The Charm School

wife.”
    “For my girlfriend. My wife gets my pay. Thank you.”
    Lisa said to Hollis in English, “Men are such pigs.”
    “I know.”
    The driver said, “You both speak good Russian. Are you spies?”
    Hollis answered, “Yes.”
    The driver laughed. He turned off the ring road into the Avenue of the Enthusiasts and headed east toward the Lefortovo suburb. “Traffic gets worse every year.”
    Hollis didn’t notice much traffic. He asked, “Do you know that Washington and Moscow are talking about a summit meeting in January?”
    “Yes. I read that.”
    “What do you think of that?” Hollis asked.
    The driver looked around as if trying to determine if there were anyone else in the cab, then said, “They’ve been talking for forty fucking years. If they wanted peace, they’d have peace.”
    Hollis listened as the taxi driver gave his somewhat rambling view of the world. Hollis knew what Soviet diplomats thought, so an Ivan-in-the-street interview was useful now and then.
    The driver turned onto Krasno Kursantsky Street. They passed the grim Lefortovo prison compound, and the driver stopped in front of a modern building of glass and aluminum. The driver concluded, “So we should get together before the black asses and the yellow asses take over the world. We’re going to blow each other up, and they’ll take over. Tell that to your president.”
    “I’ll pass it along.”
    “Are you sure you want to go here?”
    “Yes.” Hollis handed him five rubles and told him to keep the change, which he did. Hollis had been told that as few as ten years ago, the taxi drivers stuck to the rule of not accepting tips. But the Revolution was over, burned out, and no one took any of it seriously anymore. In two years he had not once heard anyone call anyone else comrade. The pride and fervor were gone, and everyone was on the make or on the take. The churches were crowded, party membership was down, suicides were up. The average life expectancy was dropping, and alcohol consumption, despite the anti-drinking campaign, had risen. Russia was a second-rate nation, but they had first-rate weapons and a world-class secret police.
    He and Lisa walked to the door of the restaurant. She said, “That man sounded like the last New York cabbie I had.”
    “God bless the proletariat. They get down to basics.”
    Lisa turned and looked up and down the street. “I’ve never been in this part of town. It’s dark and grim.”
    “Part of the charm.”
    She stared at the KGB prison across the road, then noticed a car parked with its engine running. “Is that our favorite Chaika?”
    “Could be. In a country with four makes of cars, most of which are black, it’s hard to tell if you’re being followed.”
    Hollis showed her into the restaurant, and they handed their coats in at the checkroom. He took Lisa into the dinner area, a medium-sized room, unremarkable in its decor but interesting in its clientele. Most of the patrons were men, and more than half were in one sort of uniform or another. Many of the civilian-attired men were in brown suits, better cut than those of the average Muscovite. The dining room was darker than most Moscow restaurants, Hollis noted, though the effect was not romantic.
    Lisa said, “Sinister. I love it.”
    Hollis gave his name to a woman at the reservation counter. She looked him over, then looked Lisa up and down. She frowned, turned, and led them to a table in the center of the room. The table was laid with white linen and heavy flatware. Hollis pulled Lisa’s chair out for her. She said, “Everyone is looking at us.”
    “You’re so beautiful.”
    “They know we’re Americans.”
    Hollis said, “By way of background, the gentlemen you see are mostly employees of Lefortovo—prison, not restaurant. They are a collection of KGB interrogators, torturers, and executioners. They work up big appetites. The food is good, and the service is the fastest in all Moscow, all Russia. It is also underpriced.”
    A man in uniform at the next table stared at Lisa. She stared back.
    Hollis added, “The KGB doesn’t bug the tables here. Here, the KGB are
at
the tables.”
    A waitress came by with a bottle of mineral water and set it down with two menus. Hollis ordered a bottle of Georgian wine. The waitress left without a word.
    Lisa said, “What’s this country coming to when an American military spy can sit in the same restaurant with a hundred KGB thugs? Where is Joe Stalin when they need