The Charm School

31

“The Charm School,” Lisa said. “Mrs. Ivanova’s Charm School.”

“Yes.”

She spoke as if to herself. “The place Gregory Fisher mentioned, the place Major Dodson came from, where we went on the way to Mozhaisk…. We’re going to get a closer look at it now, aren’t we?”

“Yes.” Hollis added, “They are going to question you, so the less you know, the better.”

“Question me? Interrogate me?”

“Yes.” He could feel her hand tightening over his. He said, “Just prepare yourself for some unpleasantness. Be brave.”

She drew a deep breath and nodded.

Marchenko turned in his seat and smiled at them. “Not Sheremetyevo. But you knew that.”

“Yeb vas,” Hollis said.

“Yeb vas,” Lisa agreed.

“Fuck you,” Marchenko replied.

Vadim poked his head between the seats, looked at Hollis and Lisa, and made a cutting motion across his throat.

The helicopter continued its sloping descent toward the landing area, which Hollis noted was a natural clearing of tall yellow grass in the pine forest. On the south edge of the clearing was a log cabin he’d seen in the satellite photo. A narrow dirt track, barely visible among the pine trees, began at the cabin and ran a hundred yards south to the main camp road.

Most of the mile-square camp was not much more discernible from a few hundred feet, Hollis saw, than it had been from the satellite a few hundred miles up. Yet, because he had seen much of the world from the air, he could sense the general layout. There was a roughly circular gravel road that ran around the inside of the perimeter, probably a service road for the watchtowers. The main camp road was two lanes of winding blacktop that roughly bisected the camp from east to west. This road passed through the main gate and was actually a continuation of the one they had taken up from Borodino Field.

As they descended to about a hundred feet, Hollis saw on the main road a grim-looking concrete building in the center of the camp, probably the headquarters. Not far from that was a long wooden building with a green roof whose purpose he could not guess.

Some distance south of these two buildings was another clearing, but this one was man-made, a perfect rectangle, the size of a soccer field, which it undoubtedly was, and which could double as a parade ground or assembly area, a standard facility for any school or prison camp. In fact, as the helicopter got lower, he could see bleacher stands that would accommodate close to five hundred people.

Between the soccer field and the south perimeter of the camp, he saw the metal roofs of long barracks-like buildings that would be the separate compound within the compound for the KGB Border Guard detachment.

Hollis sketched an aerial map in his mind and committed each detail to memory.

As they descended to about fifty feet, his eye caught something odd, and he looked at an area of the treetops about midway between the dachas and the headquarters. He realized that he was looking at a huge camouflage net covering about an acre, supported by living pine trees whose tops poked through the net. An axiom of both combat flying and spying was that neither aerial photographs nor overflights were a substitute for a man on the ground. He was about to be the man on the ground.

The helicopter settled onto the snow-dusted landing field. The copilot drew his pistol and slid open the door. Marchenko climbed out first, followed by Vadim. The copilot motioned with his gun at Lisa, and she took her bag and icon and jumped down from the helicopter, refusing Marchenko’s hand. The copilot looked at Hollis a moment and asked, “Where did you think you were going to take this helicopter?”

“That’s my business.”

“The American embassy, perhaps?” He glanced at the pilot and said, “Neither of us would have flown you there.”

Hollis got his bag and held it in his cuffed hands. He stood, crouched over in the low cabin. “Then I would have killed you both and flown it myself.”

The copilot backed away from Hollis. “You’re a real murderer.”

“No, I’m an American Air Force officer who is being kidnapped.”

The copilot’s eyes widened in surprise. “Yes?”

Marchenko called out, “Come along!”

“Call my embassy and tell them Colonel Hollis is here. I’ll see you get fifty thousand rubles for you and your friend here.”

Again, the copilot glanced over his shoulder. “Get moving.”

Hollis edged toward the open door.

The copilot said softly, “You shouldn’t have broken that man’s wrist. Do you know who those two are?”

“Intourist guides. Remember my offer.” Hollis jumped down from the helicopter to where Marchenko stood with Lisa and Vadim near a Zil-6, a Red Army vehicle somewhat like an American jeep but larger. Hollis heard the helicopter lift off and felt the rush of wind pushing him forward.

Marchenko opened the rear door of the Zil and said, “Colonel Hollis, then Vadim, then Miss Rhodes.”

Hollis pushed his cuffed wrists under Marchenko’s nose, “Unlock these.”

Marchenko shook his head. “Get in, please.”

Hollis said to Lisa, “Get in first.”

She got in, and as Vadim tried to follow, Hollis shouldered him aside and got in the middle beside Lisa. Vadim sat beside Hollis and said in Russian, “I’m going to beat your fucking face to a pulp.”

“With which hand?”

“You shit—”

“Please!” Marchenko shouted. “Enough!” He got into the front passenger seat and said to the driver, “Headquarters.”

The Zil moved across the grass field toward the log cabin about a hundred yards off. Hollis looked at the cabin as they drove by and guessed it was probably once a woodsman’s izba, a relic from a time when such a thing as a lone woodsman existed in this communal nation. But now it sprouted two antennas and was probably the radio shack for the helipad.

The Zil entered the narrow track that cut through the dark pine forest. Lisa took Hollis’ hand and said into his ear, “I’m going to be brave.”

“You are brave.”

The Zil came to the end of the track and turned left onto the main blacktop road. Hollis noticed that the pine trees on either side of the road were huge, rising forty to fifty feet into the air, and the spreading bough canopy was so heavy that little light reached the ground. Now and then he saw log-paved lanes, what the military called corduroy roads, leading off the main road. Down some of these lanes he saw houses that he hadn’t seen from the air. He was surprised but not shocked to catch sight of an American ranch house, then a white clapboard bungalow. They were most probably residences, he thought, for the Charm School students and their American instructors, set in the Russian bor to enhance the illusions that made this place so unique.

Lisa spotted one and said to him, “Look!”

“I see them.”

“This is bizarre. What is—?”

“No questions.”

She nodded. “All right.”

Marchenko, too, was staring out the window. He said to Hollis, “This is very odd indeed. Do you know what this place is?”

Hollis had assumed that Marchenko didn’t know much beyond his kidnapping assignment. Hollis replied, “It’s a secret CIA base camp. You’re under arrest, Marchenko.”

Marchenko turned around in his seat and looked at Hollis in a way that led Hollis to think the man almost believed him. What a country. Marchenko finally smiled. “You joke. Tell me, what kind of structures are those in the woods?”

“They’re called houses.”

“Yes? I saw American houses in a movie once. Those are American houses.”

“Very good.”

Marchenko turned back to the front and peered out the windows. “I don’t understand this place.”

Hollis noticed that the light snow was mostly on the pine branches and little of it had reached the moss-covered ground. This was a place, he thought, of perpetual darkness, a place where even at high noon in the summer there would be little light.

Lisa said, “I haven’t seen a single person.”

Hollis nodded. Neither had he, and the unsettling thought came to him that they were all gone, moved to another location as had happened when the American rescue force had raided Son Tay POW camp in North Vietnam. But as he peered through the forest he saw lit windows in some of the houses, and smoke rose from the chimneys. No, he thought, they are still here. The KGB had not properly evaluated the situation and had not broken camp yet.

The Zil continued slowly along the road, and coming up on the right was the long green-roofed building Hollis had spotted from the air. It was a single-story building of white clapboard with a very homey-looking front porch. There were rockers on the porch and a red-and-white Coke machine against the wall near the double front doors. Through a large picture window Hollis got a glimpse of some men and women, and on a wall hung a large American flag. Hollis had the impression of a small-town Veterans of Foreign Wars hall, and as the Zil passed by, he saw a black-and-white sign over the double doors that said just that: VFW, POST 000.

The Zil moved on, then came to a halt in front of the headquarters building, a grey two-story hulk of precast concrete slabs, most of which had the familiar cracks that were a trademark of the prefab industry in these parts. Steel reinforcing rods protruded here and there and bled orange rust over the deteriorating concrete. A KGB Border Guard stood in a plywood booth, and to the right of the booth was the headquarters’ entrance. Standing in front, wearing the long green greatcoat with red shoulder boards of the KGB, was Colonel Petr Burov.

Marchenko got out and said, “Come, come. You don’t keep a colonel waiting.”

Vadim opened the rear door and got out, followed by Hollis and Lisa.

Burov looked at them a long time, then said, “Well, this is what you wanted to see, wasn’t it, Hollis?”

Hollis didn’t reply.

Burov said to Marchenko, “Why is he handcuffed?”

“He tried to hijack the helicopter.” Marchenko explained to Burov with great diffidence in his voice, altering somewhat the exact events at the airport and on the helicopter.

Burov looked at Vadim’s swollen wrist, now the size of an orange, then looked at Hollis but said nothing. Burov stared at the icon in Lisa’s hands. He said to her, “If you were Catholic or Protestant, you’d have to carry only a small cross for comfort.” He laughed, and Marchenko and Vadim laughed also.

Lisa said in Russian, “Go to hell.”

Burov slapped her hard across the face, knocking her to the ground.

Hollis bent down to help Lisa to her feet, and as he did, Burov swung at him, catching him on the jaw and sending him staggering back. His knees sagged, and he dropped to the ground, then stood unsteadily.

Burov flexed his right hand and watched Hollis as he straightened up. Burov said, “Well, that evens the score for Lefortovo.” Burov looked at Vadim and said in Russian, “The stomach.”

Vadim’s right foot shot out and caught Hollis in the solar plexus, causing him to double over, but he managed to stay on his feet.

Hollis straightened up and tried to catch his breath. Coming at him, as if in a bad dream, was the towering hulk of Viktor from Lefortovo. Hollis heard Burov’s voice. “The balls.”

Viktor’s foot came up between Hollis’ legs and caught him full in the testicles. Hollis heard himself yell, then found he was on the frozen ground rolling around in blinding pain. He heard Lisa scream, then the scream was cut off by the sound of a blow. Lisa fell beside him, holding her midsection, her eyes dull with pain.

Viktor took a step past Hollis, and Hollis got the handcuff chain under Viktor’s foot and around the man’s ankle. Hollis pulled and sent Viktor sprawling to the ground with a thud.

Burov came at Hollis but walked over him and planted his heavy jackboot in Lisa’s side, causing her to cry out. Burov said to Hollis, “Any more heroics?” He put his boot on Lisa’s head. “No? Get up.”

Hollis got to his feet at the same time as Viktor. Viktor grabbed Lisa by the collar of her coat and pulled her to her feet.

Burov motioned to Marchenko. “Uncuff him.”

Lisa moved unsteadily toward Hollis, but Burov pushed her away. Burov said to Marchenko in Russian, “That vehicle will take you and your subordinate to the Center, where you will make a full report. If you ever breathe a word about anything you saw here, you’ll both be shot. Dismissed.”

Marchenko and Vadim saluted, did an about-face, and got back into the Zil.

Burov said to Hollis and Lisa, “Get inside.”

The Border Guard opened the door, and Hollis and Lisa entered with Burov and Viktor behind them.

They found themselves in a lobby or waiting room where a duty officer sat at a desk facing the door. The man stood when he saw Burov. Burov said to Hollis and Lisa, “Leave your bags and that religious thing with this man.”

Hollis set his bag down and noticed an open door to the left through which he could see a telephone switchboard and a radio transmitter.

Burov said to them, “Now take off your coats and shoes.”

Hollis removed his trench coat and shoes while Lisa pulled off her boots and overcoat.

The duty officer put the coats and footwear on his desk, examining them as he did.

Viktor fingered Hollis’ tie, then pulled it off him and stuffed it in his own pocket. He unbuckled Hollis’ belt and ripped it off, throwing it on the desk, then took Hollis’ watch and put it on his wrist.

Burov snapped, “This way.” He led them down a long corridor toward the rear of the building. A Border Guard with an AK-47 followed. The guard threw open a steel door and shoved Lisa inside. Burov said to her, “Take off your clothes and wait for the matron to come and search you. Or, if you have a means to end your life, do it before she comes. You have a few minutes.”

Viktor said to her in Russian, “I’m not through with you, bitch.” He slammed the door shut and bolted it.

Burov opened the next door and pushed Hollis into a small, windowless cell, then followed him in. He said to Hollis, “For your information, I am the camp commandant here. I never had an escape for the ten years I’ve been here. Then Dodson escapes and two of my men are murdered.” He glared at Hollis. “I know you killed them, and I think you and your Jew friend Alevy know too goddamned much about this place. Don’t you?”

Hollis said nothing, and Burov punched him in the stomach. Burov waited for Hollis to straighten up, then said, “I’ll tell you something else, smart guy — from the moment I laid eyes on you and your snotty girlfriend I wanted you both here. The Center said impossible, but I showed them how we could kidnap two American diplomats. They thought it quite brilliant. Your death in a helicopter crash is now being reported to your embassy. Your incinerated remains — actually a male and female prisoner — are being gathered from the crash site. No one knows you’re here, Hollis. No one is looking for you. You’re all mine now, and you’re dead.”

Hollis tried to clear his head. Between the lines he read that Burov was in trouble and was trying to redeem himself with Lubyanka. So far, Burov was doing fine.

Burov snapped, “Take off your clothes and give them to Viktor.”

Hollis removed his suit, shirt, and underwear, handing each piece to Viktor while the Border Guard kept his AK-47 trained on him.

Burov said, “If I find any of your stupid spy gadgets, I’ll kill you with my own hands. Someone will be along shortly to see if you’ve got anything up your ass. Welcome to the Charm School, Hollis.” Burov, Viktor, and the guard left. The door slammed, and Hollis heard the bolt drive home.

Hollis stood naked in the cell and looked around. Four bare concrete walls enclosed a space about ten feet square. There was no window, and the only light came from a dim recessed bulb in the ceiling, covered by a steel grating. Somewhere up there, though he could not see it, was a fiber-optic device watching him.

There was no furniture at all in the cell, and as far as he could see, no heat source either. In the far left corner of the cell a water spigot protruded from the wall about four feet off the floor. Beneath the spigot was a waste hole. Hollis turned on the spigot and rinsed the blood out of his mouth, then splashed cold water on his face. He felt his jaw swelling, and one of his teeth was loose. His testicles were beginning to swell too, and his midsection was turning purplish. He washed his hands, then drank some water, but his stomach heaved, and he spit it into the waste hole.

The door opened, and two uniformed men came in. One of them held a pistol in one hand, and the other performed a body search, then both men left.

Hollis stood in the center of the cold, concrete room. He had once spent ten very unpleasant days in prison, an intelligence school training facility located in a building similar to this one in northwest Washington, D.C., called Lubyanka West. The first few days there and probably here were the standard “shock days,” a blur of dehumanizing treatment, psychological torture, and physical abuse. This softened you up, stripped away your self-esteem, and set you up for what was to come. Then they left you alone to think about things, but the welcome solitude soon became maddening isolation. Then when you yearned to hear and see another human being, they scheduled “interviews” with you and were conditionally pleasant, and you began to like them for letting you live. You began talking, enjoying the company, and when you were talked out, you were sent to a regular prison camp or shot.

There was some advantage in knowing what was coming, Hollis thought, but no comfort in the knowledge. He was glad Lisa didn’t know anything.

He went to the wall that separated their cells and struck it with his palm, but it was solid, and he heard no answering signal.

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’ budesh’, 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 Dzerzhinsky, 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. He’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 write 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 the “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.”

“Not that I know of. From what I see here, that’s not possible.”

“No, it’s not. And Dodson’s escape was wholly an internal conspiracy here. No outside help. Correct?”

“We had no part in that.”

“And Fisher’s meeting with Dodson was totally chance?”

“Of course. You heard Fisher on the taped phone conversation. He’s not ours.”

“And your snooping around here — that was not an attempt to rescue a prisoner?”

“No. There was only Lisa Rhodes and I. We did that on our own.”

“You have no contact with any prisoners inside the camp?”

“No.”

“With any staff?”

“No.”

“Do you have Soviet citizens on the outside who are your agents?”

“None that have any connection with this camp.”

“But you do employ Soviet citizens as American agents.”

Hollis thought it was time to get one point on the board. “Not employ. They don’t take a kopek. They do it because they hate the Communist Party and the KGB.”

Burov said nothing for a while, then asked, “You’ll give me their names.”

“I don’t have any actual names. Just code names.”

“We’ll see.”

“Why should I tell you anything if I’m going to be shot?”

“Because being shot is not as bad as what I can do to you.”

“And I could kill myself before you do anything to me.”

“I don’t think you have any lethal means at your disposal.”

“I could have pushed that ballpoint pen through my jugular vein. You’re not supposed to give trained intelligence officers things like that.”

“Ah, yes. The pen. So, you think that as an intelligence officer your brains are too valuable to be blown out?”

“Perhaps.”

“Well, then let me ask you something. What do you propose? Intelligence officer to intelligence officer.”

“My appeal makes that clear. I realize I’m officially dead. I’d rather work here, among my peers, than go to Siberia or be shot. I want Lisa Rhodes with me.”

“Yes, you are officially dead. I’ll show you the American newspaper accounts. The Center wants you actually dead after your debriefing. But perhaps I can convince them that you and your girlfriend will be an asset here. Perhaps a life sentence here, helping us destroy America, will be worse than death. I’d enjoy that, Hollis.”

“I know you would.”

Burov smiled, then said, “I don’t think you defense attachés are as tough as your CIA people. However, if I begin to think that your capitulation is a ruse of some sort, I’ll torture your girlfriend to death. Right in front of you.”

Hollis didn’t reply.

Burov walked over to Hollis and looked down at him. “You thought you were quite the man, didn’t you? In the Mozhaisk morgue, then in Lefortovo restaurant, then on the telephone with me. What abuse I took from you.”

“I had diplomatic immunity.”

Burov laughed. “Yes, you did. Big shot. Now I can do whatever I please to you.” Burov grabbed Hollis’ hair and yanked his head back. “Look at me, you smug American bastard. You shits in the embassy look down your noses at us, don’t you? I’ve heard some of the tapes of embassy conversations. You laugh at our drinking, you think we don’t bathe enough, you make fun of our women, you joke about Moscow, the food, the housing, and just about everything else about us.” Burov pulled harder on Hollis’ hair. “Do you think you look or smell so good now, you son of a bitch?” Burov released Hollis’ hair and slammed the heel of his hand against Hollis’ forehead. “Do you think your delicate girlfriend looks or smells so good now? Do you think you look so civilized now? What are you without your tailored clothes and your deodorants? You’re nothing, that’s what you are. A Russian can stand more suffering because we don’t start with so much. And because we have more inner strength. You people fall apart as soon as you miss a shower or a meal.” Burov paced around the room, then came to Hollis and barked, “Stand up!”

Hollis stood.

“Hands on your head!”

Hollis put his hands on his head.

Burov glared at him. “Can you imagine the things I could do to you and Lisa Rhodes? Things that wouldn’t leave a mark on your bodies, but would completely destroy you inside, your humanity, your souls, your minds. Answer me!”

“Yes. I know.”

Burov stood off to Hollis’ side and said, “Your girlfriend is a lover of Russian culture. Perhaps she would like a Russian boyfriend. Maybe several dozen of them.”

Hollis didn’t reply.

“Did you know that she and Alevy were lovers? Answer me.”

“Yes.”

“I told you that your wife has taken up with an English gentleman.”

“I don’t care.”

“She’s in Washington now for your funeral. I think it’s tomorrow.”

Hollis made no response.

“Who is Simms?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think I know.” Burov looked at his watch and said, “Well, Hollis, do you want to see your slut?”

Hollis nodded.

Burov opened the door to his office and said something to the guard, then turned to Hollis. “You may take your hands down. Get out.”

Hollis walked to the door, and Burov said, “You may have sex if you wish.”

“Thank you.”

Burov smiled and closed the door.

The guard marched Hollis down the stairs. The man opened the door of Lisa’s cell and shoved Hollis in. The door closed behind him.

