The Charm School

hysteria and weeping.
    Two lanes farther down, four Marines in civilian clothing were rolling balls. The Marine watchstanders, as they were called, numbered about twenty. They were handpicked for their height, bearing, intelligence, and quite possibly their looks, Hollis thought. As per Marine regulations, they were unmarried. These facts had caused some problems, most notably the sex-for-secrets scandal at the old embassy.
    Russia, Hollis thought, more than any country he’d ever served in, changed you. You went in as one person and came out another. An American, whether a tourist, business person, or embassy staffer, was the center of attention and under constant scrutiny, from the locals and from the state. You woke up with tension, lived with tension, and went to bed with tension. Some people, such as Katherine, fled. Some cracked up, some became mildly idiosyncratic, some betrayed their country, and some, such as Lisa, embraced the Russian bear and danced with it, which, Hollis reflected, might be the only way to get out with most of your marbles.
    The bowling lanes and the adjoining spaces doubled as a bomb shelter, and Hollis sometimes wondered if the day would ever come when he would be watching the automatic pinsetters while waiting for an American nuclear strike to obliterate central Moscow above.
    Seth Alevy walked over and sat on the bench beside Hollis. Alevy swirled his scotch and ice cubes as he regarded the four women. “Right,” Alevy said at last, “we are not in Kansas. We are below the Emerald City.”
    One of the secretaries threw a strike, did a little victory jig, and slapped palms with her teammate. Hollis said to Alevy, “You want to roll a few sets?”
    “‘Frames.’ No.”
    The ambient noise cover down here was good, Hollis knew, and any bugs planted during construction were ineffective, as were the KGB directional microphones in the surrounding buildings. Which was one reason, Hollis understood, that Alevy liked to meet here. But the other reason that Alevy had not requisitioned one of the safe rooms in the chancery was that Alevy suspected those rooms were bugged by State Department Intelligence. As the CIA station chief in Moscow, responsible ultimately for all American intelligence in the Soviet Union, Seth Alevy had no intention of being bugged by a minor league bunch such as State Department Intelligence. Alevy was only slightly less disdainful of Hollis’ Defense Intelligence Agency. Alevy had a better psychic relationship with the KGB, Hollis thought, because they didn’t pretend to be his friends.
    Alevy asked, “Did Ace show?”
    “Yes.”
    “Can he help us with this?”
    “I think so.”
    Alevy nodded. “Why did you think he could, Sam?”
    “Just a hunch.”
    “You didn’t expose one of our best assets in the Soviet Union to a personal meeting with you on a hunch.”
    “Ace is Red Air Force. Dodson is—or was—U.S. Air Force. I went with that.”
    “That’s pretty thin. Now that we’re alone, why don’t you tell me everything the French couple told you, then tell me what you did and saw on the way to Mozhaisk. Then tell me what Ace told you tonight. And while you’re at it, tell me things I haven’t even thought to ask you about this case.”
    “I’m really into interservice rivalry, Seth. I’m protecting my own petty little fiefdom. It gives me a sense of worth and importance.”
    “I think we’re being sarcastic.” Alevy added, “All right, we can pursue this along separate lines for a while. All I ask of you is to be careful what you tell the Pentagon, and I’ll do the same with Langley.”
    “Why?”
    “You know why. This thing is so big they’ll try to run it from there. Then State and the White House will get involved, and we’ll be getting micromanagement from one of those bozos in the basement of the White House. We’re the ones who risk our lives out here, Sam.”
    Hollis didn’t reply.
    Alevy added, “You risked your life once in a war that had enough bombing limitation rules to make sure you didn’t hurt anyone but yourself. Are you still pissed about that? Would you like to even the score with Washington on that? Do you want to maybe bring a few fliers home? You know they’re out there, Sam. I know it too.”
    Hollis stared Alevy in the eye and said softly, “I’ll listen to reason and logic, Seth. But don’t you ever—
ever
try to manipulate me with that argument. Stay out of my past. I’ll deal with that.”
    Alevy