The Charm School

carts.
    Alevy purchased some Swiss candy bars, American bubble gum, and Finnish hard candies. He paid for the items in American dollars and went back to the concourse, where he found the Intourist service desk located behind a glass wall. He placed his passport, visa, and airline tickets on the desk and said in English, “I would like to confirm my helicopter connection to Sheremetyevo and my flight to Helsinki.”
    The attractive blond woman glanced at the papers on her desk and replied snippily in excellent English, “Yes, everything is all right. What is there to confirm?”
    “I know how well everything runs in this country, but I want to be certain about my arrangements.”
    She looked at him a moment, then replied a bit more civilly, “I know that your helicopter is already here, Mr. Burns. It leaves in fifteen minutes. Go to the lobby and see the bell captain. I haven’t heard of any problem with your Finnair flight.”
    “Thank you.” Alevy gathered his passport, visa, and tickets, slipping them into his trench coat. He walked back to the lobby and spotted his luggage, which had been taken from his room. The film crew was wrapping up the shoot, and a porter was trying to get the blood off the carpet.
    Alevy approached the bell captain. “Helicopter?” He made a whirling motion with his finger. “
Helicopter?
” he said more loudly, remembering that Americans had a reputation of shouting English to foreigners in the belief that if it was loud enough the natives would understand it. “Hel-i-cop-ter!”
    “Ah,
vertolet
.” The bell captain pointed through the glass doors to a small white Aeroflot bus.
    “Swell.” Alevy pointed to his bags and showed the man his hotel bill with his room number on it.
    The bell captain nodded and called a bellboy over, saying to the boy in Russian, “You didn’t think the American was going to carry his bags twenty meters, did you? Be nice to him, and he may take you to America in his suitcase.”
    Alevy smiled vacuously at the bell captain and gave him a ruble.
    The man touched his cap and said, “
Da svedahnya.
”
    “Good-bye,” Alevy said, and followed the bellboy toward the doors where the doorman wished him a pleasant journey, making Alevy think that indeed some of them were getting it right.
    Alevy boarded the Aeroflot minibus and nodded to three other men who were seated. The bellboy stowed Alevy’s overnight bag and suitcase in the rear of the bus. Alevy held on to his attaché case. The driver started the bus.
    The man across the aisle from Alevy said to him, “American?”
    “Yes.”
    The man smiled. “Hey, can you believe helicopter service in Moscow? They didn’t have this when I was here five years ago.”
    The man behind Alevy added, “I can’t believe this hotel. It was nearly up to standards.”
    They all laughed.
    The fourth man, in front of Alevy, looked back at the other three. “Did you men see that cops and robbers movie they were shooting there in the lobby?”
    They all nodded. Alevy said, “It was actually a CIA-KGB caper. Silly Hollywood kind of stuff. Never hear about that in real life.”
    The bus pulled away from the circular driveway, and the four men, all Americans, exchanged small talk about their stay in Moscow. It turned out that they were all taking the 10:45 Finnair flight to Helsinki, the last flight to the West until morning.
    The man in front of Alevy said he was a frequent traveler to Moscow and added, “I always feel good when I get clear of this place. I’ve kissed the tarmac at Helsinki so many times my lips are getting black.”
    They all smiled in recognition.
    The bus took them around the west side of the hotel to a concrete helipad near the International Exhibition Hall, close by the Moskva embankment road. An Mi-28 helicopter sat on the floodlit pad, its turbojet engine warming. Alevy regarded the white helicopter a moment. Rather than landing skids, it sat on wheels like most Soviet helicopters. It had four main rotor blades, sitting atop two four-hundred horsepower Izotov turbine engines. The Mi-28 saw service in the Soviet military, as it did with Aeroflot as a transporter of VIPs. It was fast, comfortable, and reliable. Or so he’d been told. Like all Soviet aircraft, this one had a NATO code name, and as with all helicopters, the code name began with
H
. The code names were supposed to be meaningless. He hoped so. The Mi-28 was called The Headstone.
    The bus stopped ten meters from the