Charm School v1_0

by Nelson DeMille

  The five Americans looked at one another. Colonel Mead broke the silence. “How the hell did you get here?”

  Hollis replied, “Kidnapped.”

  Mead said to Burov, “Christ, you people fucked up this time.”

  Burov smiled thinly. “If you followed the newspapers more closely as you're supposed to do, gentlemen, you would have read of the deaths of Colonel Hollis and Ms. Rhodes in a helicopter accident.”

  Commander Poole nodded. “That's right. You're the air attache.”

  “I was.”

  Captain Schuyler said, “Then you're both real? I was thinking you might be two of Colonel Burov's flying worms from a much earlier class.”

  “No,” Hollis replied. “We're real.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Mead still seemed skeptical. “I did read about you, but are you you?”

  Burov replied, “You'll be getting last week's news magazines tomorrow, with pictures. And last week's videotapes of network news programs also.”

  Schuyler nodded gravely. “Well, sorry to see you here.”

  “We're sorry to be here,” Hollis replied. He could sense that they had a lot of questions for him, the question of Dodson being one, but this was not the time to address them. Hollis said, “We'll talk soon.” They nodded.

  Burov made a hasty parting and led Lisa and Hollis on. He said, “As you can see, most of the houses here are American. Also, in another underground area, we have several training environments—American kitchen, several business and professional offices, rooms filled with American gadgets and such. I'll show you that another day. But mostly we concentrate on the nuances of language and culture: facial expressions, clothing, interpersonal relationships, and that sort of thing. The day-to-day things such as supermarkets and gas stations can easily be assimilated in the States.”

  Hollis remarked, “Like how to smoke a cigarette.” Burov walked in silence awhile, then replied, “Little mistakes can be fatal.” He went on. “One of our biggest problems turns out to be facial expressions. How unique faces are, and how odd that different cultures do different things with their faces for different reasons.”

  Lisa commented, “Muscovites always have an expression of quiet desperation, except when they're drunk, and then they look melancholy. They never smile except at their children.”

  “Is that so?” Burov said, “You know, I never noticed that. But that's the point. You did. And the other major difficulty is the English language. The number of words alone is overwhelming. You have close to half a million words. We have less than a hundred thousand. English is a rich language, to be sure. I'd envy you your language but for the spelling and the grammar.”

  Burov continued his talk as they walked along the wooden paths through the woods. He said, “I just remembered a story about one of our graduates who recently arrived in America and had a bad experience in a supermarket with a can crusher. It seems he put a full can of cola into the machine, though I have no idea why.” He smiled at the thought, then added, “I suppose it's like satellite-map reading. You can see everything, but it's not like being on the ground. You have to put your feet into a country and smell its air and listen to its rhythm to really know it.”

  Lisa asked, “And what if you come to know it and love it?”

  “That,” Burov replied, “can be a problem. But we've worked that out. Again, it's illusion. Our graduates are loyal, but we create the feeling within them that they are always being watched over in America. They know too that their families here are being well taken care of. You understand?”

  Hollis remarked, “You, Colonel, certainly know the nuances of our language.”

  “Thank you.”

  They crossed the main road again and took a path that ran behind the VFW hall, into the woods, and down a gentle slope. Burov said, “We are trying something new. Graduates who have spent at least six years in America are returning as instructors. This program must continue and expand; we can't rely on foreign instructors forever.” Burov added, “Peter the Great finally realized that. He imported too many foreigners at first. That is the history of my country: trying to graft Western learning and culture onto this rough land. But eventually we have to take what we need from the West and perpetuate that learning here. This school will not die because the foreign teachers die, as happened to Peter. No, we will teach teachers to teach, and they will teach others. One day this school will put out two thousand Americans a year. By the end of the century, you will have a fifth column in your country whose size and influence will be sufficient for the Soviet Union to consider itself a minority shareholder in America, albeit a silent one. One day we might be chairmen of the board.”

  Neither Hollis nor Lisa responded.

  Burov showed them toward a small clapboard cottage built in a Cape Cod style, with green shutters and a cedar shingle roof. “This was Major Dodson's quarters. You may use it for the week you need to make up your minds. Come in.” Burov opened the door and invited them to take off their coats, then turned on several portable electric heaters. At Burov's urging, Hollis lit the kindling in the fireplace.

  Hollis looked around the room. It was rustic but comfortable. He examined the books on the shelves beside the fireplace and saw that Dodson's taste ran to inspirational literature and British whodunits.

  Burov said to Lisa, “Through that door is a small kitchen. You'll find glasses and something to drink.”

  “Really?”

  Burov hesitated, then said, “Would you be kind enough to make drinks?”

  Lisa gave him a nasty look, then went into the kitchen.

  Burov said to Hollis in a low voice, “That woman is very… independent.” He added, “American women. How do you put up with them?”

  “They're interesting,” Hollis said.