Lisa sat in a sleeping bag, curled up in the corner. She looked at him but said nothing.

Hollis knelt near her and examined her face. Her cheeks were drawn, and her eyes seemed sunken. He noticed her lips were dry and cracked, and there was a bruise on her neck. On her left cheek there was still a smudge of blush, and this somehow caused him more pain than the rest of her appearance. “How are you?”

She didn’t reply.

“Do you need a doctor?”

She shook her head.

Hollis felt weak and sat down beside her, putting his arm around her shoulders. She didn’t move toward him or move away. She sat still, staring straight ahead.

They sat in silence for a long time, then Lisa put her face in her hands and wept.

Hollis drifted off from time to time, but the numbing cold and his empty stomach woke him every fifteen minutes or so.

The lights went on and off, and there were bootsteps in the corridor that stopped outside the cell door, then continued. Now and then someone slid the bolt back, but the door never opened. A few minutes later, the bolt would slide closed again.

Lisa stared at the ceiling and spoke in a barely audible voice. “I was sentenced to death.”

Hollis didn’t reply.

She reached her arm out along the wall, then held her hand out in front of Hollis.

He didn’t know at first what she was holding, then recognized a heap of ash and charred pieces of paper. Photographs. Her photographs of Moscow. He turned her hand so the ash spilled out, and wiped her palm on his knee.

She said, “It doesn’t matter.”

Hollis knew the room was wired to pick up the slightest whisper, and even in the dark, the fiber-optic device could see them. He wanted to comfort her but thought it best to say nothing that Burov could use. In fact, he knew he should not have even told Burov he wanted to see her.

She asked, “Why did you tell them about Yablonya?”

“I’m sorry.”

She stood unsteadily and went to the waste drain in the floor and used it. The guard picked that moment to come in, confirming Hollis’ belief that they could see as well as hear. Lisa stood and pulled her sweat pants up as the guard leered at her. The Russian looked at Hollis, then threw a piece of black bread in the center of the floor. He said to Hollis, “I told you that you wouldn’t feel much like fucking.” He laughed and closed the door.

Lisa washed in cold water, then put her mouth under the spigot and drank. She picked the bread up off the floor and carried it back to her sleeping bag. She slid into the bag and took a bite of bread, chewing it slowly, Hollis noticed, more like a person who is starving than merely hungry.

Hollis estimated they were getting about three hundred grams of bread a day, about four hundred calories. They’d been here about eight days, though it could have been longer. There were enough calories to stay alive, but as the guard suggested, he didn’t feel much like doing anything but breathing. He suspected, too, that the food was drugged, probably with sodium pentothal or a similar truth serum, which, along with the sensory deprivation and numbing cold, would account for their extreme lethargy.

Lisa stared at the black bread awhile, then offered him the piece. He broke off about a third and handed the rest back to her.

After they’d finished the bread, Hollis said, “Feeling better?”

She shrugged. After a few minutes she reached out and took his hand. “You must be cold. Didn’t they give you a bag?”

“I’m all right.”

“Come in here. There’s room.”

He slipped into the sleeping bag beside her.

She said, “I don’t blame you for this. You warned me.”

Hollis made no reply.

They slept fitfully. Lisa cried out in her sleep several times, but he couldn’t understand what she was saying.

Hollis got up to get water. The water pressure was low, and he knew from experience that this meant it was dawn. He heard footsteps, and the door opened. The guard said, “Stand up. Follow me. No talking.”

Hollis helped Lisa to her feet. She said, “I love you, Sam.”

“I love you.”

“No talking!”

Hollis took Lisa’s hand, but the guard pushed them apart. “Walk!”

They walked down the long corridor, and another guard opened the door to the room where Hollis had written the appeal of his death sentence, the room with the bloodstained table and the straw bales against the wall. The execution room. Lisa hesitated, but the guard shoved her inside.

32

On the bloodstained table was hot tea, boiled eggs, bread, and jam. The guard said, “Eat all you want, but if you throw it up, you’ll clean it. No talking.”

Hollis and Lisa sat. Hollis glanced at the bloodstains beneath the food. They were actually rust-colored, not bright red, and he suspected that Lisa didn’t know what they were. He wondered, too, if it was animal blood, put there to frighten prisoners and amuse the guards.

They ate slowly, but they both got stomach cramps just the same. The guard led them out of the room and into what looked like a locker room, probably, Hollis thought, used by the night guard. There were wall lockers, a sink, a toilet, and in the corner an open shower. The guard motioned toward the shower. “Go ahead. Use it.”

They both undressed and showered with hot water and soap. A matron brought in towels, a shaving kit, underwear, and clean warm-up suits. Hollis dried himself, shaved, then dressed, noticing that the clothes had Jockey labels. Lisa dressed quickly, avoiding the guard’s eyes. The matron pointed to a box full of Adidas running shoes, and they each found a pair that fit.

The guard said, “Come with me.” He led them to the east wing of the building and through a door marked Klinika. They were met by a female nurse, who took them into separate examining rooms. The guard stayed with Hollis. Presently, a plump middle-aged woman entered the room and introduced herself as the camp doctor.

She gave Hollis a perfunctory examination, being interested mostly in his heart, Hollis thought, recalling the Russian obsession with heart disease. He said curtly in Russian, “I am malnourished and have been sitting in a cold cell for about two weeks. I’ve been punched in the jaw, kicked in the testicles and the solar plexus. Also, I hear fluid in my lungs.”

She moved the stethoscope back to his lungs, told him to breathe deeply, listened, and tapped his chest. “Yes. A little congestion. You’ll be all right.”

“All right for two more weeks of starvation?”

The guard said, “No talking.”

Hollis looked at the man. “I’ll talk to the doctor. Why don’t you shut up?”

The guard snapped back, “Only medical talk!”

The doctor gave Hollis a pill and a glass tumbler that looked as if it could use a washing.

Hollis asked, “What is this?”

“Just a vitamin.”

“Then you take it.” He handed it back to her.

She looked at him a moment, then put the pill in her mouth and washed it down with the water. She said in a low voice, “I too am a prisoner here. A political prisoner.”

“I see. I apologize for my rudeness.”

She gave him another vitamin, and he took it. She said, “You’ll be fine. Your heart is good.”

Hollis got down from the examining table and dressed. He asked, “What dies first here, the heart or the soul?”

“The soul dies. The heart breaks.”

Hollis looked closely at the woman. He should have seen immediately that she was not free, but in Russia it was sometimes hard to tell and very relative. Hollis said to her, “Thank you.”

The guard took Hollis to the waiting room, and within five minutes, Lisa joined him. The guard said, “Follow me.” He led them upstairs to Burov’s office. As they entered, Burov said, “Sit down.” They sat in chairs facing Burov.

Burov said, “Now you are Americans again. Right, Hollis?”

“Yes.”

“Do you feel well?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You’ll feel much better when I tell you that both your death sentences have been conditionally commuted to life in prison.”

“What,” Hollis asked, “is the condition?”

“Two conditions. One is that you pass a polygraph test. The other is that you agree to work for us here.”

Neither Hollis nor Lisa replied.

Burov added, “If you say no, you’ll be executed for murder.”

Lisa said, “What you’re asking is that we become traitors. The answer is no.”

Burov didn’t respond to that, but said, “You should know, Ms. Rhodes, that your friend has already indicated he would work for us here in exchange for his life.”

She looked at Hollis.

Hollis said to Burov, “I didn’t say I would subject myself to a polygraph interrogation.”

“No,” Burov replied, “but you will be thoroughly debriefed nonetheless. There are several methods of interrogation. I prefer polygraph and sodium pentothal over electroshock and a truncheon, especially as the results of the former are more reliable than the latter. I’m sure you and Ms. Rhodes would prefer that too.”

Hollis said, “Working here for you is one thing. But I cannot give you intelligence secrets that would compromise or endanger the lives of other agents.”

Burov tapped his fingers on his desk and looked from one to the other. “You’re not in a position to make deals. You’re already dead, and no one knows you are here. And the reason you are here is that you know entirely too much about this place, and we want to know what you know.”

“We’re here for killing two Border Guards,” Hollis reminded him. “That’s what we are under a death sentence for.”

“Well, that too, of course.” Burov regarded Hollis a moment. “You know, as soon as the blood sugar goes up, people revert to their former selves. In your case, Hollis, I don’t like your former self. Please try to control your sarcasm.”

“Yes, sir.”

Burov turned to Lisa. “In your case, a debriefing would most probably yield very little and would in no way endanger anyone. Correct?”

Lisa nodded hesitantly.

“So the question for you is this? Do you want to live and work here, or do you want to be shot? Answer.”

“I… I want to be with Colonel Hollis.”

Burov grinned. “Here? Or in heaven?”

“Anywhere.”

Burov looked at Hollis. “Such loyalty. So what is your decision?”

Hollis thought a moment, then replied, “I would like for both of us to be let out of the cells, to live here awhile before we decide if we want to become willing instructors in this place.”

Burov nodded. “All right. I think when you see how comfortable you can be here, you’ll decide you don’t want to die in front of a firing squad. But we haven’t resolved the question of your interrogation.”

Hollis replied, “Let’s resolve that after Ms. Rhodes and I resolve the question of working here or not. We’ll need ten days.”

Burov smiled. “You’re stalling.”

“For what? I’m dead. We are both dead.”

Burov stood and went to the window. He stared out into the trees for a while, then nodded. “One week.” He turned to Hollis and stared at him. “The very first moment I think you are up to something or lying to me”—Burov pointed to Lisa—“she dies. And as I told you, not by firing squad.”

Neither Hollis nor Lisa spoke.

Burov walked toward them. He looked at Hollis. “You are intelligent enough to know that I let you bargain with me because I’d rather have you alive. I want you alive so I can question you, not only now, but anytime something comes up in American intelligence matters that you can enlighten us on. I also want you alive because we went through a great deal of trouble making you dead. You are both valuable commodities here, potential assets for this school. And lastly, but not least, I want you both under my thumb. Forever. You amuse me.”

“But you’re not smiling,” Hollis pointed out.

Burov stared at Hollis for a long time, his face impassive, then he turned and went to his desk. Burov took a heavy revolver from the top drawer and emptied five of the six chambers. He walked over to Hollis and Lisa. “No, not what you call Russian roulette. Stand up.” He handed the revolver to Hollis. “See that the loaded chamber will fire if you pull the trigger.”

Hollis checked the cylinder.

Burov stepped back a pace. “Go ahead.”

Hollis stood with the revolver in his hand.

“I’m giving you the opportunity to be a hero to your country, albeit an unknown one, and to indulge your own fantasy. Go ahead.”

Hollis glanced at Lisa.

Burov continued, “Well? At least make me crawl a bit. Tell me to get on my knees and beg for my life.”

Hollis said nothing.

“No? Are you learning something? How much power comes from the muzzle of a gun? That depends on who is holding the gun. Me or you. And authority never came from the muzzle of a gun.” He looked at Lisa. “Stand.”

She stood.

“Take the revolver.”

She hesitated, then took it from Hollis.

“You see,” Burov said, “you do what I tell you even though you have the gun now. Shoot me.”

“No.”

“Ah, what are we learning now? Civilized people think ahead. What happens after you kill me? Are your problems over? No, they have just begun.” Burov smirked. “But a real patriot would have sacrificed his life to take mine.”

Lisa looked at the revolver in her hand. She said, “There is only one reason I won’t shoot you. Perhaps you can comprehend it. I am a believer in God. I will not take a life, not even yours.”

Burov snatched the pistol from her. “Yes? Christians don’t kill people? Perhaps I should go back to my history books. How does that little rhyme go… ‘After two thousand years of masses, you’ve progressed to poison gasses?’ What hypocrites you all are.”

“We’re trying. You’re not.”

Burov sat on the edge of his desk and stared down at her. “Let me give you some advice, Ms. Rhodes. If you can convince your friend here to submit to us, you will be safe. Without him, you are nothing. Just a woman. Do you remember at Mozhaisk morgue when you pulled your hand away from me in revulsion? Well, picture, if you will, so many more dirty Russian hands on you — no, don’t swear at me. I know you both have a little backbone left. Just shut your mouths and think about everything we’ve discussed here. Stand.” Burov threw the pistol on the desk and spoke in an almost friendly tone, “Well, then. Are you feeling up to a walk in the fresh air? I’m sure you’re curious.” Burov motioned them toward the door and spoke to the guard. He said to Hollis and Lisa, “I’ll join you in a while.”

The guard led them downstairs and indicated a bench near the front doors where they had first entered the building, then left them alone.

Hollis looked around the lobby. Like the rest of the place, it was sparse, but there was, as always, the picture of Lenin staring down at them. The picture was hung over the front desk, and Hollis noticed that the duty officer there was the same lieutenant who had played games with his pistol when Hollis was writing his appeal. The lieutenant glanced up at him and smiled.

From where Hollis sat he could see the open door to the communications room and saw an operator sitting at the switchboard. The man connected a call manually, and Hollis realized it wasn’t an automatic board. To the operator’s left was the radio console he’d seen when he first entered this building. He recognized a shortwave set but couldn’t see the rest of the console.

The lieutenant said in Russian, “Curiosity is how you got here.” He stood and closed the door of the communications room. He turned to Hollis and Lisa and held out a pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?”

They both shook their heads.

“My name is Cheltsov.”

Hollis replied in Russian, “I really don’t give a shit.”

Lieutenant Cheltsov shrugged and sat back at his desk. He stared at them. “I’ve come to like Americans.”

Hollis asked, “Do they like you?”

The lieutenant smiled. “Everyone here gets along as best he can. This is not a prison.”

“You could have fooled me.”

“Well, you’ll see. Colonel Burov is a very smart man. There is much freedom here for the Americans. That’s because Americans are used to much freedom. Correct?”

“Except for American communists.”

“That’s not completely true. We know what goes on in America.”

“And how does that knowledge compare with what you were taught in school? About American communists for instance?”

The young officer shrugged. “The Party knows what’s best for the people to know.”

Lisa spoke. “You certainly don’t believe that anymore.”

Cheltsov lit a cigarette. “I certainly do. So you will be instructors here?”

“We’re considering the offer,” Hollis replied. “Tell me more about how smart Colonel Burov is.”

The man smiled. “Well, he is smart enough to let you people have the run of this place as long as you produce results. If he discovers that an American instructor has lied to a Russian student about something in America, then…” The man put his forefinger to his temple and cocked his thumb. “You understand?”

Hollis asked, “And are you the executioner, Cheltsov?”

The man didn’t reply.

“Do you speak English?” Lisa asked.

“No. None of the cadre — the KGB — speaks English.”

“And the American instructors?” Hollis asked. “Do they speak Russian?”

“They are not supposed to know Russian, but they pick up a little. You see, here the Russian students and American instructors may communicate in English only. The Border Guards may not speak to students or instructors unless absolutely necessary.”

“Then how is it,” Lisa asked, “that you know about America?”

Cheltsov smiled. “One picks up a bit here and there.”

“And what if Burov knew you picked things up here and there?” she inquired as she put her finger to her head.

The lieutenant went back to the paperwork on his desk. “Your Russian is excellent. Be careful how you use it.”

They sat in silence awhile, then Hollis said to Lisa in English, “Did you give up smoking?”

“I guess I did.” She added, “But there must be an easier way.”

“You’ll live longer.”

“Will I?” After a few minutes she said, “Sam… I know we’re in a bad situation here. But… I’m not going to… submit to them.”

Hollis rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, the embassy signal to remind people of electronic eavesdropping.

She touched her chin in acknowledgment and whispered in his ear, “It was an act, wasn’t it? I mean your… your…”

“Submissiveness.”

“Yes. That.”

He said, “We’ll talk later.”

They waited for nearly half an hour, and Hollis suspected that Burov intended this to be a period of psychological adjustment, a place to reflect on the relative freedom outside the doors and the hell at the rear of the building.

Finally Burov appeared in his greatcoat, and Lieutenant Cheltsov jumped to attention. Burov said to the man, “Get them some parkas.” He addressed Hollis and Lisa and said, “I’d like you to do two things. First, when you walk out those doors, forget what happened to you in here. Secondly, remember what happened to you in here. Do I make myself clear?”

Hollis replied, “We understand.”

“Good.”

The lieutenant handed them each a white parka, and they put them on. Burov said, “Follow me.”

They went with him out of the headquarters building into the chill morning air. There was some thin sunlight, and Hollis noticed how pale Lisa looked in it. He drew a breath of pine-scented air.

Burov too seemed to be enjoying the morning. He said, “It’s a pleasant day though a bit cold. I suppose you both feel it more without that little layer of fat you had.”

Hollis replied, “Will you be having much difficulty not making inane allusions to what happened in the past?”

Burov smiled thinly. “Thank you for reminding me. We start with a clean slate here. Here there is no past. That is the underlying philosophy of this institution. The instructors have no personal past, only a cultural past that they transmit to the students. The students have no personal or cultural past, only a political past that they cherish but never mention.”

Hollis had the distinct impression that Burov had anticipated this moment and was looking forward to showing them his school, to see and hear their reactions. “Fascinating,” Hollis said.

“Very,” Burov agreed. “And please, speak your mind. You have carte blanche to criticize, complain, even indulge your sarcastic wit. Come, let us walk.”

They followed Burov around the headquarters building and entered a log-paved lane that led south toward what Hollis had determined was an athletic field. They broke out of the woods behind the bleacher stands that he’d seen, and Burov took them around to the open grass field. On the field Hollis saw two teams of young men playing touch football. The quarterback was calling signals, the ball was hiked, and the passer faded back. The offensive line blocked, but the defense got through easily. The quarterback spotted a free receiver in the right flat and threw. The ball was wide, and the receiver lunged for it but fell. Burov observed, “It’s a difficult game.”

Hollis replied dryly, “They make it look more difficult than it is.”

“Yes?”

Hollis noticed two middle-aged men on the opposite sideline and two on the field.

Burov said, “The coaches and two referees. I wish the students could play with their instructors as they did years ago. We used to have some good games. But in truth, the instructors are getting on in years.”

“The Americans, you mean.”

“The instructors and students are all Americans, so we don’t use that term to distinguish one from the other.”

“I see.”

“Anyway, the idea is to just teach the basics. All exercise here is some sort of American or universal sport. But we’re limited because of your satellites. We play a little baseball, but if we had laid out a baseball diamond, your people would wonder what that was doing in the middle of Russia.” Burov smiled. “But now that it has been discovered that we invented baseball, we are beginning to perfect the game and I may build a court here.”

“A diamond.”

“Whatever.”

Hollis said, “That must be particularly galling to you. The satellites.”

“Oh, yes. And it hinders so many of our activities. So we retreated to the bor, like we did with the Tartars, Napoleon, Hitler, and the rest.” Burov looked up at the sky. “We all come here to this field now and then just to see the open expanse and feel the sun. You understand?”

“Yes.”

Burov nodded and said, “Come.” He led them across the field and spoke as he walked. “Now they are playing much soccer in America, so my students can excel at something over there if they have an athletic inclination. Incidentally, one of the best amateur soccer teams in northern New Jersey is coached by one of our graduates.”

“Is that a fact? Do you know what becomes of all your students?”

“Alas, no. They are turned over to Directorate S for infiltration into the States. You are familiar with D-S?”

“Yes. A branch of the First Chief Directorate.”

He glanced at Hollis as they walked. “But anyway, we get a few anecdotal stories back from Directorate S. It’s good for our morale.”

Lisa asked, “What happens to the students who flunk out?”

Burov didn’t reply for a while, then said, “Well, they’re asked to sign a statement swearing never to breathe a word of anything they’ve seen here. The same as in any other intelligence operation.”

Lisa remarked, “I think you probably kill them.”

“Come, come, Ms. Rhodes. Really.”

They walked in silence across the field and entered the tree line by way of another path. The path ended at a small concrete structure that resembled a bunker, and they entered it. The bunker was completely bare, and Hollis wondered why they were there. Burov directed them to the middle of the steel-plate floor, then pressed a button on the wall and stood beside them. The center plate of the floor began sinking.

