"I have some secret information for you," whispered the Russian in a low, conspiratorial voice. I listened closely. The small man with the salt-and-papper beard moved closer. The Russian words flew past me -- something about a KGB video and a scandal in the military. "How much did you understand?" Boris asked suddenly. "Not much," I conceded. "But what will you do when you get a real scoop in Moscow?" he insisted. "You must know how to get the gist of the story when you don't know the whole language."

In the field of Russian language, fifty-three-year-old Boris Shekhtman is the closest thing to a modern-day czar. He holds forth in the finished basement of his home in suburban Rockville, Maryland. A small army of matrioshka dolls and assorted Russian trinkets (the kind that clutter every Moscow apartment) sit awkwardly on the modern American furniture. Old Russian textbooks lean against new American paperbacks. On the bottom shelf of one bookcase is a Scrabble set, with American letters on one side of the tiles and Cyrillic on the other.

The photographs hanging above Boris's desk include a shot of former Secretary of State George Shultz presenting Boris with an award for teaching. Another shows Boris with Francis X. Clines and Bill Keller of The New York Times in their Moscow apartment. They are two of Shekhtman's "Russian Robots," so named because, he explains, "they are all tainted in my methodology, which relies on computerization -- drilling automatic Russian responses into their brains."

In a typical class, Boris draws Cyrillic letters on the blackboard, slowly pronouncing each syllable as it leaves his hand: "Paf-ta-reet-e, pajalsta," bellows Shekhtman. The student responds: "M-edl-ena, pa-jaw-loo-sta." Again and again the words are drummed in, drilled in, until the weary student can barely think of another phrase. The phrases literally mean Repeat, please, and Slowly, please. They are automatic speech patterns used by all of Boris's "robots" and they are designed to slow down and control the rapid-fire Russian dialect.

Felicity Barringer of The New York Times was one of Boris's first robots. She likens him more to a doctor or diagnostician than to a language teacher. "He analyzed my brain, made a template of the portion of my brain that learns language, and figured out what I could learn," Barringer says. "And it was all custom-made to my needs."

"Boris could teach particle physics if he had to," claims Bill Keller, who went to Moscow in December 1986 for the Times. It was shortly after Gorbachev had begun releasing political prisoners, Keller recalls, a time when reporters tested the limits. "We all had these office translaters who had been hired from the government," says Keller, who is now based in South Africa. "And so we assumed they were vetted by the KGB. If called upon, they'd probably inform. You couldn't take one of them on an interview to some god-forsaken place to meet someone who had just come out of a logging camp in Siberia, still with a prison haircut, shaved down to the scalp. The dissident would be uncomfortable with an 'enemy of the people.'" So Keller went alone.

"They [political prisoners] tended to be intellectuals whose language was, frankly, way above my head," Keller recalls. But Shekhtman had infused him with a sense of confidence and courage to "wing it." "I remember half-waiting for the political prisoner to stop me and say, 'You're not understanding a word I'm saying, are you?' It never happened."

Shekhtman prepares all his robots to swim in rough Russian-language waters. One way is by giving them "Islands." Islands can be anything from a few lines about oneself to a short monologue about the state of the world. They are the ultimate cocktail party savior -- a few canned stories and well-rehearsed insights to keep the conversation going. "And they give the robot a chance to rest a bit to think of how to change the topic," adds Boris.

In 1989, I was sent to gather material for an ABC News documentary on Russian women. My translator had finally managed to convince the beautiful blonde prostitutka outside the Cosmos Hotel to share her views on the "profession" with ABC. We found a quiet corner of the parking lot, out of view of the police, for the interview. While waiting for the camera crew to set up, my translater wandered off. The young woman grew restless and began to eye the door of the hotel. I couldn't tell if she was looking for business or fearful that the militsia might chase us away. We were running out of time and I could see our scoop slipping away. My co-producer looked helplessly at me, asking, "You know Russian -- can't you stall?" I remembered my Islands. The woman listened attentivbely as I rambled on about myself, my work, life in America -- all the pre-packaged material I had in my computer.

Eventually, I did run out of Islands, and out translator was still nowhere in sight. Then I remembered another of Boris's techniques. Shekhtman teaches his robots how to ask perfect questions in Russian, even if they barely understand the answers. "Let's begin the interview," I pronounced confidently. The camerman and co-producer seemed stunned. Nonetheless, they began rolling. I activated the interview using words so often rehearsed in Boris's basement. "Pacheemoo prostitutzia?" (Why prostitution?) "Skol-ka?" (How much?) "Gde?" (Where?) "Kagda?" (When?)

The interview went well and was subsequently aired on ABC, minus one exchange. Asking how Russians felt about sex for money, I got my prepositions mixed up, using the word for "with" instead of "for." Looking startled, the young woman asked in return, "V=Amer-eek-e 'sex' za d-en-g-ee?" (In America they perform sex with money?) Later, back in Maryland, my goof was repaired in Boris's basement.

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