The Charm School

buttoned the blue tunic of his Air Force uniform and straightened his tie. “How do I look?”
    “Very sexy,” Lisa said. “I’m going to lose you to some young secretary tonight.”
    Hollis adjusted his row of ribbons.
    Lisa asked, “Do you arrange them by color, chronologically, or what?”
    “By order of importance. Good conduct last. Which secretary?”
    She smiled. “Will you teach me how to put your uniform together?”
    “It’s not important. I can do it.”
    “Did your wife do it?”
    “I don’t think she knew I was in the military. Do you have any scotch?”
    “One bottle left in the kitchen. Help me with this zipper.”
    Hollis zippered her black silk dress, then reached around and cupped her breasts in his hands. “World-class jugs.”
    “Gross. You’re getting very gross. You used to be an officer and a gentleman.”
    He kissed her on the neck, and they went downstairs. Lisa got the scotch and a bottle of soda. Hollis filled two glasses with ice.
    She said, “These packing boxes are getting on my nerves.”
    “Where’s the icon?”
    “Over there on the bookshelf. I’m going to send it to my boss at the USIS in D.C. I wrote and asked him to hold it. Will you get it into the diplomatic bag for me?”
    “I said I would.”
    “Thanks. Can you pick it up for me when you go to Washington?”
    “Sure.” He took the icon from the bookshelf and looked at it. It was a square, about two feet on each side. The painting was of a male saint, but Hollis couldn’t identify him. “Who’s this guy?”
    She came up beside him. “That guy is the Archangel Gabriel. See his trumpet?”
    “Right.”
    “This is painted on larch. Too many of them were done on pine, which warps and cracks.”
    “I see.”
    “A lot of people don’t like icon painting. The figures have no perspective, no depth or movement. They’re just flat, and the faces seem stiff and distant.”
    “Like eight million Muscovites.”
    “But there’s a warmth to the colors they used, and there’s a certain serenity in that beatific face, don’t you think?”
    “Oh, yes. How much?”
    “Is it worth? Well, they’re hard to get appraised in the West, but I found an art historian at Columbia once who said it was sixteenth century, Kazan region, which I knew. Worth maybe twenty-five thousand.”
    “Jesus. What if I lose it?”
    She poured scotch in his glass. “I can’t imagine a spy losing things. I trust you.”
    “Okay.” He put the icon carefully back on the shelf.
    She said, “The icon has a very special importance in Russia. During the Tartar invasions, when churches were burned and priests massacred, the icon was small enough to be hidden, and each household had one. For hundreds of years these deeply religious people came to see the icon as the symbol of survival of the Russian culture and Christianity.”
    Hollis nodded. “You see parallels?”
    “Of course. Everyone does. If the Orthodox church and Russian culture could survive almost three hundred years of wild horsemen, it can survive those fools in the Kremlin. That’s part of the symbolic meaning in the revival of iconography. The portraits themselves may be uninspiring, but people here who keep icons are making a statement of dissent. I think they know and the Kremlin knows who are the keepers of the culture and who are the Tartars.”
    “Interesting. Sometimes I think there’s more to this country than meets the eye. We forget they have a history.”
    “They don’t forget for a minute.” Lisa sipped on her scotch. “I’m a little anxious about this party.”
    “Why?”
    “Well… it’s sort of… I guess I’m basically shy. I don’t like being the center of attention, especially at a party celebrating my getting kicked out.”
    “I hadn’t noticed your shyness,” Hollis ventured. “Anyway, it’s all good fun. I went to one in Sofia once. The deputy CIA station chief there had seduced the wife of a Bulgarian official or something. Long story short, he got caught and booted. Anyway, the party lasted all weekend and the poor guy… what’s the matter?”
    “Men are pigs. That’s not a funny story.”
    “Oh. Seemed funny at the time. Maybe you had to be there.”
    “You know, this espionage business is sort of… anyway, it’s not you. Can you get out of it? Do you
want
to get out of it?”
    “I’d like to fly again.”
    “Do you? Or have you been saying that too long?”
    Hollis sat on a packing crate and didn’t