They rode down a shaft for a few seconds, then stopped. Two sliding doors parted, and Burov showed them out into a smartly appointed room of chrome furniture and suede-covered walls. A young man sat at a countertop desk in the corner, wearing a T-shirt and reading a New York Times. Burov said to Hollis and Lisa, “Welcome to the Holiday Spa.”

Hollis in fact smelled chlorine, and he noticed that steaminess peculiar to health clubs.

The young man behind the counter put down his newspaper and said in cheery English, “Hello, Colonel. Who you got there?”

“New members, Frank. Colonel Hollis and Ms. Rhodes.”

“Great.” The young man put out his hand. “Frank Chapman. I read your obit last week, Colonel.”

Hollis hesitated, then shook hands with him and said, “If you’re Frank Chapman, I’m Leo Tolstoy.”

Chapman did not smile.

Burov said to Chapman, “I’ll just show them around.”

“Sure thing.”

Burov led them through steamy glass doors into an anteroom. “Men’s locker there. Ladies’ over there. We don’t have many female students because we only have six female instructors. Maybe seven now.”

Lisa said nothing.

Burov said, “This place is our gem. It cost over a million rubles to build underground, and there’s a half million dollars’ worth of Western athletic equipment here. It’s boosted morale among students, instructors, and staff.”

They followed Burov down a long corridor. Burov said, “Finnish saunas here, steam baths there, sunrooms, whirlpools. Here’s the workout room. Universal gym. Those two women are new students. They’re trying to get American figures like yours, Ms. Rhodes.” Burov smiled and watched the two Russian women sweating on stationary bicycles. Burov said, “We know that many important contacts are made in athletic clubs and that most successful Americans are involved in some sort of athletic pastime. Golf and tennis I know are the most important to the upper and ruling classes. But there is not a single golf course in all of Russia, so our students watch golf tournaments on videotape, then sign up for lessons in America. We play a little tennis here, but the real game is learned there. Here we mostly stress physical conditioning for its own sake. Social sport comes later. This way, please.”

They walked to the end of the corridor, which opened into a large gymnasium. Several young men were engaged in gymnastics, working on the bars, beams, and rings. Burov said, “This is something at which we excel. It produces very good bodies. Our students, male and female, are partly chosen for their physical attributes. Many of them, when they go West, form romantic liaisons with Americans who can be of some help. Do you understand?”

Lisa replied tersely, “Do you have any idea how morally corrupt you are?”

“Yes, by your standards. We have different standards.”

“You have no standards. That’s why this country is morally and spiritually bankrupt. Do you teach your students Judeo-Christian morality?”

“There’s not an overwhelming amount of that over there as far as I can determine.”

“Have you ever been to America?”

“Unfortunately not. Do you think it would do me some good, Ms. Rhodes?”

“Probably not.”

Burov smiled. He pointed to the far end of the gym where six young men in shorts were shooting baskets. “Come.” They walked around the hardwood gym floor and approached the six students. Hollis noted that their hairstyles were very American, and he was surprised at how they carried themselves: their walk, their smiles, their facial expressions, and hand movements. They were like no Russians he had ever seen, and he thought they closely approximated the American subtleties of physical presence.

Burov said to them, “Gentlemen, this is Sam Hollis and Lisa Rhodes. They may be joining the faculty. Introduce yourselves.”

The six young men greeted them pleasantly, pumping their hands and saying things such as, “Nice meeting you,” “Glad you could come,” and “Welcome aboard.”

Their names, Hollis learned, were Jim Hull, Stan Kuchick, John Fleming, Kevin Sullivan, Fred Baur, and Vince Panzarello. Hollis thought their Anglo and ethnic names somewhat fit their appearance.

Fred Baur asked, “Didn’t I read about you two in the newspapers?”

Burov replied, “Yes. They died in a helicopter crash.” The young men seemed to light up with recognition. They all chatted awhile, and Hollis was impressed with not only their English, but with their informal manner in front of and with Colonel Burov. This, he knew, must have been a difficult cultural breakthrough for them and for Burov.

Lisa listened to the conversation awhile, then looked at the man named Jim Hull. He was in his early twenties, blond, and rather good-looking, dressed in only shorts and sneakers. Lisa surveyed his body up and down, then caught his eye and gave him a look of unmistakable meaning. Hull seemed alternately ill at ease and interested. Finally he broke into a silly grin, dropped his eyes, and lowered his head. Burov and Hollis both noticed, and Hollis realized that Jim Hull suddenly didn’t look American anymore. American men of that age could be shy and awkward with women, Hollis knew, but Hull’s manner of expressing his shyness and discomfort revealed the Russian boy behind the mask.

Lisa commented to Burov, “That man doesn’t get out much, does he?”

Burov seemed annoyed and said curtly, “I’m afraid my students aren’t used to aggressive American women.” He added, “Let’s go.”

They walked through the gymnasium. Lisa spoke to Hollis as though Burov weren’t there. “You know, Sam, when a young man’s hormones are bubbling and his heart is racing and the color comes to his face, he is not in complete control of himself.”

“I think I remember that.”

Burov interjected, “Well, aside from that, what did you think of them? Truthfully, now.”

“I think,” Hollis answered, “your six basketball players smelled of kolbassa and cabbage.”

“You mean literally or figuratively?”

“Both.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then don’t bother to ask me.”

Burov turned down a short corridor and opened a glass door that led to a large swimming pool. Burov motioned toward the pool in which two men and two women were swimming laps. He said, “This is a focal point of social activity at night and, I’m afraid, for some rather uninhibited parties on Friday night. That’s skinny-dipping night. The wilder bunch congregates here then. I’m not sure if that’s Russian decadence or American decadence.” Burov thought a moment, then observed, “I’ll tell you something I’ve discovered. In America, as in Russia, there is a puritanical streak in the people, a high public morality, but privately there is a good deal of looseness. I think, as great empires we associate spiritual and moral decay with political decline and fall. We think of Rome. What do you think?”

Hollis thought that Burov had been forced into some independent thinking in his capacity here. He was not overly bright, but he was cunning, a survivor, and therefore open to outside reality.

Lisa said, “There are better examples of the similarities between Russians and Americans.”

“Yes, but none so interesting as their attitudes toward sex. Follow me, please.”

They toured the remainder of the underground sports complex, and Hollis realized this place was at least a partial reason for Burov’s not wanting to break camp and move the whole operation elsewhere. When the Charm School was in its cruder, more Russian form, it could easily be relocated. But with the introduction of good housing and this spa, Burov was bogged down in what he would call American decadence, if he thought about it.

They left the underground complex by way of the elevator, which brought them back up into the concrete bunker. Burov led them outside the bunker and pointed to the south. “That barbed wire is the compound of the KGB Border Guard Directorate. They man the watchtowers and patrol the perimeter. There are a few of them inside the camp, mostly at headquarters. You have no reason to ever go near that compound nor to speak to any of them.” Burov added, “They don’t like you anyway, as you murdered two of their comrades. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly,” Hollis replied. Beyond the barbed wire and watchtowers of this camp and all the other camps in this country, he reflected, was the larger Gulag called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. And every meter of those all-encompassing prison walls was watched by the elite paramilitary arm of the KGB, called the Border Guards Directorate. Over a half million strong, they were often better trained and equipped than the Red Army, and their existence gave the KGB the means to bully not only the populace, but the military and the very party they were sworn to defend. As they walked along a path, Hollis asked, “And you are not in the Border Guard Directorate?”

“You asked me about that once on the telephone, didn’t you? Well, I can answer you now. I’m in the Executive Action Department. You know us, of course.”

“Of course. Political murderers, saboteurs, kidnappers, and blackmailers.”

“We don’t define ourselves quite that way. But that’s about what we do. I started my career in that department, working for some years in Scandinavia. But I’ve been at this camp ten years, as I said, five as deputy commandant and five as commandant. Like everyone here, I’m assigned for life. The Center does not encourage transfers out of this place. Many of the Russians who work here, including the entire medical staff, are political prisoners who have been assigned here from the Gulag.” He added, “So, I heard on the Fisher tape that the American instructors call this place Mrs. Ivanova’s Charm School. Is sarcasm a trait peculiar to American pilots, or does it permeate your whole society?”

“It’s endemic in American society,” Hollis replied. “There are night classes on sarcasm.”

“Now you’re being sarcastic.”

The three of them continued their walk through the woods, and to an outside observer, it would have looked like a companionable scene. Hollis questioned Burov on some things, and Burov answered easily, remarking several times that there were few secrets inside the perimeter of the camp. Burov pointed out, “The real deficiency of this school is that all the male instructors are former pilots. Their premilitary backgrounds are somewhat varied, which is good, but their job experiences and adult lives are naturally too similar and limited for us to get a good cross section of American society.” Burov added, “To have two people like you with some variables in your backgrounds would make excellent additions to the faculty.”

“Please,” Hollis said, “spare me the college jargon.”

“But we use it here.”

“What do you call the guys with the submachine guns? Campus security personnel?”

“No, they are definitely KGB Border Guards, well-trained, with orders to shoot to kill.”

“So perhaps,” Hollis said, “I was only acting in self-defense when I killed two of them. Were you acting in self-defense when you murdered Gregory Fisher?”

Burov thought a moment, then replied, “In a manner of speaking I was.”

Lisa said tersely, “I don’t think so, Colonel Burov. I thought about that. I mean, how you would have had to do that. You would have had to smash that boy’s head through the windshield, smash his chest against the steering wheel—”

“Please, Ms. Rhodes, we don’t need graphic descriptions. Also, your moral outrage is getting tiresome.”

“You said we could say what’s on our minds. Don’t you want to learn about Western moral outrage?”

“No, and there are limits to my patience.”

“And mine.”

Burov seemed literally to bite his lip, and Hollis thought he was having second thoughts about releasing them from the cells.

They crossed the soccer field again and came back to the main road near the headquarters building. Burov turned left, west toward the main gate. About a hundred meters down the road they saw the long wooden building with the pleasant front porch and the Coke machine. They stepped onto the porch, and Burov said, “You both look rather tired.” Burov put a fifty-kopek piece in the machine. “It takes our money.” He handed a can of Coke to Lisa, then the next one to Hollis, and kept the third for himself. “It’s the real thing.” He laughed.

Hollis and Lisa sipped at the cola drink and discovered that indeed it was the real thing.

At Burov’s invitation they sat in rockers and looked out across the road at the pine trees. Hollis had once sat on a similar porch in a hunting lodge in North Carolina, sipping a soft drink from a can, smelling the pine, and talking to his wife.

Burov stared off into the distance and rocked slowly, giving Hollis the impression that he too was nostalgic for something, though Hollis could not imagine what. Perhaps his days in Scandinavia as an assassin.

Burov said, “In this country there is only one master. Us. The KGB. We are known as the sword and shield of the Party, but in reality, we serve neither the Party nor the State, and certainly not the people. We serve ourselves. Even the military fears us, and they have guns too. But we’ve discovered that the ultimate weapon is illusion. We give the illusion that we are everywhere, so people dare not even whisper our name. And what you see here”—he waved his arm—“is illusion.” He asked Hollis, “What did your photo analysts think this was?”

Hollis replied, “They thought it was probably the Russians’ idea of a desert training school.”

Lisa stifled a laugh.

Burov’s lips puckered as he stared at Hollis. His fingers tapped rhythmically on the arm of the rocker. “You might as well have your fun.” Burov stood. “Let’s go inside.”

Burov showed them into the building called VFW Post 000. To the right of the lobby was a large recreation room, and they stood at the door of it apart from the twenty or so people in the brightly lit room.

On the opposite wall was the large American flag that Hollis had seen through the window. Also on the walls, hung randomly, and Hollis thought without much care, were cardboard decorations of the season: pumpkins, scarecrows, a black cat, a few turkeys, and a Pilgrim couple. They all looked like good quality party goods, probably, Hollis guessed, made in the States.

Lisa scanned the autumnal display and said, “That’s depressing.”

Hollis was reminded of the Christmas tree in the rec room at Phu Bai air base. Some seasons didn’t travel well.

Hollis noticed a magazine rack on the wall in which were dozens of American periodicals, from Time to Road and Track, Playboy to Ladies’ Home Journal. In the rear corner was a reading area with shelves stocked with hundreds of books. There were game tables for cards and board games, a pool table, and even a video game. Burov said, “The older men, of course, are your compatriots. They keep up-to-date with American life through videotapes that are sent to us in diplomatic pouches by our embassy and consulate staffs in Washington, New York, and San Francisco. Books, magazines, and newspapers come daily through normal flights to Moscow.”

A few of the middle-aged men glanced at Hollis and Lisa, but Hollis noticed none of them even looked at Burov, and no one made a move toward them.

Hollis focused on a man in his middle fifties, a handsome, well-groomed man wearing corduroy pants, a button-down shirt, and cardigan sweater. He sat with a younger man, and both were watching television. Hollis could see the screen; Tony Randall and Jack Klugman were having an argument in the kitchen of their apartment. Hollis couldn’t hear the sound, but he recognized the segment from The Odd Couple.

The young man howled with laughter at something, then turned to the middle-aged man and spoke in New York-accented English. “I still don’t understand if these guys are supposed to be Jewish or not.”

The American instructor replied, “It’s a little vague.”

“Unger is a Jewish name, right?”

“Right.”

“So Unger is maybe a white Jew.”

“What’s a white Jew?” the American asked.

“You never heard that expression? That’s a Jew who acts like a gentile.”

“Never heard it,” the instructor said.

The student thought a moment. “Bill told it to me. He said it was a compliment. But I heard from someone else it was a slur. Now you say you never even heard it.”

The American shrugged. “I don’t know everything.”

Burov turned to Hollis. “Is it a slur? Or a compliment?”

Hollis replied, “It’s a rather nice compliment.”

Burov smiled. “I think you’re lying.” He added, “There is some lying here. That has always been a problem. But we can usually check these things.”

Hollis looked at the Americans in the room, his brother fliers from long ago, and his heart went out to them. He took Lisa’s arm and moved her out the door. Burov hurried out behind them, and they stood on the covered porch in front of the building. Burov continued his previous thought. “You see, the lies of omission are the most difficult. Our instructors do not volunteer a great deal, so—” He looked at Hollis. “Is something bothering you?”

“No.”

“Oh, yes, those men. How insensitive of me. They’re all right, Hollis. They’ve adjusted.”

Lisa put her hand on his shoulder, and Hollis nodded. “All right.”

Burov placed his can on top of the Coke machine. He waited a minute, then said to Hollis, “A man named Feliks Vasilevich called me from Minsk. He was upset over something you said about him, though he was somewhat vague on the details. I wonder, perhaps, if you know what and whom I am talking about.”

“You’re talking about Mike Salerno.”

“Yes, that’s right. How did you catch on to him?”

“He stood to attention and saluted every time a Soviet officer went past.”

“Come now, Colonel Hollis. I’ll let you be sarcastic, but this is lying, and I told you about lying.”

Hollis replied, “The way he smoked a cigarette.” Hollis explained perfunctorily.

Burov nodded. “I see.”

Lisa looked from one to the other. She asked Hollis, “Mike…?”

Burov answered, “Yes. Were you fooled, Ms. Rhodes? Good.” He looked at Hollis. “But you know, Colonel, if someone wasn’t aware, as you were, of wolves in sheep’s clothing, that minor mistake would have passed unnoticed. Oh, I don’t belittle your intelligence. But smarter men than you have been completely fooled by my graduates. Ms. Rhodes’ good friend Seth Alevy for one has been fooled several times by some of our Americans. The Kellums, to name but two.”

“The Kellums?” Lisa said. “Dick and Ann?” She looked at Hollis.

Hollis nodded.

Lisa shook her head. “My God… my God… I don’t believe this.”

Burov smiled in pure delight. “And there are three thousand more in America, in your embassies, in your overseas military bases. Fantastic, isn’t it?”

Lisa stared at Burov.

Hollis glanced from one to the other. He hoped that Burov understood and believed how little Lisa knew. He hoped too that Lisa understood why she wasn’t kept as informed as she wished to be.

Burov turned to Hollis and asked, “And how did you discover the Kellums?”

“Simple background check. They’re quite good actors actually.”

Burov looked thoughtful. “We’ve had no contact with them for ten days, so we assume Mr. Alevy is debriefing them. That’s very upsetting. Is he a good interrogator?”

“I have no idea,” Hollis replied. He asked, “With Dodson on the loose and the Kellums in Alevy’s hands, will you move the school?”

Burov shrugged. “I’d rather not. But things are getting hot, as you say. What would you do if you were the commandant here?”

“Well, I’d say it was my country and I ran it, not the Americans. I wouldn’t be pressured by Americans or the Kremlin to run and hide somewhere else.” Hollis added mockingly, “Create an illusion.”

Burov nodded to himself. “Perhaps it is you who is trying to create an illusion. Well, we’ll see.”

Lisa stood at the porch rail watching a dozen joggers run by on the sandy shoulder of the road. The men were singing as they ran, “Anchors Aweigh.”

Burov watched them. “All the students seem to like that one. I prefer your Air Force song myself.” Burov looked at his watch. “Come, we’ll walk, if you feel fit.”

They followed Burov down the steps of the porch and along the road. He turned down a log-paved path, and they came to a small wood-shingled cottage, vaguely American in design, set among the pine trees. Burov said, “This is a four-student residence.” He knocked and opened the door. Four young men in a small sitting room were on the floor playing Trivial Pursuit. Burov motioned to them to continue.

Hollis was struck again by their American casualness, their very un-Russian attitudes, sprawled out on the floor, shoeless, all wearing jeans and sweat shirts. And they were alone, Hollis thought, not expecting company. He noticed that one of the sweat shirts said “Jesus Is Lord.” Another read “Nuke the Whales.”

One of the men said to Burov in an accent that Hollis recognized as from the Virginia-D.C. area, “This Baby Boomer edition is a real bitch. The regular trivia shit is sort of general knowledge. But the Boomer stuff is tough. I don’t think most Americans even know this crap.”

“Yes?” Burov turned to Hollis. “You play this game?”

Hollis shook his head. “Wouldn’t be caught dead.”

Burov asked Lisa, “You?”

“No.”

Burov shrugged, then said to Hollis, “Do me a favor, Colonel. Ask a trivia question of my students. Please. It will be enlightening to you as well.”

Hollis thought a moment, then said to the four men on the floor, “What is the approximate number of Soviet men, women, and children who died during the Stalin reign of terror?”

The four looked at one another, then at Burov. Burov nodded. “Answer, if you know.”

One of the men replied, “I’ve read it in books and magazines. I guess twenty million is about right.”

“Do you believe that?” Hollis asked.

Again there was a silence.

Burov spoke. “I don’t believe it, and neither do they. But when they get to America, they will say they believe it.” Burov added coolly, “That is not the type of question I had in mind. Go on and ask them some trivia. You, Ms. Rhodes. Go ahead.”

Lisa said, “I don’t know any trivia.”

Burov handed her a stack of Trivial Pursuit cards.

She shrugged and flipped through them. She read, “‘What country built the TU-144, the first SST to fly and crash?’”

The man with the “Nuke the Whales” sweat shirt answered, “The Soviet Union.”

Lisa found another. “‘What Russian erection started rising under floodlights shortly after midnight one fateful August thirteenth, 1961?’”

The man with the “Jesus” sweat shirt replied, “The Berlin Wall.”

Burov said, “Thank you, Ms. Rhodes, that will be enough.”

The young man with the Virginia accent said to Lisa, “You know, we Americans call this trivia, but some of this stuff is heavy going for your average Russki.”

Lisa looked at Hollis, and he could see in her eyes that she couldn’t quite believe these men were Russian. Burov saw this too and said to the one with the “Jesus” sweat shirt, “We will break the rules and you can be a Russian again for a moment.”

