Charm School v1_0

by Nelson DeMille

  Hollis sat in a corner with his back against the warmer interior wall, pulled his legs up to his chest, and wrapped his arms around his knees. He slept fitfully.

  On what he thought was the second day, the door opened. Someone threw a ball of clothes on the floor and shut the door. Hollis found a blue warm-up suit and sweat socks but no footwear. He dressed and treated himself to some water. He felt very weak. The light overhead went off, and the cell was in darkness. He'd noticed that the light came on and off at random intervals, apparently without any pattern or any reason except to play games with his biorhythms. Hollis walked awhile in the dark, then curled up and slept in his new clothes.

  On what he reckoned was the third day, the door opened again, and a sleeping bag flew in, followed by a boiled potato that steamed in the cool air. Hollis looked at the potato but did not move toward it while the guard stood at the door.

  The guard said in Russian, “How do you feel?”

  “Fine.”

  The guard snorted and spoke the traditional phrase used to greet new camp prisoners in the Gulag, “Zhit' budesk', no est ne zakhachesh'.” You'll live, but you won't feel much like fucking. The guard laughed and closed the door.

  As Hollis moved toward the potato, the light went off, and he had to get down on all fours to find the food. He climbed into the sleeping bag to conserve body heat and ate the warm potato.

  Some hours later, the door opened again, and a guard shouted in Russian, “Get up! Come here!”

  Hollis got to his feet and followed the guard down the long corridor, then up a narrow flight of concrete stairs. He was led into a small room and immediately saw it was set up for a tribunal. There was a long table at the far end of the room at which sat five KGB officers in uniform facing him. Burov sat in the middle and seemed to be the ranking man. The other four stared at him with stolid Russian faces.

  On the wall behind the table hung a picture of Felix Dz-erzhinsky, founder of the secret police, and next to that a color photograph of a man whom Hollis recognized as the present chairman of the KGB. Above both pictures was a large painted sword and shield, the emblem of the Committee for State Security. Hollis noted there was no Soviet flag, nor a picture of any political or party leader. The symbolism was obvious; the KGB was a law unto itself.

  Hollis saw weak sunlight coming through the window, looking more like dusk than dawn. The KGB Border Guard snapped, “Sit!”

  Hollis sat in a wooden chair facing the five men.

  Colonel Burov spoke in Russian from his seat. “This special tribunal of the Committee for State Security has been convened for the purpose of trying Colonel Samuel Hollis of the United States Air Force for the murder of Private Nikolai Kulnev and Private Mikhail Kolotilov, members of the Border Guards Directorate of the KGB.” Burov recited dates and circumstances, then asked, “Colonel Hollis, how do you plead to the charge of murder?”

  The Border Guard behind Hollis kicked his chair, and Hollis stood. He said, “I plead guilty.”

  If Burov or the other four men were surprised, they didn't show it. Burov asked, “Do you want to say something in extenuation or mitigation?”

  “No.”

  Burov cleared his throat and said, “Very well. If the accused raises no extenuating circumstances, then there is only one penalty that this tribunal can adjudge for the murder of a KGB man, and that penalty is death by firing squad.” Burov looked at Hollis closely, and Hollis stared straight ahead.

  Burov said to Hollis, “You are required to write a full confession of the crime for which you stand convicted. If the confession is satisfactory, you will be allowed to write an appeal of your death sentence to the chairman of the Committee for State Security. If the appeal is turned down, there are no further appeals, and you will be executed. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take the prisoner to his cell. Bring in the next prisoner.”

  The guards moved Hollis toward the door, and as he reached it, it opened, and Lisa stepped into the room, wearing a grey prison dress. She looked, he thought, pale, shaky, and disoriented. Hollis said to her, “Plead guilty. Be brave. I love you.”

  She focused on him as if trying to place him, then the guards moved them past each other, and Hollis found himself in the corridor. He was escorted back to his cell on the ground floor. The cell was dark, but then the light snapped on, and he saw a writing tablet on the floor. He knelt and picked it up, noticing also an American ballpoint pen.

