

“Will you take a polygraph on that?”

“I have to finish a press release now.”

“Well, at least you won’t be able to get in trouble tonight. Think about it, Lisa.”

She didn’t know if Seth Alevy meant about them or the party. She replied, “Sure will.”

“Good night.”

She hung up, slipped off her shoes, and put her feet on the desk. Holding the bourbon in her lap, she lit a cigarette and contemplated the acoustical-tile ceiling. The new American embassy, she reflected, sitting on ten acres of bad bog land about equidistant between the Moskova River and the old embassy on Tchaikovsky Street, had been more than a decade in the building. The work had been done mostly by a West German firm under subcontract to an American concern in New York. If the Soviet government was insulted by this snub to socialist labor and building expertise, they never expressed it verbally. Instead they’d indulged themselves in petty harassments and bureaucratic delays of monumental proportions, which was one of the reasons the project had taken about five times as long as it should have.

The other reason was that each slab of precast concrete that the Soviets had supplied to the building site had been implanted with listening devices. After the bugging scandal broke, there followed the Marine guards’ sexual scandals at the old embassy, and the subsequent charges and counter-charges between Moscow and Washington. The American diplomatic mission to the Soviet Union had been in a shambles for over a year, and the whole mess had been making front-page news back in the States. The image of the Secretary of State conducting business in a trailer out on Tchaikovsky Street was rather embarrassing, she thought.

According to Seth Alevy’s sources, the Russians had a big laugh over the whole thing. And according to her own personal observations, the American diplomats in Moscow felt like fools and had for some time avoided social contact with other embassies.

Eventually, a little belated Yankee ingenuity and a lot of Yankee dollars had put things right in the new embassy. But Lisa Rhodes knew there was a good deal of residual bitterness left among the American staff, and it influenced their decision-making. In fact, she thought, whatever goodwill there had been between the embassy people and their Soviet hosts was gone, replaced by almost open warfare. The State Department was now seriously considering making a clean sweep of the entire staff, replacing the two hundred or so able and experienced men and women with less angry diplomats. She hoped not. She wanted to continue her tour of duty here.

Lisa Rhodes shook the ice in her drink. She closed her eyes and exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke at the ceiling.

She thought of Seth Alevy. Being involved with the CIA station chief in Moscow was not the worst thing for her career. He could pull strings to keep her in Moscow even if State ordered her home. And she did love him. Or once loved him. She wasn’t sure. But somehow, being involved with him meant being involved with his world, and she didn’t like that. It wasn’t what she wanted to do with her career or her life. It was also dangerous. Being in Moscow was dangerous enough by itself.

3

“Russian efficiency,” said the voice again.

Greg Fisher did not turn, did not breathe.

“American?”

Fisher found himself nodding in the dark.

“I’m over here.”

Fisher turned slowly toward the voice. He could make out the figure of a man standing among the pine boughs on the far side of the road. The man was tall, heavily built, and wore matching dark clothing that looked like a uniform.

The man stepped onto the road, and Fisher saw in his right hand the glint of steel. A gun. Fisher took a step back.

The man spoke as he walked. “Name’s Dodson. Yours?”

“Fisher.” He cleared his throat. “Gregory. American.” Fisher thought that if he had a serial number he’d give him that too. “Who are you?”

“Keep it down.” The man stopped a few feet from Fisher.

Fisher swallowed and inquired, “Tourist?”

The man smiled without humor. “Resident.”

“Oh.”

“Are you lost, Fisher?”

“Very.”

“Alone?”

Fisher hesitated, then replied, “Yes….” He saw now that the steel was not a gun but a knife. The man was about fifty years old with short, dark hair and eyes that glinted like the steel in his hand. There was something — blood, maybe — smeared on his chin.

Dodson said, “You might just be a graduate student.”

“I am. Was. Yale. Business school.”

Dodson smiled again. “No. I mean…” He regarded the Pontiac Trans Am, its engine running and its headlights on. “No… I think you’re the real thing.”

Fisher was confused, but he nodded. He took a deep breath and looked cautiously at the man. It was not a uniform but a blue warm-up suit with red piping. The man wore running shoes. Unreal, he thought.

Dodson slipped the knife into a scabbard beneath his waistband, then pointed at the Trans Am. “You drive that from Yale?”

“Yeah. Sort of. From Le Havre.”

“Amazing.”

“Yeah. Well, I have to get going. Not supposed to be driving after dark. Hey, nice meeting you.” Fisher glanced at his car but didn’t move toward it.

A dog barked again, and Dodson motioned Fisher toward the car. Dodson got in the passenger side and closed the door quietly. Fisher got behind the wheel. Dodson said, “I have to put some distance between me and this place.”

“What place?”

“I’ll tell you later. Turn it around. Kill the lights.”

“Right.” Fisher pulled the Trans Am up into the turnaround, backed out, and headed down the narrow road.

“Cut the engine and coast.”

Fisher glanced at his passenger, then put the transmission in neutral and shut off the engine. The car rolled down the slope he’d come up. “Hard to see the road.”

“Where are you heading, Greg?”

“Moscow.”

“Me, too.”

“Oh… well, I guess I can drop you off….” Fisher felt his head beginning to swim. “I mean—”

“Where are we?”

“Russia.”

“Yes, I know. How far are we from Moscow?”

“Oh, about a hundred kilometers.”

Dodson nodded to himself. “Closer than we thought.”

Fisher considered the big man sitting beside him. Resident. How far are we from Moscow? You might just be a graduate student. Clearly the man was nuts. Fisher said tentatively, “Someone after you?”

“Depends if they know I’m gone yet.”

“Oh.” Fisher stared out the windshield. “Getting harder to see.”

“Peripheral vision is better at night. Try it.”

“Yeah?” Fisher moved his eyes slightly and found that indeed he could see better. “Learn something every day.”

“Yes. Escape and evasion,” Dodson said. “They teach you that course at Yale?”

“No.” The road began to wind, and Fisher found himself gripping the wheel, tugging it left and right to try to make it respond without the power steering.

Dodson picked up a handful of maps and brochures from the console between them. “Can I borrow some of these?”

“Sure. Help yourself. Take them all.”

Dodson opened the glove compartment and sorted though the maps by the dim light. “Where are we in relation to Moscow?”

“West. A little north. We’re near Borodino. That’s where I got a little lost.”

“Borodino. The battlefield.”

“Right. I have to try to find the Minsk — Moscow highway. This road isn’t even on the map.”

Dodson nodded. “No, it wouldn’t be.”

Occasionally branches brushed either side of the Pontiac, and Fisher jerked the wheel the opposite way. The car went off the road to the right, and he felt the two tires sink into the sandy shoulder. The car slowed and he tugged at the wheel until he got the tires back on the blacktop and continued down the gradual slope.

Fisher turned his head slightly toward Dodson. As he tried to sort out the dark images in his peripheral vision, he focused now and then on his passenger. He saw the man running his fingers over the dashboard, then touching the rich leather on the side panels — like he’d never sat in an American car before, Fisher thought. Like a Russian.

They sat in silence as the car continued down the ridge line. The pine trees thinned toward the base of the slope, and Fisher was able to see better.

The night had become very still, he noticed, and bright twinkling stars shone down between scattered clouds. He hadn’t been in the Russian countryside at night, and the deep, dark quiet surprised him. Spooky.

Through an opening in the trees, he saw the rolling fields below. The moon broke through a cloud and revealed a dozen polished obelisks standing like shimmering sentries over the dead. “Borodino.”

Dodson nodded.

Fisher thought he saw something in his rearview mirror. Dodson noticed and looked back through the rear window.

Fisher ventured, “Someone following us?”

“I don’t see anything.” He added, “They’re searching on foot, because they think I’m on foot.”

“Right.”

“I wish you hadn’t left that tire mark in the sand, however.”

“Sorry.” Fisher thought a moment, then added, “This mother can outrun anything in the USSR.” He smiled in spite of himself.

Dodson smiled in return.

Fisher found the car slowing as the slope flattened. He said, “Who’s after you? What did you do?”

“Long story.”

Fisher nodded. “Fucked-up country.”

“Amen.” Dodson studied an Intourist highway map, then slipped it into his side pocket. “You have a city map of Moscow?”

“Under your seat.”

Dodson found the folded map and opened it.

Fisher said, “It’s all in Russian. You know Russian?”

“Hardly a word. Everything was in English. That was rule number one.”

Fisher began to ask something, then thought better of it.

Dodson studied the map. “I did read in American newspapers that there was a new American Embassy somewhere near the Moskva River, but the articles weren’t too specific. I don’t see it here.”

“It’s near the Kalinin Bridge. You want to go there?”

“Ultimately.”

“Okay… we have to cross that bridge on my way to the Rossiya.”

“That’s where you’re staying?”

“Right. I can drop you off at the embassy.”

“I wouldn’t get past the Soviet militia at the gates.”

“Why not?”

“No passport,” said Dodson. He looked at Fisher a moment, then said, “Let me see your passport.”

Fisher hesitated, then drew his passport from the inside pocket of his windbreaker.

Dodson took it, studied it and the visa stapled to it by the light of the glove compartment, then handed it back.

They were nearly out of the pine forest now. Ahead lay copses of bare birch, a few lonely poplars, and the fields of Borodino. A hundred meters beyond the base of the ridge, the Pontiac came to a gradual halt. Fisher looked at Dodson, waiting for instructions.

Dodson said, “If they catch us together, they’ll shoot you.”

Fisher felt his mouth go dry.

“Or worse, they’ll send you to where I just escaped from. So we’re going to part company here. I’m going cross-country to Moscow. You’re going to find the highway and drive there. You’re going to the embassy. I’m going to figure out what to do when I get to Moscow. I may try to contact you at the Rossiya. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“I may try to contact the embassy by phone. I need all the rubles and kopeks you’ve got on you.”

Fisher took out his wallet and removed the one-, five-, and ten-ruble notes. “About a hundred and fifty.”

Dodson took the notes.

Fisher found seventy-five kopeks in his pocket and handed them over.

“Can’t promise I’ll pay you back.”

Fisher shrugged. Fisher didn’t care if he never saw the money or Dodson again. Especially if it meant getting shot. He thought he should have listened to the Intourist lady and stayed in Smolensk.

Dodson glanced back in the rear of the car. “You going to open a farm stand?”

“Huh…? Oh, no. Gifts. You can take what you need.”

“You have candy? Packaged food?”

“Candy in the plastic bag back there. Some peanuts. Snacks.”

Dodson leaned back and retrieved the bag with the name and address of a West Berlin Konditorei stamped on it. “Last outpost of junk food, right, kid?”

Fisher forced a smile. “Right.”

“Okay, listen to me, Greg Fisher. I am going to tell you something, and you are going to listen like you never listened to a prof at Yale. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“My name is Major Jack Dodson. I am an American Air Force officer.”

Fisher nodded. “Air Force.”

“I am — I was — a POW. I was shot down over North Vietnam in 1973.”

Fisher looked at Dodson. “Jesus… you’re an MIA!”

“Not anymore, kid. Listen. I have been held here in Mrs. Ivanova’s Charm School since 1974—”

“Where?”

“That’s what we call it. Don’t interrupt. I am going to give you some important details. You will get to the embassy before I reach Moscow. I may never reach Moscow. But you will. You will ask to speak to a defense attaché, preferably the Air Force attaché. Got that? Attaché.”

“Yes. Attaché.”

Dodson studied Fisher for a long moment, then said softly, “I don’t know what fate brought us together on this lonely road, Greg Fisher, but I think it was God’s will.”

Fisher simply nodded.

“I am going to tell you a very strange story now. About the Charm School.” Dodson spoke and Fisher listened without interruption. Fifteen minutes later Dodson said, “You make sure they understand you and believe you. There are a lot of men whose lives depend on you as of this moment, Mr. Fisher.”

Fisher stared through the windshield with unfocused eyes.

“Are you a patriot, Mr. Fisher?”

“I guess… I mean in the last few weeks…”

“I understand. You’ll do what you have to do.”

“Yes.”

Dodson reached out and took Fisher’s hand, which was limp and wet. “Good luck, and as we used to say on the flight line, God speed.” Dodson opened the door and left quickly.

Fisher sat motionless for a few seconds, then looked out the passenger side window. Major Dodson was gone.

Gregory Fisher felt very alone. In a moment of crystal clarity, he completely grasped the meaning and the consequences of the secret that had just been revealed to him, and an awful fear suddenly gripped him, a fear unlike any he had ever known in his short, sheltered life. “This one’s for real.”

Gregory Fisher got his bearings from the Kutuzov obelisk shining in the moonlight. He found the lane flanked by the monuments to the Russian regiments, then spotted the white limestone museum, and within a minute he was on the poplar-lined road heading toward the iron gates.

Approaching the gates, he saw they were now closed. “Oh, for Christ’s sake—” He hit the accelerator, and the Trans Am smacked the gates, flinging them open with a metallic ring that brought him out of his trancelike state. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

Fisher pressed harder on the accelerator as he negotiated a series of shallow S-turns. Coming out of a long turn, he saw the old Moscow road dead ahead. He cut sharply left onto it with squealing tires.

Fisher snapped on his headlights and saw the signpost he’d passed earlier. He made a hard right into the farm lane that led back to the main Minsk — Moscow highway. “Should have taken this road the first time. Right? Did I need to see Borodino? No. Saw War and Peace once…. Read War and Peace too… that’s all I needed to know about Borodino….”

His chest pounded as the Pontiac bumped over the potholed pavement. He could see lights from distant farm buildings across the flat, harvested fields. He had an acute sense of being where he wasn’t supposed to be, when he wasn’t supposed to be there. And he knew it would be some time before he was where he was supposed to be: in his room at the Rossiya — and longer still before he was where he wanted to be: in Connecticut. “I knew it.” He slapped his hand hard on the steering wheel. “I knew this fucking country would be trouble!” In fact, despite his nonchalance of the last eight hundred miles, he had felt tense since he’d crossed the border. Now a neon sign flashed in his head: NIGHTMARE. NIGHTMARE.

The straight farm road seemed to go on forever before his headlights picked out a string of utility poles, and within minutes he was at the intersection of the main highway. “Okay… back where we started.” He turned quickly onto the highway and headed east toward Moscow.

He saw no headlights coming at him and none in his rear mirror, but he still had to resist the urge to floor it. As he drove he realized there were towns and villages ahead, and if there were police in any of them, he would be stopped and questioned.

Greg Fisher concocted several stories to tell the police, but as plausible as they might sound to him, it didn’t after the fact that the police — either here or in Connecticut — believed nothing you told them.

The clouds had returned, he noticed, and the night was deep and black with no sign of human habitation on this vast and fabled Russian plain. He had the feeling he was moving through a void, and as the time passed, the sensory deprivation began to work on his mind. He tried to convince himself that what had just happened to him had not happened. But by the time he reached Akulovo, he was left with nothing but the truth. “Jesus Christ… what am I supposed to do?”

Unwilling to think about it any longer, he popped a tape in the deck and tried to immerse himself in the sound of an old Janis Joplin album. She sang “Bobby McGee” in that deep, husky voice that turned him on. He wondered what she had looked like.

When Fisher’s mind returned to the road again, he saw a strange, haunting shimmer of light sitting on the black horizon. For some seconds he stared at it, confused and anxious. Suddenly he looked at his clock and odometer, then back at the glow. “Moscow!”

The Trans Am rolled eastward, and Greg Fisher kept his eyes on the distant lights. Ahead the road dipped beneath a highway bridge, and he knew this was the Outer Ring Road, the unofficial city limits. The road widened to four lanes as it passed beneath the Ring Road. He saw a farm truck coming toward him, its poultry cages empty. Then a bus heading out of the city went by, and he could see by its bright interior lights that it was filled with darkly clad peasants, mostly old women with head scarves.

Still he saw no signs of urban life along the highway, no suburbs, no streetlights, no signs, only fields of cut grain as though each square meter of earth had to produce something until the moment it was excavated for construction.

Roads began branching off to the left and right, and in the far distance he could see rows of stark prefab apartment houses, some lighted, some under construction. The previous night in his hotel room in Smolensk, he had spent an hour studying his Moscow map for this approach into the city.

To his right in the far distance the land rose, and he knew these were the Lenin Hills. Atop the rise was a massive skyscraper with an ornate spire — Moscow State University, where he had intended to check out the coeds. But his plans had turned indefinite.

Straight ahead up the highway he could see the Triumphal Arch commemorating the Battle of Borodino, and beyond the arch were solid blocks of buildings, like a medieval city, Fisher thought, rural to urban just like that. No Glenwoods subdivisions here.

The highway passed to the right of the Triumphal Arch, and the Minsk — Moscow highway became Kutuzov Prospect, named after the general of Borodino. Suddenly there were streetlights and vehicles.

He did not see a sign that said, “Welcome to Moscow,” but that was where he was. With the luck of the damned he had made it, had driven through the countryside after dark in a flashy American car without being stopped. He felt somewhat calmer now that he was mingling into the traffic of Moscow. “So much for the vaunted efficiency of the police state.” He noticed that other drivers were pulling close to him to look at his car. “Go away,” he muttered.

He drove slowly through Victory Square. To his left was a huge statue of Kutuzov on horseback, and behind that a circular building housing another Borodino museum. “Moscow branch,” he muttered. Fisher felt an unpleasant association with his side trip to Borodino Field. “Goddamned museums… statues… victories… wars…” The Prospect was flanked by solid walls of grey masonry buildings. Fisher pulled up to his first stoplight. People in the crosswalk were looking at his car and license plate, then at him. “Jesus, you people never see a car with Connecticut plates before?”

