The Charm School

Kramden’s wife and beat you at Trivial Pursuit. See?”
    “Whitefish is in Montana, Seth.”
    “Is it?”
    “Who played shortstop for the 1956 Dodgers, Seth?”
    Alevy smiled grimly. “Phil Rizzuto.” He waved his arm. “Anyway, I can’t be one of them.”
    “Why not?”
    “My company doesn’t let you in just because you talk the talk. They want to interview mothers, fathers, and high school teachers. Point is though, most private companies just want to see documentary evidence that you were born, educated, and so forth.” Alevy grinned. “But it was a good question. You’ll be asking it again.” Alevy added, “You’ve met a graduate of the Charm School.”
    “The man in Fisher’s room. Schiller.”
    “Yes. Was he perfect?”
    “Chillingly so.” Hollis thought a moment. “So you think these… graduates of this school have entered American life, in America?”
    “We believe so. They might not work for my company, but they could work for contractors we hire, and they could live next door to me in Bethesda or empty the trash in CIA headquarters. They could install my telephone and audit my taxes. They can go to computer schools or other technical schools and could most probably join the military.” He looked at Hollis. “Who
did
play shortstop for the 1956 Dodgers?”
    “Howdy Doody.”
    “Bang, you’re dead.” Alevy poured brandy into his empty coffee cup. “Want anything?”
    Hollis could see that Alevy was fatigued, high on caffeine, and low on alcohol. Hollis went to the sideboard and poured the last of the coffee. He said, “So they quack like a duck, look like a duck, and even lay eggs like a duck. But they ain’t ducks.”
    “No, they ain’t, Sam. They’s red foxes. In the chicken coop. Or if you prefer, Satan in the sanctuary.”
    “How many do you think have graduated that place?”
    “When the school was first started, there were probably more Americans—let’s call them instructors. The Charm School, as an offshoot of the Red Air Force school, has been in existence maybe twelve to fifteen years. The Charm School course would have to take at least a year. Probably a one-on-one situation. The little Red student assimilates the sum total of the American’s knowledge, personality, accent, and so forth.”
    “The invasion of the body snatchers,” Hollis said.
    “Precisely. So the school may once have had the capacity to graduate several hundred agents a year. But we assume some of the Russkies flunked out, and we assume some of the American instructors flunked in the ultimate sense, and also we don’t think the KGB undergraduate schools here in Moscow or in Leningrad could supply that many qualified students to the graduate school—that’s what we called it. But Major Dodson called it Mrs. Ivanova’s Charm School, and that’s from the horse’s mouth. I guess the Americans there call it that as a joke. We still don’t know what the Russians call it. Probably Spy School Five. Anyway, we can’t be sure all of the graduates were infiltrated into the States. So to answer your question, I would guess maybe fifteen hundred to two thousand. Maybe more.”
    “You mean there may be as many as two thousand Russian agents in America posing as Americans?”
    “Posing is not the word,” Alevy said. “They
are
Americans. The earlier graduates have been there nearly fifteen years. Long enough to have realized the American dream—with a little help from their friends. Long enough to have married and have kids in Little League. Long enough to be in positions to do real harm.”
    “And none of them has been caught?”
    Alevy shook his head. “Not that I know of. No one was even looking until recently. And what do we look for? Someone who drinks tea from a glass and writes his
k
’s backward?”
    “Someone who is caught spying.”
    “They probably don’t spy in the conventional sense. Their people are probably divided into several categories: sleeper agents, agents in place, agents of influence, and so forth. Their covers are perfect, and they never draw attention to themselves. Even if we nabbed one spying, we’d be hard-pressed to prove the guy was born and raised in Volgograd, as long as he stuck to his legend.”
    “If you attached electrodes to his balls and jolted him until he spoke Russian, you’d know.”
    “You know something? I don’t think the guy would speak Russian. And even if he exposed himself, what good would it do? He’s not part of a cell or a