  Hollis sat on his sleeping bag and rested the tablet on his knees. His instructions as an intelligence officer superseded the Rules of Conduct for a POW. He was to confess to everything and anything and write whatever they asked as long as it didn't endanger another prisoner or compromise national security or ongoing operations. In short, he was to play their game because they thought so much of it.

  His primary obligation was to escape, and to do that he was to preserve his mind and body. He'd been assured that if he stayed within his instructions, that whatever he signed, wrote, or said would not be held against him if he should ever make it back. Hollis thought he preferred the moral certainty and rigid guidelines of name, rank, and service number. But he was no longer a pilot, and in this new business there were no certainties, moral or otherwise. Hollis began writing his confession. He chose to write it in Russian, so if there were any problem of fact, he could plead ignorance of the finer points of the language.

  He knew that if they had the time, they'd make him rewrite it again and again. The Russians took the written word very seriously, and as former Orthodox Christians they were obsessed with confessions of guilt; thus the legendary written confessions that poured out of the Lubyanka. But Hollis suspected that Burov was on a tight schedule to get on with the important business, the interrogation to find out what he and Alevy knew and what the embassy knew and what Washington knew. Hollis reflected on the sequence of the criminal justice system here: trial, confession, interrogation. He supposed it didn't matter. The bullet still came at the end. Hollis continued to write.

  Hollis paused to collect his thoughts, then continued his confession. In truth, there wasn't much to tell. Ht'd been spying on the Charm School, ran into two Border Guards, and shot them. His chance sighting of Yablonya from the helicopter removed that moral problem and gave him an opportunity to betray people who were already liquidated. He knew, too, that the KGB wanted not only details, but philosophical motivations for what he'd done, an enlightened awareness of his shortcomings as a decadent product of Western capitalism. They also wanted apologies. He'd written several sample confessions in the Washington Lubyanka, but he didn't want to make it appear that he was a pro at it.

  As he started a new page, Hollis thought about Lubyanka West, the Charm School, and the many other manifestations of Washington's and Moscow's obsession with and emulation of each other. He always thought that if either side were ultimately defeated in a future war, the victor would feel a sense of loss and purposelessness. He recalled the almost disappointed expression on Burov's face upon passing the death sentence on him. There was no doubt that each side got something out of the conflict, drew some sort of unnatural psychic energy from it.

  Hollis filled the writing tablet with words, then read what he'd written. It was a good confession, a mixture of hard fact and hard-to-prove fiction. The facts were things Burov probably already knew. The fiction was that Greg Fisher's phone call to the embassy was the first time they'd heard of an American POW in Russia. Burov would believe that because he wanted to believe it.

  Two hours after he'd begun writing, Hollis signed the confession and lay down in his sleeping bag. He thought briefly about Lisa, then forced her out of his mind, but he fell into a restless sleep and dreamt about her anyway.

  On the fifth or sixth day of his imprisonment, after the third draft of his confession, the door to his cell opened, and the lieutenant who had been the duty officer when he arrived walked in and said in Russian, “Your confession is accepted. Now you will w
rite an appeal of your death sentence. Come with me.”

  Hollis, half starved by now, stood unsteadily and followed the lieutenant out into the corridor. The man pointed, and Hollis walked toward the rear of the building. It was at this point where they usually put the bullet into your neck. But why that odd custom of the hallway execution—begun in the 1930s in Lubyanka—persisted was beyond him. It would have been humane if no one knew about it, but as it was fairly well-known in the Soviet Union, Hollis thought he'd just as soon face a firing squad outdoors.

  He could hear the lieutenant's boots on the concrete floor and listened intently for the snap of the holster flap, wondering if he'd misjudged Burov's need to interrogate him. He remembered his own advice to Lisa at the restaurant in the Arbat, that the KGB were not rational, and he could well believe that Burov had let his emotions get the better of his intellect.

  “Stop!”

