The Charm School

maintained eye contact, then nodded and turned away. “Okay. Cheap shot.”
    Hollis finished his beer.
    Alevy stood and went to the bar, coming back with two more drinks. He handed Hollis a beer. Alevy said, “You know, I’ve been thinking about Ace. I don’t know if he rings. Do you?”
    Hollis recognized the format: Prove to me your man is not a double. “He’s always had the goods,” Hollis reminded him.
    Alevy looked at Hollis. “Seems so. Everything he’s given you has checked out with my people and yours. Yet…”
    Hollis stared down at Alevy’s brightly polished handmade broughams. Italian-tailored blue silk suit. Custom shirt and Liberty tie. Seth Alevy spent a good deal of money on good clothing. And yet someone who knew Alevy in the States said he dressed better in Moscow than in Washington. Hollis suspected that the sartorial splendor was just Alevy’s way of annoying the Russians. Alevy, to the best of Hollis’ knowledge, was the only man who ever showed up at the Bolshoi in a tuxedo. In fact, Hollis was convinced that Alevy owned the only tuxedo in all of Russia.
    Alevy finished his second scotch. “Ace’s stuff is good, but he may be setting us up for a nasty sting. You might have handed him the means if you mentioned Borodino.”
    “There’s always that possibility.” Hollis regarded the four FSPs. The one with the Toto T-shirt threw a gutter ball and uttered an obscenity. She pulled the front of her T-shirt up and wiped the perspiration from her face, baring her midriff in the process. “Hard fuzzy-belly.”
    “What?” Alevy looked. “Oh.”
    “What do you do for sex now, Seth?”
    “That’s a rather personal question.”
    “No, it’s a professional question.”
    “Well… I don’t have to remind you, as our Marines have to be reminded daily, that the local
devitsas
are off-limits. And so, theoretically, are the wives of our coworkers.”
    “Theoretically.”
    “There are,” Alevy said, ignoring this, “at this moment exactly thirty-two single women in the embassy, and perhaps twenty or more of them have already formed liaisons.”
    “Have they? How do you know?”
    “I keep a dossier on everyone here. Isn’t that disgusting?”
    “No comment.”
    “As for the women in other Western embassies, they are off-limits to intelligence types such as us. For you and I the policy is to date only single American women.” Alevy added, “You could hang around the hard-currency bars and find an unattached American tourist.”
    “Have you done that?”
    “Maybe.” Alevy looked at Hollis. “I assume your wife is not returning. However, until you get a divorce, you have to play by the rules.” Alevy smiled and patted Hollis’ arm, a rare display of intimacy. “You don’t know how to be a bachelor anyway. You were married too long.”
    Hollis didn’t respond.
    “Did you have someone special in mind?” Alevy asked.
    “No, just checking the rules.”
    Alevy regarded Hollis for some time, then asked, “Did something happen between you and Lisa? That’s a professional question.”
    “Then look in your dossier.”
    “Well,” Alevy said in a cooler tone, “I want you to think now about Ace.”
    “I have. So I had him meet me in Dzerzhinsky Square. And some K-goons came along, and Ace went pale. Hard to fake skin color.”
    Alevy shrugged. “Heard of a similar situation where a guy did fake it with some sort of nitrate substance. Turned him ashen. But Dzerzhinsky Square
was
an inspired idea. Not bad for a military guy. A little risky though.”
    Hollis sipped his beer.
    Alevy said, “Regarding Ace, if you cut him loose, we’re ahead of the game whether he’s real or not. If you stay with him, you may find out what he’s up to. But what he’s up to may be murder, and it may be too late.”
    “Actually there’s been a new development.”
    “What?”
    “He wants to head West.”
    “Does he?”
    “So he says.”
    Alevy thought a moment. “Then maybe what he wants is to find out how we get people out of here.”
    “Maybe. Maybe he just really wants to defect.” Hollis cradled the beer bottle in his hands and watched the condensation drip. Alevy had a weak spot in his professional makeup: He personally didn’t like most Russians. Not liking the Soviet regime was a job qualification. But Alevy was unable to concede that anyone who had been shaped by the regime was capable of anything but treachery and vileness. Perhaps he was right. Certainly General Surikov