The man jumped to his feet and said in Russian, “Yes, Colonel.” He looked at Hollis and Lisa and again in Russian said, “My name was once Yevgenni Petrovich Korniyenko. Eleven months ago I entered this school that we call Chrysalis — this sheltered state of being during which I will completely metamorphose and emerge a butterfly. I will be named Erik Larson. I may have some vague memory of the caterpillar I once was, but I will have beautifully colored wings and I will fly in the sunlight. No one who sees me will think of a caterpillar.”

Burov nodded, and the man sat again. It seemed to Hollis that Yevgenni Petrovich was more believable as Erik Larson. Hollis also realized, as Burov suggested, that many of these men were picked for their physical attributes as well as intelligence. A majority of those that he’d seen were good-looking, and many had the fair complexions of the Nordic Russians, giving them a sort of all-American look when the props and costumes were added.

Burov thanked the four men and motioned to the door, but Hollis said to the four, “Who knows who won the Battle of Borodino?”

Larson replied, “I’m not much on history, but I think Napoleon just squeaked by on that one. Right, guys?”

They all nodded.

Hollis said to Burov, “You must reread your history, Colonel.”

Burov didn’t reply, but escorted Hollis and Lisa outside. They continued their walk. Hollis saw that the buildings in the camp were spread out, and there were times when it seemed they were in an uninhabited woods, but then a building appeared, or men could be seen walking. Hollis spotted three men in overcoats walking toward them on the wood-planked path. Burov said, “Instructors.” Hollis watched them walking and talking, almost, he thought, as if they really were three dons, at some sylvan retreat, discussing tenure or Chaucer. They met on the path, and Burov made the introductions. “Commander Poole, Captain Schuyler, Lieutenant Colonel Mead, may I introduce Colonel Hollis, United States Air Force, former American embassy air attaché, and Miss Lisa Rhodes, United States Information Service, also late of the American embassy.”

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 attaché.”

“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 settled 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 system 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 we’re 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 operation.”

“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?”

“You know, I think these pilots here have been playing for time for nearly twenty years.”

“One week. Promise me.”

She nodded. “One week.”

They got back on the path and continued their walk. The pine forest was rather nice, Hollis thought, a real Russian bor, alive with birds and small animals. Pinecones lay strewn on the log trail, and a carpet of needles covered the earth. Among the pines were a few scrub oaks, and red squirrels gathered acorns from the base of them. As Hollis and Lisa rounded a bend they saw an unexpected knoll covered with yellow grass, atop which were a dozen white Russian birches, alight in the fading afternoon sun. Lisa took Hollis’ hand, and they made their way to the top of the knoll and stood among the birch trees. She said, “The circumstances notwithstanding, this is lovely.” She pointed. “What is that?”

Hollis turned toward the setting sun and shielded his eyes. About a hundred meters off, through a thin growth of pine, he could see a tall wooden watchtower, grey and brooding in the gathering dusk. “That is what has replaced the onion-dome church as the predominant feature of the Russian landscape. That is a guard tower.” He couldn’t see the barbed wire or the cleared zone, but he knew it was there. He picked out another tower about two hundred meters beyond the first. Hollis reckoned that if the camp was about two kilometers square and the watchtowers were about two hundred meters apart, there could be as many as forty towers around the perimeter. Each one would have to be manned by at least two Border Guards in eight-hour shifts, meaning there were no fewer than two hundred forty guards for the towers alone. There would be perhaps another two hundred for the perimeter patrol and the main gate, plus the headquarters staff and the helipad personnel. Based on just what he’d seen, here and from the air, Hollis thought there could be as many as six hundred KGB Border Guards in the camp. A formidable force. That was a lot of people to keep about three hundred Americans contained. But it was critically important to the KGB that not even one American should get out of here. And for nearly two decades, no one apparently had. Then Dodson had done the seemingly impossible, and the whole chain of command, from Burov right up to the Politburo, was worried. Hollis wondered how Dodson had gotten out.

Lisa looked out at the tower and said, “This is the limit of our world now, isn’t it?”

“Apparently.”

“I wish I had wings.”

“I’m sure the airmen imprisoned here remember when they did.”

They walked back down the knoll to the path and turned in the direction from which they’d come. Lisa said, “I still feel weak.”

“Do you want to stop?”

“Later. I want to walk while the sun is shining. I’ll hold your arm.”

They rounded a curve in the path and saw coming toward them a young couple dressed in jeans and ski jackets. Hollis said to Lisa, “Be friendly and play instructor.”

“One week.”

The couple smiled as they drew closer, and the man introduced himself, “Hi, I’m Jeff Rooney, and this is Suzie Trent. You must be Colonel Hollis and Lisa Rhodes.” He stuck out his hand.

Hollis shook hands with him and felt a firm, powerful grip.

Rooney took Lisa’s hand. “Great meeting you.”

Hollis looked at the man. He was in his mid-twenties, probably a two- or three-year veteran of the Red Air Force. He may have had some university years and perhaps some time in Air Force Intelligence school. Certainly he had spent his one year at the Institute for Canadian and American Studies in Moscow. He was dark and rather short and did not appear particularly Irish as his name suggested, but his legend would probably include a Slavic mother.

Rooney said, “We were sort of looking for you guys. We went to your house, but someone said they saw you heading this way.”

Neither Hollis nor Lisa responded, but Jeff Rooney seemed irrepressible in his friendliness. He said, “The colonel suggested we look you up. He wanted Suzie to meet Lisa.”

Suzie Trent smiled. She was a petite woman, in her early twenties, with dirty blond hair, a pointy nose, acne, and breasts too big for her frame. She spoke in accented English, “It is good that you are here now, Lisa. I have been here six months and go to the women’s class. It is very small. Twelve students and only six female instructors. It is time for me to go one-on-one, but there are not enough female mentors. So I hope you can become my mentor and teach me to be you.”

Lisa drew a short breath. “Yes, if you wish.” She forced a smile. “But you can’t sleep with my boyfriend.”

Jeff and Suzie laughed very hard. Suzie said, “Lisa, can you have tea with us this afternoon? We meet at five-thirty, after class. All the girls.”

“The women.”

“Yes. We meet in the split-level. Anyone may tell you where it is.”

“Can tell.”

“Yes, thank you. Can. I know the rule, but I still don’t know always which to use.”

“When in doubt, use ‘can.’ Most Americans err in that direction. When Russians speak English, they tend to err in the other direction, using too many ‘mays,’ and it stands out.”

“I will remember that.”

“Remember, too, that Americans don’t stand as close as you’re standing to me.”

“Oh, yes. Sorry.” She took a step back and asked, “Were you rich in your last life? Will I have to learn the manners and customs of the rich?”

Lisa glanced at Hollis and replied, “I was born into a middle-class family.”

“Where?”

“Long Island, outside New York City.”

“Oh… then they will send me elsewhere. I wanted to go to New York.”

Jeff Rooney interjected, “Suzie, I don’t think Lisa cares about that. You’re not real sensitive. You know?”

“Of course. I’m sorry.”

Rooney said to Hollis, “My old man is in the Soviet Foreign Ministry, so I sort of picked up the jargon and stuff at home. I thought what we could do for my last few months here is to bat around a lot of embassy jargon. I’m up to here in American Air Force and Navy jargon. We have a few Army types too, by the way. Mostly chopper guys. So, what do you think?”

“Sounds all right.”

“Great,” Rooney said, as if Hollis could have turned him down. Rooney added, “But I understand that you two may decide not to stay on.” He looked at Hollis closely, and the mask slipped a half centimeter as he said, “That would be a mistake.”

Hollis didn’t reply.

Rooney smiled and continued his pitch. “Anyway, when I graduate, I was sort of thinking about a career in military intelligence, leading to an attaché posting like you had. Ultimately, I’d like to be assigned to NATO.”

“Good choice.”

“Right. Problem is, the placement people here don’t think I could get a security clearance. I mean with my background. Born in Moscow, father a Party member, and all that.” Rooney laughed. “Well, I mean, I have to come up with a whole legend, of course. But it would be a hell of a coup if I could make it into American military intelligence. I took a few Air Force placement and aptitude exams — U.S. Air Force, I mean — and did pretty well. I think with your coaching, I could really do all right.”

Hollis cleared his throat. “Well, that’s very ambitious of you. I’d be surprised, though, if you could pass a background check. How would you do that?”

“Well, it’s getting a little easier now that we have all those other guys over there. I’d start off as an orphan, you see, and list a defunct orphanage, and a few dead foster parents. Birth certificates are no problem anymore. We got a few guys in the Bureau of Vital Statistics in some cities who can take care of all that.”

“But what about personal references?”

“Well, the program here goes back fifteen years, Colonel. So I can list guys whose own bona fides are pretty well established here. It’s like an old boys’ network already. School ties and all that. Us new guys go in there with a few beachheads already established.”

“It is my understanding that the graduates never come into contact with one another for security reasons.”

“Oh? Who told you that?”

“Can’t remember.”

Jeff Rooney shook his head. “There are small cells. Just like all over the world. That’s how we made a revolution here and other places. Cells, isolated from one another for security, but all working for the same thing. It was a novel concept back before the Revolution, and it still works. Makes it impossible to round up the whole organization. That’s the way I understand it is over there. Each cell works to enhance the professional life of its members.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Right. So, anyway, don’t worry about my security clearance, Colonel. Just give me some insights into the Air Force intelligence world and maybe some embassy jargon and how the politics work on getting these postings. I’ll do the rest. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Rooney added, “I wish I had an old man who was an Air Force general like you do. Well, someday I’ll be an American Air Force general, and my kids will have it easier. The great American dream — right, Colonel? Always a little harder for us immigrants.” He laughed. “Legal or illegal. But we’ll make it. We work harder.”

Hollis regarded Rooney closely. The Charm School, he thought, took the spycraft ideal of deep cover to its ultimate realization; it assaulted the very notion of identity that all human beings took for granted. Each man and woman on earth, Hollis reflected, was a complex matrix of language, habit, nuance, gesture, and shared mythology, the sum total of which identified them as members of a specific nation, culture, or society. And the thought that all of this could be replicated was a scary notion. But, Hollis thought, it was a very Russian notion. It was the old Russian nobility and upper classes speaking French, dressing English, and thinking German; it was the whole Russian obsession with trying to be something they were not. And this place, Hollis realized, was an advanced version of Stanislavsky’s method acting, a bizarre and grotesque stage where all the actors exited into the night and played their stage parts in the world. It was, Hollis understood, a place where the final curtain had to be drawn.

Rooney said, “Colonel? You there?”

Hollis focused on Rooney. “I’m here.”

Rooney smiled. “Well, you guys probably want to snoop around a little, so we won’t keep you. But we’re having a party Friday night. You’ll get a chance to meet a lot of the people here. See Chuck over at supply for a mask.”

“Mask?”

“Yeah. Halloween. Friday’s Halloween.”

“Right.”

Suzie looked at Lisa and said, “Smile. It’s not so bad here.”

Lisa didn’t smile or reply.

Jeff added, “No one will hassle you if you’re straight with us. Talk to the other instructors and you’ll see. See you at the Grand Sabbat.”

Suzie waved. “Nice meeting you both. Don’t get lost.”

“Welcome to the campus,” Jeff added. “Don’t get too close to the perimeter.”

They moved off down the path.

Neither Hollis nor Lisa spoke for a minute, then Hollis said dryly, “Nice kids. Lots of ambition.”

Lisa replied, “God forgive me, but I wanted to slit their throats.”

“And they may have wanted to cut ours.” Hollis thought a moment, then said, “Frightening.”

“Creepy,” Lisa agreed. She watched them disappear around the bend in the path and commented, “He’s a nearly finished product. She’s still very rough. I guess I’m supposed to polish her. I can’t believe this, Sam.”

“It is a bit surreal.” Hollis looked into the woods. Deep purple shadows lay in the ancient bor, and the worn wooden trail ran from nowhere to nowhere. The wind had died, and there was a stillness all around. Here I am, Hollis thought, in the heart of Russia, dead to the world, surrounded by barbed wire and engulfed in a mad experiment. Fifteen years late, but here at last.

They headed back the way they came, but took a cross path that cut east.

Lisa said, “Did I do all right? I mean with the ‘may’ and ‘can’?”

“Fine. But they didn’t believe for a minute that we were willing participants.”

“Good. I’m not much of a phony.”

“No, you’re not.”

They came to a ranch-style house set snugly among the pine trees. It was red brick with white trim and a green asphalt roof. A gravel driveway led to a one-car garage, but there was no sign that a car had ever driven over the gravel. On the right side of the garage was a man of about fifty, stacking a cord of firewood. A child of about five swung in a tire suspended by a rope from a tree limb. Hollis walked up the drive, followed by Lisa, and the man turned toward him. Hollis said, “Hello, I’m new in town.”

The man looked at him and at Lisa. “Sam Hollis! I heard you were here. And that must be Lisa Rhodes.” The man wiped his palms on his corduroy slacks and shook hands with Hollis. He spoke in a Texas twang. “I’m Tim Landis. I think we know each other, Sam.”

Hollis was momentarily taken aback. “Yes… by God, you were a flight commander in our fighter group.”

“Right. We attended some wild briefings together. I remember you used to give old General Fuller a hard time.” Landis said to Lisa, “Sam got ticked once at all the target restrictions and told Fuller we should drop water balloons so no one would get mad at us.”

Hollis introduced Lisa, and she shook hands with Landis. She asked, “Is this like dying and going to purgatory, or is it a living hell?”

Landis seemed to understand. “Well, that depends on how you wake up in the morning, what you dreamed about in the night.” Landis rubbed his forehead. “You see, I’ve been nearly twenty years here, and I don’t feel like it’s home, but I don’t know what home is supposed to feel like anymore.” He added, “Except sometimes when I wake in the night and can remember all of it and feel it again.”

No one spoke for a while, then Landis smiled at Hollis. “Hey, Sam, I’m glad you didn’t get downed.”

“Well, I did. Over Haiphong harbor. Last run of the war. But I got fished out of the drink.” Hollis hesitated a moment, then said, “My copilot was Ernie Simms. Is he here?”

Landis replied, “Not anymore.”

“He was here?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Well… let’s see… it was back in ’74. He’d just got here from Hanoi. In fact, now you mention it, it was you he was with. He said you blew out too, but didn’t know what happened to you. So he got fished out of that same drink, I guess. Artery got opened, but the Zips fixed him up, and he was fine by the time he got here.”

“What happened to him here?”

“They shot him.”

“Why?”

“Well…” Landis seemed suddenly uncomfortable. “Well, he told them to fuck off. He told the honcho here, a Red Air Force shit whose name I can’t remember now, that he wasn’t playing ball. So they shot him.”

Hollis nodded.

Landis said, “They had all the pilots they needed from the Zips then, so if you got testy with them, they shot you. Then the war ended, and the KGB started taking over. You know about all that?”

“No.”

“You want to know?”

“Some other time.”

“Okay. Hey, sorry about Simms. But there are probably a few other guys here you know from our bunch. Jessie Gates?”

“‘Crazy’ Gates?”

“Right.” Landis rattled off a dozen other names, and Hollis recognized three or four of them. Landis said, “Say, let me introduce you to my little guy.” He turned to the boy and called out, “Timmy. Come here and meet an old friend of mine.”

The boy jumped down from the tire and ran over to them. Landis said, “Timmy, this is… what are you now, Sam, a general?”

“Colonel.”

“Terrific. Timmy, this is Colonel Hollis and Miss Rhodes. This is Timothy Junior.”

Everyone shook hands, and the boy smiled bashfully. Landis said, “Timmy is almost six. There are a few other kids his age here but not too many. He likes the older kids anyway. Right, kiddo?”

The boy nodded. “Joey Reeves is my best friend, and he’s nine.” He looked at Hollis. “Are you from America?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to America someday.”

“Good. You’ll like it.”

“I’m going to go there to work for peace.”

Hollis didn’t reply.

“America is a good country.”

“Yes, it is.”

“But bad people run the country.”

Hollis glanced at Landis.

Lisa asked the boy, “Do you speak Russian?”

“No. We learn things about Russia but in English.”

“What do you learn?”

“Russia is a great country that works for peace. Someday, Russia and America will be friends. Then Dad, Mom, and me can leave here and live in America if we want. Or in Russia. Russia is close to here. America is far away.”

Lisa knelt and took the boy’s hands. “America wants peace too.”

“But bad people run the government.”

Hollis put his hand on Lisa’s shoulder, and she stood.

Landis said to his son, “Go on and play.”

The boy ran off.

Landis watched him, then said, “At first they thought that sex was enough, then they understood that some of us actually had a paternal instinct and our women had the maternal urgings. So they let us have children. They want to keep us contented here, busy with everyday things. But solutions lead to new problems. Like the kids. There are about sixty of them now. The oldest is the Brewer kid, Rick. He’s ten. Ted Brewer’s wife, Svetlana, was the first to conceive after they lifted the ban.”

“And what,” Hollis asked, “is the problem?”

“Well, they didn’t know how to bring up these kids. So they came up with this hybrid system where they teach the kids a modified American curriculum in English, but they also teach Russian history and Soviet ideology. It’s kind of screwed up. They think they can send these kids into America like they do the Russian students. But I don’t know. I think all these kids are going to go bonkers as they get older and realize they’re in prison.” Landis looked at his son, swinging again on the tire. “My poor little guy.”

Lisa watched the boy awhile, then looked at Landis. “Do you teach him the truth at home?”

“No.”

“Why not? You could in subtle ways—”

“Miss Rhodes, they told me that if they discovered I was doing that, they would kill the boy. Not take him away, but kill him. And kill my wife too.”

“My God… I’m sorry…”

Landis shrugged. “It’s all velvet gloves over steel fists here.” He looked at Hollis. “Say, Sam, did you ever happen to hear anything about my wife? I mean my American wife? Maggie?”

“No, I don’t think so. I’ll try to remember.”

“Would you? I’d appreciate that. I had two boys. Timothy… my other Timothy… and Josh. They’d be grown men now. Tim would be thirty, and Josh would be twenty-four. I sure hope they did all right. Hope Maggie remarried too.” Landis passed his hand over his face.

Hollis had a strangely empty feeling in his stomach. He said, “Look, Tim, I think my presence is a little upsetting, so we’ll—”

“No, no. Hey, I won’t ask any more of those kinds of questions. You two are probably a little disoriented yourselves. Come on in and meet Jane. That’s my wife. She’s Russian but likes the name Jane.”

“No, thanks—”

“Come on. You’ll like her. She’s a political. Real anti-Red. She got thirty years, but that’s like a death sentence in the camps. She did two years and then got offered the job here because she had some school English. I’d like you to meet her.”

Lisa and Hollis exchanged glances, and Lisa said, “We’d like to meet her.”

“Great.” They walked around to the front of the house, and Landis went on, “She got here about, let’s see… fifteen years ago. She dated around for about two years — we all did then. Wild time. Then most of us sort of paired off over the years.”

Landis opened the front door of the house and called in, “Honey, we got company.”

A voice called out in accented English, “Oh… Tim, the house is a mess.”

Hollis and Lisa looked at each other and didn’t know whether to laugh or leave.

Landis indicated the way toward the kitchen. Hollis noticed that the living room furniture was rather shabby and not particularly American-looking. It was blondewood, sort of 1950s, and may have been Scandinavian. The floor was Russian parquet, larch not oak, and the rug was an Oriental from one of the Soviet near-Eastern republics. Hollis saw a modern Sony TV with VCR and an audio system in a stack unit.

They entered the kitchen, and Hollis felt that here indeed was little America. It was a well-equipped and fairly modern kitchen, with breakfast nook. The only thing that seemed to be lacking was a dishwasher. A General Electric coffeepot was perking on the white plastic counter. Mrs. Landis was scrubbing beets at the sink.

Landis said, “Jane, these are our new neighbors, Lisa Rhodes, and an old comrade-in-arms, Captain — no, Colonel Sam Hollis.”

