The Charm School

smiled. “I gave Pavel a tenner. So, do you think we can get away with just dinner, or do we have to have them for the weekend?”
    “I think they were nice.”
    “He beats his wife.” Hollis tried to put the car into gear, but the linkage was stuck again. “A nuclear power. I don’t get it.” He played with the clutch and stick shift, finally forcing it into second gear. “Okay.”
    Hollis pulled out onto the dirt road and turned in the opposite direction from which they had come.
    “Are we going to find that telephone?” she asked.
    “I wouldn’t chance that.”
    “Where are we going? Mozhaisk is the other way.”
    “We are not going to Mozhaisk. We’re going to Gagarin.” Hollis honked his horn and waved to Pavel, Ida, Mikhail, Zina, and the others who were waving from their front gardens. “Yablonya,” he said. “This place will sit on my mind for some time.”
    “Mine too.”
    Hollis passed the last
izba
in the village and sped up. The Zhiguli bounced badly on the rutted and frozen mud. “
Chornaya gryazi
,” Hollis said. “The black mud. This stuff will turn to pudding when the sun warms it. The panzers used to sink up to their turrets.”
    “Why Gagarin?”
    “Well, there are people between Mozhaisk and Moscow who are looking for Major Dodson and maybe for us. So we’re heading west to Gagarin, where I hope there’s not an all points out for stray Americans. We’ll ditch the car, then take the train to Moscow. Okay?”
    “What are my choices?”
    “You can ride in the backseat. Left or right side.”
    Lisa lit a cigarette. “You’re a pretty smart guy.”
    “Foreign travel is educational. And we’ll see how smart I am. Could you crack the window?”
    Lisa rolled down the window. “Can we stop for a pack of cigarettes?”
    “Next Seven-Eleven you see.”
    “Thanks.”
    Hollis headed west along the straight dirt road. He couldn’t imagine that the Soviet state did not have the wherewithal to pave or even gravel back roads. Perhaps, he thought, it was just another subtle means of keeping the peasants where they belonged and making their miserable lives more miserable. He knew he had to get the Zhiguli onto blacktop before the mud thawed.
    “Do you know the way?” Lisa asked.
    “It’s about fifty K west of here on the old Minsk–Moscow road. And yes, I’m afraid this is—”
    “Another fucking itinerary violation.”
    “What happened to that sweet girl who was so obsequious toward me?”
    She laughed. “I
was
awed by you. That’s how you talked me into bed.”
    Hollis thought it best to leave that one alone. He said, “I need a shower.”
    “You sure do.”
    Hollis pushed the Zhiguli hard. It was a few minutes past eight, and he could see water in the ruts now instead of ice. He figured they had about fifteen minutes left on this road before it swallowed the Zhiguli.
    Lisa said, “Do you think those people in Yablonya will be all right?”
    “Well, if they don’t report their contact with foreigners, and the authorities find out on their own, or if the little Komsomol shit tells them, it will be bad. In the intelligence business we talk about the average Ivan’s attitudinal loyalty to the state. Some say he’s got it, others don’t think so. In America, if Joe Smith had a Russian knocking on his door asking to be put up on the sly, Joe would be on the horn to the FBI in a flash. Joe does that because he thinks it’s right, not because he thinks the FBI will torture him if he doesn’t. Ivan, on the other hand, is about half patriotic and half terrorized. That’s my professional analysis. Personally I think Yablonya is fucked.”
    Lisa stayed silent for some time, then said, “I should have realized the trouble they’d be in… it just seemed like a solution to our problem.”
    “Don’t worry about it. I just hope the KGB doesn’t go snooping around there this morning. We need a few hours’ head start.” Hollis could feel the road getting soft and heard mud splashing against the wheel wells. The muffler was thumping. Ahead he saw a horse-drawn potato wagon plodding along the narrow road. “Damn it.” He knew he couldn’t slow down behind the wagon without getting mired in the muck. “Hold on.” Hollis came up behind the wagon, angled the car to the left, and cut back so that the Zhiguli’s right side was inches from the horse and wagon while its left wheels were off the road into the drainage ditch. The car started to flip over, then settled