  Hollis stopped and heard a door open to his right. The lieutenant said, “In there.”

  Hollis entered a small windowless room that was just another cell like his own except that there was a table and chair in it. On the table was a sheet of paper and a pen.

  “Sit down.”

  Hollis sat, and the lieutenant moved behind him. Hollis saw that the table was of yellow pine, and the boards of the table were stained with what could only have been blood. Against the wall in front of him were stacked bales of straw to keep a bullet from ricocheting.

  “Address your appeal to the Chairman of the Committee for State Security.”

  Hollis picked up the pen and asked, “In Russian or English?”

  “It doesn't matter.”

  Hollis began writing, and the lieutenant remained behind him. In contrast to confessions, the appeal was obviously supposed to be short, as he had only one sheet of paper.

  Hollis heard the metal snap of the holster, the pistol sliding over the leather, and the click of the hammer being cocked.

  Hollis continued to write. He found that his mouth had gone dry and his palms were moist. He controlled his hand as he finished the last line of the appeal of his death sentence. Hollis signed his appeal, put the pen down, and waited, wondering if he'd actually hear the blast or feel anything.

  He heard the hammer click again, the pistol slide into the holster, and the snap close. The lieutenant chuckled softly and said, “Leave it there. Stand.”

  Hollis stood, and the lieutenant brought him back to his cell. The Russian said, “Your appeal will be decided within twenty-four hours. It is not humane to have you waiting much longer to learn your fate.” He closed and bolted the door.

  The light was on, and Hollis knew Burov was taking some pleasure in watching him. Hollis wanted to urinate but didn't. He sat on his sleeping bag and closed his eyes. He knew that he should be playing the game for Burov, should be shaking with fear at the waste hole, drinking water to wet his dry mouth. He knew that if he didn't give Burov any pleasure, then Burov, in his pique, would consider Hollis a malfunctioning toy and get rid of him.

  Hollis rose slowly, went to the waste hole, and urinated. He drank from the spigot, retched, then drank again. He took a deep breath, went to his sleeping bag, and pulled it over his head. The lights went off.

  An image of Lisa walking beside him on that sunny Saturday in Arbat Street filled the darkness behind his eyes. He pictured her face with various expressions, and each expression froze for a moment, as if he were taking photographs with his mind. He found himself slipping into a sort of twilight sleep, the only sort of sleep he'd been capable of for some time. There seemed to be less and less difference between his waking periods and these periods of shadowy consciousness, and he could not distinguish dreams from waking hallucinations. What he longed for was a deep, recuperative sleep, but that no longer seemed possible.

  Finally he slipped into real sleep and had a real dream, a dream he never wanted to have again—his F-4, its controls dead in his hands, the cockpit filled with blue smoke and red blood, and the sea rushing up at him, then the sky, sea, sky, as the aircraft rolled wing over wing and his hand clutched at the eject trigger.

  Hollis jumped to his feet, his face covered with sweat and his heart trying to get out of his chest. He screamed, “Simms! Simms!” then sank to the floor, covered his face, and remained motionless.

  The door opened, and a guard said tonelessly, “Come with me.”

  Hollis stood and followed the man into the corridor. A second guard fell in behind them, and they began walking. The guard to his rear said to Hollis, “Mikhail Kolotilov was a friend of mine, you fucking murderer.”

  Hollis made no reply. The guard to his front turned into the narrow staircase along the wall, and they went to the second floor. The Russian knocked on a door and opened it. The man behind him poked Hollis toward the door, and Hollis entered.

  Colonel Burov sat at his desk in a spartan concrete office. There was a single window in the wall, and Hollis saw it was evening. The concrete walls were painted the color and texture of crusty yellowed cream, and on the concrete floor was a brick-red rug with a central Asian design. On the wall behind Burov's desk hung the same two pictures as in the tribunal room, but in addition, there was the necessary picture of Lenin.

  “Sit down, Hollis.”

  Hollis sat in a wooden chair facing the desk, and the door closed behind him.