Fisher savored the sights and sounds. “Moscow! I’m in Moscow!” He grinned. All the towns and villages from Brest on had been mere hors d’oeuvres. This was the pièce de résistance. The Capital, the Center, as the Russians called it. He stared at the buildings and the people, trying to absorb every detail, making himself understand that he was actually in the streets of Moscow. “Moskva.”

The light changed, and Fisher moved forward. The road forked, but he knew to take the left fork. Ahead he saw the spire of the Ukraina Hotel, another Stalinist wedding cake that looked much like the Moscow university building. He passed beside the massive hotel and found himself on the Kalinin Bridge that spanned the Moskva River. On the far bank, off to the left, he could see a modern high-rise building of dark red brick, and he was fairly certain that was the American embassy compound. “Thank you, God.”

Fisher came off the bridge into a confusing interchange. He was looking for a turnoff that would double him back toward the embassy near the river when a green and white police car pulled up beside him. The policeman in the passenger seat motioned him to pull over. Fisher decided he didn’t see him. The policeman shouted, “Stoi!”

Fisher considered making a run for the embassy. Fastest car in the Soviet Union. But a chase through central Moscow was probably not a good idea. He was past the interchange now and was on the busy Kalinin Prospect.

“Stoi!”

“Up your stoi, bozo.” Fisher took a deep breath, cut the wheel, and pulled over to the curb. His knees were so weak and shaky he had trouble applying the brakes.

The police car pulled up behind him, and both men, dressed in green overcoats and fur hats, approached. They carried white billy clubs. One came to his window, and Fisher lowered it.

“Amerikanets?”

“Right. Da.”

“Viza. Pasport.”

Gregory Fisher controlled his shaking hands as he produced his visa and passport.

The policeman studied the documents, looking alternately between Fisher and the papers again and again until Fisher thought the man was a half-wit. The other man was walking around the car, touching it. He seemed intrigued by the rear spoiler.

No one said anything for a long time. Suddenly a man in civilian clothing appeared. He stared at Fisher through the windshield, then came to the driver’s side. He spoke in heavily accented but correct English. “The car documents, please. Your international driver’s license, your insurance papers, your motoring itinerary.”

“Right. Da.” Fisher handed the man a large envelope.

The civilian studied the paperwork for some time, then snapped his fingers, and one of the policemen quickly handed him Fisher’s passport and visa. The civilian said to Fisher, “Turn off your ignition, give me your keys, and step out of the car.”

Fisher did as he was told. As he stood in front of the man he noticed that he was tall and very slender for a Russian. In fact, he was fair and Nordic-looking.

The man studied Fisher’s face, then his passport and visa pictures just as the uniformed man had done. Finally he said, “You come from Smolensk?”

“Connecticut.”

“You just arrived in Moscow from Smolensk?”

“Oh, yes.”

“You were driving in the country at night.”

“No.”

“But you said you just arrived in Moscow. It has been dark for two hours.”

“I didn’t say I just—”

“You were seen coming past the Arch.”

“Oh… is that the city limit?”

“What is your business in this quarter of the city?”

“Tourism.”

“Yes? Have you gone to your hotel yet?”

“No. I thought I’d just drive around—”

“Please don’t lie. That makes it worse. You were driving in the country at night.”

“Yes.” Fisher looked closely at the man. He was about forty, wore a leather coat and a black fur hat, probably sable. He seemed neither friendly nor hostile, just inquisitive. Fisher knew the type. “Well, I got a late start from Smolensk.”

“Did you?” The man looked at Fisher’s travel itinerary. “Yet it says here you left the Intourist office at thirteen-fifty — one-fifty P.M.”

“I got lost.”

“Where?”

“At Bor — at Mozhaisk.”

The man stared at Fisher, and Fisher stared back. Fuck you, Boris.

“I don’t understand.”

“Lost. You know.”

“What did you see in Mozhaisk?”

“The cathedral.”

“Where did you get lost?” The man added in a sarcastic tone, “Inside the cathedral?”

Fisher’s fear gave way to annoyance. “Lost means you don’t know where.”

The man suddenly smiled. “Yes. Lost means that.” The man seemed to be thinking. “So. That is what you say?”

Fisher stayed silent. He might not have the right to remain so, he thought, but he had enough brains not to incriminate himself any further.

The man regarded Greg Fisher for an uncomfortably long time, then motioned Fisher to follow him. They went to the rear of the car, and the man unlocked Fisher’s trunk and opened it. The trunk light revealed Fisher’s cache of spare parts, lubricants, and cleaning supplies. The man picked up a can of Rain Dance car wax, examined it, then put it back.

Fisher noticed that the citizens of Moscow slowed imperceptibly but did not stop and did not stare — the only time in the last thousand miles that the Pontiac did not stop traffic. Greg Fisher suddenly comprehended the full meaning of the words “police state.”

He noticed that the two uniformed men were bent over into the rear seat of his car, examining his luggage and burlap bags of fruit and vegetables.

“What does this mean?”

Fisher turned back to the civilian. “What?” Fisher saw he was pointing to the nameplate on the car. “Pontiac,” Fisher said.

“Yes?”

“Name of the company”—shithead—“General Motors. I think it’s an Indian word or something. Right. Chief Pontiac.”

The man didn’t seem enlightened. He stared at Fisher’s nationality plate, a red, white, and blue shield with stars and stripes that Fisher had been required to purchase at Brest. The man snapped his finger against the American shield, almost, Fisher thought, as though he intended to be insulting. He then pointed to the front fender. “Trans Am?”

“Trans — across. Am — America.”

“Across America.”

“Right.”

“Across Russia.” The man smiled again, and Fisher noticed it wasn’t a pleasant smile. The man came around to the driver’s side and put his hand on the seat. “Leather?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Oh… about eighteen thousand dollars.”

“Seventy — eighty thousand rubles.”

Fisher noticed the man had given the black market rate of exchange instead of the official rate. Fisher replied, “No. Fifteen thousand.”

The man smirked, then asked, “Are you a capitalist?”

“Oh, no. I’m an ex-student. I took a course in Soviet economics once. Read Marx and a book called The Red Executive. Very enlightening.”

“Marx?”

“Karl. And Lenin. I’m very interested in the Soviet Union.”

“For what reason?”

“Oh, just to know about the Soviet people. World’s first socialist state. Fascinating. Did you ever see Reds? Warren Beatty—”

The man turned away and joined the two policemen who were now standing on the sidewalk. They spoke for about five minutes, then the tall civilian returned. “You have broken a law: driving in the country at night. It is very serious, for a foreigner.”

Fisher said nothing.

The man continued, “You should have stopped in a town along the highway if you were lost.”

“You’re absolutely right.”

“I suggest you go now directly to the Rossiya and stay there for the evening. You may be asked to give a full accounting of yourself tomorrow, or perhaps tonight.”

“Okay.” And here, in an ironic twist, Fisher realized, they didn’t cuff or frisk you after charging you with a serious offense; they simply had no previous experience with armed or dangerous citizens. Nor did they arrest you on the spot, because the whole country was a sort of detention camp anyway; they simply sent you to your room. The arrest was at their convenience. “Right. The Rossiya.”

The man handed Fisher his papers and his keys. “Welcome to Moscow, Mr. Fisher.”

“Real glad to be here.”

The man walked away, and Fisher watched him descend into a Metro station. The two policemen got into their car without a word. They remained parked, watching Fisher.

Greg Fisher shut his trunk and his right side door, then climbed behind the wheel and started the engine. He noticed a crowd forming now. “Sheep.” He replayed the incident in his mind and decided he’d done all right. “Schmucks.” He threw the car in gear and pulled out into traffic. The police car followed.

“Assholes.” He was trembling so badly now he wanted to pull over but continued up Kalinin Prospect. The police car stayed with him, so the embassy was out of the question for the time being.

Fisher barely noticed his surroundings as he drove. When he did, he realized he had crossed the Inner Ring Road and was heading straight for the Kremlin. He recalled from the map what he was supposed to do and turned hard right onto Marx Prospect, went down to the embankment road, and cut left. On his right was the Moskva, to his left the high crenellated south wall of the Kremlin, punctuated by tall watchtowers. The Moskva reflected the glow of the red stars of the Kremlin’s towers and churches, and Fisher stared, mesmerized by a sight of unexpected beauty. He felt that he had come to the end of his uneasy journey.

The embankment road curved to the right, and the Kremlin wall ended at a massive watchtower. Behind him he could still see the headlights of the police car in his rearview mirror. Ahead, he saw an arched underpass beneath the ramp of a Moskva River bridge. Rising up beyond the ramp was the Rossiya Hotel. It was a massive, modern building with a glass and aluminum facade, and its width made its ten stories look squat. Fisher noticed that most of the windows were dark. He drove under the ramp and pulled around to the east side as his Intourist instructions said. In front of the east entrance was a small parking area bordered on three sides by a low stone wall. He came to a stop fifty feet from the front doors and looked around. There were no cars in the lot. The front of the Rossiya was stark. To the left of the entrance doors was another door that led to a Beriozka shop, found in nearly all Soviet hotels where Westerners with Western currency could buy Russian goods and occasionally Western toiletries and sundries. The Beriozka was closed.

Fisher noticed that the parking lot hung out over a steep incline that ran down to the Moskva River. The hotel was a monstrosity, surrounded by small, old buildings and a half dozen tiny churches in bad repair.

Fisher looked in his rearview mirror. On the entrance drive behind him he saw the police car parked. Fisher pulled up to the front doors of the hotel and shut off the engine.

He saw a green-uniformed doorman standing inside the glassed-in outer foyer of the hotel. The man studied the Trans Am but made no move to open the door. Fisher got out of the car with his shoulder satchel. He had discovered that in a Soviet hotel a doorman’s job was not to help people in, but to keep Soviet citizens out, especially, but not limited to, black marketeers, prostitutes, dissidents, and the curious who might want to see how people on the West side of the tracks lived. Fisher opened the door himself and approached the doorman. “Allo.”

“Allo.”

Fisher motioned toward his car. “Bagazh. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He handed the doorman his car keys. “Garazh. Okay?”

The doorman looked at him quizzically.

It occurred to Fisher that there was probably not a parking garage in the whole of Moscow. Fisher was tired, scared, and annoyed. “Sweet Jesus….” He realized he didn’t have a ruble on him. He reached into his satchel and grabbed an item he’d been saving. “Here.” He held up an eight-inch copper reproduction of the Statue of Liberty, complete with pedestal.

The doorman’s eyes darted around, then he took it and examined it suspiciously. “Religiozni?”

“No, no. It’s the Statue of Liberty. Svoboda. For you. Podarok. Take care of the auto. Okay?”

The doorman shoved the statue into the pocket of his tunic. “Okay.”

Fisher pushed through the swinging glass door and entered the lobby, which seemed deserted and, like most public places, overheated. The Russians equated heat with luxury, Fisher suspected. He looked around. The lobby was mostly grey stone and aluminum. A mezzanine ran from end to end above the pillared lobby. There was no bar, no newsstand, no shops, no services in evidence. There was nothing in fact to suggest he was in a hotel except for a sort of ticket window in the left-hand wall that he assumed was the front desk. He walked to it, and a disinterested young woman looked up. He gave her his Intourist reservation, his passport and visa. She examined the passport a moment, then without a word disappeared through a door behind the desk.

Fisher said aloud to himself, “Welcome to the Rossiya, Mr. Fisher. How long will you be staying with us?… Oh, until the KGB comes for me…. Very good, sir.”

Fisher turned and looked down the long, narrow lobby. There were no bellhops or hotel staff in view except the doorman sitting in the glass-enclosed foyer. He could see his car, and parked right behind it was the police car.

The place not only looked deserted, but spooky. “This is not a hotel.”

Fisher now noticed a couple near a far pillar arguing in French, which echoed through the lobby. They were well dressed and both were good-looking. The woman seemed on the verge of tears. The man gave a very Gallic wave of dismissal and turned his back on her.

“Oh,” Fisher said, “give the woman a break. You should have my problems, buddy.” Fisher recalled Paris as he’d last seen it in June and wondered why he’d ever left. Napoleon probably wondered the same thing as Moscow burned around him and the snow was falling. He might have stood right here, Fisher thought, a hundred yards from the Kremlin wall, Red Square to his back and the Moskva to his front. And he would have felt that sense of doom that the Westerner feels when he enters this foreboding land, like I feel now.

He noticed that someone had moved his car, but he didn’t see his bags being brought in, and that bothered him. He thought about where his car might be. Probably at KGB headquarters, being stripped to its frame. The police car was also gone.

Fisher needed a drink. He looked at his watch: 8:30 P.M. Someone behind him said, “Gree-gory Feesher.”

He turned back to the desk. A middle-aged woman with short red hair, black roots, and a polyester pantsuit of aquamarine said, “I am from Intourist. I may see your papers?”

Fisher handed her the large envelope. She went through each paper carefully, then looked at him. “Why are you late?”

Fisher had rarely been asked that question in that tone by anyone, and he felt his anger rising in him again. He snapped, “Late for what?”

“We were worried about you.”

“Well, nothing to worry about now, is there? May I go to my room?”

“Of course. You must be tired.” She added, “It has been some time since I met an American who traveled by auto from the West. The young are so adventurous.”

“And stupid.”

“Perhaps.” She handed him his papers minus his passport and visa, then gave him a green hotel card. “This is your propusk. Carry this always with you. Your passport and visa will be returned when you check out. You must produce the propusk when anyone in authority asks for it.”

“Maybe I should just tape it to my forehead.”

She seemed to appreciate the joke and smiled. She leaned across the counter and said softly, “You have been here long enough to know that it is not easy for a Westerner traveling without a tour group, Mr. Fisher. Don’t call attention to yourself.”

Fisher didn’t respond.

“Avoid barter, currency deals, prostitutes, political talk, and itinerary violations. I give you good advice because you seem a pleasant young man.”

Fisher thought he’d been anything but pleasant. “Thank you. I’ll be good.”

She stared at him awhile, and Fisher had the disturbing thought that she knew he was already in trouble and was worried about him. He suddenly liked her. He asked, “Where is my luggage?”

“It will be along.”

“Shortly?”

“Presently.”

He thought it was being searched by now. He asked, “Will they park my car safely?”

“Of course. Who could steal an American car?”

Fisher smiled. “Couldn’t get too far.”

A bellhop suddenly appeared who Fisher thought looked like Genghis Khan’s nephew. He motioned Fisher to follow him to the elevator bank. They waited nearly five minutes before an elevator came. Fisher rode up with the Tartar to the seventh floor. The elevator doors opened to reveal a small vestibule where a pretty young woman sat at a desk. In Paris or Rome, Fisher would have been pleasantly surprised to find a floor concierge in attendance. But in Moscow, Fisher knew this woman was the floor’s dezhurnaya, a guardian of public morals, and according to a Pole he’d met in Warsaw, also a KGB snoop.

The blond woman looked up from a copy of Cosmopolitan. “Allo. Your propusk, please.”

Fisher gave it to her. She handed him his room key. “Give me key when you leave. I give you propusk.”

“Sounds fair.”

The bellman pointed down the hall, and Fisher found himself leading the way. At a turn in the corridor Fisher saw his room, 745, and opened the door with his key. He went in, followed by the bellman. Fisher said, “Your room, sir.”

“Please?”

“Forget it.” Fisher looked around. It was a medium-sized room decorated in stark Scandinavian blondewood. The two single beds were undersized, and the mattress would be thin foam rubber, and the sheets, coarse cotton. The rug was brick-red, but that didn’t hide the fact that it needed a shampoo. He doubted, however, that such a thing existed east of Berlin. Oh, the things we take for granted. The rest of the room looked clean enough except for the window. He had not seen a single clean window in the whole of the Soviet Union. “Windex. I’ll sell them Windex.” A smell of pine disinfectant reminded him of his side trip to Borodino.

The bellman said, “Good room.” He tried a lamp switch and seemed surprised that it worked. “Good light.”

“Excellent fucking light. Volts, watts, lumens, the works.”

The bellman ducked into the bathroom for a second, opened the closet, pulled out a few bureau drawers, then held out his arms as if to say, “It’s all yours.”

Fisher sighed and rummaged through his satchel, finding a small sampler of Aramis cologne. “This drives the women wild.”

The Tartar took it and sniffed. “Ah.” The man beamed, his slanted eyes narrowing. “Thank you.” He turned and left.

Fisher examined the door. As in all other rooms he’d stayed in east of the curtain, this door had no peephole, no bolt, or security chain. He walked to the bed, fell back onto it, and kicked off his Reeboks. He stared at the ceiling awhile, then sat up and looked at the telephone. The hotel service directory was a single sheet of typed paper. He dialed a three-digit number, got room service, and ordered a bottle of vodka. “First thing that went right all day.”

He considered the events of the last few hours. He had managed to suppress his fear in front of the police and to act natural and a bit cocky as he checked in. But his resolve was draining away fast in the quiet, empty room. He began to shake, then bounded out of bed and paced the room. What if they come for me now? Maybe I should try to get to the embassy now. But that bastard said to stay in the hotel. They’re watching me. Can they know what happened at Borodino?

He stopped pacing. “This is not a business problem. This is life or death.” He realized he had to calm down before he could think. Don’t think about getting arrested or shot. Then you can go through the bullshit of problem solving.

He walked to the window and looked out through the grime. From his corner room he could see toward Red Square. The Kremlin was to the left, and he could look down into it. St. Basil’s ten phantasmal onion domes seemed to hang suspended like giant helium balloons above the dark cobbled pavement, and beyond them lay the huge GUM department store. The streets looked deserted, the buildings were dark, but the monuments were bathed in floodlight. A night fog, like a vapor, rolled off the Moskva and swirled around the streetlights, rolled over the Kremlin walls, and seemed to turn covers, as if it were looking for something. There was a sinister essence about this city, Fisher decided. Something unnatural about its cold, dead streets.

