Charm School v1_0

by Nelson DeMille

  O'Shea replied, “Based on average airspeed and elapsed traveling time, I estimate about a hundred and fifty klicks. I have a land navigation chart, but I can't see any landmarks below. We're on a heading for Leningrad. When we see the lights of the city, we'll take a new heading.”

  Hollis looked at the airspeed indicator and the altimeter. They were traveling at ISO kph at 1,600 meters. He read the torque gauge and tachometer gauges, then checked the oil pressure and oil temperature, battery temperature, and the turbine outlet temperature. Considering the load weight and the distance already traveled, the helicopter was performing well. The only problem he could see was with the fuel: there didn't seem to be enough of it. He tapped the fuel gauge to see if the needle moved.

  O'Shea thought Hollis was drawing attention to the problem and said softly, “I don't know.” He forced a smile and using an old pilot's joke said, “We might have to swim the last hundred yards.”

  Hollis replied, “You burned some fuel coming back for me.”

  O'Shea didn't reply.

  No one spoke for some time, and Hollis noted that for all the euphoria they must have felt over a narrow escape, the mood in the cabin was anything but jubilant. He suspected that everyone's thoughts were flashing back to the Charm School and forward to the Gulf of Finland. The here and now, as Brennan was demonstrating, was irrelevant. He said to Mills, “If I understand you correctly, you, Brennan, and my former aide here are still in Helsinki and most probably will not be returning to Moscow to resume your duties, diplomatic or otherwise.”

  Mills replied, “That's a safe assumption.”

  “And Burov and Major Dodson will disappear into the American Charm School.”

  Mills nodded tentatively.

  “And Lisa and I will get a ticker tape parade in New York.”

  Mills stayed silent for a moment, then said, “Well… did Seth speak to you?”

  “Yes. I know that Lisa and I were not supposed to be on this helicopter. But now that we are…”

  “Well… I suppose we can say your helicopter accident was a case of mistaken identity. I guess we can work out your resurrection.”

  “Thank you. You worked out our death real well.”

  Mills smiled with embarrassment.

  Lisa looked from one to the other. “I'm not completely following this, as usual.”

  Hollis looked at her. “It wasn't sleeping gas. It was nerve gas. Poison.”

  “What…?”

  “There will be no negotiating or swap for the others. Everyone back there, including Seth, is dead.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. You and I were supposed to be dead too.”

  “Why…?” She looked at Mills. “Seth… dead? No, he can't be dead. Bert said he would be taken prisoner and exchanged for Burov. Bert?”

  Mills stood. “Sit here.” He took her arm and moved her into his seat. Mills squatted on the floor and drew a deep breath. “It's very complicated to explain, Lisa.”

  Hollis said, “No, it's not, Bert. It's very simple. You just don't want to say it out loud.” Hollis said to Lisa, “The State Department, White House, Defense Intelligence, and the CIA cut a deal. Mrs. Ivanova's Charm School is closed forever, and Mrs. Johnson's Charm School is about to open.”

  Mills said, “I don't think you should say anything else, General. I don't think Seth would have wanted her to know any of this.”

  Hollis ignored him and continued, “The two seemingly insolvable problems were, one, how to identify the Russians in America, and two, how to deal with the Americans held prisoner in Russia. A man named General Surikov provided the solution to the first problem, which allowed Seth to provide his solution to the second.” Hollis related to Lisa what Alevy had told him.

  Lisa stared at Hollis' reflection in the Plexiglas window as she listened. When Hollis finished, she said in a surprisingly strong voice, “And that was all Seth's idea?”

  Hollis nodded. “To his credit, he felt remorse over the consequences of his finest moment. And he couldn't bring himself to let you die. He was ambivalent about me right to the end. I shouldn't even tell you that, but you have a right to know everything.” He added, “That's what you always wanted.”

  “I don't think that changes how I feel about him right now.” She thought a moment. “I can't picture all those people dead… All those men, their wives, the children… Jane, the kidnapped American women…” She shook her head. “I can't believe he made up that lie about sleeping gas and prisoner exchanges.” She looked at Hollis. “You knew it was a lie, didn't you?”