  Burov held up Hollis' written confession. “Fascinating. I'm quite impressed with your ability to avoid capture. As you know, we discovered your car at Gagarin station. What you don't know is that we found out about Yablonya as well. I'm glad to see you were truthful about that.”

  Hollis rubbed the stubble on his chin and suppressed a cough.

  “Your girlfriend, however, was not. In fact, her confession has fewer interesting details than yours does.”

  “She doesn't know much.”

  “No? She knew about Yablonya and didn't put that in her confession. She, too, has been condemned to death by the tribunal. Unless her confession is satisfactory, she will not have an opportunity to make an appeal for her life.”

  Hollis said nothing.

  “And she will be shot.” Burov studied Hollis a moment, then picked up a single sheet of paper and glanced at it. “Your appeal for clemency is interesting. You say you are willing to work here if you are not shot.”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think we do here?”

  “Train KGB agents to pass as Americans.” Burov studied Hollis a moment, then inquired, “How do you know that?”

  “We guessed.”

  “You and Alevy?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. And have you caught any of our graduates from this place?”

  “Yes. The Kellums.”

  Burov leaned across his desk. “When did you discover them?”

  “Only… I guess it was last Thursday or Friday. What day is this?”

  Burov didn't answer, but asked, “And Dodson? Where is Dodson?”

  “I don't know.”

  Burov stood and went to the window. He stared out at the dark pine forest, then asked, “If you people know about this place, why aren't you doing anything about it?”

  “My government is pursuing a policy of peace at the moment.”

  “So they want to keep it quiet.”

  “That's my understanding.”

  “But if Dodson somehow got in touch with your embassy…?”

  “They'll shut him up.”

  Burov smiled. “Will they?”

  “I believe so. I don't know everything that goes on there.”

  “No. I'd rather have Alevy here. But you'll do for now.”

  Hollis rubbed his eyes. He knew that what he said was being recorded, and perhaps it was being fed into a voice-stress analyzer. Later, he'd be asked the same questions when he was attached to a polygraph and perhaps again under drugs. Any inconsistencies discovered then would be resolved with electric shock interrogation.

  Burov continued what was called in the trade t
he “soft” interrogation, and Hollis answered the questions, tonelessly and with an economy of words. Burov was good, but he was not a professional KGB interrogator of Special Service II. Hollis thought the bogus SS II interrogators at Lubyanka West in Washington were somewhat better. On the other hand, Hollis, as an air attaché with diplomatic immunity, was not supposed to have ever gotten into such a situation, and his training was somewhat limited.

  Hollis suspected, however, that Burov was enough of an egoist to think he could handle the situation himself, and that was why Burov, the camp commandant, had gone to Mozhaisk and Lefortovo restaurant on his own counterintelligence missions. Also, Hollis reminded himself, Burov and his whole Little America operation were probably in trouble with the politicians if not the Lubyanka. It was Hollis' job to assure Burov that everything was all right. He did not want this place to disappear. Yet.

  Burov said, “I can't imagine that your government would let our operation continue. Even in the interests of peace. There are thousands of our agents in America already, and we're graduating over two hundred a year. What does Washington intend to do about that situation?”

  And that, Hollis thought, was the crux of the matter. He replied, “It is my understanding that the State Department is looking for a negotiated settlement.”

  “Are they? The diplomats are such women. What does the CIA want to do?”

  “Blow the whistle. Leak it to the world press.”

  “Ah, yes. And the White House?”

  “They're sort of in between.”

  “And your people? The Defense Intelligence Agency?”

  “They have a moral interest in the fate of the captured fliers.”

  “And you? You, Colonel Sam Hollis?”

  Hollis allowed himself a small smile. “I just want to kill you.”

  Burov smiled in return. “Yes? I thought you wanted to work for me.”

  “That depends.”

  Burov nodded to himself, then said, “And has anyone proposed direct action against this school?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something like rescuing one or two of these men and presenting them to the world as evidence.”