  “They're spoiled bitches.” Burov sat in an armchair near the fire. “The winter is here. Have you adjusted well to Russian winters?”

  “Quite well. I have the Joel Barlow award.”

  Burov nodded. “I heard that tape, you know.”

  Hollis didn't reply.

  “One couldn't make out everything, but I have to tell you I was enraged. It was insulting, vile, and hateful.”

  “It was in rather bad taste,” Hollis agreed. “Perhaps you shouldn't listen to other people's conversations.”

  “Your friend in there likes Russia.”

  “But not the people who run Russia now.”

  “Now and forever.”

  “I think not, Colonel Burov.”

  “Be realistic, Colonel Hollis.”

  “I try to be.”

  Burov shrugged. He said, “A word of advice: try to keep her mouth shut. We're very lenient here, because that's the only way we can suck your brains year after year. But a few instructors have gone too far.”

  “And you shot them.”

  Burov replied, “Only as a last resort. Have a seat. You don't look your old self. Sit.”

  Hollis sat on a love seat facing the fire.

  Lisa came back with three glasses on a small metal tray and passed a glass to Hollis. “Brandy.” She took a glass for herself and put the tray on an end table. Burov took his glass and raised it. “To your new home.” He drank alone. “So, do you find this preferable to torture, starvation, and death?”

  Lisa replied, “Not yet.”

  Burov stared at her awhile, then said, “Sex. You both wondered about that. You saw some women. Some were students, and there are those six American female instructors whom you haven't met yet. Also there are many other women here who have been provided for the American instructors. Russian women. It would be unrealistic to expect these men to function well for all these years without women. Dodson, however, was one of those who did not seem to avail himself of female companionship. Some say he was completely celibate, and I heard he was being faithful to a wife. Can you believe that?”

  Burov sipped his brandy. “Well, in the beginning most of these men were very promiscuous. But now most of them have settle
d down into monogamous relationships. The women are all from the Gulag, mostly politicals, but a few criminal types as well. Economic crimes mostly. Thus, the women are mainly of the educated classes, so the Americans form rather good bonds with them. And most of the women are anti-Soviet, which is how they got into the Gulag in the first place. Many of them had life sentences, and those that didn't, do now.”

  Lisa inquired, “Are these couples married in a legal way?”

  “No, not under Soviet law. I know that some quasi-religious marriages have been formed. Also, as I said, we still have the wild ones, the ones who go to the spa on Friday. Everything is coed on that night. Life here is what you make it. Like in the West.” Burov added, “I think in an ironic way you will be less homesick here than you were in the embassy.”

  Hollis found that the brandy had gone to his head and found too he was sick to death of Burov. He said to Burov, “We'd like to be alone.”

  Burov stood. “Of course. You've both had a trying few weeks.” He went to the door. “Speak to the quartermaster at headquarters if you need anything. There's a shopping plaza at the east end of the main road. Everyone here draws a salary. I'll get you your pay for the week in advance. You'll find your overnight bags in the bedroom through that door. Unfortunately, your luggage has been sent to your next of kin.”

  Hollis asked, “Ms. Rhodes' icon?”

  “Oh, I'll have that sent over if you wish. Who cut that hammer and sickle into it?”

  Hollis replied, “The Kellums, I presume.”

  “Really? I remember them from when they were here—ten years ago it was. We don't often send them over as a couple like that, but they had the idea of hiring themselves out as domestic servants to a powerful political family. Servants, I understand, are hard to come by in America and easy to place. Once they are in the house, they have unlimited access to things.” Burov added, “We teach individual initiative here too, which is unfortunately not a Russian character trait. But in the spy business it is half the game. Don't you agree, Colonel?”

  “If desecrating a holy art object is an example of the initiative you teach, you're getting it wrong.”

  “That was rather cruel of them. But I'll send that over to you if you wish. Anything else? No? Well, I've had a pleasant morning. I hope you did too.” Burov left.

  Hollis surveyed the room, then looked into the bedroom. “Not really my taste.”

  Lisa put her arms around him. “I want you to know and to never forget that I love you.”

  “I hope so. It looks like we may be here for the rest of our lives. And you thought the embassy was claustrophobic.”

  “We will not be here for the rest of our lives. No! We are going to go home, or we're going to die trying.”

  “Don't be a fool.” Hollis rubbed his fingertips together.

  She nodded.

  “We'll take a walk later.”

  “Yes. I'm exhausted. I don't feel well. My God, that was awful, Sam… that cell… I hate that man.”

  “Lie here on the couch.” He moved her to the couch and covered her with a parka, then sat in an armchair.

  Lisa said, “Was I brave?”

  “Very.”

  “I don't want to hate so much.”

  “Go to sleep. We'll talk later.”

  “Yes.”

  Hollis stared at the fire awhile.

  He reflected on Burov's schizoid personality: vicious and sadistic, then nearly amiable. He suspected that neither facet of that man was an act. Burov had an honest and profound hate for Hollis and the entire Western world. Yet, given a little encouragement and self-interest, he could be polite if not friendly.

