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The Charm School

The Charm School

Titel: The Charm School Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Nelson Demille
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are?”
    Poole replied, “A few kilometers north of Borodino battlefield.”
    Hollis nodded.
    Poole continued, “We know from the flight that took us from Hanoi that we were landing in European Russia. We’ve also done some star and sun plotting to confirm that. The climate too is probably mid-Russian and not Siberian. The biggest clue is all those aircraft we see descending to the southeast. The traffic has grown over the years. We figured that had to be Moscow.”
    “And Borodino?”
    “The cannon fire,” Poole replied. “Every September seventh and October fifteenth and sixteenth, we can hear a twenty-one-gun salute a few kilometers to the south. Those are the anniversaries of the two battles of Borodino. Correct?”
    Hollis nodded again. He had actually attended the September ceremony the previous year.
    “Well,” Poole said, “I guess the question is, did Jack Dodson make it to the embassy?”
    “That,” Hollis replied, “is the question.”
    They continued their walk. As they passed in front of the massive grey headquarters building, Poole said, “You spent some time in the back rooms there, did you?”
    Hollis answered, “Not long by Russian standards.”
    “Almost everyone here has done time in the cooler. But Burov has more subtle means of punishment. It’s counter-productive to throw instructors in the cells, so he throws the Russian wives or girlfriends in if one of us commits an offense. Most of us have wives or children now—hostages to fortune—so it makes it difficult for us to act.”
    The road curved and dropped as they rounded the bend, and Hollis realized it had become darker. He looked up at the sky and saw nothing but blackness.
    Poole said, “Camouflage net.”
    Hollis thought this was the camouflaged area he’d seen from the helicopter.
    Lisa said, “Look, Sam!”
    Hollis looked ahead and saw dim lights suspended from lamp poles. As they got closer Hollis saw he was looking at a paved parking lot, complete with white lines. Set back from the parking lot was a row of about ten darkened storefronts, looking very much like a suburban shopping plaza. The main store in the row was a large 7-Eleven complete with the distinctive white, green, and red sign. Hollis said to Lisa, “See, there’s the Seven-Eleven we were looking for on the road to Mozhaisk.”
    Lisa stared at the stores. “Incredible.” She moved across the dimly lit parking lot toward the row of red brick shops. Hollis and Poole followed.
    To the left of the 7-Eleven was a laundromat, a Bank of North America complete with logo, a place called Sweeney’s Liquors, a barbershop called Mane Event, and a beauty parlor named Tresses. To the right of the 7-Eleven was Kruger’s Hardware store; a stationery and tobacco shop, Main Street Pharmacy; a bookstore that also carried audio- and videotapes; and at the end of the row, a sort of luncheonette-coffee shop called Dunkin’ Donuts.
    Hollis asked, “Is that a legitimate franchise?”
    Poole laughed. “No. But we’re trying to get an American Express travel agency here.”
    Hollis walked past the luncheonette and peered into the bookstore.
    Poole said, “To varying degrees these stores are all functioning operations. You need camp scrip to buy things at all of them except this book and tape store. Everything there is only for loan. It’s sort of the camp audiovisual department, though it’s set up as a retail bookstore for training purposes. We get a wide selection of publications, videotapes, and some decent cassettes and albums.”
    Lisa looked at the window display of recent American and British hardcover fiction and nonfiction. “I couldn’t find some of this stuff in the embassy bookstore.” She saw a copy of John Baron’s classic,
KGB
, and the Soviet defector Arkady Shevchenko’s exposé,
Breaking with Moscow
. “And they let you… and the so-called students read this stuff?”
    “They don’t have any choice, do they?” Poole replied. “If they don’t read it now, they’ll read it stateside, where it might blow their minds. They’re inoculated here with the truth.”
    Hollis peered through the windows of the pharmacy and stationery store. “You men don’t lack for anything here, do you?”
    “Not in the material sense, Colonel. You know what we lack.”
    Hollis didn’t reply but moved over to the hardware store. “Mostly American brand name goods here.”
    “Yes,” Poole replied. “Most of the hardware and housewares in the camp are

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