Read The Charm School for Free Online

together, they’ll shoot you.”
    Fisher felt his mouth go dry.
    “Or worse, they’ll send you to where I just escaped from. So we’re going to part company here. I’m going cross-country to Moscow. You’re going to find the highway and drive there. You’re going to the embassy. I’m going to figure out what to do when I get to Moscow. I may try to contact you at the Rossiya. Understand?”
    “Yes.”
    “I may try to contact the embassy by phone. I need all the rubles and kopeks you’ve got on you.”
    Fisher took out his wallet and removed the one-, five-, and ten-ruble notes. “About a hundred and fifty.”
    Dodson took the notes.
    Fisher found seventy-five kopeks in his pocket and handed them over.
    “Can’t promise I’ll pay you back.”
    Fisher shrugged. Fisher didn’t care if he never saw the money or Dodson again. Especially if it meant getting shot. He thought he should have listened to the Intourist lady and stayed in Smolensk.
    Dodson glanced back in the rear of the car. “You going to open a farm stand?”
    “Huh . . . ? Oh, no. Gifts. You can take what you need.”
    “You have candy? Packaged food?”
    “Candy in the plastic bag back there. Some peanuts. Snacks.”
    Dodson leaned back and retrieved the bag with the name and address of a West Berlin Konditorei stamped on it. “Last outpost of junk food, right, kid?”
    Fisher forced a smile. “Right.”
    “Okay, listen to me, Greg Fisher. I am going to tell you something, and you are going to listen like you never listened to a prof at Yale. Okay?”
    “Okay.”
    “My name is Major Jack Dodson. I am an American Air Force officer.”
    Fisher nodded. “Air Force.”
    “I am—I was—a POW. I was shot down over North Vietnam in 1973.”
    Fisher looked at Dodson. “Jesus . . . you’re an MIA!”
    “Not anymore, kid. Listen. I have been held here in Mrs. Ivanova’s Charm School since 1974—”
    “ Where?”
    “That’s what we call it. Don’t interrupt. I am going to give you some important details. You will get to the embassy before I reach Moscow. I may never reach Moscow. But you will. You will ask to speak to a defense attaché, preferably the Air Force attaché. Got that? Attaché.”
    “Yes. Attaché.”
    Dodson studied Fisher for a long moment, then said softly, “I don’t know what fate brought us together on this lonely road, Greg Fisher, but I think it was God’s will.”
    Fisher simply nodded.
    “I am going to tell you a very strange story now. About the Charm School.” Dodson spoke and Fisher listened without interruption. Fifteen minutes later Dodson said, “You make sure they understand you and believe you. There are a lot of men whose lives depend on you as of this moment, Mr. Fisher.”
    Fisher stared through the windshield with unfocused eyes.
    “Are you a patriot, Mr. Fisher?”
    “I guess . . . I mean in the last few weeks . . .”
    “I understand. You’ll do what you have to do.”
    “Yes.”
    Dodson reached out and took Fisher’s hand, which was limp and wet. “Good luck, and as we used to say on the flight line, God speed.” Dodson opened the door and left quickly.
    Fisher sat motionless for a few seconds, then looked out the passenger side window. Major Dodson was gone.
    Gregory Fisher felt very alone. In a moment of crystal clarity, he completely grasped the meaning and the consequences of the secret that had just been revealed to him, and an awful fear suddenly gripped him, a fear unlike any he had ever known in his short, sheltered life. “This one’s for real.”
    * * *
    Gregory Fisher got his bearings from the Kutuzov obelisk shining in the moonlight. He found the lane flanked by the monuments to the Russian regiments, then spotted the white limestone museum, and within a minute he was on the poplar-lined road heading toward the iron gates.
    Approaching the gates, he saw they were now closed. “Oh, for Christ’s sake—” He hit the accelerator, and the Trans Am smacked the gates,