Jane Landis wiped her hands on her apron and looked at both of them, then took Lisa’s hand. “Hello.”

Hollis thought she was about forty. She was rather attractive and well-kept with grey-streaked black hair, cut in a pageboy style. She wore a turtleneck sweater, plaid skirt, and penny loafers. Hollis momentarily pictured a late fall day, somewhere in the Northeast. It was a Saturday afternoon, and the man of the house was stacking firewood, and his wife, still rather preppy despite her years, was brewing coffee. Through the bay window of the breakfast nook, their son could be seen playing among the pine trees. Illusions.

Jane Landis took his hand and said, “So the bastards kidnapped you both?”

Hollis smiled at her. For a moment he felt like hugging her. “Yes, the bastards kidnapped us.”

“What for? Ah, they don’t need a fucking reason. Sit down. Have some coffee.” She banged four mugs on the table that extended into the bay window area and busied herself with sugar and cream. “So, what does your presence bode for us? Are we saved, or are we doomed?”

“Neither, I think,” Hollis answered as he sat. He jerked his thumb at the ceiling in a gesture he thought she’d understand immediately.

“Oh,” Jane Landis said, “I don’t think that after fifteen years they care what we say anymore. We don’t know anything they don’t know. But maybe with you two here, they’ll start listening again. So answer me another time.” She poured four cups of coffee. “It’s not American, it’s Ethiopian. Every time they grab another country, they ship out arms to it and get some crap in return. Starting to get bananas from Nicaragua now. The only thing they get from Afghanistan is body bags.”

Landis sat across from Hollis and said to him, “I told you she was anti-Red. She’s going to get into trouble one of these days. Right, Jane?”

“Fuck them. I hope they’re listening.” She said to Lisa, “I spent two years in the Kandalaksha Camp in the Murmansk region, up near the Arctic Circle. And for what? For writing a letter to that pig Brezhnev protesting the use of Soviet troops in Poland to put down the riots there. That was December of 1970. I have a husband and two daughters. They were notified that I died in Kandalaksha. I’ll never see them again.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. We’re all sorry. I’m sorry I came here. If I’d stayed in Kandalaksha, I’d be dead now. It turns my stomach to think I’m still working for them. The Americans here, Tim included, hate them, but they hate in an American way — part-time and with idiotic gallows humor. They don’t understand how a Russian can hate them.”

Lisa replied in Russian, “My grandmother was Russian. I think I understand.”

Jane’s eyes lit up. “Ah,” she replied in English, “we’re going to be friends.”

Hollis said in English, “Lisa has aristocratic blood.”

Jane made a face. “Well, I’ll forgive that.”

They all smiled. Hollis always marveled at how even the anti-Soviet Russians had been conditioned to hate the Romanovs and the old aristocracy. That was perhaps the one solid success the Soviets had in creating the new Soviet citizen. And without a past that they wanted to return to and with their innate fear of the future, the Russian was controllable. No one seemed to have any idea of who or what should replace the communists. It was a country of failed imagination.

Tim Landis said to Lisa, “You shouldn’t speak Russian. That’s a serious offense.”

“That’s rather ironic,” Lisa replied.

Jane Landis said, “I’m not allowed to teach Tim Russian. That’s one of the ways they keep the Border Guards isolated from the Americans. They fear Western contamination.”

Lisa asked, “But do they trust the students?”

Jane replied, “They have to, up to a point. And they must have a way of controlling them in the States.” She added, “I understand that they polygraph the hell out of these guys before they ever leave here. If they see one glitch, the student gets washed out.”

Tim Landis tapped the table and pointed at the ceiling.

Jane Landis shrugged. “Screw them.”

They drank coffee in silence awhile, then Lisa asked, “This house… is it just for you, or do they use it as a training… what would you call it?”

Jane Landis replied, “Yes, that’s it. It’s for training. Not just for our comfort. We have two boarders at the moment. We’re supposed to call them boarders. Two young swine who live here. We get them a few months before they ship out, so we don’t have people here all the time, thank God. But when we have them, I’m a bitch to live with. Right, Tim?”

“Right.”

Hollis asked, “And you housebreak them?”

She smiled. “That’s it. Teach them how to use a flush toilet.” She laughed.

Tim Landis added helpfully, “Jane does their cooking and laundry. They help me with house repairs and heavy cleaning chores. It teaches them a little about domestic life, handiwork, and all.”

Jane said, “These two are real assholes. One of them made a pass at me, then was ball-less enough to say it was only training.”

Lisa smiled and asked, “Where are they now?”

Landis looked at his watch. “They had a driving class today. They go up and down the main road. The Soviets buy your old embassy cars and bring them here.”

Hollis nodded. “I always wondered what they did with them. I never saw one around Moscow.”

“Well,” Landis said, “now you know why. Most Soviets, as you know, can’t drive. Even young guys like these two, most of whom were going to become pilots, for Christ’s sake. So anyway, these two — Sonny and Marty — should be here in a few minutes, if you want to meet them.”

“All right,” Hollis replied.

Jane Landis said to Lisa, “Sonny is the one who wants to get in my pants. Keep an eye on that pig. He has a hormone problem.”

“Okay.”

Hollis drank his coffee and stared out the bay window. He tried to put himself in Tim Landis’ life, tried to imagine how it would have been in a North Vietnamese POW camp, then to be transferred to a Red Air Force POW camp to train pilots, then the evolution of the POW camp to the Charm School. Then a wife, a son. Nearly two decades. Who was Tim Landis now? Even Tim Landis didn’t know. Did they want to go home? How would Maggie Landis react? She had remarried about ten years ago. Hollis knew that because he’d known an officer who’d flown to San Diego for the wedding. And if these people got out of here, were their new wives and children supposed to go with them? With every hour that passed in this place, Hollis had more questions and fewer answers. The final answer, however, might be that they would all simply die here of old age.

Tim Landis got up from the table, found a pencil and pad, and wrote on it, then handed it to Hollis. Hollis read: Do you know about Major Dodson? Did he make it to the embassy?

Hollis wrote in reply: We know about him, indirectly, through Gregory Fisher. Fisher story in American newspapers. Dodson still MIA.

Landis read it, nodded, and turned away. Hollis thought he was crying. Hollis crumpled the paper and put it in his pocket.

Jane Landis was about to say something when the back kitchen door opened and two men in their mid-twenties came in. One of them said, “Hi. Who’s this?”

Tim Landis seemed to have gotten control of himself and made the introductions. Hollis looked the two over. Marty was a bit chunky, dressed in grey sweats and a ski parka. He had a pleasant, smiley face, and Hollis thought he looked rather innocuous. Sonny was uncommonly handsome, with curly black hair, dark eyes, and a sneering mouth that Hollis thought some women would find sensuous.

Sonny smiled at Lisa. “Glad to meet you. Everyone here is talking about you.”

“Is that so?”

Sonny’s eyes held hers. “Yes, it is. There are only six other real American women here.”

“Why don’t you just photostat them?”

Sonny laughed. “Say, are you and Sam involved, as they say, or just friends?”

Marty interjected, “Lay off, Sonny.”

Lisa stared hard at Sonny. “That’s none of your damned business.”

“Sure it is. I want to date at least one real American before I cross over.” He smiled.

Hollis’ swing caught Sonny in the abdomen, doubling him over. Sonny staggered around the floor, odd noises coming from his mouth, then he sank to his knees, trying to catch his breath.

Hollis said to the Landises, “Will there be any trouble for you?”

Tim Landis shook his head. “He had it coming. I’ll square it with his Russian control officer.”

Jane Landis added, “Good training for him. He doesn’t seem to comprehend the etiquette of putting the moves on a woman.”

Marty added as he helped Sonny out of the kitchen, “This guy’s gonna get himself killed in the States by some hot-headed boyfriend.”

Hollis said to the Landises, “Thank you for coffee.”

Tim Landis got an electric lantern from the cupboard. “You’ll need this to find your way.”

Lisa said to Jane Landis, “We’ll speak again.”

She replied, “I like you two already.”

Tim Landis walked out with them and handed Hollis the lantern. He said, “Thanks for stopping by. We’ll have you both for dinner one night. Jane cooks American.”

Hollis said, “Lisa cooks Russian.”

Landis smiled. “Good night.” He turned away, then came back. “Oh, I remembered something, Sam. What Simms said. He didn’t say that he didn’t know what happened to you. That was somebody else I was thinking about.”

Hollis stood silently in the dark, holding the lantern.

Landis moved closer to him. “Simms said you both hit the drink together. He said the Zips sent boats out, and they got him, but you got fished out by the Jolly Green Giant. Fate, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Landis moved still closer and spoke in a soft voice. “Ernie Simms said you were swimming toward him, yelling to him to come to you. He said he kept waving you off because he figured he was a goner, but you kept coming, calling to him. He said he was glad when he saw the chopper rescue you, glad for you and glad there was a witness that he’d been captured alive.” Landis added, “He spoke highly of you, Sam.”

Hollis nodded. “Thank you.” He turned and walked with Lisa away from the house.

Lisa squeezed his hand. “All right?”

He nodded again. And so, he thought, I make the final entry in the pilot’s log and close the book.

They walked for a while in silence, then Lisa said, “Do you want to be alone?”

“No, walk with me. Talk to me.”

“Okay… question: Did you hit Sonny because he was a Russian or because he was hitting on me?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Mostly male ego, I guess. I’m actually having trouble perceiving these people as Russians. All I saw was a young punk being a boor.”

“He wasn’t bad-looking.”

“Bitch.”

She smiled and grabbed his arm. They embraced and kissed. She said, “Sam… Sam…”

“Yes?”

“Don’t leave me. I’d die if you left me. If we stay here, don’t take a Russian wife.”

“How about a girlfriend?”

“Don’t tease.”

“Sorry.”

They walked down the path and headed home.

Lisa said, “How do people marry here?”

“I think they just announce it.”

“Will you marry me?”

“Yes. Does that mean you’ll work here?”

“I’ll live here. I’ll work against them. We’ll be free someday. I know we will.”

He took her arm. “I feel free. Poor Tim Landis just gave me my freedom.”

“I know.”

They continued on the dark path toward their cottage. Hollis saw other lights moving along other paths, like aircraft, he thought, lost in the night, looking for their home base. He suddenly recalled a sign that had hung in the chapel at Phu Bai air base. It was a New Year’s message from Britain’s King George to his embattled people at the beginning of the Second World War, and Hollis found he could recall it clearly: I said to the man at the gate of the year, “Give me a light that I may go forth into the unknown.” And the man replied, “Put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than a light, safer than a known way.”

34

Sam Hollis knelt by the fireplace in the small living room of the cottage and lit the kindling under the logs.

Lisa said, “I used to love a fire on a cold winter night. That’s one of the things I missed in Moscow and my other assignments.”

She looked at the growing flames, then said, “I suppose one can pretend. I mean, here in this room, just you and I. We can pretend we’re home, instead of sixty miles from Moscow. Maybe that’s how these prisoners have kept their sanity.”

Hollis wasn’t sure they had kept their sanity. And he recalled, too, what Tim Landis had said about those sad early-morning hours. “Could you turn on the VCR?”

She went to the bookshelves beside the fireplace and examined the videotapes. “Anything in particular?”

“Something noisy.”

She selected Rocky IV and fast-forwarded it to the fight scene with the Russian, then sat down on the love seat with Hollis.

He put his arm around her and spoke in a low voice. “How was tea with Suzie and her friends?”

“Awful. I had to get up and leave. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right.”

“Sam, there are six other American women here. Two were kidnapped in Finland on ski trips, and a woman named Samantha was kidnapped while she was hiking in the Carpathian mountains in Romania. The other three were supposedly lost in swimming accidents, two in the Black Sea, one in the Baltic off East Germany. There used to be two others, but they committed suicide.”

Hollis made no comment.

“Sam, it almost broke my heart. How can these bastards do that to people? Rip them away from their families… their lives…?”

Hollis looked into the fire awhile, then said, “They call us the Main Enemy. In caps. They believe that they are locked in a life-or-death struggle with us. They’re right. They know that if the Main Enemy is defeated, most of their problems will be over. Meanwhile, America gives the Soviets about ten percent of its attention.”

Lisa looked at the television. Rocky and the Russian were going at it, and the crowd was nearly hysterical. “That movie is inane. I know it’s inane. But why isn’t it as idiotic as it was the first time I saw it?”

Hollis smiled. “I know what you mean.”

She said, “Do you think of them as the Main Enemy?”

Hollis put his feet on the coffee table. “You know, sometimes I like to think that I’m doing something for them too. Not the party people of course or the KGB. But the narod, the Russian masses, and the other nationalities imprisoned outside our prison. My mind keeps returning to Yablonya, Lisa. The way it was when we were there, the way I saw it from the helicopter, and the way it could have been if the people in Moscow were different.”

She looked at him, then put her head on his shoulder and after a while asked, “How did Major Dodson get out of here?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“What did you do while I was gone?”

“Burov stopped by.”

“What did he want?”

“He just wanted to see how we were getting on.”

“That bastard!”

“Don’t let these people get to you, Lisa.”

“It’s him. He… he hit you, he slapped me… he…”

“What?”

“He… he was in my cell… when the matron… searched me….”

“All right. Don’t think about it. You have to understand that he always intended for us to work for them. That’s why we’re here and not in Lubyanka. That’s why he hasn’t done anything to us that he thinks we couldn’t forgive.”

“I understand.”

Hollis said, “He also dropped off some reading material. Are you up to reading about your death?”

She stared straight ahead for some time, then nodded.

Hollis stood and went to a cabinet beneath the bookshelf. He returned with newspapers and magazines and sat beside her. He handed her the Long Island Newsday, opened to the obituary page.

Lisa looked down at her picture and read the headline: Lisa Rhodes, Accident Victim. She cleared her throat. “My mother must have given them that old photo. She always liked that picture….” Hollis saw a tear splatter on the newspaper, and he took the paper from her. He stood and poured two glasses of brandy. He handed her a glass, and she drank from it.

Lisa composed herself and said, “My family buried me… poor Dad… I can almost see him trying not to cry.” She looked at Hollis. “And you? Your family…?”

Hollis opened a Washington Post to the obituary page. “I got full military honors at Arlington. My parents probably groused about having to fly in from Japan.”

She looked down at the obituary and read it silently. “I didn’t realize you were so important.”

“It was just the circumstances surrounding our deaths that generated some interest. Here…” He opened a later edition of The Washington Post to a story in the A section headlined: U.S. Accepts Soviets’ Claim, Calls Fatal Crash “Accident.”

Lisa looked at him, then turned her attention back to the story and read:

Lisa closed the newspaper and stared at the burning logs. Hollis poured two more glasses of brandy. He saw that her cheeks were wet with wiped tears. Finally, she said, “They don’t suspect a thing.”

“Not for the record.”

“But Seth…”

Hollis felt himself getting somewhat annoyed but answered, “Yes, Seth probably knows.”

She seemed to sense his irritation and added, “We don’t need him to get us out of here. We can do it ourselves. You got us away from Mozhaisk and that state farm.”

“Right. We’ll work on it together.”

She looked at the newspapers spread out on the coffee table, stood, gathered them up, and threw them in the fire. The blaze lit up the room, and Hollis watched her face in the sudden light. She seemed, he thought, to be finding herself again. And he noticed too that somewhere between the Arbat and here she had gotten much older.

She sat beside him again, and they held hands on the love seat. The VCR continued to play, the fire burned, and the brandy took effect. They both slept.

Hollis was awakened by a knock on the door and sat up. The videotape had run out, and the fire was dying. The mantel clock showed 10:15 P.M. Hollis stood.

Lisa awoke and mumbled, “Where’re you going?”

There was another knock on the door. Hollis went to it and opened it. A man of about fifty, dressed in a ski parka, stood in the cold. “Sorry to bother you, Colonel. We met earlier in the woods. I’m Lewis Poole. May I come in a moment?”

“That depends. Were you born Lewis Poole, or are you one of Burov’s flying worms?”

Commander Poole smiled. “I guess that meeting on the path could have been a setup. But I can take you to fifty guys here who were in the Hanoi Hilton with me.”

“Come in.”

Poole stepped in and greeted Lisa. He stood by the fire and warmed himself, then said, “Can we play a little music?”

Lisa put on one of Dodson’s tapes in a portable player, and the voices of black gospel singers filled the room.

Poole said, “They’ve about given up on house bugs because we find them and squash them. Also, we play music or just use writing and sign language. Every one of us here can communicate by signing. Someone found a book on it in the library years ago, and by the time the Russians realized it, we were all pretty adept at signing.”

Lisa nodded. “We used a simple sign language in the embassy.”

“Right. You know what it’s all about. This cottage is probably all wired for you. Soviet technology. But I don’t think they’ve invented a simple one-family house furnace yet.”

“Brandy?” Hollis asked.

“Fine.”

Hollis poured him some brandy.

Poole took a drink and continued, “Also, you have to be extremely aware of the directional microphones outdoors. They’re in the watchtowers. You have to get low, into gullies and ravines, and swish pine branches around when you speak.”

Hollis commented, “I suppose there are a lot of things we have to learn.”

“Yes. I can set up a briefing session for you both in the next day or two.”

“That’s very good of you, Commander.”

“Lew. Let me introduce myself a bit further. I’m the aide-de-camp for General Austin. Do you know the name?”

Hollis replied, “Of course. He was the commander of the Eighth Tactical Wing at Cu Chi. The only American Air Force general shot down. Missing, believed dead.”

“Yes. But he’s very much alive. According to camp rules, there is no senior man among us and no aide-de-camp or any command structure. But we’re all military, are we not? So we’ve set up a sub-rosa POW camp organization as we were trained to do. You understand.”

Hollis nodded.

“It may surprise you, Colonel Hollis, to discover that the spirit of resistance is still alive here after nearly two decades. But I hope it doesn’t surprise you.”

Hollis did not respond.

Poole continued, “Though to be perfectly frank, we have not accomplished very much aside from sabotaging the curriculum as often as possible. In real terms — that is, bottomline breakout — Jack Dodson is only the second man we’ve gotten out of here. The escape committee has tried virtually everything known in the annals of prison-camp escape, including a hot-air balloon. But there are either a few turncoats among us or perhaps it’s the Russian wives, though they aren’t supposed to know anything about escape plans. Maybe it’s just good KGB intelligence work. Whatever it is, we’ve been damned unsuccessful.”

Lisa asked, “What happened to the first man who escaped?”

“That was Gene Romero, an Air Force captain. He was recaptured and shot on the athletic field along with five other men as an example. That was nine years ago.”

“And Dodson?” Hollis asked. “How did he get out?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“All right.”

Poole glanced at Hollis and Lisa and said, “Your presence here has sparked a lot of hope.” His eyes searched Hollis’, and he asked, “Right or wrong?”

Hollis replied, “I’m not prepared to comment at this time.”

Poole seemed to take this as a positive statement, Hollis thought. Poole said, “Well, the reason I’m here is to invite you to meet General Austin.”

“Now?”

“Yes. Now.”

Hollis considered a moment, then replied, “You understand that I don’t accept the authority of General Austin under these circumstances.”

“I think I understand that.”

“Well, Commander, let me be blunt so that you do understand. I hold an active and honorable commission as a full colonel in the United States Air Force. The status of you men is somewhat questionable.”

Poole stared at Hollis, then turned away and looked at the fire. “All right. I think General Austin knew you might say that. His invitation is not an order. In fact, if you wish, I’ll ask him to come here.”

“That won’t be necessary if you acknowledge my point.”

“I do.”

Hollis took the parkas from the wall hook. “Lead on, Commander.”

Hollis, Lisa, and Poole walked out into the cold night, Poole holding a flashlight to their front.

Hollis said, “Isn’t there a curfew here?”

