Jim is in favor of the idea, he wants to see this Great Adversary that America has worked so hard to create and support. Angela is up for it.

So they go to Moscow. Well, sure. It reminds Humphrey of Toronto, his childhood home. Streets are clean. A lot of well-dressed people are out walking. Little untracked gas-engine cars roar about on the streets, which the travelers find delightfully quaint and noisy. At their hotel, recommended by the Intourist Bureau at the airport, they ask where they can rent a car and are told they cannot. “We’ll see about that,” Humphrey declares darkly. His eyes gleam crazily. “Time for some private sector enterprise.” He has smuggled a number of videocassettes in, and as soon as they’ve unpacked in their rooms he stuffs several in his jacket and goes out to flag a taxi. Half an hour later he is back, pockets crammed with rubles. “No problem. Asked my driver if he knew anyone interested, and of course he was. The cab drivers are the big black market dealers here. The bellboy wants some too.”

He looks affronted as Jim and Sandy and Angela laugh themselves silly. “Well, it’s not so funny. We’ve got a serious problem here, in that they won’t let you exchange rubles for real money. So this is like Monopoly money, you know?”

Sandy’s eyes light up. “So while we’re playing the game we might as well move to Boardwalk, is that it?”

“Well, yeah, I guess so.” This is against Humphrey’s grain entirely, but he can’t figure out why he should object.

“What’s the most expensive hotel in town?” Sandy asks.

They end up just behind Red Square in an immense old hotel called the Rijeka, and take up a suite on the top floor. Their window view of Red Square, filtered though it is, is impressive. “What a set, eh?” Sandy orders champagne and caviar from room service, and when it arrives Humphrey goes to work on the hotel employees, who speak excellent English. It’s actually a disadvantage for the employees in this case, as it allows Humphrey to work them over more completely. When they leave the gang is many rubles richer, and Humphrey marches about the room ecstatically quoting long extempore passages from Acres of Diamonds in between attacks on the caviar, waving fistfuls of rubles in each hand.