  “It seemed a bit too good and didn't fit the facts.”

  She nodded but said nothing.

  Hollis said to Mills, “I consider that my life and Lisa's life are still in danger.”

  Mills seemed uncomfortable. “I'm not the source of the danger. We'll work something out.”

  “Like what? Life tenure in the new Charm School?”

  “I think that all Seth ever wanted from you two is a promise never to reveal a word of this to anyone.”

  Hollis noted that Mills' voice had that tone in it that one uses in speaking of recently deceased heroes. The legend begins. Hollis looked at Lisa and saw she had her hands over her face and tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  Hollis turned back toward the front and concentrated on the problem at hand. His eyes swept the gauges again, and he noted an increase in oil temperature and a drop in pressure. The fuel needle was in the red, but the warning light was not on yet. He said to O'Shea, “You've done an admirable job of burning fuel. Reduce airspeed.”

  “I can't.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, according to my instructions, which I opened only after I was airborne, our rendezvous with the ship must occur before dawn. The ship won't identify itself after daylight. There may be Soviet naval and merchant vessels in the area.”

  “I see.”

  O'Shea added, “First light in that part of the world isn't until zero seven twenty-two hours. We're cutting it close even at this speed.”

  Hollis nodded. He'd thought the problem was only fuel. Now it was the sunrise. Hollis looked at the airspeed indicator, then the more accurate ground-speed indicator. Airspeed was still 150 kph, but actual ground speed was only 130. They were obviously bucking into a strong headwind.

  Hollis looked out the windshield. Thin, scudding clouds flew at them, and occasionally he could feel the turbulence of the gusting north wind.

  The sky above was layered with clouds, and there was no starlight. Below, Hollis could not see a single light. He'd flown this route to Leningrad with Aeroflot, and he knew this part of Russia. Much of it was an underpopulated expanse of forest, small lakes, and marshes. Last autumn he'd taken the Red Arrow Express from Leningrad back to Moscow, and the train had passed through the same country he'd seen from the air. The villages had been dilapidated, and the farms badly kept. It was a cold, unforgiving stretch of country below, not the sort of place where one would want to forceland a helicopter.

  Hollis said to O'Shea, “Did you try a higher altitude?”

  “No, sir. I didn't want to burn any more fuel on a climb.” Hollis took the controls on his side. “Take a break. Stretch.” O'Shea released the controls and the stretched his arms and legs. “Do you want to fly it from the right-hand seat?”

  “No, but I don't want to try a crossover either. I'll let you sit in the pilot's seat as long as you don't take it seriously.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hollis knew that helicopter flying, which needed continuous concentration and constant hands-on, could fatigue a solo pilot within an hour. O'Shea had been behind the stick for close to two hours, alone with the falling fuel needle.

  Hollis said, “Let's go upstairs.” He increased the collective pitch for a slow rate of climb, increased the throttle, and held the craft level with the cyclic stick. The increased torque caused the nose to yaw to the left, and O'Shea reminded him, “It's backwards.”

  “Th
ank you, Captain. Does that mean our fuel level is rising?”

  “No, sir.” Hollis pressed down on the right rudder pedal and put the helicopter in longitudinal trim. “It seems to handle all right. But I wouldn't want to have to try something tricky like landing on a pitching ship in the dark with a strong wind.”

  O'Shea glanced at Hollis to see if he was making a joke. O'Shea said, “Well, I've logged enough time on this to give it a try. But if you want to take it in, you're the skipper.”

  “We'll arm-wrestle for the honor as we make our final approach.”

  Mills looked from Hollis to O'Shea. Pilots, he thought, like CIA operatives, resorted to black humor when things were least funny.

  Hollis watched the altimeter needles moving. At three thousand meters he arrested the ascent, and the airspeed climbed back to 150 kph. The ground-speed indicator read nearly the same. “That's better.”

  O'Shea said, “Maybe I should have climbed earlier.”

  “Maybe. Maybe the headwinds were stronger up here earlier.”