There was a loud rap on the door, and Fisher turned with a start. Another knock. Fisher took a breath, went to the door, and threw it open. A matronly woman stood there with an ice bucket from which protruded a liter of Moskovskaya. Fisher showed her in, gave her a tube of toothpaste, and showed her out.

His hand shook as he poured a half tumbler of the chilled vodka. He drank it down, and it made his eyes water. He refilled his glass and continued pacing. The next knock will be my luggage or the KGB. “The fucking K—” He stopped. He’d heard and believed that every room was bugged. He’d read somewhere that some rooms had a fiber optic embedded in the wall or ceiling and everything in the room could be seen. He put his glass on the nightstand, turned off the light, put on his shoes, and took his shoulder satchel. He went into the bathroom, flushed the toilet, and shut the light. As the toilet was still flushing, he left the bathroom and slipped quietly out of his room into the hallway. He looked both ways, then retraced his path and found the elevator lobby. The dezhurnaya’s face was hidden by the copy of Cosmopolitan. She didn’t seem to know he was there or didn’t care. Fisher read the string of subheads on the cover: Beating the Man Shortage! Cosmo Finds the Best Place to Meet Them; The Shy Girl — How She Can Compete; Why Friends Make the Best Lovers; The Joy of Resuming an Old Romance.

Fisher put his keys on her desk. She looked up. “Allo, Mr. Fisher.” She gave him his propusk.

He pushed the elevator button and prepared for a long wait. The vodka finally reached his brain. He said to the woman, “Good magazine?”

“Yes. Very sexy.”

“Right.”

“American women have too much.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

She tapped the magazine. “They have so many problems with men.”

“Cosmo women have more problems than most.”

“Ah.”

Fisher hesitated, then took a tube of lip gloss from his satchel. It was a frosted pink and seemed to match her coloring.

She smiled as she examined it. “Thank you.” She took a compact mirror from her bag and went to work immediately.

Fisher noticed it wasn’t really her color, but she didn’t seem to care. He liked the way she puckered her lips. The elevator came, and he stepped in. Two Russian men who smelled of salami stood quietly behind him. Fisher felt perspiration under his arms.

Fisher stepped out into the lobby and felt somewhat better in a public place. He found the foreign exchange window, but it was closed. He went to the front desk and asked the clerk if she would cash an Intourist voucher for five rubles. She said she wouldn’t. Fisher asked for the Intourist woman and was told she was gone.

He looked around. All he needed was a lousy two-kopek piece. For want of a nail… “Damn it.” He saw that the French couple was still there, and he approached them. “Pardon, monsieur, madame. J’ai besoin de… deux kopeks. Pour le téléphone.”

The man gave him an unfriendly look. The woman smiled nicely and searched through her bag. “Voilà.”

“Merci, madame. Merci.” Fisher moved off and found a single telephone booth in a short corridor that led to the Beriozka. He went inside, pulled the door closed, and took his Fodor guide from his satchel. Fisher found the number of the American embassy, inserted the two-kopek piece, and dialed.

Gregory Fisher listened to the short, distant ringing signals, very unlike the ones he was used to at home. He cleared his throat several times and said “hello” twice to try his voice. The blood was pounding in his ears. He kept his eyes on the corridor. The phone continued to ring.

4

Lisa Rhodes sat at the night duty officer’s desk on the first floor of the chancery building. The wall clock showed 8:45. The phone had been quiet all evening. This was not an embassy that was likely to be surrounded by angry mobs or blown up by a terrorist. Nor was Moscow a city where the police called to inform you they had a dozen of your compatriots in the drunk tank. She lit a cigarette as she crossed out a line of the press release she was working on.

The door opened, and Kay Hoffman, Lisa’s boss, stuck her head into the small office. “Hello. Anything exciting happening?”

“Yes, but it’s happening in Rome. Hello, Kay. Come on in.”

Kay Hoffman entered the office and sat on the windowsill air register. “Ah, that feels good on my buns. Cold out there.”

Lisa smiled and regarded Kay Hoffman a moment. She was a woman near fifty with thick chestnut hair and large brown eyes. She could be described as pleasantly plump or perhaps full-figured. In any case, men seemed to like her lustiness and easy manner.

Lisa said, “I can’t offer you a drink.”

“That’s all right. I thought I’d drop in on the Friday night follies.”

Lisa nodded. The Friday night cocktail reception, given by the ambassador, was a sort of TGIF affair, except that the weekends were worse than the weekdays. Traditionally all visiting Americans in Moscow were invited to the reception, and in the days when you could count the Americans on two hands, they were contacted individually. Now, with increased trade and tourism, it was sort of an open invitation that you had to know about. The embassy staff seemed to enjoy seeing new faces, and the visiting Americans were usually thrilled to be there. Sort of like sitting at the captain’s table, Lisa thought.

Kay said, “Come with me. Call the guard post and tell them where you’ll be.”

“No, thanks, Kay.”

“Sometimes there are interesting men there. That’s why I go. You’re young and good-looking, Lisa. You attract them, and I’ll pounce on them.”

Lisa smiled.

“Last week,” Key continued, “I met a single man who was in Moscow to see about exporting Armenian cognac to the States. He comes in about once a month. Stays at the Trade Center Hotel, so he must have money and connections.”

“Was he nice?”

“Yes. Very.” Kay grinned.

Lisa forced a smile in return. “I’m not up to it tonight.”

Kay shrugged. She said, “What are you working on?”

“Oh, that rock group, Van Halen, who played at the Kolonnyi Zal.”

“How were they?”

“I got a headache from them. But you’d have thought by the crowd that John Lennon had returned from the dead with free Levis for everyone.”

“Write something nice.”

“I’m trying.” Lisa went back to her work.

“What happened with that political affairs officer? Seth Alevy.”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“All right.” Kay looked at her watch. “I can make the last half hour. Then I’ll be downstairs in the bowling alley bar. Unless I get lucky.”

Lisa smiled. “Maybe I’ll see you later.”

“You need a man, sweetie.” Kay Hoffman left.

A few minutes later, the phone rang, and Lisa saw the red light flashing, indicating that the Marine post was calling her. She picked up the receiver. “Rhodes here.”

“This is Corporal Hines, ma’am. I have a call from a man who says he is a U.S. national. Says he wants to speak to a defense attaché.”

Her eyebrows rose. “A defense attaché. Why?”

“Won’t say. Sounds like a young guy. Won’t say where he’s calling from either.”

“Put him through.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The phone clicked, and she heard Corporal Hines say, “Go ahead, sir.”

A male voice said, “Hello…?”

“This is Ms. Rhodes speaking. Can I help you?”

There was no response for several seconds, then the voice said, “I have to speak to a defense attaché. Air Force, if possible.”

“For what reason, sir?”

“It’s important. National security.”

She checked the recording device to make sure it was activated. “Then perhaps it’s not a good idea to speak on the phone.”

“I know that. But I don’t have any choice. I have to tell you now — before they come for me.”

“Who is going to come for you?”

“You know who.”

“All right….” She thought a moment. There was a possibility this was a setup or a prank, but her instincts said it was neither. “What is your name, sir?”

“Why can’t I speak to a defense attaché?”

“Do you know what a defense attaché is?”

“No… but I was told to speak to one.”

“Who told you that?”

“Is your phone tapped?”

“You must assume it is.”

“Oh, Christ. Can you send someone to get me? I need help.”

“Where are you?”

“Maybe I can get there. Can I get through the gate?”

Lisa Rhodes thought he was sounding more distraught and perhaps a bit drunk. “Listen to me,” she said with a tone of authority. “Talk to me, and if I think it advisable, I will locate a defense attaché. All right?”

“Yes… yes, okay.”

She found the duty officer’s procedure manual in a drawer and flipped through it as she spoke. “Are you an American citizen?”

“Yes, I—”

“What is your name?”

There was a pause, then the voice answered, “Fisher. Gregory Fisher.”

“Where are you now?”

“The Rossiya Hotel.”

“Are you checked in there?”

“Yes.”

“Did they take your passport when you checked in?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you can’t get past the mili-men — the Soviet militia outside the embassy — without it.”

“Oh.”

“Room number?”

“Seven forty-five. But I’m not in my room.”

“Where are you?”

“In a phone booth in the lobby.”

“What is your business in the S.U.?”

“S.U….?”

“Soviet Union.”

“Oh… no business—”

“Tourist?”

“Yes.”

“When did you arrive in country, Mr. Fisher?”

“Last week.”

“What tour group are you with?”

“Group? No group. I drove—”

“You drove to Moscow?”

“Yes, my own car. That was part of the damned problem.”

“What was?”

“The car. A Trans Am sticks out—”

“Yes. All right, tell me briefly why you need help and why you would like to speak to a defense attaché.”

She heard what sounded like a sigh, then he said softly, “In case you can’t get here in time… I’m going to tell you all I can… before they get me.”

Lisa Rhodes thought that Gregory Fisher had a good grasp of the situation. She said, “Then you’d better speak quickly.”

“Okay. I was in Borodino, about five P.M. tonight — visiting the battlefield. I got lost in the woods—”

“Were you stopped by the police?”

“No. Yes, but in Moscow.”

“Why?”

“For driving in the country at night.”

She thought that this wasn’t computing. A travel itinerary violation was one thing. Asking to speak to a defense attaché—a person who was more or less an intelligence officer, a spy — was quite another. “Go on, Mr. Fisher.”

“On the road, north of Borodino, I think, I met a man, an American—”

“An American?”

“Yes. He said he was an American Air Force pilot—”

“And he was on the road, north of Borodino, at night? Alone? In a car?”

“Alone. On foot. He was hurt. Listen, I don’t know how much time I have—”

“Go on.”

“His name was Major Jack Dodson.”

“Dodson.” Lisa had thought that it might have been a defense attaché at the embassy, but the name was unfamiliar.

“Dodson said he was an MIA — a POW — shot down in Vietnam—”

“What?” She sat up in her chair. “He told you that?”

“Yes. And he said he had been a prisoner here in Russia for almost twenty years. A place he called Mrs. Ivanova’s Charm School. Near Borodino. He escaped. I gave him maps and money. He didn’t want us to travel together in my car. He’s heading cross-country to Moscow. To the embassy. There are other Americans held prisoner who—”

“Stop. Hold the line.” She hit the hold button. In the duty book she quickly found the apartment number of the air attaché, Colonel Sam Hollis, whom she knew casually. She rang him, but there was no answer. “Damn it, and Seth is at his damned Sukkot party….” She considered putting out an all-points page for Hollis but instead tried Hollis’ office two floors above. The phone was picked up on the first ring, and a voice answered, “Hollis.”

She said in a controlled voice, “Colonel Hollis, this is Lisa Rhodes on the duty desk.”

“Yes?”

“I have a U.S. national on the line, calling from the Rossiya. He sounds very distraught. He also says he wants to speak to a defense attaché, preferably an Air Force attaché.”

“Why?”

“I’ll play the tape for you.”

“Go ahead.”

Lisa Rhodes transferred the playback to Hollis’ line. When it was finished, Hollis said, “Put him through.”

She put the phone on conference call and released the hold button. “Mr. Fisher? Are you there?”

There was no answer.

“Mr. Fisher?”

“Yes…. There’s someone standing—”

“Here is the gentleman with whom you asked to speak.”

Hollis’ voice came on the line. “Mr. Fisher, you say you are calling from the lobby of the Rossiya?”

“Yes. I’m—”

“Is the lobby crowded?”

“No. Why?”

“Who is standing by the phone booth?”

“A man. Listen, should I try to get to the embassy—”

“No, sir. You stay there. Do not leave that hotel. Do not go back to your room. There is a restaurant on the top floor. Go to the lounge there and introduce yourself to some Westerners — English-speaking, if possible — and stay with them until I arrive. Is that clear?”

“Yes… yes.”

“What are you wearing?”

“Blue jeans… black windbreaker—”

“Okay, son. Get to the lounge quickly. If anyone tries to stop you, kick, scream, yell, and fight. Understand?”

“Yes… yes, I…” Fisher’s voice sounded strained. “Oh… God… hurry.”

Hollis’ tone was soothing. “Ten minutes, Greg. Get to the lounge.”

Lisa heard the phone click as Fisher hung up. Hollis’ voice came on. “Ms. Rhodes, I need a car—”

“I’ve already called for one, Colonel. With driver.”

“I’ll be bringing Mr. Fisher here. Have a visitor’s room ready in the residency and alert the appropriate security people.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stay in the duty office.”

“Of course.”

There was a silence, then Hollis said, “Nicely handled, Ms. Rhodes.”

She heard him hang up before she could respond. Lisa Rhodes put the phone back in the cradle. “You, too, Colonel Hollis.”

5

Colonel Sam Hollis, American air attaché to the Soviet Union, left his office and took the elevator to the ground floor of the chancery building. He went directly to the duty office adjacent the empty lobby and opened the door.

Lisa Rhodes turned toward him. “Yes?”

“Hollis.”

“Oh….” She stood. “I didn’t recognize you in civvies.”

“Have we met?”

“A few times.” She regarded him a moment. He was wearing a leather bomber jacket, jeans, and leather boots. He was in his late forties, tall, and lanky. She thought he was rather good-looking in a tough sort of way. She remembered his pale blue eyes and unmilitary-length sandy hair. She also remembered that he and Seth had business dealings.

Hollis said, “I don’t want you to breathe a word of this to anyone.”

“I know that.”

“Good. There is someone however… do you know Seth Alevy? Political affairs officer.”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Alevy is attending a party in town—”

“I know that.”

“How do you know that?”

“He invited me.”

“I see. So you know how to reach him?”

“Yes, through his people here.”

“That’s right. Please do that.”

She hesitated, then said, “I’ve already asked his people to get him here.”

Hollis gave her a close look.

She returned his stare. “I guess I know he’s involved with things like this.”

Hollis went to the door, then turned back to her. “Are you involved with things like this?”

“Oh, no. I’m just a PIO. Seth and I are social friends.”

They looked at each other a moment. Hollis guessed she was in her late twenties. She was lightly freckled, with reddish auburn hair. She was not the type of woman you forgot meeting, and in fact, he had not forgotten the times they’d met in the embassy. He also knew that she and Alevy had been recent lovers. But by instinct and training he never offered information, only solicited it. “Hold the fort. See you later.” He left.

Lisa moved to the door and watched him walk quickly through the lobby to the front doors. “Strong, silent type. Silent Sam.”

Sam Hollis pushed through the glass doors into the damp, misty night. He zipped his leather jacket and headed toward a blue Ford Fairlane that sat in the forecourt with its engine running. Hollis jumped in the passenger side. “Hello, Bill.”

The driver, a security staff man named Bill Brennan, drove quickly through the court, around the traffic circle that held the illuminated flagpole, and moved toward the gates. “Where we going, Colonel?”

“Rossiya.” Hollis looked at Brennan. He was a man in his mid-fifties, heavyset and balding, and his nose had once been broken. Hollis always had the impression that Brennan wanted to break someone else’s nose. Hollis said, “You carrying?”

“Yup. You?”

“No. Didn’t have time to get it.”

“Loan you mine if you promise to kill a commie.”

“That’s all right.”

The gates swung open, and the car moved past the Marine guard post, then past the Soviet militia booth on the sidewalk. Brennan kept the speed down so as not to attract the attention of the KGB embassy watchers in the surrounding buildings, but Hollis said, “Step on it. They know where I’m going.”

“Okay.” Brennan accelerated up the dark, quiet side street and cut right onto the wide, well-lit Tchaikovsky Street. Traffic was sparse and Brennan made good time. He asked, “Do I stop for police?”

“No, you run them.” Hollis added, “Don’t take the direct route up Kalinin.”

“Gotcha.” The Ford picked up speed in the outside lane, passing buses and trams, and sailed past the Kalinin Prospect intersection. Brennan stuffed his mouth with bubble gum, chewed, and blew bubbles until they popped. “Want some?”

“No, thanks. Do you know the Rossiya?”

“Know the traffic patterns, parking, and all. Not the inside.”

“Fine.” Brennan knew the streets of Moscow better than a Moscow cabbie, but Hollis thought that Brennan cared not a whit about Moscow. He was into streets, and he claimed he’d never seen Red Square, because he couldn’t drive through it.

Brennan asked between chews, “Is this going to be messy?”

“Maybe. American national up the creek at the Rossiya.”

“How’d the Komitet know you were going there?”

“Well, the kid — the U.S. national — called the embassy and said he was in trouble.”

“Oh.”

Hollis thought about Fisher’s call. He assumed the traffic police had indeed stopped Fisher for nothing more than an itinerary violation. But Fisher had gotten paranoid because of the Borodino thing. If he’d kept his cool, he would have been able to come to the embassy and tell his story. Instead, Gregory Fisher’s two-kopek phone call might have already cost him his freedom — or his life.

Yet, Hollis thought, it was a brave thing to do. Stupid, but brave. Hollis would tell him that without making him feel bad. How to get Fisher out of the country was tomorrow’s problem.

Brennan asked, “What kind of trouble is he in?”

“Itinerary violation.”

“Am I asking too many questions?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay, why am I tear-assing across Moscow with a military attaché in my car to rescue a kid who went to the fucking zoo instead of the fucking park or whatever?”

“You’re asking too many questions.”

“Right.”

Neither man spoke for a while. The popping gum was getting on Hollis’ nerves. Hollis thought about the phone call. Who was Major Jack Dodson? What, in the name of God, was a POW doing in the woods at Borodino? Only Gregory Fisher could answer that.

Brennan said, “I just passed a parked cop car.”