  Hollis tried to come to grips with his death—his staged death and his impending death. He thought of the three American officers he'd met on the path. They looked forlorn, like unhappy ghosts, lost souls, adrift in a void between the living and the dead. He tried to imagine nearly two decades in this place but could not. He tried to comprehend the sort of monstrous sys-

  tem that could create a place such as this but could not. He tried to think of a way out but could not.

  * * *

  33

  Toward dusk, Hollis and Lisa left their cottage and walked south toward the soccer field. Lisa asked, “Can we talk here?”

  “Not on the paths. Later.” They found the soccer field, but it was deserted, and they moved farther south past the concrete bunker that housed the spa elevator. Lisa asked, “Are we going to the Holiday Spa?”

  “No, just walking.”

  “Like the last time you took me through these woods?”

  “Well, it's not quite so dangerous this time. This time we're inside the barbed wire.” The path ended, and Hollis climbed the ladderlike branches of a towering pine tree. He disappeared among the boughs for ten minutes, then came down and brushed himself off.

  Lisa asked, “What did you see?”

  “The Border Guard compound.”

  “Why did you want to see that?”

  “Because it's here. That's my training.” He smiled. “I can't help it.”

  “I guess not.”

  They went back along the path, and Hollis turned off the trail and led her into a small ravine. They sat side by side on the sloped ground, and Hollis said softly, They may have listening

  devices on the paths and maybe directional microphones tracking us. But we can talk here if we keep it low.

  “By now we should have been in a country where no one worries about things like that. Damn it.” Lisa picked up a twig and poked the carpet of pine needles on the ground. “Are we here for the rest of our lives?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Seth knows were here?”

  “I think he knows we didn't die in that helicopter crash. He probably hopes we're here and not someplace else. We're actually lucky we are here and not Lubyanka.”

  “So, are we going to be rescued or exchanged or what?”

  “I don't know.”

  “You do know. Why can't I have some hope?”

  Hollis took her hand. “I told you—the less you know the better. The less I know, the better. You understand about polygraphs and truth serums. Burov is by no means through with us.”

  She nodded. “I told Burov just about everything I knew, Sam. I couldn't help it. But I didn't betray the people in Yablonya.” She looked at him.

  Hollis put his arm around her. “It's gone. I saw the village from the air. They burned it.”

  She poked at the ground awhile, then said quietly, “Oh… those bastards…”

  “It was brave of you to try to protect them.”

  She shook her head. “I wasn't brave.” After a while she said, “I always thought I could resist… but within a week I was nobody. I wasn't Lisa. I feel ashamed of myself.”

  Hollis replied, “They're professionals, Lisa. They can break anyone. They've had millions of people to practice on before you came along. Don't be hard on yourself.”

  She nodded slowly. “But I had no idea what they could do to a person…”

  “I think you did.”

  She looked at him. “Yes. I understand that now. The KGB was always an abstraction to me, a bogeyman story that you and Seth told to frighten me into being careful with my Russian friends, my church attendance… but now… my God, how evil they are. We're so naive.”

  “Don't dwell on it.”

  “I'm still shaking.”

  He held her closer, and she put her head on his shoulder. She said softly, “Burov tried to make me hate you. He said I was here because I was an accomplice to the murders you committed. But I knew that was a lie. They aren't interested in those two dead men. They're interested in what we know and who we are.”

  “Yes. You know they don't subscribe to our morality, though they take every opportunity to use it against us. You're not a criminal. You're a political prisoner.”

  “Yes, a political prisoner.”

  “Those guards were unfortunate casualties of their own illegal oper
ation.”

  “Yes. I'll remember that.” She took a deep breath and said, “I… I prayed, but I think I lost faith a few times.”

  “So did Christ on the cross. He was human too.”

  She took his hand. “You've made me feel better.”

  “Good. And you'll feel a lot better if we can even the score here.”

  “I don't want to talk about that, Sam. I'm tired of this ongoing vendetta. All I want is to be out of here and to get our people out of here.”

  He said, “Good.” He rose to his feet. “Then let's talk to some of our people here and see how we can help.”

  Lisa rose also and put her hand on his arm. Sam … I hope you'll understand… but I don't think we should sleep together . . . for a while at least.

  “I understand.”

  “Do you? It's nothing to do with you.”

  “It's all right.”

  “I love you.” She kissed him, and they linked arms, walking back toward the path. She asked, “Do you think they'll give me a Bible?”

  “I think they'll give you nearly anything you want. That's the whole idea. They're not trying to brainwash us here. On the contrary. They want you to be Lisa. And they want you to turn out other Lisas.”

  “I won't.”

  “You most certainly will.”

  “I never said I would. You said I would.”

  “Do you want to be shot?”

  “Maybe.”

  Hollis glanced at her. “Lisa, just play for time. All right?”