“No. There used to be a lot of rules. There are very few rules now.” Poole added, “The Russians are a bit slow in the head, but they finally realized that totalitarianism doesn’t suit their purposes here and takes a lot of their time. They can run the rest of this benighted country with terror and fear, but this is the most free square mile in the Soviet Union.”

“I see. That was Burov’s idea?”

“Pretty much. He lived in the Scandinavian countries for a few years and learned that a well-fed and free population could be as cooperative and productive as a terrorized population. That’s a big leap for a Russian.” Poole laughed without humor.

They came up to the main road near the VFW hall and turned right, east toward the headquarters, walking on the shoulder of the unlit road. Poole said, “We follow world events closely, and we’re probably better informed about Soviet-American relations than the average stateside American. Certainly we know more than any Russian below the Kremlin level.”

As they walked, headlights approached from up the road, and the vehicle slowed as it drew closer to them, then stopped, its headlights glaring in their faces.

Hollis, Lisa, and Poole moved toward the driver’s side of the vehicle, out of the glare of the lights, and Hollis saw that the vehicle was a Pontiac Trans Am. Sitting behind the wheel was Colonel Burov. Burov said, “Good evening, Ms. Rhodes, Commander Poole, Colonel Hollis.”

Only Poole returned the greeting.

Hollis saw that the Trans Am’s windshield was intact, and there didn’t seem to be any body damage to the vehicle.

Burov said, “Yes, Mr. Fisher’s car. I suppose he didn’t get into an accident after all. Not in this car anyway.” Burov patted the steering wheel. “Nice machine.”

Lisa came up beside Hollis and looked at Burov. “You bastard.”

Burov ignored her and spoke to Hollis. “The seats are real leather, and there is even an air conditioner in the car. Do you all drive cars like this?”

Hollis looked at the low, sleek car, its engine humming on the lonely road in the Russian bor with a uniformed officer of the KGB behind the wheel.

Burov saw he wasn’t going to get a reply and continued, “I’m going for a drive. I’d ask you to come along to give me some pointers, but I’m leaving the camp. I want to get it out on the Minsk highway and see if it can really do a hundred and forty miles per hour.” Burov added, “Unfortunately I can only take it out at night when there are no foreigners about. Someone might see it and put two and two together, as you say.”

Lisa said, “I hope you kill yourself in it.”

Burov looked at her. “No, you don’t. I am the best thing that has happened to this camp. After me — who knows?” He looked back at Hollis. “I assume you are on your way to pay a courtesy call on General Austin. Or are you going to pick mushrooms?”

Hollis said, “General Austin. How about a lift?”

Burov laughed. “I’m afraid if I let you in this car, the temptation to try something stupid would be too great for you. You and Ms. Rhodes are slippery characters, as I discovered.” Burov raised his right hand and showed an automatic pistol. “So you will have to walk. It’s good for your heart. Good evening.” Burov let up on the clutch and hit the accelerator. The Pontiac chirped, lurched, then stalled. Burov restarted it and managed to leave a little rubber. Hollis watched the taillights disappear toward the main gate. Beneath the lighted license plate was a bumper sticker that read: POWs and MIAs — not forgotten.

Lisa said, “I still hope he kills himself.” She turned to Hollis. “That’s ghoulish. Driving the car of the man he killed. He’s sick.”

Poole asked, “That was the car of the American boy killed in an accident? Fisher?”

“Yes.”

“We read about it in the American newspapers. And Landis told us that you know about Jack Dodson through Fisher. They met? And Fisher contacted the embassy?”

Hollis said, “I can’t discuss this now.”

Poole nodded, then asked, “Where are we exactly?”

Hollis looked at him. “Where do you think you are?”

Poole replied, “A few kilometers north of Borodino battlefield.”

Hollis nodded.

Poole continued, “We know from the flight that took us from Hanoi that we were landing in European Russia. We’ve also done some star and sun plotting to confirm that. The climate too is probably mid-Russian and not Siberian. The biggest clue is all those aircraft we see descending to the southeast. The traffic has grown over the years. We figured that had to be Moscow.”

“And Borodino?”

“The cannon fire,” Poole replied. “Every September seventh and October fifteenth and sixteenth, we can hear a twenty-one-gun salute a few kilometers to the south. Those are the anniversaries of the two battles of Borodino. Correct?”

Hollis nodded again. He had actually attended the September ceremony the previous year.

“Well,” Poole said, “I guess the question is, did Jack Dodson make it to the embassy?”

“That,” Hollis replied, “is the question.”

They continued their walk. As they passed in front of the massive grey headquarters building, Poole said, “You spent some time in the back rooms there, did you?”

Hollis answered, “Not long by Russian standards.”

“Almost everyone here has done time in the cooler. But Burov has more subtle means of punishment. It’s counter-productive to throw instructors in the cells, so he throws the Russian wives or girlfriends in if one of us commits an offense. Most of us have wives or children now — hostages to fortune — so it makes it difficult for us to act.”

The road curved and dropped as they rounded the bend, and Hollis realized it had become darker. He looked up at the sky and saw nothing but blackness.

Poole said, “Camouflage net.”

Hollis thought this was the camouflaged area he’d seen from the helicopter.

Lisa said, “Look, Sam!”

Hollis looked ahead and saw dim lights suspended from lamp poles. As they got closer Hollis saw he was looking at a paved parking lot, complete with white lines. Set back from the parking lot was a row of about ten darkened storefronts, looking very much like a suburban shopping plaza. The main store in the row was a large 7-Eleven complete with the distinctive white, green, and red sign. Hollis said to Lisa, “See, there’s the Seven-Eleven we were looking for on the road to Mozhaisk.”

Lisa stared at the stores. “Incredible.” She moved across the dimly lit parking lot toward the row of red brick shops. Hollis and Poole followed.

To the left of the 7-Eleven was a laundromat, a Bank of North America complete with logo, a place called Sweeney’s Liquors, a barbershop called Mane Event, and a beauty parlor named Tresses. To the right of the 7-Eleven was Kruger’s Hardware store; a stationery and tobacco shop, Main Street Pharmacy; a bookstore that also carried audio- and videotapes; and at the end of the row, a sort of luncheonette-coffee shop called Dunkin’ Donuts.

Hollis asked, “Is that a legitimate franchise?”

Poole laughed. “No. But we’re trying to get an American Express travel agency here.”

Hollis walked past the luncheonette and peered into the bookstore.

Poole said, “To varying degrees these stores are all functioning operations. You need camp scrip to buy things at all of them except this book and tape store. Everything there is only for loan. It’s sort of the camp audiovisual department, though it’s set up as a retail bookstore for training purposes. We get a wide selection of publications, videotapes, and some decent cassettes and albums.”

Lisa looked at the window display of recent American and British hardcover fiction and nonfiction. “I couldn’t find some of this stuff in the embassy bookstore.” She saw a copy of John Baron’s classic, KGB, and the Soviet defector Arkady Shevchenko’s exposé, Breaking with Moscow. “And they let you… and the so-called students read this stuff?”

“They don’t have any choice, do they?” Poole replied. “If they don’t read it now, they’ll read it stateside, where it might blow their minds. They’re inoculated here with the truth.”

Hollis peered through the windows of the pharmacy and stationery store. “You men don’t lack for anything here, do you?”

“Not in the material sense, Colonel. You know what we lack.”

Hollis didn’t reply but moved over to the hardware store. “Mostly American brand name goods here.”

“Yes,” Poole replied. “Most of the hardware and housewares in the camp are American. Keeps things standard and easy to fix. That’s why the plumbing works.”

“You do your own repairs?”

“Yes, with our students. Most Soviet men aren’t very handy, as you know. I guess that’s because they all live in government housing that’s falling apart. We teach them how to be weekend handymen.” Poole smiled. “So someday when their American wives nag them to replace a leaky washer, they don’t have to call a plumber.” Poole added, “Or as we say — How many Russians does it take to change a lightbulb? Ten. Nine to fill out the requisition forms for the bulb and one to screw it in.”

Hollis, Lisa, and Poole moved to the plate glass windows of the 7-Eleven. Poole said, “We get most of our packaged and canned food here. Some of it is American, some Finnish, some Soviet. Supplies vary. For fresh meat and produce, we go to a warehouse near the main gate and get whatever is available on a rationed basis. That is the same as everywhere else in this country.”

Hollis asked, “But you actually get paid here?”

“Yes. This scrip….” Poole took a five-dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to Hollis.

Hollis and Lisa examined it in the dim light of a lamp pole. The note looked like a five-dollar bill and in fact was a color photocopy of one. The only difference was the poor quality paper and the reverse side, which was blank.

Poole said, “That’s part of the psychology of keeping us from becoming complete zombies. We have to balance our personal budget and all that. The students do too. They pay to board with us for instance. Banking transactions and finance are one of the most important parts of the curriculum. It’s more difficult than you might think to teach these people a sense of fiscal responsibility. They’re used to blowing a month’s pay on the first consumer items they see on the way home from work.” Poole added, “It’s still not a completely realistic economic model here. For instance, we don’t pay taxes.” He smiled.

Lisa asked, “Where do they get all the American-style fixtures and such for these stores? The Seven-Eleven sign for instance.”

Poole replied, “That came from Mosfilm. Their prop shop, I guess you’d call it. Same with the Bank of North America accoutrements. The smaller items, consumer goods and so forth, come through the diplomatic pouch or through the International Center for Trade in Moscow. I saw a picture of that place in a magazine. Built by Armand Hammer. Looks like a Trump building in New York. All glass, brass, and marble. Now that’s real Little America, isn’t it? You people been there?”

“Yes,” Lisa replied. “It’s quite a place. An opening to the West.”

Poole commented, “More so than you know. They send the students to stay in the hotel there as a graduation present. They spend a month living it up and mingling with Western businessmen and VIPs. Sort of a halfway house. Then they head West.”

Hollis moved down the row past the laundromat and the bank and stopped in front of Sweeney’s Liquors, examining the stock and the window displays of various Western distilleries and vintners. There was a professionally done display of world-class Italian wines with posters of sunny Italy and cardboard Italian flags. A wicker basket held bottles of Principessa Gavi and the Banfi Brunello di Montalcino, both popular wines that were widely imported in America.

Lisa said, “These are very good wines. Can you buy these?”

Poole replied, “We can buy the wines before they turn. Sometimes we can buy the Western liquor. Depends on supply. We can buy all the Soviet stuff we want.” He added, “Everyone here was amused when we started reading that Stolichnaya had become something of a trendy drink in America. I’ll take Kentucky bourbon any day.”

Hollis commented, “I was told there was another training environment here. Kitchens, offices, and so forth.”

“Oh, that’s right here. Below our feet. A large subterranean arcade. There are staircases behind the shops. There is a sort of office suite with a reception room down there. It’s mostly to familiarize the students with office etiquette and office equipment. Word processors, Photostat machines, water coolers, electric staplers. The works. There’s also an auditorium where they show first-run movies that aren’t on videotape yet. I don’t know how they get them. Also, there are two very modern home kitchens, an extensive reference library, a hotel and motel check-in desk, airport customs, and a motor vehicle bureau desk where two nasty Russian women abuse people. They don’t even have to act. They were both government bureaucrats once. The students think it’s funny that a state motor vehicle bureau approximates Soviet life in general.” Poole smiled, then continued, “They also do house closings down there, employment interviews, and so on.” He added, “The most popular amusement down there is the brokerage firm of E.F. Hutton.”

Lisa asked, “You play the stock market here?”

Poole smiled. “The ultimate capitalistic parasitic endeavor. Everybody here plays — the students, the instructors, the wives. The Russians fly in a videotape of the ticker quotes, so the Charm School is two days behind Wall Street. We all got hurt in the crash of ’87.” He laughed without humor. “But I’m up about six thousand dollars now.”

Hollis and Lisa glanced at each other.

Poole continued, “It’s a very wide-ranging curriculum here, but aside from language and social customs, it’s impossible to go into depth, to jam the knowledge and life experiences of a twenty-five-year-old American into the head of a Russian of about the same age within thirteen or fourteen months. That’s how long most of them are here. Of course they come here with good English and some knowledge of America. They’re all graduates of the Red Air Force intelligence school outside Moscow and of the Institute for Canadian and American Studies.”

Hollis nodded. As an intelligence officer, he knew a good program when he saw one. Whereas the American intelligence establishment had shifted the emphasis from spies to satellites, statistical analyses, and other passive means of intelligence gathering, the Soviets still believed very much in the human factor. That, Hollis thought, was ironic, considering the relative values each society placed on the individual. Hollis always believed that the Soviets’ emphasis on the human spy was the correct approach. Alevy too believed in human intelligence gathering; which, Hollis suspected, was why he and Lisa were in the Charm School.

Lisa glanced in the windows of the barbershop and the beauty parlor and asked Poole, “Do the women in the camp actually come here to have their hair done?”

“Oh, yes. The hair stylists in both shops are barbers from the Gulag. All the employees in these places are from the Gulag, most of them women and most of them now married to or involved with American instructors. It’s a strange little world we have here. The milieu is mostly suburban, as you can see. That’s because most of us were suburban, I guess.”

“But no cars or PTA,” Hollis said.

“No. And no travel agency.” Poole seemed lost in thought a moment, then continued, “The population of Anytown is a little over a thousand. There are two hundred eighty-two former American pilots at last count and about an equal number of Russian wives, plus our children. Then there are the six kidnapped American women — seven now — and there are some Russian service people and medical staff also from the Gulag. Then of course there are the students — about three hundred at any given time. And there are about fifty Russian proctors, as they’re called. Control officers, actually, one for each six students. They’re KGB intelligence officers who speak and understand English. Then there is the KGB Border Guard battalion, about six hundred men, living mostly in their own compound and patrolling the perimeter. We don’t really count them as part of the camp population. We never have to deal with them, and they are forbidden to try to communicate with us.”

Poole stayed silent awhile, then took a breath. “So that’s it. One thousand souls, living in this miserable square mile, spending each and every day pretending. Pretending until the pretense seems reality, and the reality we read about and see on videotapes seems like reports from a doppelganger planet. I tell you, sometimes I think I’m a certifiable lunatic, and other times I think the Russians are.” He looked at Hollis, then at Lisa. “You just got here. What do you think?”

Hollis cleared his throat. “I’ll reserve judgment, though I don’t think it matters if you’re all insane. My problem with this place is that it works.”

Commander Poole nodded. “That it does. We’ve hatched thousands of little monsters here. God forgive us.”

They walked through the parking lot back to the main road and continued on.

Lisa said, “Let me ask you something, Commander… do you ever get the impression that these students are… seduced by our way of life?”

Poole motioned them both closer and replied in a low voice, “Yes. But I think only superficially. The way an American might be seduced by Paris or Tahiti. They don’t necessarily want any of this for their country. Or perhaps some of them do, but they want it on their terms.”

Lisa nodded. “The Russians still equate material wealth and good living with spiritual corruption.”

Poole glanced at her as they walked. “You do know your Russians. And yet they are schizoid about it. They have no God, but they worry about their spiritual life; they live in poverty, which is supposed to be good for their Russian souls, yet they buy or steal anything they can get their hands on and want more. And the few who obtain wealth slip quickly into hedonism and drown in it, because they have no guiding light, if you know what I mean.”

Hollis said, “That’s not peculiarly Russian.”

“No,” Poole agreed, “but I’ll tell you what is. Most of them seem to have a dark core, an impenetrable center that will not let in the light around them. It doesn’t matter how many books they read or how many videotapes they watch. They will not hear, and they will not see. Of course, there are a few — more than a few, maybe twenty-five percent of them — who crack open. But when they do, they’re spotted very quickly by the proctors, even though we try to cover for them. The KGB takes them away. Maybe we got a few converts out of here. But I don’t think they get past the oral examination — that’s what we call the marathon polygraph sessions they go through.” Poole, still speaking softly, said to Hollis and Lisa, “We’re always hoping that one of them will get to America and walk right into the nearest FBI office with the spy story of the century.” He asked, “Has that happened yet?”

Hollis shook his head.

“Incredible.”

Hollis was glad to discover through Poole that the men here still had a sense of themselves as American military men and that they still held the Russians in some contempt. Hollis asked, “How many of you have been imprisoned here?”

“It’s hard to say. In the early days from about 1965 to the end of the air war over North Vietnam in December 1973, hundreds of men passed through here. Most of them are dead. We’ve put together a list of about four hundred and fifty fliers who we know were shot, died of neglect, or killed themselves. It was a very turbulent time, and we were not in a position to keep good records.” Poole whispered, “But we do have that list, several copies of which are hidden about the camp.”

Hollis stopped, and the three of them stood close, facing one another. “May I have a list of the dead?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And a roster of the men who are here now?”

“Yes.”

“Did Jack Dodson have that information with him?”

“Certainly. Are you saying you may be able to get this information out of here?”

“I’m not saying that, but that is obviously what I have in mind.”

Poole nodded. He said, “Something else you ought to know. After the Paris Peace Treaty and after all the POWs were supposed to have been freed, we were still receiving American fliers from North Vietnamese prisons. These men were in incredibly bad shape, as you can imagine. There were about fifty of them, back in the mid and late seventies. The last one was in 1979.” Poole looked at Hollis. “These men said there were still American POWs in North Vietnamese camps. We have a list of those men who made the sightings and the names of the POWs they say were left behind in North Vietnam.” Poole looked from Hollis to Lisa as they stood face-to-face in the tight circle and added, “We have signed depositions to that effect. Also, the list of the two hundred eighty-two men who are now here is in the form of signatures, all written under a statement attesting to their imprisonment in the Soviet Union and the nature of this school. It would be very good if we could get this documentary evidence to Washington.”

Hollis nodded. Not everyone thought it would be good at all.

Poole added, “I got here in June of 1971. I’d been in North Vietnamese prisons for about six months prior to that.” He thought a moment, then said, “As I said, I was flown from Hanoi in a Red Air Force transport on a direct flight to a Soviet air base not far from here. I had no idea where we were going. There were ten of us. We had the idea that the Russians might be acting as brokers between the Americans and the North Vietnamese — that we were going to be exchanged for North Vietnamese POWs or Russian spies or something. Even after we were transported here in sealed trucks, we couldn’t comprehend that we were going to train Red Air Force pilots. But as soon as we realized that, we also knew we would never get out of here with that secret.”

Hollis nodded. The secret was out, but the men remained. He wondered if Poole and the others sensed that.

They began walking again, shoulder to shoulder on the road, speaking in whispers. Lisa asked, “Is there a church here? Do you have services?”

“No. That’s one thing they won’t allow, which is very telling. We can hold Bible study groups now, because we demanded that. But the students are not allowed to participate even as a training exercise. In America, they can become capitalists or right wing politicians if they wish, but I’ve heard that they’re not allowed to join a church unless it’s necessary for their cover.”

Lisa remarked, “That’s not consistent with the idea that you should enjoy American freedoms here.”

Poole replied, “I don’t quite understand that either. They make such a big deal over atheism and bad-mouthing religion, you’d almost think they believed in God.”

They continued their walk along the main road, then turned left into a narrow log-stepped path that climbed a rise in the heavily treed forest. This section of the camp, Hollis noted, seemed uninhabited.

At the end of the log path was a rundown izba with a weak light in its single window and smoke coming from its stone chimney. Poole explained, “One of the last of the original structures. General Austin prefers it to the so-called American houses, though Colonel Burov would prefer it if the general would sell out like the rest of us.”

They approached the door of the log cabin, and Poole continued, “The general has not taken a Russian wife, as he says he is still married to Mrs. Austin. I believe he has remained faithful.” He added, “He has more willpower than I do. Also, you should know that the general refuses to teach classes.”

Hollis asked, “Why hasn’t the KGB gotten rid of him?”

“We made it clear that we would strike or rebel if they did. We have value as a commodity here, like any slaves when the slave trade is cut off. Also, I suspect they don’t mind giving us a small victory to let us think we’re still men.” Poole knocked on the door.