Hollis glared back. “He’s on a break.”

“Right.”

Hollis looked at the speedometer and saw they were doing seventy miles per hour. Tchaikovsky Street changed names several times as it curved south and east in what was generally known as the Second Ring Road. They crossed the Moskva at the Crimea Bridge, skirted Gorky Park to the right, and continued east up the wide, six-lane road. Hollis glanced at his watch. It had been twelve minutes since they’d left the embassy.

“Do you see him?” Brennan asked.

Hollis looked out the rear window. “Not yet.”

“Good.” Brennan suddenly cut hard left with squealing tires through Dobrynin Square and headed up Ordynka Street, straight north on a run that would take them to the center of Moscow and the Rossiya Hotel. Hollis knew that Brennan’s route may have taken them a few extra minutes, but it had avoided any KGB who were out to intercept them and avoided the militia posts around the Kremlin.

Brennan said, “If I get nabbed speeding, they kick me out of the country.”

“That bother you?”

“No… but I have the Colt .45. That can get sticky. My diplomatic immunity status is a little shaky.”

“I’ll take the gun and the rap if they nail us.”

“Nah… that’s okay. I’m tired of this fucking country anyway.”

“Drive on.”

Brennan accelerated up Ordynka Street. He added more bubble gum to the already large mass, and the bubbles got bigger.

Hollis hiked up the left leg of his blue jeans, reached into his boot, and pulled out a grey Air Force survival knife. He slipped the knife under his jacket and into his belt. Brennan watched him out of the corner of his eye but said nothing.

Hollis could see the Moskvoretsky Bridge about a half kilometer ahead, and beyond the bridge he saw the Rossiya getting bigger with every second. The few cars on the road seemed to be standing still. Hollis heard a continuously honking horn behind them. He looked out the rear window. “The fuzz.”

“I hear it. What kind of car?”

“A Lada.”

“A fucking joke. About as much power as an electric shaver.”

“Nevertheless, he’s on our tail.”

“Not for long.”

The Ford shot forward, and Hollis watched as the Lada lost ground. The police car had no siren or revolving lights, and the horn grew more distant, though Hollis knew it was still sounding because the Lada’s headlights dimmed every time the driver hit the horn.

Brennan took the narrow bridge at eighty miles per hour, and Hollis saw a blur of pedestrians staring at them from the bridge walkway. The Ford sailed off the bridge, bounced hard, then tore across the embankment road, cutting diagonally past the Kremlin’s corner tower. As they barreled up the approach lane to the Rossiya, Brennan asked, “East side?”

“Yes. You keep going. Back to the embassy.”

Brennan pulled the Colt .45 from his shoulder holster. “You need this?”

“No. You keep it or ditch it. Your choice.”

Brennan swung around toward the east entrance of the hotel. “Ready?”

Hollis saw that the small parking area did not have a Trans Am in it, and he took this as a bad sign. “Ready. Nice job.”

Brennan slowed the car in front of the hotel. “Good luck.” He popped a big bubble.

“You too.” Hollis jumped out of the moving car and slammed the door as Brennan accelerated out the exit ramp.

Hollis pushed through the front doors of the Rossiya, and the doorman said, “Propusk.”

“Komitet,” Hollis replied as he brushed past him.

The man literally jumped back and tried to open the second door, but Hollis was already through it. Hollis went directly to the elevator and hit the top floor button. Komitet. Committee. The Committee for State Security — the KGB. Magic words. Open sesame. The fact that he’d arrived in an American car, wearing American clothing, made no difference to the doorman. No one else would dare utter that word.

The elevator arrived. Hollis rode up to the tenth floor and began the long trek to the west-facing side.

The Rossiya, for the uninitiated, was a confusing amalgam of four separate wings containing over three thousand rooms, attached to form a square around a central court. The east wing was the Intourist hotel, the west wing was a hotel for Soviet and East Bloc citizens only, while the north and south wings were residences for favored communists. The wings were connected at a few floors though not at the ground floor. To pass from one wing to another, Hollis knew, you had to have a good reason. East was east, and west was west, and most Western tourists were not even aware of the presence of the others. Here on the top floor however, east and west nearly met in this Byzantine and schizoid building. Hollis approached the entrance to the restaurant and bar, where one of the ubiquitous angry ladies who seemed to guard every door in Moscow sat at a desk. She looked him over.

“Bar,” Hollis said.

She nodded curtly and pointed to the doors. Hollis went through into a large foyer. To the left was a black, closed door marked with the English word BAR. Straight ahead, two open doors revealed a huge restaurant filled to capacity. Hollis could tell by the din, the toasts, the laughter, and the attire that they were mostly Russians. He looked inside. A band played American jazz, and the dance floor was crowded with people who seemed to have trouble just standing. A wedding party occupied a large round table, and the bride, a pretty young girl in white, was the only person still sitting upright. Hollis had the fleeting impression she was having second thoughts. Hollis surveyed the room and satisfied himself that Fisher would not have gone in there. A man came toward him shaking his head. The man pointed over Hollis’ shoulder. “Bar.”

“Spasibo.” Hollis went through the black door and entered the bar, where, for Western hard currency, you could buy Western hard liquor and brand name mixers; a night spot of capitalist decadence, high above Red Square. Hollis scanned the dark lounge.

The bar was full, but in contrast to the Russian restaurant, the drunken chatter was more subdued and less lusty. The clientele, Hollis knew, were mostly Western Europeans, and nearly all were guests at the hotel. The Rossiya attracted few Americans, and he wondered how Fisher wound up here. Mixed with the Europeans were always a few Soviet high rollers with access to Westerners and their money. Every hard currency bar in Moscow also had a resident KGB snoop who could eavesdrop in ten languages.

Hollis walked around the lounge but didn’t see anyone who could be Gregory Fisher. This, he decided, was not good.

There was a service bar where patrons were obliged to get their own drinks. Hollis elbowed through the crowd and spoke to the bartender in fluent Russian. “I’m looking for my friend. An American. He is young and has on blue jeans and a short, black jacket.”

The bartender glanced at him quickly but continued to make drinks as he replied, “American, you say? No, I didn’t see anyone like that.”

Hollis left the bar and walked quickly to the east-wing elevators. He rode down to the seventh floor and got off. The dezhurnaya looked at him curiously. “Gost?”

“No. Visitor.” He leaned over her desk, looked the blond woman directly in the eye, and said, “Fisher.”

She looked away.

“Gregory Fisher. American.”

She rolled a tube of lip gloss in her fingers, then shook her head.

Hollis looked at the keyboard behind her desk and saw that the key for 745 was missing. He walked past her and she called after him, “You may not go there.”

Hollis ignored her. He found room 745 and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again, harder.

A voice from behind the door said, “Who is it?”

“I’m from the embassy.”

“Embassy?”

Hollis heard the lock turn, and the door opened. A paunchy, middle-aged man with sleep in his eyes, wearing a robe, peered out. “Is everything all right?”

Hollis looked at him, then past him into the room. “I’m looking for Mr. Fisher.”

The man seemed relieved. “Oh, I thought something happened at home. My wife. My name is Schiller. Everything’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Hollis stared at him.

Schiller said, “I heard ‘embassy,’ and you know—”

“Mr. Fisher just called me and said he was in seven forty-five.”

Schiller’s manner went from worried to slightly annoyed. “So? He’s not here, pal. I don’t know the guy. Try four fifty-seven. Anything’s possible in this fucked-up country.”

Which, Hollis thought, was not only true, but offered another possible explanation. “They may have assigned you a roommate. They do that sometimes.”

“Do they? Christ, what a place.”

“Could there be anyone’s luggage in your closet?”

“Hell, no. I paid extra for a fucking single, and there’s no one here. Hey, is he with that American Express group? Did you see that little Intourist guide they have? Christ, she looked edible. Maybe your friend is talking politics with her.” He laughed. “Well, see ya at the Bolshoi.” The man closed the door.

Hollis stood there a moment, then walked back to the elevators. The dezhurnaya was gone. Hollis went behind her desk and found the drawer full of propusks. He flipped through them but could not find one with 745 on it. How did Schiller get the key to 745 without turning in his propusk?

Hollis took the elevator down to the lobby, which was deserted. He went to the front desk and rang the bell. The clerk appeared at the door behind the counter. Hollis said in Russian, “What room is Gregory Fisher in?”

The clerk shook her head. “Not here.”

“Who is in room seven forty-five?”

“I cannot tell you.”

“Is there an Intourist representative here?”

“No. Tomorrow morning at eight. Good evening.” She turned and disappeared into the inner office. He looked toward the foyer and saw there was a different doorman on duty. “People are disappearing left and right, before my very eyes. Amazing country.”

Hollis thought a moment. Several possibilities came to mind, including the possibility that this was all a KGB provokatsiya, a ruse to draw him into some sort of compromising situation. But if they wanted to entrap him, there were less elaborate schemes. If they wanted to kill him, they’d just pick a morning he was jogging along the Shevchenko Embankment and run him over.

Hollis thought about Fisher’s voice, the words, the very real fright in his tone. “Fisher is real.” But Hollis had to prove that Fisher had reached this hotel alive and had fallen into the hands of the KGB. For if he could prove that, then what Fisher had said about Major Jack Dodson was probably true.

Hollis reached over the clerk’s counter and took her telephone. He dialed 745 and let the phone ring a dozen times then hung up. “Not good.”

Hollis looked around. He realized he was alone and exposed. They could take him anytime they wanted now.

He walked quickly across the lobby, his footsteps echoing on the stone floor. He entered the dark passage that led to the Beriozka shop, drew his knife, and slid into the phone booth that Fisher must have used. Hollis thought that if the Rossiya was causing people to disappear, it might be a good idea if he proved that he had reached the Rossiya alive. He inserted a two-kopek piece and dialed the embassy. The Marine duty man answered, and Hollis asked to be put through to the duty office. Lisa Rhodes answered quickly.

Hollis asked, “Have you heard from our friend?”

“No. Isn’t he there?”

“Apparently not.”

There was a silence, then she said, “Are you returning here?”

“That is my plan.”

“Do you need assistance?”

Hollis did, but he did not want this thing to escalate. He, Seth Alevy, and the other men and women in their profession had been made to understand by the ambassador that their shenanigans were their own business and should never embarrass the diplomatic mission. Hollis continued in that cryptic and stilted way they all spoke over the telephone. “Have my car and driver returned yet?”

“No. Isn’t he with you?”

“No, I let him go on. I thought he should be back there by now.”

“I’m sure he’s not. Could he have had an accident or a breakdown?”

“He could very well have. You may be hearing from the authorities on that.”

“I see.” She drew a deep breath. “Can I send transportation for you?”

“No. I’ll find public transportation. Is your friend back from his party yet?”

“He should be here within minutes. Do you want him to join you?”

“No need for that,” Hollis replied.

“Can he call you there?”

“No. But I may call you again.”

“What shall we do here if I don’t hear from you?”

“Let him make that decision when he arrives.”

“All right.” She added, “I’ve replayed that tape we both like. It sounds realistic.”

“Yes. I’ve thought about that. I’ll do what I can to find the original.”

“Good luck.”

Hollis hung up and went back down the dark corridor, knife in hand. He reached the lobby and slipped the knife under his jacket. “Well, if I don’t make it back, the ambassador can raise a little stink about it.” His estranged wife, Katherine, would get his pension and life insurance. He kept meaning to write to his lawyer in Washington to change his will. The complications inherent in international matrimonial problems were endless. “Endless.” There were times when he wished he were in his old F-4 Phantom with nothing more to worry about than MiGs and missiles converging on his radar screen.

Hollis considered the evidence. Fisher’s phone call to the embassy had tipped the KGB, but they would have needed time to react. “Therefore Fisher made it to the lounge.”

Hollis took the elevator back up to the top floor and went to the lounge. He ordered a Dewar’s and soda at the service bar and said to the bartender in Russian, “Have you seen my friend yet?”

“No. I’m sorry. Three dollars.”

Hollis paid him.

A well-dressed man next to Hollis thrust his glass toward the bartender and said with a British accent, “Gin and tonic — Gordon’s and Schwepps. Slice of lemon this time, spasibo.”

Hollis said to the man, “They’ve been out of lemons since the Revolution.”

The Englishman laughed. “What a place this is, eh, Yank?”

“Different.”

“Bloody right. Here on holiday, then?”

“Business.”

“Me too.” The man’s drink came without the lemon, and the bartender asked for three pounds. Hollis moved away from the service bar, and the Englishman followed. The man said, “They haven’t had cocktail waitresses since the Revolution either. You fetch your own drinks here, and they make their own exchange rates as they go along. Three dollars, three pounds, all the same to them. But I think my gin cost me more than your whiskey.”

“Try giving him three lire next time.”

The man laughed. “They’re not that bloody stupid. Name’s Wilson.”

“Richardson,” Hollis replied.

They tipped their glasses toward each other. “Cheers.”

Wilson said, “Did I hear you speaking Russian there? Spasibo and pozhalusta. Which is which?”

“Spasibo is ‘thank you,’ pozhalusta is ‘please.’”

“Oh, I’ve been getting it backwards. How do you get the bartender’s attention?”

“Call out Komitet.”

“Komitet?”

“Right. That should get his attention. Have you been in here awhile?”

“About an hour, I suppose. Why?”

“I’m looking for a friend of mine. American, in his twenties, blue jeans and windbreaker.”

“‘Windcheater,’ you mean?”

“Yes, windcheater.”

“I think I did see him. No one dresses in this benighted country. Damned Reds ruined everything. No manners either, and no style here, if you know what I mean. Of course I don’t fault you for wearing a leather jacket if no one else dresses.”

“Did you notice if he was speaking to anyone?”

Wilson looked around the lounge. “Saw him sitting over there somewhere. Yes, speaking to someone.”

“Who?”

“Ah, now I remember. See those two? Nicely dressed. Frogs, I think. They dress well if nothing else. Had a young chap with them. Could be your fellow. The lad had a few too many, and two people from the hotel helped him out. The boy became a bit… belligerent, I suppose you’d say. They hurried him off. I don’t think they would make anything of it — half the damned country’s drunk at any given moment. Probably took him to his room.”

“When was this?”

“About fifteen — twenty minutes ago.”

“Thanks.” Hollis moved through the cocktail tables and sat in an armchair across from the man and woman. “May I?”

The man grunted in reply.

Hollis asked, “Do you speak English?”

The man shook his head.

“And you, madame?”

She looked at him. “A little.”

Hollis leaned across the table and spoke softly and distinctly. “I am looking for a friend, an American, a young man. I understand he had a drink with you earlier.”

The woman glanced at the man beside her before replying, “Yes.” She added in good English, “He was ill. He was aided to his room.”

“This young man told you his name?”

“Yes.”

“Fisher?”

“Yes.”

“Did he seem… agitated? Worried?”

The woman did not reply but nodded almost imperceptibly.

“Did he tell you what was worrying him?”

The man stood and said to the woman, “Allons.”

She remained seated and said to Hollis, “He did not say. But he said they may come for him. He knew. I think the drink was… what…?”

“Drugged.”

“Yes.” She stood. “My husband wishes to go. There is no more I know. I am sorry.” She stood.

Hollis stood also and said to the woman, “You understand, madame, this is a matter of some concern to the authorities here. They know he spoke to you and are curious about what he told you. You may be in danger. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

The Frenchman walked away impatiently. The woman lingered a moment, and Hollis looked her in the eye. “What else?”

Her eyes met his. “Are you the attaché?”

“Yes.”

“He said you would come. He said to tell you some things that he did not say to you on the telephone.” The woman thought a moment, then recited quickly, “Dodson told him it was once a Red Air Force school. Now it is a KGB school. There are almost three hundred Americans.”

“Three hundred? He said three hundred?”

She nodded.

Hollis found himself holding the woman’s arm in a tight grip. “What else did Mr. Fisher say?”

“Nothing. He became ill…. They came for him. A Russian spoke to us in English, asking what the young man was saying. My husband replied in French, saying we spoke no English and could not understand the Russian or the young man.”

“Did the Russian believe your husband?”

“I think so.”

Hollis released her arm. “Then perhaps you will be all right. But take the precaution of contacting your embassy. Tonight. In person. Not on the telephone. Then leave the country immediately.”

“I understand.”

“Good. Thank you, madame.”

She smiled weakly. “The boy borrowed from me two kopeks… he seemed a nice sort… and now… now he is… what? Dead?”

Hollis didn’t reply.

She shook her head. “What times we live in.” She walked away.

Hollis finished his drink, then made his way out of the lounge and into the corridor. He went to the south wing of the hotel and took the elevator down to the Zaryadye Cinema, which had just let out. Hollis mixed with the crowd in the lobby and exited the door that faced the Moskva River embankment. He followed a group down a flight of stairs that led to a passageway under the road.

Hollis walked through the long, tiled tunnel, watching his breath mist in the cool air, listening to the echoing footsteps around him. A few of the Russians glanced curiously at him. He recalled a time two years before when he’d first come to Russia. He’d had occasion to walk this underpass at night and had been impressed by the discovery that there was not a scrap of litter on the floor, nor a line of graffiti on the walls. Moreover, the citizens of Moscow walked without fear. He was still impressed, but two years had given him a broader perspective. The streets and subways were immaculate, but little else was. There was no fear of street crime, not because there was none, but because it wasn’t reported in the news. This was a society that thrived on good news, most of it manufactured.

Yet the average citizen’s own observations told him one thing, and the government told him another. Predictably, Soviet men and women developed frayed circuitry, jerking along through life believing neither their senses nor the newspapers, neither in themselves nor their leaders, neither in God nor their fellow man. It was a nation of illusion, delusion and collusion, a Potemkin village on a national scale, a place where men and women could disappear without a trace, and all evidence of their ever having existed would disappear with them. “I tried, Fisher. I tried.”

