The Charm School

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