The door opened, revealing a man close to seventy, very fit looking with a grey crew cut and steel-grey eyes. His skin was too pale, but it seemed more a result of too little sun than any unhealthiness. Hollis thought he looked like a man who had borne too much, too long, and had borne it alone.

General Austin regarded them a moment, then showed them in without speaking. He went to a stereo system strewn out on a wobbly bench and placed a record on the turntable. The strings and woodwinds of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” came through the speakers and filled the small room. Austin indicated two facing wooden chairs near the crumbling stone fireplace. Hollis and Lisa sat.

Poole took a similar pine chair facing the fire. Austin lowered himself into a birch rocker.

Hollis looked around the log-walled room. It was about as large as Pavel and Ida’s kitchen, but if anything, more sparse. Aside from the rocker and stereo, there was not a bit of comfort, no easy chair, no rag rug on the floor, and no kitchen facilities. There were, however, shaded reading lamps around the room, their cords all snaking toward a single electrical outlet. A half wall of rough planking separated the sleeping area, where an electric heater glowed on the floor beside an army cot. Beside the cot were stacks of books, magazines, and newspapers.

General Austin spoke in a very soft voice, barely audible above Vivaldi. “It was good of you to come, Colonel.” He looked at Lisa, “And you, Ms. Rhodes.”

She asked, “Would you have preferred that I wasn’t here?”

“If I did, I would have said so.”

She found herself replying, “Yes, sir.”

Commander Poole said to Austin, “Colonel Hollis wishes you to know that he is here voluntarily.”

Austin nodded but made no comment. He addressed both Hollis and Lisa. “You have knowledge of the Major Dodson business?”

Hollis nodded.

“And do you have any news of Major Dodson?”

Hollis replied, “No, General,” preferring to use that form of address rather than “sir.”

Austin asked, “What do you think our government is prepared to do if Major Dodson makes contact with the embassy or a Western reporter?”

“General, I can’t engage in any discussion of that nature with a man I’ve just met. A man who is not a free agent. And, excuse me, a man who has been compromised.”

Austin stared off into space awhile, rocking in his chair. Finally he said, “I understand your reservations. However, I expected from you, at the very least, some message from the outside.”

“I am not the bearer of any message. I am an intelligence officer, and I’ve been trained and instructed not to speak to anyone on matters that they have no need to know, rank notwithstanding.”

“I think I’m in a better position than you to determine if I have a need to know.”

Hollis did not respond directly but said, “General, I have been drugged and interrogated by Burov, and I have so far not divulged more than I absolutely had to in order to establish myself to Burov as a potential traitor. That’s why I’m here and not in a cell. Whatever I know will do you little good anyway.”

Poole asked, “Colonel, can’t you at least tell us if our government knows we’re here?”

“No, I can’t.” Hollis looked at Austin. “I want you to tell me how Dodson got out.”

Austin replied, “Only a handful of men know that. Using your reasoning, you have no need to know.”

Poole added, “If they catch Jack Dodson, they will torture him the way they tortured Captain Romero and make him reveal the names of the men on the escape committee. They will then torture those men to determine if there are others. Two of those men will be me and General Austin. So if we told you how Dodson got out, we might, under torture, be forced to tell the KGB that you know the secret as well. Then they might torture and execute you and Ms. Rhodes. They tolerate a lot from us, but they will not tolerate an escape attempt. So if you still want to know how Jack Dodson got out of here, be advised you might get caught up in the bloodbath to follow his recapture.”

Hollis looked at Lisa, who nodded.

Austin spoke. “All right. A catapult.” He explained, “We cut our own wood for our fires. We designed a catapult, cut the pieces, and scattered them about in the forest. One day a few weeks ago before the cold set in, we assembled the catapult, wrapped Major Dodson in padded blankets, and sent him over the barbed wire.” General Austin added a few more details. “We intended to send three more men over in quick succession, then cut up the catapult and burn it in our fireplaces. But as luck would have it, a motorized patrol came along between the wire fences and shone a light on us, illuminating the catapult. We abandoned the rest of the escape and made it back unseen to our houses. The alarm went up, and we didn’t give Jack Dodson much of a chance.” Austin looked from Hollis to Lisa. “So you see, they already know how we got Dodson out. I was testing your courage.”

“We don’t need testing, General.”

“I don’t know that. I don’t even know what brought you two here.”

Hollis replied, “Fate and destiny brought us here, General.”

Austin nodded. “We take your presence here as a positive sign.” He leaned toward Hollis in his rocker. “I’ll tell you something, Colonel. As much as we would want to go home, I think we’d all sacrifice our lives if we thought one man could get out of here and tell the world about this place. If you are to be that man, if you have a plan from the outside, you need only give the word. We’re ready for just about anything.”

Hollis nodded in acknowledgment.

Lisa said, “That’s very brave.” She looked at Hollis. “Sam?”

Hollis made no response.

Poole spoke. “As for the catapult, Colonel, it is now behind the headquarters building under twenty-four-hour guard. No one has told us why, but since we can read the Russian mind by now, we know why. Do you know why? You, Ms. Rhodes?”

Neither replied, and Poole continued, “If they catch Dodson, he will be the first — without the padding this time. If they don’t find him and they don’t learn who is on the escape committee, they will just pick ten or so names at random. So even if you find us contemptible as traitors, don’t think we are the Russians’ docile house pets. We did do something that we are prepared to die for.”

Hollis said to Poole, “I am not judging you. I’m only reminding you that you’ve all violated the Code of Conduct for prisoners of war by collaborating with the enemy. And, yes, so did I to an extent. As long as we all understand that, then we can move on to our next obligation under Article III of the Code, which is to escape. I don’t think two men in two decades is a very impressive effort.”

Poole’s face reddened. “Colonel, I don’t think you can say—”

“The colonel is right,” Austin interrupted. “The Russians have long ago eliminated those of us who refused to collaborate, and others of us have committed suicide, actively or passively. What you see left here, Colonel Hollis and Ms. Rhodes, are the traitors. That’s why we’re alive. And why Ernie Simms among others is dead. Correct, Colonel?”

“Correct, General.”

Poole stood. “Colonel, let me quote you some rules that apply to POWs. First—‘Even as a PO W, you continue to be of special concern to the United States; you will not be forgotten.’ Two—‘Every available national means will be employed to establish contact with you, to support you, and to gain your release.’” Poole said to Hollis, “Look me in the eye, Colonel, and tell me that my government has lived up to its obligation to us. Tell me we are not forgotten and forsaken. Tell me they don’t know we are here.”

Hollis looked Poole in the eye. “If they knew you were here, Commander, they would have done something too get you out.”

Poole stared at Hollis, then drew a deep breath. “Then let me tell you what we are doing here in lieu of escape. We sabotage the curriculum at every opportunity. And we justify staying alive by saying that if we could just live long enough to get one of us out, we could warn our country about this place. And there is some truth to that, Colonel. Because, as you see, this is not just a POW camp, and other rules prevail here. We’ve tried to maintain our integrity and our honor as officers. I can tell you for instance that not one man here has ever been found to be a stool pigeon. We can trust one another, and we’ve never accepted the friendship of a single Russian. It’s a very bizarre situation, and we try to deal with it as it evolves. General Austin has formed an ethics committee for that purpose.” Poole looked at Hollis and Lisa. “I hope you’re not here twenty years, but if you are, I hope you can maintain your own sense of duty and honor.”

Hollis said, “You mean you’d like to see me eat my words.”

“That’s right,” Poole replied tersely.

Hollis stood. “Well, perhaps I will.”

Lisa stood also and addressed Poole and Austin. “I… think from what I see and hear that you’ve done the best you could.”

General Austin stood. “Well, we know we haven’t. And your friend knows that too.” He looked at Hollis and said, “The fall of Vietnam, Watergate, the surrender of the Pueblo, Iran-Contra, the shameful episode of the hostages in Iran, Lebanon, and on and on. We’ve witnessed from afar nearly twenty years of American disasters and humiliations. But we haven’t used that to justify our own shameful and weak behavior.”

Hollis replied, “You don’t have to justify yourselves to me or to anyone except a duly constituted board of inquiry should you ever get home.”

Austin’s mind seemed to have wandered, and Hollis wondered if he’d heard him. Then Austin said, “Home. You know… we all saw on tape the POWs coming home from Vietnam. We saw men we knew. Some of us even saw our wives and families who were there to unselfishly share the joy of other families whom they’d come to know through common grief.” Austin looked from Hollis to Lisa. “I don’t think there was a worse torture the Russians could have devised for us than to show us that.”

Lisa turned and left quickly.

Hollis walked toward the door.

Poole said, “We also read about the continuing efforts to locate POWs, mostly by private groups and families, I should add, not our government. Do you know how frustrating that is for us? And why hasn’t anyone been clever enough to make some deductions? SAM missiles for American pilots. My God, the Russians and North Vietnamese were allies. How smart do you have to be to figure it out? Why hasn’t anyone thought we might be here? In Russia!” Poole studied Hollis’ face. “Or have they figured it out? And is Washington too worried about the repercussions to act? Is that it? Colonel?”

“I can’t answer any of those questions,” Hollis replied, then added, “But you have my personal word that I will do everything in my power to get you all home. Good evening, General, Commander.” Hollis took the flashlight and left.

He found Lisa on the path and saw she had been crying. He took her arm, and they picked their way down the dark log trail. They came back to the main road and turned right, back toward their cottage.

Lisa composed herself and said, “You were cruel.”

“I know that.”

“But, why… how could you be so hard on men who have suffered so much?”

“I can’t endorse what they’ve done.”

“I don’t understand you. I don’t understand your code or your—”

“It’s not necessary that you do. That’s my world, not yours.”

“Damn you. Your world got me into this.”

“No. The KGB got you into this.” He added, “There are a lot of wrongs to be righted here, Lisa. I’m not judge and jury, but I’m damned sure a witness. I know what I see and I know I’m not one of the criminals here. You keep that in mind.”

She looked at him, and it came to her that he was very upset by the meeting. She said, “You saw yourself in their place, didn’t you? They were your people once. It’s not anger and contempt you feel for them. It’s pity, so deep you can’t comprehend it. Is that it?”

He nodded. “Yes, that’s it.” He put his arm around her shoulder. “I can’t give them hope, Lisa. That would be crueler than anything else I could say to them. They understand that.”

She moved closer to him. “Ernie Simms is dead and buried, Sam. Now you have to find peace.”

35

Halloween day dawned cold and frosty. Hollis got out of bed and went into the bathroom, a prefab unit usually used in apartment houses but now attached to their cottage off the bedroom. The tap water was barely warm, and Hollis guessed the propane water heater was having problems again.

Lisa rose and put on a quilted robe over her nightgown. She went into the living room and built a fire, then into the galley kitchen and made coffee in an electric pot.

Hollis shaved, showered, and dressed in one of the four warm-up suits he had been issued. He joined Lisa in the kitchen, and they took their coffee mugs to the living room and sat before the fire.

Lisa said, “Tomorrow it’s your turn to do coffee and fire.”

“I know.”

“Did you sleep well?”

“I suppose.”

She asked, “Does it bother you that we sleep together without sex?”

“No. But your feet are cold.”

“Can we get a wood stove for this place?”

“I don’t plan on staying.”

“That’s right.”

“I was thinking,” she said, “as primitive as this place is, it’s a palace compared to a peasant’s izba. We have an electric coffeepot, toaster, and hot plate, a refrigerator, indoor plumbing, hot water—”

“Tepid water.”

“Again?”

“I’ll check it out later.”

“It’s good to have a man around the house.”

“To fix things.”

“I’m sorry about the sex.”

“Me too. But to be perfectly frank, I’m not much in the mood either. I think this place has suppressed my libido.”

She looked at him with concern. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. I don’t feel it anymore.”

She put her cup on the coffee table. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

She thought a moment. “Well… they can’t do that to us.”

“It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t we go… back to bed?”

“I’m not sure I can do you much good.”

“You’ll be fine, Sam.”

“Well… all right.” He stood, and they went back into the bedroom. Hollis looked at the icon, now hanging over the double bed. He said, “Is that an appropriate place for a religious painting?”

“Oh, yes. The Russians put them anywhere. Like Catholics put crucifixes over their beds.”

“If you say so.” He looked at the bed, and they both stood beside it awkwardly as if it were their first time. Lisa slipped off her robe, then standing beside the electric heater, pulled her nightgown over her head and laid it in front of the heater. She stood naked, the bright orange glow of the electric bars reflecting off her white skin.

Hollis got out of his warm-up suit, and they embraced. He kissed her on the lips, then the breasts, then knelt and ran his tongue over her belly, down to her pubic hair, and touched his tongue to her labia.

“Oooooh… my word….” She knelt in front of him and they fondled each other beside the electric warmth. She said, “This guy’s as big as a billy club. You’re all right.”

“What a relief.”

She looked at him sternly. “You conned me out of my clothes.”

“Not me.”

They rose together and lay in the heavily quilted bed. Hollis got on top of her, and she guided him in, then wrapped her legs around his back. She whispered, “Sam… it was silly of me… this is what I needed… your love.”

“This is all we’ve got here, Lisa.”

“Sam, I want to live. We need more time together… it’s too soon to have it end.”

“Yes, it would be too soon. I love you, Lisa. Remember that.”

They moved slowly, unhurriedly, like people who know they have many hours to themselves but not many more days, like servicemen on leave from a war, as Hollis recalled, when time was measured in minutes, and each minute was full of self-awareness and small pleasures never before experienced or appreciated.

Lisa’s hands ran smoothly and slowly along his neck and shoulders down to the small of his back, then up his spine. Hollis cupped his hands under her buttocks and brought her up as he forced his groin down deeper into her. He came and his spasm brought her to climax.

They lay still, listening to the absolute quiet of the room, their breathing, and the blood pounding in their ears.

Lisa held him tight. “Our victory.”

They jogged along the main road. Other joggers, mostly men, passed them in either direction. Everyone waved. Lisa said, “Friendly group. Just like Sea Cliff on a Saturday morning. But where are the women?”

“Russian women don’t jog, I guess.”

“Right. I never saw one in Moscow.”

They turned right on the main road and walked a few hundred meters. Lisa asked, “Where are we going?”

“To call on Burov at home.”

“You can go without me.” She turned, but he took her arm. Lisa said, “I will not call on that man’s home.”

“He’s asked us to stop by.”

“I don’t care. Don’t you understand? Try to put yourself in my place, as a woman. Do you want me to be graphic? He stood there in that cell while the matron gave me a very thorough search.”

Hollis nodded. “I understand. I’ll tell him you’re not feeling well.”

“Why do you want to go there?”

“I have a job to do. I have to see whatever I can see.”

“But for what reason?”

“I don’t know exactly, but I don’t want to be unprepared for whatever is going to happen.”

Lisa stayed silent a moment, then turned and walked toward Burov’s house.

The main road ended at a wide turnaround on the far side of which was a guardhouse, a tall razor-wire fence, and a wire gate. Two KGB Border Guards watched them approach. One of them unslung his rifle and cradled it under his arm. “Stoi!”

Hollis and Lisa stopped and one of the guards walked toward them. “Go away!” he said in English. “Go!”

Hollis said in Russian, “We have an appointment with Colonel Burov. I am Colonel Hollis.”

The guard looked them up and down, then said in Russian, “Are you the new Americans?”

“That’s right. Though my Russian is somewhat better than yours.”

The guard glared at him, then turned and went back to the guardhouse, where he made a telephone call. He motioned to Hollis and Lisa, and they passed through the gates onto a blacktopped path, just wide enough for a vehicle. Adjacent to the guardhouse was a kennel where six German shepherds roamed inside a wire mesh enclosure. The dogs immediately began barking and pawing at the mesh.

Hollis and Lisa continued up the path. Burov’s dacha was set among towering pines that had been thinned out to let some light pass through to the house and grounds. Tree stumps dotted the carpet of brown pine needles and cones.

The dacha itself was a two-story clapboard structure with somewhat contemporary lines and oversize windows. Parked in a gravel patch beside the house and enclosed in a newly built carport was the Pontiac Trans Am. Hollis walked up to the front door and knocked.

The door opened, and a KGB Border Guard motioned them inside. They entered into a large anteroom that held the guard’s desk, chair, and a coatrack.

The guard showed them through to a large pleasant living room with knotty-pine walls.

Burov stood in the center of the room wearing his uniform trousers, boots, and shirt but no tunic. “Good morning.”

Hollis ignored him and looked around. The furniture, he saw, was all Russian but not the junk that the masses had to live with. Everything in the room looked as if it had been lifted from the lobby of the Ukraina Hotel — stolid, made-to-last lacquered furniture of the 1930s; what might be called art deco in the West, but what the Russians officially called Socialist Realism and the people called Stalinist. Adorning the walls were oversize canvasses of uncommonly handsome peasants, happy factory workers, and Red Army men prepared to do battle. The only thing missing from this 1930s time capsule, Hollis thought, was smiling Uncle Joe himself or at least a photograph of him.

Burov followed Hollis’ gaze. “As you say in America, they don’t make it like this anymore. In recent years we’ve sacrificed quality for quantity. There are many who long to return to the time when shoddy goods and bad buildings were punished by firing squad.”

“There are probably less extreme methods of quality control,” Hollis said dryly. “Are you a Stalinist then, Burov?”

“We don’t use that word,” Burov replied. “But certainly, I admired the man if not all of his methods. Please, sit.” Burov motioned to the far side of the room where there was an ancient Russian porcelain stove with a wood fire in it, the only antique piece in the room. Hollis and Lisa sat in armchairs whose frames were black lacquered wood inlaid with stainless steel.

Burov motioned to the Border Guard, who left.

Lisa said, “If I had to guess your taste, Colonel Burov, I would have said this was it.”

He smiled doubtfully.

She focused on a large canvas of peasants harvesting wheat, well-built men and women with grinning ruddy faces and flowing red bandannas. She commented, “I didn’t see anything like that in the countryside, and I suspect the artist never did either.”

“That is what we call the ideal.” He sat on the matching sofa across from them. “So how have you been faring?”

Hollis replied, “We’re in prison. How do you think we’re faring?”

“You are not in prison,” Burov said curtly. “Tell me then, what do you think of our school so far?”

Hollis said, “I’m impressed.”

Burov nodded as though he already knew that. He looked at Hollis. “First order of business. Your physical assault on Sonny Aimes.”

“Why don’t we first talk about the physical assaults on Ms. Rhodes and myself by Viktor, Vadim, and you?”

“That was not assault. That was official business, and as it happened before you entered the world of the school, it cannot be discussed. Why did you hit Sonny? Because he insulted Ms. Rhodes?”

“No, I was on official business.”

“I make the rules here, Colonel Hollis. I’m very strict about law and order. And very fair. I’ve given students jail time for fighting, harassing women, stealing, and so on. I shot a student for rape once. If this place is to work, there must be law and order. Unlike America.” Burov added, “If you decide to stay on here, I will conduct a full inquiry into the matter and see who was at fault.”

Lisa said, “The Landises were not at fault. We put them in a difficult situation. It was between me and Sonny. The man is a pig.”

Burov smiled. “Yes. He was a fine boy before he started seeing American movies.” Burov laughed.

Lisa stood. “Good day.”

Burov motioned her back to her seat. “No. Please. Enough verbal jabbing. I have things to discuss with you.”

Lisa sat reluctantly.

Burov looked at Hollis and Lisa for some time, then said, “You’ve probably heard a few things about me and how I run this camp. And you’re probably wondering what makes me tick. That’s what you people wonder about when you meet a strong personality.”

Hollis said, “Yes, and when I meet an abnormal personality I try to guess at the type of psychosis that is affecting his brain.”

Burov smiled thinly. “Don’t delude yourself into thinking I’m crazy. I’m not. I have developed here the finest espionage school in all the world, Hollis. Every premier and each member of the Central Committee and the Politboro for the last ten years knows my name.”

“That’s not always an advantage,” Hollis reminded him.