Hollis came to the end of the tunnel. He ascended the stairs and went out onto the pedestrian walk of the Moskvoretsky Bridge, over which he and Brennan had driven nearly an hour before. He walked about twenty yards onto the bridge and stopped. A fog rose off the Moskva below, and the ruby red stars of the Kremlin towers glowed spectrally through the mist. There may have been a fine rain falling, but Hollis had never been able to distinguish Moscow’s mist from its drizzle, and it didn’t matter.

Hollis turned up the fleece collar of his leather jacket. Moscow by night, Hollis had discovered, was unlike any other great city he’d lived in. You could walk the streets and squares of Moscow until dawn, as he’d done a few times, and never meet with an adventure or a misadventure. There were no public bars, no discos, no prostitutes, no street people, no nightlife. No all-night markets, no midnight movies, no midnight mass, no midnight anything. Most of the city was quiet by ten P.M., shut down by eleven, and the last taxis disappeared by twelve. All public transportation ceased at one A.M., and after that you were on your own, which was to say you were stranded.

There was one class of citizen, however, who stayed out until the last possible moment; and one of them, a young man of about eighteen, now approached Hollis. He carried a nylon Adidas bag and wore a cheap synthetic leather coat of three-quarter length. He had on American jeans, but his shoes were definitely Soviet. He spoke in good English with exceeding politeness. “Excuse me, sir, do you have a cigarette?”

“No, do you?”

“Yes.” The young man gave Hollis a Marlboro, lit it for him, and lit one for himself. The boy looked up and down the bridge. Hollis noticed a few other black marketeers observing the action. The youth said, “My name is Misha. I am pleased to meet you.” They smoked awhile. Hollis threw his unfinished cigarette off the bridge. Misha’s eyes followed it, then he turned to Hollis. “Do you see this end of the square?” Misha’s gesture took in the south end of Red Square, bordered by the Kremlin Wall, the back of St. Basil’s, the Rossiya, and the Moskva River. “That is where the German, Matthias Rust, landed his aircraft. I was here that day. What a sight it was.”

Hollis nodded. Rust’s landing spot had become part of the unofficial tour of Red Square. The average Muscovite, usually cynical by nature, had been captivated by the young man’s flight. The Soviet court gave him four years. Hollis, as an air attaché, had been inconvenienced by the fallout from that flight when some of his better contacts in the Red Air Force and Air Defense Ministry had been sacked. Nevertheless, as a pilot, Hollis could appreciate the young flier’s daring. Hollis thought that he would like to try something insane like that one day.

Misha said, “He flew for peace.”

“So did Rudolph Hess.”

Misha shrugged. “No politics. Economics. Do you have anything to trade?”

“Perhaps. What do you have, Misha?”

“I have unpressed black caviar. Three hundred grams. Very excellent. It is sixty dollars in the Beriozka. But I would trade it for a carton of American cigarettes.”

“I have no cigarettes on me.”

Misha looked around again, then said, “Well, forty dollars then.”

“It is against the law for us to deal in currency.”

Misha backed away. “Excuse me.”

Hollis grabbed his arm. “Have you been on the bridge all night?”

“A few hours….”

“Did you see an American car on the embankment road about two hours ago?”

Misha drew on his cigarette. “Perhaps. Why?”

“It’s none of your business why.” Hollis pressed Misha against the bridge rail. “Do you want to make forty dollars, or do you want to swim in the river?”

Misha said, “I didn’t see the car myself. A friend told me he saw it. On the embankment road about two hours ago.”

“What sort of car?”

“He thought it was a Pontiac Trans Am. It had a rear spoiler. Dark color.”

“How did your friend know it was a Trans Am?”

“Magazines. You know. I give three dollars American or fifteen rubles for Car and Driver. Same for Track and—”

“Did your friend see where the car went?”

“The Rossiya.” Misha added, “Then a strange thing happened. They hurried over to the Rossiya to see the car and to talk to the driver who they saw in the car — a young man — maybe American. But as they got to the Intourist wing, they saw the car going up Razin Street, away from the Rossiya, with two older men.”

“Two Russians?”

“Two Russians.” Misha hesitated, then said, “The type with closed faces. You know what I mean?”

“Yes. Did you or your friends notice anything else unusual tonight?”

“Yes. About an hour ago. I myself and everyone here saw a blue Ford Fairlane going very fast over the bridge. A cop was chasing it, but the bastard never had a chance. Those Fords can move on the straightaway. The American embassy uses them. Are you from the embassy? Was that your car?”

Hollis turned and walked back toward the underpass. Misha followed. They went down the steps, and Hollis handed Misha two twenty-dollar bills. Hollis said, “I’ll take the caviar.”

Misha reluctantly took the tin of caviar from his gym bag and handed it to Hollis. Misha said, “I’ll give you three more tins and an ancient Russian cross for your jacket.”

Hollis put the caviar in his pocket and said in Russian, “Go home, Misha, and never come back to this bridge. The men with closed faces will be asking about you.”

Misha’s eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open.

Hollis climbed to the top of the stairs and walked back to the bridge. He crossed it on foot, aware of the stares of the other entrepreneurs. Capitalism, Hollis thought, like sex, was hormonal; it existed on the Moskvoretsky Bridge and behind St. Basil’s, a stone’s throw from the Kremlin. It existed around every hotel and every farmer’s market throughout Moscow, in small isolated cells that might one day spread and weaken the whole state. Like communism in czarist Russia, capitalism was the new subversive ideology.

Hollis walked out onto Ordynka Street, working out in his mind a Metro route that would get him back alive.

6

Sam Hollis got off the Metro at Smolenskaya station. He walked along the Moskva River embankment and followed the big loop of the river beneath the Kalinin Bridge. The massive Ukraina Hotel rose up across the Moskva, and a dark riverboat slid toward its dock on the Shevchenko Embankment. The autumn was not pretty in Moscow, Hollis decided; it was wet and grey. But when the first snow fell, Moscow was transformed into a sparkling white city of muted sounds and soft curves. The sun shone more often, and the night was starlit, casting iridescent blue shadows over the snowy landscape. The good fur coats appeared, and the women looked better. Children pulled sleds, and ice skaters could be seen in the parks. The snow was like white ermine, Hollis thought, cloaking the hard-featured city.

Hollis turned up a gradually rising street that came off the embankment. At the turn of the century this district, where the new American embassy was located, had been called Presnya. It was then a squalid industrial suburb and fertile ground for Marxist-Leninist ideology. During the revolution of 1905, the workers here had fought the czar’s army, and the whole area had been subject to intense artillery bombardment and — when the revolt was put down — to savage reprisals. The district was now called Krasno Presnya — Red Presnya. It seemed to Hollis that half the streets, squares, and districts of Moscow were prefixed with “red,” to the extent that the word had become meaningless, and the Muscovites in private conversation usually dropped the “red.” Presnya was largely rebuilt, but Hollis still sensed its tragedy. Russia was a very sad country.

Hollis looked up and saw the towering red brick chancery building, its windows all alight as per the ambassador’s orders. A few minutes later he saw the red brick walls and the embassy residences that rose above them. The streets were deserted, and the low ground was covered with a blanket of river fog.

Hollis could now see the lights of the main embassy gate in the wall. The compound was a sort of mini-Kremlin, Hollis thought, and the use of red brick, rare in Moscow, was supposed to make the Russians think of the red brick Kremlin walls and towers. That, in turn, was supposed to make them associate the American embassy with power, strength, and perhaps even God and sanctuary. Hollis thought the Madison Avenue subtlety might be lost on the average Soviet citizen.

The gate was a hundred meters away, and Hollis could see the Soviet militia booth, though he could not yet see the U.S. Marine guard post just inside the gates. Rising above the wall, the illuminated flagpole flew the Stars and Stripes, which now fluttered in a light breeze.

Sam Hollis heard a car drawing up behind him, and its engine had the slow rpm sound of a Chaika. The car kept pace with him just to his rear. The driver raced the engine and flashed his lights. Hollis did not turn around.

The car drew abreast of him and stopped. Hollis saw it was indeed a Chaika, a black four-door sedan, the type favored by the Committee for State Security. There were three men inside. The driver stayed behind the wheel, and two men got out. They both wore leather car coats, black pants, leather gloves, and narrow-brim hats — what Hollis called KGB evening attire. Hollis recognized them as the same two embassy watchers who had followed him one afternoon. The short, squat one Hollis had named Boris. The other one, taller and better built, Hollis called Igor.

Hollis turned and walked toward them, his hands in his pockets, his right hand through a slit in his jacket and around the handle of his knife.

Boris and Igor looked Hollis over. Boris said in English, “Hand over your wallet and watch, or we’ll beat you to a pulp.”

Hollis replied, “Is the Komitet so badly paid?”

Boris snapped, “You bastard, who do you think you are? Give me your wallet.”

Hollis said, “Yeb vas.” Fuck you. Hollis turned and walked toward the embassy. He heard the footsteps of the two men behind him. They came up very close, and Igor said, “What’s your hurry? We want to talk to you.”

Hollis kept walking. It occurred to him that the KGB had no difficulty impersonating muggers. Hollis was abreast of the embassy wall now, and the gate was fifty yards further. Suddenly he felt a powerful blow in the small of his back, and he lurched forward, sprawling across the sidewalk, breaking his fall with his hands. He rolled to the side and barely avoided a kick, then splashed into the wet gutter. Igor and Boris smiled down at him. Igor imparted to Hollis a pithy aphorism in crude Russian. “You keep drinking like that, and one of these days some queers will fuck you while you’re drunk and you’ll have a hangover in your asshole instead of your head.”

Both men laughed.

Hollis wanted to bring out the knife, but he knew that’s what they wanted too. Hollis remained where he was. Boris glanced toward the embassy gate, then stared at Hollis. “The next time, I’m going to crack your skull open.” He spit at Hollis, then slapped Igor on the back and said, “We taught this shit his lesson. Let’s go.” They turned and walked back toward the Chaika.

Hollis stood and brushed the water and filth from his jacket and trousers, noticing that the palms of his hands were bleeding. He felt a raw abrasion on his cheekbone and a dull pain in his back. The two men got into the car, and Hollis could hear them laughing with the driver. The car made a U-turn and sped off.

Hollis continued toward the embassy. As he approached the gate, a young militiaman, who had obviously seen the whole incident, stepped out of the booth and extended his hand palm up. “Pasport.”

Hollis snapped back, “You know who I am!”

“Pasport!”

“Get out of my way, you dristui.”

The militiaman stiffened at the expletive. “Stoi!”

The other militiaman came out of the booth. “What is this?”

A Marine guard appeared at the gate and called out, “What’s going on there?” Hollis saw he was armed and so could not cross the threshold of the property. Hollis called to him, “Open the gate.”

The Marine opened the gate, and Hollis brushed past the militiamen, walking the ten yards between the militia booth and the entrance to the embassy compound. He took the salute of the guard, who recognized him, and the sergeant on duty asked, “Are you all right, Colonel?”

“Fine.”

Hollis strode across the courtyard, and in the distance he could hear the bells of Ivan’s tower chiming midnight and the raised voices of the two Marines and the two Soviet militiamen shouting at one another. He entered the chancery and went directly to the duty office.

Lisa Rhodes stood as he walked in. “Oh, Colonel Hollis. We were getting worried. We—”

“Any word on Bill Brennan?”

“He’s here. In the infirmary. I don’t have the details. What happened to your face?”

“Tripped. Is Seth Alevy here yet?”

“Yes. He’s in the sixth-floor safe room, waiting for you.”

Hollis went to the door.

“May I come?”

He looked at her.

“Seth Alevy said I could, if it was all right with you.”

“Is that so? Come along then.”

They walked to the elevator in silence and rode up together. She said, “Your hands are bleeding.”

“I know that.”

She shrugged, then asked, “Is Bill Brennan a friend of yours?”

“No. Why?”

“It was the first thing you asked.”

“He was my responsibility.”

“I like that.”

He glanced at her.

The elevator stopped at the sixth floor, and they stepped across the corridor to an interior room. Hollis pressed a buzzer.

The door opened, and Seth Alevy said, “Come in, please.” He motioned them to a round oak table at which were a dozen leather and chrome chairs.

Lisa Rhodes looked around the dimly lit room. The chancery, she knew, had several safe rooms, but this was the first time she had been in the sixth-floor one. It was an interior room like all the safe rooms, and this one was lit by soft indirect cove lighting around the walls. On the table were individual reading lamps. The floor was covered in a thick royal blue carpet, and the walls and door were carpeted in a camel color. Lisa noticed that the ceiling was the same as in the other safe rooms: black acoustical foam rubber. The room was impervious to underground listening devices, cavity resonators, or directional microphones, and it was swept for bugs two or three times a day. This particular room, she’d heard, was used mostly by the intelligence types, and Lisa saw they treated themselves rather well with a bar in one corner, a sideboard, and a recessed galley counter complete with running water and a refrigerator.

Alevy said to Lisa, “Drink?”

“No, thanks. I’m still on D.O.”

“Right. Coffee then.”

Hollis said, “Vodka, neat.”

Alevy poured black coffee for Lisa and a chilled vodka in a crystal flute for Hollis.

Hollis regarded Seth Alevy a moment. He was about forty, some years younger than Hollis. He wore a nicely tailored three-piece tweed suit with a green knit tie. He was too tall and too lean and reminded Hollis of an unbearded Lincoln, though somehow better looking. He’d been married once, but no one here knew anything about that.

Hollis said, “How was your party?”

“Fine. Lots of dissidents. Good food. Sukkot is a happy holiday. You should have come.”

“Then who would have gone chasing across Moscow?”

“I’m certain,” Alevy said coolly, “that my people could have handled that.”

Hollis did not hear Alevy add the word “better,” but it was there. Hollis said, “The kid asked for a defense attaché.”

“I’m sure he didn’t know a defense attaché from a middle linebacker. I’m not sure I do either. The next time, Sam, something like this comes up, please call me or someone in my section.”

Hollis didn’t respond but recalled what he knew of Alevy. Seth Alevy was a Philadelphian, a Jew, and a Princeton graduate, not necessarily in that order. He had once told Hollis in a rare, candid moment that he hated the Soviets and had joined the CIA “to do maximum damage to the regime.” Getting into the CIA had not been difficult. Alevy had majored in Russian studies and Russian language and had thereby come to the attention of the CIA, as he knew he would.

Alevy poured himself a vodka.

Hollis threw the tin of caviar on the table. “Some tost, maslo, and smetana would be fine.”

Alevy examined the tin. “Very nice stuff.” Alevy and Lisa got crackers, butter, and sour cream. Hollis opened the tin with his knife.

Alevy regarded Hollis for some time, then asked, “They rough you up, Colonel?”

Lisa heaped a spoonful of black caviar on a buttered cracker. Hollis said to her, “I would have asked for red, but I can’t stand the word krasnya anymore.”

Lisa laughed. “I thought I was the only one.”

Alevy’s eyes went from one to the other. He asked again, “They rough you up?”

Hollis stared at Alevy across the table. “You know damned well what happened.”

“Well,” Alevy replied, “if they had gotten out of hand, my people would have stepped in. You were covered.” Alevy added, “They tell me you kept your cool.”

“How is Brennan?”

“He didn’t fare as well as you. The cops finally caught up with him. They kept him standing around in the rain for half an hour, then just gave him a ticket and left. But before Brennan could get back to his car, a bunch of khuligans appeared and beat him with iron pipes, robbed him, then smashed up the car. And there’s never a cop around when you need one.” Alevy added, “He made it back here instead of going to a hospital. He got his nose broken again, but he says he got a few licks in. Doc Logan says he’ll be okay, but he has to go West for proper care.”

Hollis nodded. Score another point for the KGB tonight, he thought.

Lisa was spreading sour cream on a plate of crackers. Alevy helped himself to the caviar. “Where did you get this? How much?”

“Moskvoretsky Bridge. Forty bucks.”

“I could have done better. You ever hear a Jew argue with a Russian about price? Anyway, I assume this black marketeering is part of your tale. If you’re feeling up to it now, we’re listening.”

Hollis glanced at Lisa.

Alevy said, “It’s all right. I had a top secret clearance done on Ms. Rhodes some months ago.”

“Why?”

“Regulations. We were dating.”

Hollis poured another vodka for himself. “What is her need to know?”

“Let me worry about that.”

Hollis thought a moment, then nodded. “Okay. From the beginning. I was in my office doing the report you asked for earlier. The phone rang. It was Ms. Rhodes.” Hollis related the events of the evening, leaving out what the French woman had told him. A half hour later he poured himself a glass of mineral water and said, “So, as I approached the embassy, I expected to be met. By friends. But apparently you thought it would be good for me to get up close and personal with the Komitet.”

Alevy replied dryly, “You have diplomatic immunity.”

“Yeah, Seth, but the KGB has a different take on diplomatic immunity.”

“Well, you’re here, and a little peroxide will clean up those cuts nicely. I’ll even pay for your dry cleaning.”

Hollis began to say something, but Lisa interjected, “Colonel, what do you think happened to Gregory Fisher?”

“We should assume he is right now in a room with KGB interrogators.”

No one spoke for a while, then Alevy said, “By the way, Sam, no one is faulting you for anything. You acted as quickly as possible.” He added, “It’s their town.”

Hollis didn’t respond.

Alevy changed the subject. “I’m interested in the man in room seven forty-five.”

“So am I,” Hollis replied.

Alevy asked, “Was he definitely an American?”

Hollis considered a moment before answering, “Yes. Right down to the Mennen after-shave lotion.”

“But,” Alevy speculated, “he could have been an American in the employ of the KGB.”