  “It's hard to know without being able to call for weather conditions.”

  “Right.” Hollis familiarized himself with the controls and with the instruments. He played around with the data available: speed, altitude, load, fuel, elapsed flight time, estimated distance to landing—but he couldn't say with any certainty whether or not they'd see the Gulf of Finland before dawn or for that matter even see the Gulf of Finland or the dawn.

  O'Shea seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “If we spot a landmark, we can figure our distance to landing. But I don't have a feeling for that fuel gauge.”

  Hollis replied, “We have the speed we need to arrive on time at the only landing site we have. Those are close parameters, and there's nothing more we can do at the moment.”

  O'Shea said, “Maybe we'll pick up a tailwind.”

  “Maybe.”

  Mills, who had been listening intently, asked, “What if we pick up another headwind?”

  O'Shea glanced back at him. “No use worrying about something we can't do anything about.”

  Mills said to Hollis, “Basic question, General—what are the odds?”

  Hollis replied, “I just got here. I'm not giving odds on your game plan.”

  Mills asked, “Look, would it help if we dumped some weight?”

  “I assume you've already done that.”

  O'Shea replied, “Yes. Coats, baggage, drinking water, some hardware, and all that. Lightened us maybe a hundred pounds.”

  Mills said, “I had something else in mind.”

  Hollis inquired, “Whom did you have in mind, Bert?”

  “Well… Dodson or Burov, I guess.”

  “You need them,” Hollis said. “Would you like me to jump?”

  “No. I don't want Captain O'Shea flying again. He makes me nervous.” Mills smiled, then added, “Look, we can get rid of Burov if it would make a difference.”

  Neither Hollis nor O'Shea replied.

  Mills said, “Well, forget it. I'm not playing that lifeboat game. That's your decision if you want to make it.”

  Hollis rather liked Mills when Mills was being Mills. But when Mills was trying to be Alevy, the result was an affected cynicism without his boss's style or moral certainty.

  Lisa, who hadn't spoken in some time, said, “I don't want to hear about any more murders, please.”

  No one said anything, and the only sound was from the turbines and rotor blades.

  Hollis asked O'Shea, “Have you sighted any aircraft?”

  “No, sir.”

  Hollis nodded. He didn't think anyone at the Charm School had had the opportunity or ability to radio out any information. But by now, the Soviets might have discovered that their facility had been wiped out, and they might have made the connection between the missing Aeroflot Mi-28 helicopter and the disaster at the Charm School. And if they had put it all together, they were probably thinking of the only safe place other than the American embassy that an Mi-28 could reach: the Gulf of Finland.

  Hollis turned to Mills and asked, “Did you people consult any Air Force types when you put this scheme together?”

  “Of course,” Mills said in a slightly offended tone.

  “How did you expect to escape Soviet radar detection?”

  “Well,” Mills replied, “the Air Force guys we spoke to figured we'd be out of reach of Moscow's radar by the time they drew any conclusions. We knew we couldn't be spotted visually with our navigation lights off.” Mills said to O'Shea, “You have some technical written orders, don't you?”

  O'Shea replied, “I was supposed to get down low to avoid airborne radar—to blend in with the ground clutter—and take an evasive course toward the gulf. But I sort of figured that the available fuel wouldn't allow for that.”

  “You were sort of right.” Hollis said, “Even if they're not looking for us, we're going to show up on somebody's screen as we approach Leningrad's air traffic control area.”

  O'Shea said, “At that point we're going to have to get in low, below the radar. We can risk a visual sighting over a populated area at that time because we'll be in the home stretch. We should be landed before they can scramble a flight to intercept us.” He looked at Hollis. “What do you think?”

  “I think someone forgot to consider Red Navy radar that watches everything in the gulf. I think if they're specifically looking for us, they'll find us. I'm going on the assumption they haven't connected an Mi-28 Aeroflot helicopter bearing a certain ID number with the nerve gas attack on their training facility outside of Borodino.”