“Could have been. But maybe Fisher just got his room number wrong.”

Alevy stood and hit a button on the electronic console in the corner. Gregory Fisher’s voice filled the room, and they listened again to the entire conversation.

Lisa remarked, “I think he knew his room number.”

Seth Alevy lit a cigarette and paced around the room in thought. He said finally, “Well, I’ll handle it from here.” He turned to Lisa. “Of course you’ll discuss this with no one.” He said to Hollis, “I’ll take a report from you and forward it to Langley. You’ll want a copy sent to your section in the Pentagon.”

Hollis stood. “That’s right.”

Alevy added, “We’ll have to tell the ambassador something since we’ve got a car wrecked and a man in the infirmary. I’ll handle that of course.” Alevy turned to Hollis. “I don’t see any military intelligence angle here, Sam.”

“No.”

Alevy regarded Hollis keenly and said, “You might think this Major Dodson thing concerns you because Major Dodson, if he exists, was or is a POW and so on. But I’ll let you know if I need you.”

Hollis walked to the door. “Thank you, Mr. Alevy.”

Lisa said, “What I want to know is, what is Mrs. Ivanova’s Charm School? And where is Major Dodson? Is he still out there somewhere? Can we help him? Can we help Greg Fisher?”

Alevy looked at his watch. “It’s very late, and I have some sending to do. So good night and thank you, Sam. Lisa, will you stay a moment?”

Hollis opened the door.

Alevy called after him, “Do you want your caviar?”

“Put it some place warm, Seth, where the sun doesn’t shine.” Hollis left.

As Hollis stood waiting for the elevator, Lisa joined him. The elevator came, and they both rode down to the ground level in silence. They walked out the rear of the chancery into the cold October night. Sam Hollis and Lisa Rhodes stood a moment on the covered stone terrace. Lisa said, “My unit is to the left.”

“Mine’s to the right.”

“Will you walk me?”

They took the path to the left, which was bordered by newly planted trees, Russian birches, all bare now. To the right was the quadrangle formed on three sides by the row house residences and the Marine barracks, and on the fourth side by the chancery building. The grass of the quadrangle held the faint outlines of impromptu softball games and fainter evidence of a short touch-football season. The embassy’s few children sometimes played in the quadrangle, and in fact, Hollis saw a few toys lying on the wet grass. The first snow would bring snowmen and snowball fights, and the spring would bring kite-flying, followed by sunbathing. This little patch of ground — about three acres — was the village commons, a little piece of the America they all missed and had learned at last to love.

Lisa followed his gaze. She said, “We’re building a scarecrow out there as soon as we get the stuff together. Someone in the consular section has located pumpkins in the free market on Mira Prospect. Well, sort of pumpkins. Can you carve a jack-o’-lantern with that knife of yours?”

Hollis replied, “That’s why I carry it.”

“In case you see a pumpkin in the market? I doubt it.”

They kept walking. Lisa said, “I’m not sure I like living and working in the same place — in a compound. It’s like a fort… or a jail.”

“It’s better for everyone.”

“Is it? The old place at least had charm, and it was right on Tchaikovsky Street, not far from the American Express office.” She smiled. “And we all lived in that delightfully grim apartment house off Gorky Street. My bathroom — they were prefab, remember? — was pulling away from the rest of the building. There was a six-inch gap and I could actually see into the bathroom below.”

“Was that you?”

She laughed. They walked on in silence awhile, then Lisa said, “But I suppose this is better. We have the quadrangle. I guess you’re used to this institutional living. I mean, you lived on Air Force bases.”

“Sometimes. Depended on the assignment.”

Lisa stopped. “This is my cell. Actually, they’re quite nice. Just a bit sterile.”

“Eight million Muscovites would trade places with you.”

“Oh, I know. I’m just getting cabin fever.”

“Take a leave.”

“In January. There’s a place called Jumby Bay, a small island off the coast of Antigua. Very private and very lovely. I may defect there.”

They stood in the cold mist, and he noticed in the dim lamplight that her face and hair were wet. He noticed, too, she was about twenty years younger than he was.

Lisa said, “I’ve never seen you at the Friday night follies.”

“I usually wind up at some embassy reception on Fridays.”

“Right. The follies are for the rank and file. But I get to go to a lot of cultural events. Do you like the ballet?”

“Only at the end when the fat lady sings.”

“That’s opera.”

“Right. I get them mixed up.” He took his hands out of his jacket pockets. “Well, I suppose we’d better get out of the rain.” He held out his hand.

She seemed not to notice and said, “Seth is very intense.”

“Is he?”

“Yes. Some people would mistake it for abrasiveness.”

“Would they?”

“Do you know him well?”

“Well enough.”

“You both seemed short with each other. Are you enemies or just rivals?”

“Neither. We enjoy each other. It’s just our way of speaking.”

“Like when you suggested he shove the caviar up his ass?”

“Yes, like that.”

She considered a moment. “He never mentioned that he knew you.”

“Why should he?”

“I suppose there were a lot of things he didn’t discuss with me.” She added, “He is very professional. There was no loose pillow talk.”

“But you know he’s not a political affairs officer.”

“Yes, I know that. And I know that most defense attachés are military intelligence.”

“How do you know that?”

“One knows these things. Didn’t you know I was seeing Seth Alevy?”

“He never mentioned it.”

“I thought it was hot gossip in the lunchroom. Oh, well, as a French philosopher once said, ‘People who worry about what others think of them would be surprised at how little they did.’”

“Precisely.”

She asked, “Do you have antiseptic for those cuts? You have to be careful in foreign countries.”

“I had three glasses of Russian antiseptic.”

“Be serious. I have some witch hazel….”

“I’m going to the infirmary to see Brennan. I’ll get something there.”

“Good. Be sure you do.”

“I will. Good night.”

“I have tomorrow off. I usually sleep late after night duty.”

“Good idea.”

“I wanted to go to the Marx and Engels museum tomorrow. I haven’t seen it yet. Have you?”

“It’s not on my list.”

“Anyway, I’m a little… concerned now. About going out alone, I mean. I guess they know who I am now. From the tape. Right?”

“Yes. But I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

She reached out and picked a wet twig from his fleece collar and handed it to him.

He examined the twig thoughtfully, then spoke in a soft voice. “You see, Ms. Rhodes, you can’t let them dictate how you are going to live. They are not omnipotent, nor omnipresent. They want you to think that. It makes their job easier.”

“Yes, I know that, but—”

“But you may be right. Perhaps you ought to stay in the compound until we get a better fix on this.”

She replied in an impatient tone, “That is not what I had in mind, Colonel. I’m asking you if you would like to come with me tomorrow.”

Hollis cleared his throat. “Well… why don’t we have lunch and save the Marx-Engels museum for a special occasion?”

She smiled. “Call for me here at noon.” She turned and walked to her door.

“Good night, Colonel Hollis.”

“Good night, Ms. Rhodes.”

7

“Yes… yes, I… Oh, God… hurry.”

“Ten minutes, Greg. Get to the lounge.”

Seth Alevy hit the stop button on the tape player.

Charles Banks, special aide to the American ambassador to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, sat at the head of the long mahogany table in the ambassador’s safe room, a worried look on his face.

Sam Hollis sat to his right, across from Alevy. Hollis had been in the room a number of times and was always struck by its patina of age, though the room was barely a year old. Apparently everything in the room, including the wainscoting and moldings, had been taken from somewhere else and reconstructed here. The ambassador, a wealthy man, was supposed to have paid for it himself. Hollis would have wondered why, except that everyone in this loony place had an idiosyncrasy that defied explanation.

Alevy said to Charles Banks, “A voice-stress analysis was done on the tape early this morning. Our expert says that Gregory Fisher was most probably telling the truth and was under actual stress.”

Banks looked curiously at Alevy. “Really? They can tell that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Amazing.”

Hollis regarded Charles Banks, a man near sixty, with snow-white hair, a ruddy, avuncular face, and sparkling blue eyes. Hollis remembered last Christmas when Banks dressed as Santa Claus for the embassy children. When not wearing his Santa suit, Banks favored dark, three-piece pinstripes. He was a career diplomat, with the standard Eastern credentials, easy social graces, and the voice of a 1940s radio announcer. Yet beyond the Santa facade and the diplomat’s polish, Hollis recognized a kindred spirit; Hollis thought that Charles Banks was the third spy in this room. But Hollis did not know for whom Banks was spying.

Alevy continued his briefing for Banks. “And as I’ve indicated, Colonel Hollis believes he can establish that Mr. Fisher was at the Rossiya last night.”

Banks turned to Hollis. “You have this Englishman, the French couple, and the black-market fellow.”

Hollis replied, “I don’t actually have them. I spoke to them.”

“Yes, of course. But they could identify Mr. Fisher?”

“I hope so. We’re getting facsimiles of passport photos transmitted here from the State Department’s files of all passport applicants with the name Gregory Fisher. There are about a dozen.”

“And you will show the photos to these people?”

“I called my counterpart in the French embassy this morning,” Hollis explained, “and he found out for me that a Monsieur and Madame Besnier have contacted their embassy, stating they were involved in a difficulty at the Rossiya. They are leaving the country on today’s Finnair flight out of Sheremetyevo at twelve forty-five. If we miss them there with the photos, we can locate them in Helsinki or in France. Keep in mind, sir, the woman did know the name ‘Gregory Fisher.’”

“Yes, but I would like her to identify a photograph.”

“Of course. And the Englishman, Wilson, is still at the Rossiya, according to John Crane at the British embassy. Mr. Wilson is here on the gas pipeline business. The black marketeer, Misha, said that his friends saw only the car, but I believe that was Mr. Fisher’s car. There are few Pontiac Trans Ams in Moscow. Probably none. So that is my hard evidence, if we should need it, sir.”

Banks nodded. “Thank you.” He turned to Alevy. “So, despite the fact that the Rossiya and Intourist say Mr. Fisher was never at the hotel, you two are convinced he was and that he called the embassy from there. Let me ask you this: Are you sure there is an American Gregory Fisher in the Soviet Union?”

Alevy answered, “The Soviet Foreign Ministry has been suspiciously quick to confirm that it issued a visa to a Mr. Gregory Fisher of New Canaan, Connecticut, age twenty-four, and Intourist has been helpful for a change, informing us that this Mr. Fisher crossed the frontier at Brest seven days ago. He spent a night in Brest, three nights in Minsk, a night in Smolensk, and was on the road in between.”

“And,” Banks asked, “you believe this is the same Gregory Fisher who called our embassy?”

Alevy seemed somewhat impatient. “He’s the only Gregory Fisher we have in country at the moment, sir. Intourist also confirms that Gregory Fisher was to have checked in at the Rossiya. The evidence seems conclusive, sir.”

“Has anyone contacted this man’s family?”

“That would be premature,” Alevy answered. “There is no use upsetting them at this stage.”

Banks added, “And until we are sure he has vanished, as you are suggesting.”

“Actually,” Alevy replied, “he has not vanished. I think we can tidy up all these questions shortly. We know where Gregory Fisher is now.”

“Where is he, Mr. Alevy?”

“He is in Mozhaisk, sir. In the morgue.”

Banks leaned forward across the table. “Dead?”

Alevy replied dryly, “Yes, sir. I believe that’s why he’s in the morgue. Peterson, in the consular section, got the call about twenty minutes ago. The call came from a gentleman who identified himself only as an official of the Soviet government. Mr. Fisher had a car accident.”

Banks said, “How terrible!”

“Yes, sir.” Alevy shuffled some papers in front of him and glanced at a blue sheet. “According to the militia report, Mr. Fisher’s car, which they call a Transamerikanets sportivnyi avtomobil, was found at daybreak this morning by peasants, eighteen kilometers west of Mozhaisk in a ravine off the Minsk — Moscow highway. The car apparently had been heading toward Moscow and went off the highway during the night, crashing into a tree. The damage indicates the car was traveling at excessive speed and could not navigate a sudden turn in the road. Mr. Fisher was not wearing a seat belt and suffered chest and head injuries. He died of his injuries before the peasants discovered the accident. We are requested to take charge of the body for shipment out of the Soviet Union.”

Banks seemed to be pondering all this, then said, “That would indicate that Mr. Fisher never got to Moscow.”

Hollis added, “Nor to Borodino, since according to my map, the accident occurred some kilometers before the Borodino turnoff.”

Banks looked at Alevy. “There is certainly some inconsistency here. Is it at all possible that Mr. Fisher never reached Moscow? That he made this call from the road and that he was perpetrating some sort of hoax or prank?”

Alevy replied, “Fisher’s call came through without operator assistance, meaning it was made from metropolitan Moscow. In addition we have the voice-stress test and the witnesses. What else do you need, Charles? Videotape?”

“One has to be absolutely certain.” Banks glanced at his watch and stood. “You’ve both done an admirable job of detective work considering the difficulties here. I’m quite proud of you. I think the ambassador should alert the Soviet authorities to these facts and tell them that we suspect foul play and that we want a full investigation.”

Alevy and Hollis glanced at each other. Alevy said, “Mr. Banks, what we are suggesting is that it was the Soviet authorities who murdered Gregory Fisher.”

“Oh.” Banks nodded slowly. “Yes, I see. Because of what Mr. Fisher said regarding this Major Dodson.”

Alevy studied Banks’ face, then said, “Charles, are you jerking us around, or are you that dense?”

Banks winked in reply, then said, “Well, I’ll speak directly to the ambassador about this. I trust you’ll both keep in mind the political considerations that may arise as a result of this incident.”

Alevy stood. “As a political affairs officer, that will be foremost in my mind, sir. Foremost.”

“Splendid. Colonel Hollis?”

Hollis remained seated and didn’t reply.

“Colonel?”

Hollis said to Banks, “Once I bombed only politically approved targets. We lost the war.”

Banks responded in a soothing voice, “As you know, in the Soviet armed forces there is a political commissar attached to every command. The military officers resent this, but they recognize that today war is too important to be left to the generals and colonels. Especially cold war. Good day, gentlemen.” Banks went out the door.

Alevy said to Hollis, “Why didn’t you just say okay? That’s all he wanted to hear.”

Hollis stood. “An American citizen has been murdered, and I’m a little pissed off.”

“They get murdered in America all the time,” Alevy observed. “Do you feel partly responsible for Fisher’s death?”

“I suppose. Wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe. Look, Sam, I’m not a politician or a diplomat, but you have to see their point of view as this thing heats up. Some dorks are trying to crank up détente again, and that’s the numero uno consideration right now. If I found two KGB men in the basement planting a bomb, the ambassador would tell me to forget it.”

“What if you found a KGB man in bed with the ambassador’s wife?”

Alevy smiled. “Same thing. One can’t become personally involved. Détente. Think peace.” He held up two fingers. “Peace.”

“Okay, forget that Fisher was murdered. Why was he murdered?”

“You know. He saw something. Heard something.”

“Something big.”

“Apparently,” Alevy replied.

“We’re supposed to find out what it is. That’s why they put us here.”

“Yes. That’s true. Let’s see what comes down from Washington.” Alevy walked to the door. “If you have nothing further of a sensitive nature, let’s go. The snack bar has croissants from Paris this morning. If you stick one in your ear, you can hear the sound of a sidewalk cafe.”

“I’m going to go for the body.”

“Wrong. Someone in the consular section is going for the body. That’s their job.”

“I don’t think you heard me. I am going.”

Alevy looked annoyed but said nothing.

“I’ll need two passes from the Foreign Ministry.”

“Two?”

“I’m taking company.”

“Who?”

“Lisa Rhodes.”

“Is that so? How do you know she wants to go?”

“Everyone here would like to get out of Moscow. Even picking up a corpse is a treat.”

“You understand that the Foreign Ministry will inform the KGB that they have issued a pass in your name.”

“I think I understand that,” Hollis replied.

“The Komitet does not like you any more than they like me. They may not be able to resist the temptation to get you to the Mozhaisk morgue on their terms.”

“Let me worry about that.”

“I’m not worried about you. You’re a pain in the ass. I’m worried about Lisa Rhodes.” Alevy added, “Keep in mind, I can’t cover you out in Mozhaisk.”

“You can’t cover me fifty yards from the embassy. Two passes in my office before noon.”

Alevy opened the door to leave, but Hollis closed it. Hollis asked, “Did you find out if a Major Jack Dodson is listed as an MIA in Vietnam?”

“Checking on it.”

“And how about our friend in seven forty-five? Schiller. Any such American in country?”

“I’m checking on it, Sam. I’ll keep you fully informed.”

“I know you will, Seth. It’s a joy working with the CIA.”

Alevy patted Hollis’ shoulder. “Try not to get killed on the Minsk — Moscow highway.” Alevy left.

Hollis looked at his watch: ten A.M. He’d been up all night with this thing. Brennan was in the infirmary, the Besniers were packing to leave Russia, Fisher was in the morgue, Charles Banks and the ambassador were burning the wire to Washington, and Alevy was having croissants in the snack bar. “I’ll try not to get killed on the Minsk — Moscow highway. I want to see how this thing ends.”

8

Sam Hollis pulled on his blue jeans, then his leather boots. He slipped his knife in the left boot and strapped an ankle holster above his right boot. Hollis checked his Soviet Tokarev 7.62mm automatic. It was basically a Colt-Browning design, slightly modified by a Russian armorer named Tokarev who put his name on it and probably forgot to pay Colt or Browning a licensing fee. The Tokarev’s advantages were that Hollis found it to be reliable, he was familiar with the American original, and lastly, if he had to shoot someone, it was better to leave a Soviet-made slug in the body.

Hollis screwed a short silencer into the muzzle and stuck the automatic into his ankle holster, pulling the jeans down over it. He put on a black turtleneck sweater and over that his leather jacket, which held four extra magazines of eight rounds each.

Sam Hollis left his apartment and walked across the wide quadrangle. The grass was soggy beneath his boots, but the sky was clearing, and a weak sun was visible between the rolling clouds.

Three boys in their mid-teens were tossing around a football. Hollis recognized the passer as Larry Eschman, son of Commander Paul Eschman, the Naval attaché. Another boy, Tom Caruso, son of the consul general, was running short patterns. The third boy was named Kevin, son of Jane Lowry, a commercial officer. Kevin Lowry was defensive back. Saturday morning normality. Sort of. The Eschman boy called out, “Colonel Hollis! Ready?”

“Sure.” Hollis ran toward the opposite sideline until Caruso and Lowry moved into defensive positions, then Hollis cut down-field in a deep fly pattern. The two boys were close, and Hollis could hear their cleats slapping on the sodden turf. Without a prearranged play Hollis thought he should hold the same pattern for Eschman. He held out his arms, glanced back over his right shoulder, and saw the ball as a brown blur hanging in the air, wide and long. He put on a burst of speed and felt the ball hit his fingertips, then got control of it and pulled it to his chest. His boots lost traction, and he shoulder-rolled forward, the ball tucked securely between his right hand and the crook of his elbow. He heard Eschman holler, “Complete! Way to go, Colonel!”

Hollis sat up as Caruso extended his hand toward him. “Nice going, Colonel.” Hollis pulled himself up by Caruso’s hand.

Lowry walked over and also put out his hand. As Hollis reached toward Lowry, he saw that Lowry was holding an automatic pistol. Hollis took the gun and slipped it back into his ankle holster, pressing hard on the Velcro strap.

Lowry said, “You move pretty fast, Colonel. Even with an iron ankle weight.”

Caruso stifled a grin.

Hollis said, “When I played end at the Academy, I shot three defensive backs.”

Both boys laughed.

Hollis looked at the boys. It must be lonely for them, he thought. No high school dances, no Saturday nights, no beaches, skiing, friends, girls. No America. He said, “Get something out of this tour of duty, guys. Get out into Moscow and meet the Russians.”

They nodded.

“Don’t let Vanya see you with those cleats,” Hollis warned, referring to the Russian groundkeeper who was obsessed with the lawn and actually called Scotts in Columbus, Ohio, for advice.

Hollis continued his walk across the quad. He approached the housing units, found Lisa Rhodes’ door, and pressed her buzzer. The brick row houses for singles were narrow, but they were three stories high. The first floor, that in the States might have a garage, was a laundry and storage room. A foyer with a staircase led up to the living room, dining area, and kitchen. The third floor held one or two bedrooms, sometimes a study or home office, depending on the rank of the officer. Lisa was in a one-bedroom unit along the east wall. Hollis heard her footsteps on the stairs, then the door opened. She smiled. “Hello. I thought you were running to me, then I saw the football.”

“Were you looking for me?”

“Just checking the weather. What did you drop?”

“My wallet.”

“Oh.” She stepped outside and did a complete turn. “Is this casual enough?”

Hollis glanced her over. She was wearing ankle-high boots, black corduroy slacks, and a dark blue quilt jacket that the Russians called a vatnik. From the collar of the jacket rose a black turtleneck like his own. He said, “Very nice.”

“Are you going to tell me why you requested I dress in casual clothes of dark colors?”

“I have a fetish. Let’s go.”

They walked on the path that ran parallel to the residences toward the pedestrian gate in the rear of the compound. She said, “Seriously, Sam… can I call you Sam?”

“Of course.”

“Why dark?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

They passed through the rear gate where the Marine barracks were located, and the single Marine watchstander saluted. Hollis walked up to the Soviet militia booth on the sidewalk and greeted the two young men in Russian. They returned the greeting stiffly. Hollis said, “When you get back to your barracks, you tell the two men who were at the main gate last night that Colonel Hollis apologizes for not acting correctly.”

Neither man spoke, then one of them said, “We will be sure to tell them, Colonel.”

“Good day.”

Hollis and Lisa walked up Devatinski Street. Lisa asked, “What was that about?”

Hollis replied, “I got a little nasty when they asked me for my passport. I guess I was on edge after the Rossiya.”

She said, “That was good of you to apologize.”

“It was militarily correct.” He added, “Also I don’t want the bastards to think they can get to me.”

They came into Tchaikovsky Street where the old embassy stood. Lisa said, “Where are we going for lunch?”

“The Prague.”

“Then we can walk up Arbat Street. I have to make a stop.”

They turned right and walked along the wide boulevard. Lisa said, “The sun is shining, for a change.”

“I see.”

“Do you go to the Prague often?”

“No.”

“Read any good books lately?”

“Can’t think of any.”

“Someone told me you were shot down over North Vietnam.”

“That’s right.”

“But you weren’t a POW.”

“No, I was rescued at sea.”

“This Major Dodson business has special meaning for you.”

“Perhaps.”

“You’re not into complex sentence structures, are you?”

“Depends on the subject.”

“Sorry.”

They walked in silence awhile, then crossed Tchaikovsky Street and turned up Arbat Street where it began at the massive Foreign Ministry building, another Stalinist skyscraper of pinnacles and spires. Lisa asked, “Have you ever been in there?”

“A few times.”

“What’s it like?”

“Have you ever been to the State Department building?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s what the Soviet Foreign Ministry is like, except the twaddle and bunkum is in Russian.”

They walked up Arbat, an old Moscow street that had recently been made into the Soviet Union’s first and only pedestrian shopping street. There were hundreds of people out on this promising Saturday, every one of them carrying a big bag. The street had been repaved with brick, and young trees struggled to take hold in concrete planters. There were benches, decorative streetlamps, and flower boxes running the length of the kilometer-long street that wound through the old Arbat district.

The Arbat was sometimes compared to the Left Bank or Georgetown, Greenwich Village, or Soho. But Hollis thought the Arbat was the Arbat, a unique glimpse of a vanished world that had not been well-known or chronicled even when it existed. For some reason the present regime was trying to preserve the Arbat’s heritage, rehabilitating the handsome buildings and restoring the facades of once chic shops. Though in a society that placed no value on chicness, gentility, tourism, or consumerism, Hollis could not comprehend what the government’s purpose was. It might be nothing more than creeping bourgeois sentimentality, though Hollis found that hard to believe. He said to Lisa, “Do you like this?”

“Sort of. But it’s a bit sanitized, if you know what I mean.”

“Have you seen the unsanitized parts of the Arbat?”

“Oh, yes. I know every block of what’s left of old Moscow.”

“Do you?”

“I’m doing a photographic essay.”

“Interesting. Hobby?”

“Sort of. I’m going to get it published.”

“Good luck.” He asked, “Are you a Russophile?”

She smiled with a touch of embarrassment. “Sort of. Yes. I like… the people… the language… old Russia.”

“No need to be defensive. I won’t have you arrested.”

“You make a joke of it, but on this job you have to be careful what you say publicly or privately.”

“I know.”

Lisa and Hollis strolled from one side of the street to the other, looking in shop windows. The shops were mostly of the basic variety, a svet—lighting fixture store, an apteka—apothecary, and so on. There were a number of snack bars and ice cream kiosks and what the Russians called health food stores that sold mostly processed dairy products. Hollis noticed a long line outside one of them, women, young children, and babies in strollers, which meant, he knew, that fresh milk was available. Lisa stopped at an outdoor stand and bought a bunch of mums from one of the traditionally white-aproned old ladies. Lisa said, “For a utilitarian people, the Russians spend a lot of money on hothouse flowers.”

“Maybe they eat them.”

“No, they put them in their drab apartments and dingy offices. Flowers are Russian soul food.”

“The Russians are a paradox — are they not? I can’t figure them out,” Hollis said. “They talk a lot about their Russian souls, but they never much mention their hearts.”

“Perhaps—”

“Instead of saying ‘a heart-to-heart talk,’ for instance, they say ‘dusha — dushe’—soul-to-soul. I get weary of all the soul talk.”

“It may be a matter of semantics—”

“Sometimes I think their problem is purely genetic.”

“Actually I have Russian blood.”

“Oh, do you? I’ve put my foot in my mouth.”

She took his arm as they walked. “I’ll forgive you.” She said, “My paternal grandparents were named Putyatov. They owned a large estate and a big brick house outside of Kazan on the Volga. I have an old picture of the house.”

“Is it still there?”

“I don’t know. When my grandmother, Evelina Vasileva, last saw it on the day she fled, it was still intact. My grandfather had five hundred peasants on the estate. I’d try to find it, but I can’t get permission from the Foreign Ministry.” She stayed silent awhile, then added bitterly, “What’s it to them if I spend a weekend out in the country looking for my roots?”

“Did you tell them you were an aristocrat and heir to five hundred peasants?”

“Of course not.” She laughed, then said thoughtfully, “I’ll bet the Putyatov name is still remembered there.”

“Fondly?”

“Who knows? This is not like Western Europe where you can go back and trace your ancestry. There’s been a complete break here, whole families wiped out, two world wars, revolution, civil war, purges, plagues, forced collectivization… what would I do if I found the house or found a Putyatov?”

“I don’t know. But you’d know what to do. You have a Russian soul.”

She smiled but said nothing and led him toward a shop whose gilded wooden letters spelled antikvar. She said, “This is the best of Moscow’s three antique shops. The other two are mostly secondhand-junk shops.”

They went inside, and the chicly dressed proprietress, an attractive young woman, greeted Lisa cordially, and Lisa gave the woman the mums. Lisa said in Russian, “Anna, this is my friend Sam.”

Hollis said in Russian, “Good afternoon.”

She appraised him a moment, then asked in Russian, “Are you with the embassy?”

“Sometimes.”

“Then you must know my good friend Seth Alevy.”

“I’ve heard of him.”

“Give him my regards, if you see him.”

“I will, if I see him.”

“Please”—she waved her arm—“look around.”

Hollis watched as Lisa browsed through the shop, crowded mostly with furniture, rugs, and lamps, none of which looked antique. There were, however, tables covered with interesting smaller items: silver pieces, ivory, troika bells, ceramics, gilded picture frames, jasper, porphyry, and other objects of semiprecious Ural stone — bits and pieces of a vanished world. Hollis wondered if Lisa was looking for the Putyatovs here.

Hollis noted there were no crosses or icons and in fact nothing of a religious nature, though religious art had been the predominant art form in pre-Revolution Russia. However there were things here that one would never find in a Moscow store, though nothing of true artistic value. Most of the good pieces had long since been appropriated by the government for museums or for the houses of the Soviet elite. The rest had made its way out of Russia long ago or had been destroyed in the initial frenzy of the Revolution. Now and then something significant surfaced in the West — a previously unknown Fabergé egg, a Rublyev icon, and recently a Levitan landscape had been auctioned at Sotheby’s for an anonymous client who was thought to be a Soviet defector. But for the most part, the evidence that Imperial Russia and Holy Russia had once existed could be seen only in Soviet museums between the hours of ten and six, closed Mondays.

Hollis picked up an inkwell made of Lithuanian amber. Embedded in the amber was an insect that he could not identify. He studied the inkwell as he thought about Seth Alevy, Lisa Rhodes, and the antique-shop woman who knew too much.

Lisa called out, “Do you like this?” She held up a round lacquer box.

Hollis walked over to her and took the small black box. On the lid was an uncommonly lithe Russian milkmaid, carrying a yoke with two milk buckets hanging from it. The black lacquer was deep and lustrous, and the girl’s clothing, bright and vibrant. On the bottom of the box was a four-hundred-ruble price sticker.

She said, “I think it’s a real Palekh box. Maybe pre-Revolution. Can you tell?”

Hollis’ limited knowledge of Palekh boxes told him that it was difficult to tell the old ones from the ones still made in the village of Palekh. The quality was consistently high, and the style unchanged, despite the Revolution or the fact that the craftsmen were now all state employees. Therefore, age had no meaning with Palekh boxes. Size counted. This one could be bought in a Beriozka for about a hundred rubles. He said, “I don’t think it’s worth four hundred.”

“That’s what I’d expect a man to say.”

Hollis shrugged.

She added, “Besides, I like Anna.”

“Anna doesn’t own the place. The great Soviet people own it. Anna works for the government.”

“Actually, this is a unique sort of operation. It’s called a commission shop. Do you know what that is?”

“No.”

“People bring things here on consignment. Whatever Anna sells, she takes a commission. The rest goes to the person who brought it in. Anna splits her commission with the government. It’s almost free enterprise.”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

“It’s only allowed with used goods.”

“Interesting.”

“Anna has what we call incentive. She’s nice, and she holds things for me.”

“And Seth.”

“Yes. She likes Camels.”

“Excuse me?”

“Cigarettes. Camel cigarettes.”

“Oh.”

“I’m going to buy this.” She went to the counter and chatted with Anna, then counted out four hundred rubles. Lisa wrapped the Palekh box in a piece of tissue and slipped it into her bag. She pushed a pack of Camels across the counter. “Let me know if you ever get anything porcelain with inlaid silver or gold.”

“I’ll call you if I do.”

They bade farewell, and Hollis walked out into the pedestrian street. Lisa followed and they continued walking in the afternoon sun. Hollis ventured, “That was a lot of money for that box.”

“I know.”

“Do you usually carry four hundred rubles with you?”

“I’m a real Russian. No credit cards, no checks. Just hundreds of rubles in case I see something to buy.”

“They usually look for food and clothing. That box was — well, it’s not my business.”

They walked for a few minutes before she said, “Does that place remind you of anything?”

“Not offhand.”

“Think. A novel. The one we all think about here.”

“Oh, yes. The secondhand store in 1984. The one run by the Thought Police, where poor Winston Smith was entrapped. That did cross my mind, now you mention it. Is that place run by the Thought Police?”

“I hope not.”

“How does that woman know you and Alevy and that you are both with the embassy? Why does Seth Alevy frequent that place?”

“That’s a good question. I thought you could tell me.”

“I’m sure I can’t.”

“Seth gives me money to buy things there. In fact, he tells me what to buy. It’s always an overpriced item. This time it was the box. I shouldn’t tell you this, but he hasn’t been up front with me.”

Hollis did not respond.

“Was that disloyal of me?”

“Do you owe him loyalty?”

She shrugged. “In some areas. Anyway, I told you, so you wouldn’t think I was a complete bubble brain. I was under orders to buy the box.”

Hollis nodded, then said, “That did seem out of character.”

“Out of character and out of my price range.” She asked, “So you don’t know anything about the antique shop?”

“No.” But Hollis thought he might look into it.

They walked on, and Hollis watched the people sitting on the benches and planters, eating ice cream and small meat pies. Most people gave them a passing glance, and some stared. Westerners were still rare enough in Moscow to attract attention, and a Muscovite could pick out a Westerner as easily as a Westerner could pick out a Cossack on horseback. The sun, Hollis thought, had the unfortunate effect of putting Moscow and its citizens in the most unfavorable light; somehow the drabness was not so drab under an overcast sky.

Lisa had taken his arm again, and Hollis gave her a sidelong glance. Now that she’d mentioned it, there was something vaguely Russian about her. But perhaps it was only the power of suggestion, as when he’d seen Julie Christie as Pasternak’s Lara against the background of Hollywood’s Moscow.

Hollis thought Lisa was quite pretty, and he noticed she had the high cheekbones and sharp features of some Slavic women. But her complexion was light, and her eyes were big and blue. Her auburn hair was cut in a shag-pixie style that Hollis noticed was popular with many younger Moscow women. Her lips, he saw, had the capability of being pouty, though he hadn’t seen that so far. Mostly she smiled or bit her bottom lip in thought.

She said without looking at him, “Do I have a fly on my nose?”

“No… I… I was just looking for Russian features.”

“Not in the face. Feet and legs. Short, stubby legs and big feet. Fat thighs.”

“I doubt that.”

“Want to bet?”

“Well… sure.”

She smiled and led him down a side street called Kalachny, or pastrycook. The streets in the Arbat recalled the names of the sixteenth-century court purveyors who once lived and worked there: Plotnikov — carpenter, Serebryany — silversmith, and so on. The names had been changed after the Revolution but had recently been changed back again. It was, Hollis thought, as if the country was on a nostalgia trip, like in America, a sure sign that the twentieth century had gotten out of hand. Hollis said, “Where are you taking me now? To see your Russian features?”

“No. To lunch. Didn’t you invite me to lunch?”

“Yes, but I called in a favor to get a reservation at the Prague.”

“Oh, I thought I could pick.”

“All right, but there aren’t any restaurants this way.”

“There’s one.”

“What’s it called?”

“I don’t think it has a name.” She crossed Pastrycook Street, and he followed her up the steps of an old stucco building that looked like the former residence of a wealthy merchant. They entered the large foyer, and Hollis smelled cabbage and old fish. She said, “That’s not the restaurant you smell. That’s the tenants.” She motioned him to a door under a sweeping staircase, and they descended into the basement.

Lisa opened another door at the end of the stairs, and Hollis could see a large dimly lit room with a low wooden ceiling. The floors and walls were covered with Oriental carpets, and a layer of aromatic tobacco smoke hung in the air. An old woman approached and smiled widely, giving Hollis the impression she was wearing someone else’s dentures. The woman said, “Salaam aleihum.”

Lisa returned the greeting and followed the woman to a low table laid with a dirty red cloth and mismatched flatware. Lisa and Hollis sat, and Lisa exchanged pleasantries with the woman, who spoke flawed Russian. The woman asked Lisa, “Does your friend like our food?”

“He loves it. Could you bring us a bottle of that plum wine?”

The woman moved off.

Hollis looked at his surroundings. “Is this place in the Blue Guide?”