  Mills said, “We're gambling that no one even knows that the Charm School is dead until someone comes by in the morning with a delivery or someone calls from Moscow or something. As for this helicopter, I changed the ID number, and they're probably still looking for the crash site of P-113. This is a very compartmentalized country, and information does not travel freely. Therefore connections aren't easily made. That's working in our favor.”

  Hollis replied, “You may be right.” He asked O'Shea, “How are we supposed to rendezvous with the ship in the gulf?”

  O'Shea glanced at a piece of paper clipped to the instrument panel. “Well, first we look for Pulkovo Airport, which you and I would recognize from the air. Then we drop below two hundred meters to get under the radar. About a klick due south of the control tower, we take a three-hundred-ten-degree heading. We'll pass over the coast west of Leningrad and continue out until we see the lighthouse on the long jetty. From a point directly over the lighthouse we take a three-hundred-forty-degree heading and maintain a ground speed of eighty kph for ten minutes. According to what it says here, somewhere down in the main shipping lane we'll see three yellow fog lights that form a triangle. Those lights are on the fantail of a freighter heading out of Leningrad. The lights won't blind or project a beam that might attract unwanted attention. But they should glow bright enough for us to see them at two hundred meters' altitude and about half a klick radial distance around the ship—even in one of those gulf fogs. We land in the center of that triangle, deep-six the chopper, and the ship takes us to Liverpool.” O'Shea added, “I'll buy dinner when we get to London.”

  Hollis glanced at O'Shea but said nothing.

  They continued north for another fifteen minutes, and Hollis saw that the ground speed was dropping, indicating they were picking up headwinds again. The needle on the fuel gauge was buried in the red zone. One of the things Hollis recalled from the Mi-28 manual—which he'd purchased indirectly from an Aeroflot mechanic for blue jeans and American cigarettes—was that the fuel gauge shouldn't be trusted. In fact, he noticed that though the needle was deeper in the red, the fuel warning still wasn't on.

  O'Shea said, “Want me to take it?”

  “No. I need the practice.”

  A few minutes later O'Shea said, “We should have seen the lights of Leningrad by now.”

  Hollis nodded.

  Mills asked, “Will we have any warning before
the fuel runs out?”

  Hollis replied, “Do you want a warning?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you want to land in Russia?”

  “I guess not. I guess we just keep flying until we go down.”

  “I guess so,” Hollis replied.

  Five minutes later the fuel warning light flickered. A few seconds after that a reedy voice said in Russian, “Your fuel reserves are nearly gone.”

  O'Shea replied to the recording, “Screw you.”

  The voice said, “Make preparations to terminate your flight.”

  Hollis and O'Shea exchanged glances.

  Mills asked, “What did he say?”

  Hollis replied, “There're only forty-two shopping days left until Christmas.”

  Lisa said to Mills, “Fuel is low.”

  Mills nodded. “I figured that's what he said.”

  They continued on north through the black night. No one spoke, as if, Hollis thought, everyone were waiting for the sound of the turbines to cut out. Finally, Lisa leaned forward and put her hand on his shoulder. “How are you?”

  “Fine. How're things back in business class?”

  “You tell me. How much fuel is left after that announcement?”

  “It's more a matter of how much flight time you can get out of the available fuel. That depends on load, temperature, humidity, winds, altitude, speed, engine performance, maneuvers, and the good Lord.”

  “Should I pray?”

  “Can't hurt.”

  “I'll let you fly.”

  “Okay. You pray. I'll fly. Later we'll switch.”

  Lisa looked at Hollis' hands on the controls. This was a different Sam Hollis from the one she'd known in Moscow or in the Charm School. It struck her that he belonged in this aircraft, and she recalled what Seth Alevy had said to her at Sheremetyevo Airport about the world of pilots: They were a different breed, but she thought she could love him just the same.

  The voice said again, “Your fuel reserves are nearly gone,” then, “Make preparations to terminate your flight.”

  No one spoke for some minutes, then O'Shea said, “Hey, did you hear about the Aeroflot pilot who ran low on fuel crossing the ocean and dumped fuel to save weight?”