“No, sir. But it ought to be. The food is great.”

“Is it Jewish?”

“No. Azerbaijanian. I said salaam aleihum, not sholom aleichem. Close, but it’s sort of Arabic.”

“I see.” Hollis noticed the room was full, and the other diners, mostly men, were obviously not ethnic Russians, and in fact he heard no Russian being spoken. Moscow, Hollis had observed, was becoming ethnically diverse as more of the Soviet minorities found their way to the center of the empire. The regime discouraged this immigration, and the Russian Muscovites were appalled by it. Though the Soviet government claimed they had no figures on ethnic breakdown, Seth Alevy had done a report in which he estimated nearly twenty percent of Moscow’s population was now non-Russian. The city had become home to Uzbeks, Armenians, Georgians, Tartars, Turks, and a dozen other Soviet minority groups. Alevy had concluded that Moscow was becoming more cosmopolitan and sophisticated because of this ethnic diversity. He also concluded that it was becoming the sewer of the empire, like former imperial capitals, filled with wheeler-dealers, men on the make, profiteers, and parasites. Such as Misha. Where the Russians saw a problem, Seth Alevy and Sam Hollis saw an opportunity.

Hollis noticed that most of the patrons were glancing at them. Hollis asked, “Is this place safe?”

“I guess.”

“This doesn’t appear to be a government-owned restaurant.”

“It’s a catering establishment. Almost a private club. It’s owned and operated by an Azerbaijanian produce cooperative. It’s legal.”

“Okay.”

“Have you ever eaten in a catering co-op?”

“No.”

“The food is better than in the best restaurants. Especially the co-ops with access to fresh produce such as this one.”

“Okay.”

A young boy came to the table and set down a bowl of small white grapes and another bowl of tangerines.

Lisa said, “See? When was the last time you saw a tangerine?”

“In a dream last week.” Hollis took a sharp knife and peeled a tangerine. He pulled the sections apart, and he and Lisa ate in silence, picking at the sweet white grapes between bites of tangerine. Lisa said, “Do you believe this?”

“You saved me from scurvy.”

Lisa wiped her mouth with her handkerchief as there were no napkins. “All the Azerbaijanians who live in Moscow come here. The food is genuinely ethnic.”

Hollis nodded. In Moscow’s other so-called ethnic restaurants, the Prague, the Berlin, the Bucharest, and the Budapest, the food was distinctly Russian. And in the Havana the only thing Cuban was the sugar on the table. The Peking served borscht. He asked, “How did you find this place?”

“Long story.”

Hollis thought it could be told in one word: Seth.

She said, “We’re allowed to patronize these places. Most Westerners don’t know about them, or if they do, won’t eat in them.”

“Can’t guess why.”

“Do you smell those spices?”

“Sort of. But the tobacco smoke is filled with air.”

Lisa sat back and lit her own cigarette. “Restaurants,” she said, “are a sort of barometer of what is wrong with this country.”

“How is that?”

“I mean there are eight million Muscovites, and half of them are trying to get reservations in the twenty passable restaurants.”

“Seating is tight,” Hollis agreed. “But they may be holding our table at the Prague.”

“You see, if private individuals were allowed to open restaurants, five hundred would spring up overnight. Same with shops and everything else.”

“That would be a threat to the system.”

“What sort of threat?”

“A very formidable threat. It would be like lighting a candle in the dark. Everyone would converge on it and light their own candles from it. Then the dimly perceived flaws in the system would be seen. Then who knows what would happen.”

Lisa studied him for a moment before observing, “You’re rather profound for a military man.”

“I thank you, I think. Read any good Gogol lately?”

She smiled. “Actually, I’m a great fan of his. Have you read Dead Souls?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“He’s not that widely read in the West, and I think that’s because his characters are hard to appreciate outside a Russian context. Don’t you think so?”

“Absolutely.”

“Gogol’s statue is actually at the end of this street, you know. In the Arbat Square. Have you seen it?”

“Hard to miss it.”

The plum wine came, and Lisa poured. Hollis touched glasses with her and toasted. “As the peasants say, ‘To a short winter, ample meat, and dry wood for the fire.’”

“You forgot the last line.”

“Yes. ‘And a warm woman for my bed.’”

They drank.

Lisa looked at him over the rim of her glass. She asked, “Sam, where are you from originally?”

“All over. I’m an Air Force brat.”

“Is this going to be like pulling teeth?”

He smiled. “All right, let me tell you about myself. I was born at Travis Air Force Base during the Second World War. I moved all over the globe until I was eighteen. Then I spent four years at the Air Force Academy. I graduated and went on to fighter school. I did a tour in ’Nam in 1968, then another in 1972. That’s when I was shot down over Haiphong. I got the craft out to sea, bailed out, and was picked up by air-sea rescue. I was banged up a bit, and the flight surgeons said no more flying. My father was a brigadier general by this time and got me a temporary posting in the Pentagon until I was able to be more active. Somehow I wound up taking a language course in Bulgarian. As you might know, Bulgarian is the root Slavic language, sort of like Latin is to the Romance languages. So anyway, I did three years in Sofia as an air attaché, then did stints in a couple of other Warsaw Pact countries, then before I knew it, I was too involved with this business for them to let me go back to the line.” Hollis took a drink of his wine. “I always suspected my father was behind this embassy attaché business.”

“So you’re a reluctant spy.”

“No, not reluctant. But not enthusiastic either. Just sort of… I don’t know. And I’m not a spy.”

“Okay. And then about two years ago, they sent you here. The big leagues.”

“The only league in this business.”

“And how about your family?”

“My father retired some years ago. He and my mother live in Japan. I’m not sure why. They’re rather odd. I think they’re into Zen. Too much traveling around. They don’t even know America, and what they know they don’t like. Reminds me of the Roman centurions or British colonial officers. You know? Since World War Two, America has developed a whole class of people like that.”

“Like us.”

“Yes, like us. The emissaries of empire.”

“Do you have brothers or sisters?”

“A younger sister who married a jet jockey and is currently living in the Philippines. No children. One older brother who works on Wall Street, wears a yellow tie, and makes too much money. He’s married, two children. He’s the only real American in the family.” Hollis smiled. “He developed travel burnout as a kid after the fifteenth transfer. His philosophy is that a man should never leave his time zone.”

“Time zone?”

“Yes. You know. He lives in the Eastern time zone. He won’t leave it and in fact confines himself to twenty degrees of latitude within the zone. He’ll cross zip codes freely but tries to stay within his telephone area code. He’s in two one two.”

Lisa stifled a laugh. “Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“What an interesting family. Are you all close?”

“There is a bond. How about you? Tell me about Lisa.”

She gave no indication of having heard him and said, “I seem to remember a wife.”

“Wife? Oh, yes, Katherine. She went to London to shop.”

“I think she’s been gone about half a year.”

“Has it been that long?”

“Are you legally separated?”

“Illegally.”

Lisa seemed about to pursue this but poured more wine instead.

The proprietress came to the table, and she and Lisa discussed the day’s fare. Lisa ordered for both herself and Hollis. Lisa said to Hollis, “It’s a fixed price. Only three rubles. The menu changes by the hour. Better that than the big restaurants where they keep telling you they’re out of everything you order.” She tore a piece of pita bread and put half of it on his plate. She remarked, “Bulgarian? I thought your Russian was odd. I don’t mean American-accented or anything, but not Russian-accented either.”

“I speak a little Polish too.”

“You’ve been around the Bloc.” She laughed at her own pun.

Hollis smiled. “It’s an article of faith with the Russians that only a Russian can speak Russian Russian. Yet Seth Alevy is nearly perfect. If he were trying to pass, a Muscovite would think he was probably a Leningrader and vice versa.”

“Perhaps on the telephone. But there’s more to being a Russian than the language. It’s like that with any nationality, but the Russians are different in unique ways. Did you ever notice that Russian men walk from the shoulders down? American men use their legs.”

“I’ve noticed.”

She continued, “And their facial expressions are different, their mannerisms. To be a Russian is the sum total of the national and cultural experience. Neither you nor I nor Seth could pass for a Russian any more than we could pass for an Oriental.”

“I detect some Russian mysticism there, Ms. Putyatova.”

Lisa smiled.

Hollis said, “Yet I wonder if it could be done? I mean, given the right training, cultural immersion, and so forth, could an American pass for a Russian in a group of Russians? Could a Russian pass for an American at a backyard barbecue?”

Lisa thought a moment before replying. “Perhaps for a while, if no one was looking for a counterfeit. But not under close examination. Something would betray the person.”

“Would it? What if a Russian who already knew English went to a special school? A school with an American instructor? A sort of… finishing school? A total immersion in Americana for, let’s say, a year or more. Would you get a perfect copy of the American instructor?”

Lisa considered a moment, then replied, “The instructor and the student would have to be very dedicated…. There would have to be a very good reason for an American to go along with that—” She added, “We’re talking about spies, aren’t we?”

“You are. I’m not. You’re very bright.” Hollis changed the subject. “Your Russian is grammatically perfect. Your colloquialisms are good. But I noticed your accent, rhythm, and speech patterns are not Muscovite, nor do you sound as if you learned Russian at Monterey or Wiesbaden.”

“No, I didn’t go to our language schools. My grandmother taught me Russian.”

“Evelina Vasileva Putyatova?”

“So, you were paying attention. Odd for a man.”

“I’m a spy. I listen.”

“And look and file things away. Anyway, my grandmother was a wonderful woman.” Lisa stubbed out her cigarette and continued, “I was born and raised in Sea Cliff, a neat sort of village of Victorian houses on Long Island’s north shore. Sea Cliff has a large Russian community that goes back to czarist times. Then the Revolution and civil war brought a second wave of immigrants, among whom were my grandmother and grandfather. They were in their early twenties and recently married. My grandfather’s father was a czarist officer, and he was killed fighting the Germans, so my grandfather, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Putyatov, inherited the estate and title, which by this time had become a distinct liability. My grandmother’s parents had already been arrested by the local Bolsheviks and shot, and Mikhail’s mother, my great-grandmother, shot herself. Relatives on both sides of the family were scattered all over Russia or were at the front or already in exile. So sensing the party was over, Mikhail and Evelina grabbed the jewels and the gold and got out. They didn’t arrive in America broke. Anyway, Mikhail and Evelina wound up in Sea Cliff, a long way from the Volga.”

“And your grandmother told you all this?”

“Yes. Russians are perhaps the last of the Europeans to put so much emphasis on oral history. In a country where there has always been censorship, who can you go to for the facts if not the old people?

“They’re not always the most reliable witnesses to the past.”

“Perhaps not in the sense of the larger issues. But they can tell you who was hanged for hoarding food and who was shot for owning land.”

“Yes, that’s true. Go on.”

“Well, in the parlor of our nice old Victorian house in Sea Cliff, we had a silver samovar, and when I was a child, Evelina would sit me by the samovar and tell me Russian folktales, then when I got older, about her life on her parents’ estate and about my grandfather. When I was about sixteen, she told me about the Revolution, the civil war, the epidemics, and the famine. It affected me very deeply, but I suppose her stories were colored by her hate of the communists, and I suppose, too, that I was influenced by her hate, though I don’t know if that was her purpose.”

Hollis made no comment.

Lisa continued, “But she taught me love, too, love of old Russia, the people, the language, the Orthodox church….” Lisa stared off into space for a few seconds, then continued, “In my grandmother’s room there were three beautiful icons on the wall and a curio cabinet that held folk art and miniature portraits on porcelain of her family and of Nicholas and Alexandra. The atmosphere in our community, even as late as when I grew up, was vaguely anticommunist — anti-Bolshevik, I suppose you’d say. There is a Russian Orthodox church close by, and ironically the Soviet mission to the United Nations has an old estate that they use as a weekend retreat a few miles from the church. Sundays my grandmother and I would go to church, and sometimes we’d walk with the priests and the congregation to the gates of the Soviet estate and pray. Our Holy Saturday candlelight procession would always march past the Soviet place. Today we’d call that a demonstration. Then, we called it bringing light to the anti-Christs. So you see, Sam, Evelina Vasileva Putyatova had a deep and lasting influence on me. She died when I was away at college.”

Neither spoke for some time, then Lisa said, “I went to the University of Virginia and got my degree in Soviet studies. I took the Foreign Service Entrance Exam, went through the oral assessment, the background investigation, and was vetted for a top secret clearance. I placed high on the USIS list but had to wait a year for an appointment. I did my year of consular service in Medan, Indonesia. There were six of us in a run-down two-story house, and I couldn’t figure out what we were supposed to do to further American interests there. Mostly we drank beer and played cards. I almost went nuts. Then I got my first real USIS job at the American library in Madras, India, and spent two years there. Then I came back to Washington for a year of extra training and staff work with the USIS in D.C. Then off to East Berlin for two years, where I finally used my Russian. That was a good embassy — exciting, mysterious, spies all over the place, and a ten-minute car ride to the West. After Berlin, I finally got what I wanted. Moscow. And here I am. With another spy.”

“You like spies.”

“I’m a spy groupie.”

Hollis smiled.

She added, “I’ve never married and never been engaged. I’m turning twenty-nine next month.”

“Invite me to your office birthday party.”

“Sure will.”

He asked, “And your parents?”

“They both still live in that house in Sea Cliff. My father is a banker; my mother, a teacher. They can see the harbor from their porch, and in the summer they sit out there and watch the boats. It’s very lovely, and they’re very happy together. Maybe someday you can stop by.”

Hollis didn’t know what to say to that, so he asked, “Brothers or sisters?”

“An older sister, divorced and living back home. I have a niece and nephew. My parents seem happy for the company. They want me to marry and move close by. They’re proud of my career in the diplomatic corps but aren’t too keen on my present assignment. Especially my mother. She has a phobia about Russia.”

“You look like you can take care of yourself. You know, my father was stationed on Long Island in the mid-fifties. Mitchel Air Force Base. I vaguely remember it.”

“Yes. It’s closed now.”

“I know,” Hollis replied. “What’s become of the place?”

“It’s been parceled out to Hofstra University and a community college. Part of the land was used to build the coliseum where the Islanders play. Do you follow hockey?”

“No. Like my parents, I’m not much of an American. It’s ironic, considering I’ve devoted my life to the service of my country. I’m a patriot, but I’m not plugged into the pop culture. For years I thought Yogi Bear and Yogi Berra were the same person.”

Lisa smiled. “So you wouldn’t pass the friend-or-foe test if someone asked you who plays center field for the Mets? You couldn’t pass for the American that you are.”

“No, I’m afraid I’d be shot on the spot.”

Lisa poured the last of the wine into their glasses. She looked at Hollis. “Well, now we know something about each other.”

“Yes. I’m glad we had a chance to talk.”

The food arrived, and Hollis inquired, “What the hell is this?”

“That’s dovta, a soup made of sour milk and rice. This cuisine is similar to Turkish. It’s somewhat complex, with more depth than Slavic cuisine. And the shit on the chipped blue plate is called gulubtsy.” She laughed.

Hollis smiled and helped himself. They ate in silence. More plates of spiced food arrived. They washed the meal down with weak Moscow beer. Hollis glanced at his watch.

She noticed and asked, “Do you have time to see the Train of Mourning?”

“The what?”

“The actual engine and coach that brought Lenin’s body back to Moscow. It’s on display at Paveletsky Station.”

“Oh, that train. I’ll pass.”

“Just kidding anyway. I don’t really go to places like the Marx-Engels museum either,” Lisa said. “I think it’s a joke how they try to create a secular religion in place of the one they destroyed. But if you are free this afternoon, perhaps we can do something.”

“Sure. How would you like to take a ride in the country?”

“Don’t joke.”

“No joke,” Hollis replied.

“Where? How?”

“I have to go to Mozhaisk on official business. I have a pass with your name on it.”

“Do you? I’d love to go. What sort of business?”

“Bad business, Lisa. Gregory Fisher is in the Mozhaisk morgue.”

Lisa stopped eating and stared down at the table for some time. She cleared her throat and said, “Oh, God, Sam. That poor boy….”

“Do you still want to go?”

She nodded.

The proprietress brought strong Turkish coffee and honey balls. Hollis had the coffee. Lisa sat silently. She lit a cigarette and said to Hollis, “Was he… trying to escape or what…?”

“No. They say he was heading toward Moscow. They say he had a car accident before the Borodino turnoff. They say he never got to the Rossiya.”

“They’re lying.”

“Be that as it may, it’s their country. I’ll brief you in the car. But I want you to understand now that if you come with me, I can’t guarantee your safety.”

“Safety?”

“I think the KGB is satisfied that they’ve contained the problem. They probably don’t think they have to engineer another accident. On the other hand, they’re not logical in the way we understand logic, therefore they’re not predictable.”

She nodded.

Hollis added, “They know you took Fisher’s call, and they know your name is on the pass. That shouldn’t make you a target, but you never know what they’ve talked themselves into. Still want to go?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why are you going, Sam? Anybody from the consular section could go.”

“I’m going to snoop around. You know that.”

“And that’s why I’m wearing dark, casual clothes and why you have a gun in an ankle holster.”

“That’s right.”

“Well… I’ll help you snoop. I enjoy your company.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Also, I guess I feel I was in at the beginning of this… you know?”

“Yes.” He stood and put six rubles on the table. “Well, the food wasn’t so bad. The place has ambience and no electronic plumbing like at the Prague or the other top twenty. Two and a half stars. Send a letter to Michelin.”

She stood. “Thanks for being such a good sport. My treat next time.”

“Next time I pick.”

“Can you top this for ambience?”

“You bet,” Hollis said. “I know a KGB hangout.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No.”

“Neat. Take me.”

They left the restaurant, and Hollis found himself in an agreeable frame of mind for the first time in a long while.