“So far, it has been. But I’ll tell you what motivates me. Two things. One, my deep abiding hate for the West, which I think you know. And ironically, it is only since I have had to deal with hundreds of Americans that I’ve grown to hate them, hate their culture, their filthy books and magazines, their shallow movies, their selfish personalities, their total lack of any sense of history or suffering, their rampant consumption of useless goods and services, and above all, their plain dumb luck in avoiding disaster.”

Hollis smiled. “That about covers it.” He asked, “But certainly you didn’t learn all that from your prisoners?”

“Instructors. No, I learned from the Western filth I’ve been exposed to. The irony of these fliers is that they’re probably the best you’ve got to offer in your childish society. And your government and nation wasted them like it wastes every resource you have. As I suggested to you in Lefortovo restaurant, you might agree with that.”

“I might, but I won’t. I’ve already worked all that out, Burov. I don’t feel betrayed or used. So if this is the standard psychological pitch to get me mad at America, forget it.”

Burov leaned back in the sofa and crossed his legs. “All right. But think about it. I’ll tell you something else that is ironic and that amuses me. My students, when they get to America, will make better, harder working, more knowledgeable, and more law-abiding citizens than you’re able to produce yourselves over there.”

“And they’ll probably pay their taxes too.”

Burov regarded Hollis for some seconds, then said, “And my second motivation is purely intellectual. Quite simply, I am fascinated with the challenge of turning Russians into Americans. I don’t believe anything quite like this has ever been done on such a scale. And it has other ramifications for the future. Do you follow?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Yes. There are other schools in the planning.”

“And where will you get the instructors?”

“Kidnap them as we kidnapped you and the American women here. But on a larger scale. I think we will use submarines to capture entire boatloads of pleasure sailors.” He smiled. “Perhaps in the Bermuda Triangle.”

Lisa said, “How can that make you smile? That’s so cruel.”

Burov replied, “It’s war. We know that. You don’t.” He turned his attention back to Hollis. “Within ten years we will have a school for every major Caucasian nation in the world. All of Europe, South America, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand — any place where an ethnic Russian can pass for a native — we will have Russians burrowing into the very fabric of those nations. By the end of the century we will cover the globe with men and women who look and act like Germans, Frenchmen, Englishmen, or whatever, but who work for Moscow.” Burov asked Hollis, “What do you think of that?”

“That’s very ambitious for a country that has had seventy years to create the New Soviet Man and can’t.”

Burov leaned toward Hollis. “You’re entirely too glib.”

“I know. Gets me in trouble.”

Burov nodded. “So that’s what makes me tick.”

“Good. Can we leave now?”

“No. There are some other matters.”

An elderly Russian woman entered the room carrying a tray on which was a teapot and cups. She set the tray down on the stove, stared at Lisa and Hollis, then left.

Burov said, “Help yourselves.”

Lisa replied, “If that woman is a prisoner, I won’t touch a thing that has been served by your slave.” Burov made a clucking sound with his tongue. “What scruples you have. That was actually my dear mother.” Burov stood and poured three cups of tea. “Yes, I have a mother. And a wife and my little darling, Natalia.” He handed Lisa a cup, which she accepted, then he gave one to Hollis and remained standing by the stove. He stared at Lisa awhile, then asked her, “I was wondering if you would like to work here. In this house. To teach my Natalia English. She is ten now. Perhaps you could be a sort of governess.”

“Colonel Burov, you must be joking.”

“I wasn’t. Do you want to meet Natalia?”

“No.”

“Do you find us all so repulsive?”

“I have many Russian friends. You are not among them.”

Burov shrugged. “We’ll see. Time heals many hurts.”

Hollis put his cup on the floor beside his chair. “Is that the only reason you asked us here?”

“No. Unfortunately something has come up. My superiors in Moscow did not agree with my decision to extend you a week to meditate. So I must have your decision now. I trust you’ll agree that you would both rather be here than in an unmarked grave.”

Hollis stood. “My answer is no.”

Burov looked at him incredulously. “No, you will not work for us here?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Then you will be thoroughly interrogated, then shot.”

“Then I have nothing to lose if I killed you right now.”

Burov set his cup on the stove and stepped away from Hollis.

Hollis took a step toward Burov.

Lisa rose to her feet.

Burov seemed undecided if he should call out for the guard or not. He said to Hollis, “Are you armed?”

“I don’t need a weapon to kill you.”

“No? You think you’re so strong? I keep myself fit also.”

“Good. That should make it interesting.” Hollis moved closer to Burov.

Burov snapped, “Stay where you are.”

Lisa spoke. “Sam. Please.” She said to Burov, “I’ll work for you.” She turned to Hollis. “Please, Sam. We discussed this. It’s not worth our lives. Tell him yes. Please.” She grabbed his arm. “What difference does it make if there are two more instructors?” She turned back to Burov. “He’ll do it. Just give me some time.”

Burov seemed to consider. He stared at Lisa awhile, then said, “I have orders to get an answer from you today. If you don’t say yes by six this evening, you’ll be taken to the cells forthwith. Do you understand?”

Lisa nodded.

Burov said, “I’m in a good mood today, and I’ll tell you why. Major Dodson has been captured. He was not two hundred meters from the west wall of your embassy. So whose side is fate on?”

Hollis didn’t reply, but turned to leave.

Burov said, “Yes, you may go now. Report to me at my office at six P.M. with your answer.” He pointed the way out.

Hollis and Lisa went out to the foyer, and the guard opened the door. They walked down the path to the guardhouse, where one of the KGB men opened the gate. As they headed back along the main road, Lisa said, “You want to buy time, don’t you?”

Hollis nodded. “But you didn’t have to do that.”

“I did it for you, Sam. I saw your ego was getting in the way of your brain. I never thought you’d lose your cool like that.”

Hollis replied, “I was okay when I went in there. But… I started thinking about him.”

“About what he did to me? I shouldn’t have told you that.”

Hollis didn’t reply.

“And you were also angry at what he was saying about America.”

“All of the above.” Hollis said, “Thanks for cooling the situation. I’m sure that wasn’t an easy act for you.”

“You owe me one.”

“Right. And dinner.”

They continued their walk away from Burov’s dacha. Lisa said, “They captured Dodson.”

Hollis nodded. “Damned bad break for Dodson. But maybe that takes the pressure off Burov to break camp.”

“If you’re concerned that this place stay put, you obviously believe someone is coming for us.”

“That’s a good deduction. You’re starting to think like an intelligence officer.”

“And you talk like one. Answer the question, Hollis.”

He smiled. “I think it’s better that we’re here and not someplace else if a rescue attempt is made.” He added, “Don’t press me on it, Lisa. I think out loud sometimes because I have no one to talk to about any of this. I’ll think to myself now.”

Hollis thought that undoubtedly Alevy knew he and Lisa were kidnapped and, in fact, had anticipated their kidnapping, which was why Alevy, in an uncharacteristic display of sentiment, had tried to talk Lisa out of taking that flight. And in the two early-morning sessions he had with Alevy, Alevy hinted at some sort of rescue operation at the Charm School — perhaps, as Burov had guessed, an operation to get at least two or three men out of here as evidence. Thus, all Alevy’s questioning about the Soviet Mi-28 helicopter, which was obviously how Alevy planned to do it.

But then Alevy, at Sheremetyevo, had indicated a swap, now that they could lay their hands on most of the three thousand Charm School graduates in the States. Alevy never actually lied to his peers; he just gave ten correct answers to the same question.

He tried to get into Alevy’s mind, which was not totally impossible because they were both in the same business and ostensibly had to think alike to solve the same sort of problems. He thought that Alevy not only knew he and Lisa had been kidnapped, but guessed that they had probably been taken to the Charm School. Alevy would not want Lisa to spend much time in Burov’s hands, because Alevy, above being an intelligence officer, was a man in love. And Alevy would not want Hollis to spend too much time in Burov’s hands either, because Alevy did not want Hollis’ brain in Burov’s possession too long.

Lisa broke into his thoughts. “I think we underestimated Burov’s intellect.”

“Yes, I was impressed with his little speech.” Hollis added, “What makes him tick is a weighted chain. He’s cuckoo.”

Lisa laughed. “You are too glib for your own good. Let’s go back and tell him that one.”

“Later.”

“What do you want to do between now and six P.M.?”

“Explore. Discover. Are you up to a long day?”

“Sure. I like watching you work. You intrigue me.”

He put his arm around her, and they continued down the main road.

They passed the shopping plaza, then the headquarters building and approached the VFW hall. Hollis said, “I’m to run into Poole here by accident at ten A.M.”

They climbed the porch steps and went into the building. There were about a dozen instructors in the rec room and twice that many students. Four men played billiards at one end of the room, and a group was in front of the television watching Platoon.

They found Poole at a card table with three students playing poker. Poole had a stack of chips in front of him and a wad of camp scrip. One of the cardplayers was Jim Hull, the young man whom Lisa had caused some discomfort in the gym. He smiled at Lisa, but she gave him a frosty look that sent him back to his cards.

Poole looked up from his hand. “Oh, hello, Colonel. Ms. Rhodes. Do you want to sit in?”

“No, thanks. Someone told me you were on the firewood committee.”

“Oh, sure. I’ll be with you in a second. Let me finish out the hand.”

Hollis and Lisa sat at a nearby table.

The men played out the hand, and one of the students took the pot with aces and sixes. Poole said to the three students, “That’s called the dead man’s hand.”

“Why?” one of them asked.

Poole explained, “It was the hand that Wild Bill Hickock was holding when he was shot in the back by someone in Deadwood. That’s a town somewhere in the American West. I don’t remember what state. But it’s an unlucky hand, even if you win with it. Aces over sixes. When someone gets that hand in poker, you say ‘dead man’s hand.’” Poole stood. “I’ll be back later. Don’t swipe my money.”

The three young men smiled.

Poole led Hollis and Lisa outside and stood at the edge of the main road some distance from the VFW hall.

Hollis remarked, “Dead man’s hand is aces over eights.”

“Really? How stupid of me.” He grinned and whispered, “I have to pull a fast one on them at least once a day, or I’m depressed.”

Lisa asked, “Have you ever been caught?”

“Sure. About a dozen times. Then Lena — that’s my wife — does a week in the slammer.” He looked at Hollis, then Lisa. “She doesn’t care. She’s proud of me when they take her away. She did four years in a logging camp before she came here. The cells here are like R and R in comparison, and she doesn’t have to do laundry in the slammer or make the bed because there are no beds. I cook her a big meal when she comes home.”

Lisa said, “But surely they can do more to her and to you if they chose to.”

“They can. But they hesitate. I explained to you, they’re using more carrots and fewer sticks now. They’ll go through the stick phase again one day. In fact, I kind of sense it coming.”

“And will you still sabotage the curriculum?” Lisa asked in a quiet voice.

“Absolutely. You know, it may not seem much to you — these little lies, like the aces and sixes. But I remember a true story I read once about a British flier imprisoned with other pilots in a German castle during World War Two. He was there a few years, not fifteen or twenty years, but his sense of frustration at not being able to do damage to his enemies became obsessive. So he would cut slivers of dry rot from the castle timbers and implant them in sound timbers, knowing that fifty or a hundred years later, the whole castle would be eaten by rot. Can you understand the psychology of that?”

“Yes,” Hollis replied. “I’ve heard of similar stories.”

Poole put his arms around them and drew them closer. He spoke softly. “Well, that’s sort of what we feel here and what we do here. Only we have our modern version of the castle timbers. I sometimes think of these little courses we teach as silicon chips. We’re supposed to implant the right microcircuitry on those chips so they can go into the big computer of the Russian student’s brain. But we put little scratches on those chips as we’re making them. Small imperfections that escape quality control. Then the Russian heads West with these little glitches, and maybe his computer works fine most of the time, and maybe he gets a malfunction at a noncritical moment. But one day, in the right situation, like when he’s sailing along at Mach two and sixty thousand feet and the engines are at full power, he’ll try a maneuver, and the imperfect microchip will fail him at a crucial moment. And the small malfunction at that time and place will be fatal. Like maybe one of those bozos in there will be playing cards someday with a CIA man and pulling aces and sixes and make a stupid comment. You understand?”

“Perfectly.”

“We try.”

“I know.”

“So, do you smoke Cuban cigars?”

“No.”

“You do now.” Poole took two aluminum cigar tubes from the pocket of his warm-up jacket and handed them to Hollis, who slipped them in his pocket. Poole said, “All the names of the Americans past and present who’ve been in this place. Signatures where possible, dates of first incarceration here, and dates of death where appropriate. That’s dynamite there, Colonel, if you can get that out of here and to the embassy.”

“I know that.”

“But maybe they don’t want dynamite in the embassy.”

“They may not. But they’ll do what they have to do.”

“Will they? Do you have any hope of — well, I won’t ask you again.” Poole inquired, “How was your morning?”

“I assume you know we went up to see Burov. Is it common to be asked to his house?”

“It used to be. Like being asked to take sherry with the headmaster. But the ethics committee ruled it out years ago. We only go if given a direct order by him to report. Never take a drink or even a glass of water. I think he’s insulted, so he never asks anymore.”

“All right.”

“Can you tell me what he wanted?”

“Well, basically he wanted to shoot us. But he’ll settle for our working here.”

Poole nodded. “If you could be sure he’d only shoot you, I’d advise you to tell him to shove his job. But he’ll put you through an interrogation that won’t be very pleasant.”

Hollis replied, “I know that. But we have the choice of a more pleasant interrogation by drugs and polygraph if we take his job offer. Either way, he’s going to get things from us that I’d rather he didn’t know.”

Poole looked at Hollis, then at Lisa, and asked her, “Are you in intelligence?”

“Yes. But only very recently. I used to write press releases.”

Hollis continued, “I have to give him an answer by six. We’ll tell him yes, but I’m going to buy time between then and the polygraph.”

Poole stared at Hollis. “What are you buying time for?”

Which, Hollis thought, was a very good question. If he were to answer Poole, he would say, “Time to get the people in Washington moving.” He knew that Seth Alevy would be presenting to the President a very convincing case to prove that Lisa Rhodes and Sam Hollis had been kidnapped, not incinerated in that helicopter crash; and that they were being held in the Charm School. Alevy would also tell the National Security Council that Hollis had more information in his head than they would ever want the Russians to know. Alevy would hint at dark things, would cajole, plead, and threaten. And Alevy might even have General Surikov in the White House at this very moment, presenting a very chilling microfilm show of three thousand Soviet agents to a stunned President and his security advisers. Eventually, even Washington would realize that something had to be done and the hell with détente.

“Buy time for what?” Poole repeated.

Hollis did not respond to the question, but informed Poole, “Burov says they’ve captured Dodson.”

“Jack… captured?”

“That’s what Burov said.”

Poole seemed stunned, then pulled himself together. “Now comes the bloodbath.”

“I’ll speak to Burov tonight. I’ll see what I can do.”

“You can’t do a thing.”

“But I’ll give it all I’ve got.”

“All right… that idiotic Halloween party is tonight. Begins at seven. We all have to show up with our women.”

“I’ll talk to you then.” Hollis added, “Commander, is it too early for you to have a drink?”

“Normally, yes. But I’ll make an exception this morning.”

“Good day.”

Poole walked off as if in a trance.

36

Sam Hollis and Lisa Rhodes sat in Colonel Burov’s office. Also in the office were two KGB Border Guards standing at parade rest directly behind them.

Burov said, “What have you decided?”

Lisa replied, “We’ve decided to work here.”

Burov nodded and looked at Hollis. “I want to hear it from you, Colonel.”

Hollis said, “I will work here.”

“Good. And you will both submit to interrogations with truth drugs and polygraph machines. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you understand that you will not attempt to dissemble and confuse the machines. You will tell the truth the first time you are asked a question. If you lie even once, you go to the electroshock table. If you lie twice, you may go to the firing squad. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Now let me ask you some questions, without drugs or polygraph. And your answers had better prove true when you get on the machine. First question — Does American intelligence know of the general nature of this facility? Colonel?”

Hollis replied, “Yes.”

Burov stared at him a moment, then asked, “They know there are American fliers held here?”

“Yes.”

“Do they know how many?”

“No.”

“What do they plan to do about the Americans held here?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t? That answer had better not send the needle off the polygraph paper, or you’ll find out how painful an electric shock to the genitals can be.” Burov looked from Hollis to Lisa, then asked Hollis, “Is your presence here a result of my cleverness or Seth Alevy’s cleverness?”

“I’m not following you.”

“But you are. Did you and Alevy know you might be kidnapped?”

“No.”

Burov’s eyes fixed on Hollis, and he stayed silent for a long time, then asked, “Is there an American intelligence operation of any sort planned against this facility?”

“I don’t know of any.”

Burov said, “You know, Hollis, if I see that you’ve lied to me twice so far, you go right to the wall, sparing yourself the electric shock. But perhaps I didn’t impress that upon you. So I’m going to ask you the same questions again.” Burov proceeded to ask the questions in the same words and got the same responses from Hollis. He rephrased the final question, “Has Seth Alevy even hinted to you of an armed or clandestine American mission directed toward this camp?”

“No, he has not.”

Burov smiled thinly. “I hope for both our sakes that you are telling the truth.” He looked at Lisa. “And you. Are you in any way involved in intelligence work?”

“No.”

“No? You are simply involved with intelligence men?”

Lisa nodded. “Yes.”

“How unfortunate for you. If there were a next time for you, I would advise you to sleep with less dangerous men.”

Lisa started to reply but then simply nodded.

Burov went on, “Your two spy friends have gotten you into this. I can’t get you out of it now. But I can see to it that you live comfortably if you do what I say.”

Again she nodded.

Burov said, “You heard Colonel Hollis’ response to my questions. Were his responses true, to the best of your knowledge?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what an electroshock table is?”

“I think so.”

“Good. Next question, Ms. Rhodes. Did you and Colonel Hollis speak with General Austin at his cottage two nights ago?”

“Yes.”

“Did you speak to Commander Poole at that time, and also again near the recreation building earlier this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Was an escape plan or a rescue mission discussed on either of those occasions?”

“No.”

“No? Well, we’ll see how many strikes you have when we attach you to the polygraph.”

Burov looked at Hollis. “In baseball you get three strikes. Yes? Here we play softball. The game is easier, but you only get two strikes in softball, and you’re out.” Burov smiled.

Hollis said to Burov, “That’s a bad analogy.”

“Metaphor,” Lisa corrected.

“I can’t keep them straight,” Hollis admitted.

Burov’s eyes narrowed and his lips pursed. “I love your language. I really do. The spoken language. But the English-speaking peoples think that anyone who doesn’t speak their language is a moron. That’s a source of great amusement for you. But do you know something? When a person is strapped to the electroshock table, only one language comes out of his or her mouth, and it doesn’t resemble any human language you have ever heard.”

Burov looked at them both, then said, “Tomorrow morning two interrogators will arrive here from Moscow. The first is a polygraph and drug expert. Your sessions with this man may last several weeks, and aside from some drug hangovers, you will not be uncomfortable in any way. The second interrogator is a man they call the elektromonter—the electrician. He dwells in the basement of the Lubyanka, and he has seen things there that would make the three of us sick.” He added, “Luckily for you the choice is yours, not mine.”

Lisa said, “We’ve chosen.”

Burov looked into Lisa’s eyes a long time. “What, I wonder, has happened to your spirit.” He shrugged. “Well, anyway, I congratulate you on your wise decision.”

Hollis asked, “What’s going to happen to Major Dodson?”

“Oh, you know I have no control over that.”

“Why not? Who runs this place?”

Burov seemed annoyed. “You must understand, Colonel Hollis, that Dodson, aside from committing a capital offense, has seen too much of the country between here and Moscow. I don’t want him briefing the others about the terrain and such. The man will be executed.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

Hollis stood. “You—”

One of the guards put his hands on Hollis’ shoulders and slammed him back into his chair.

Burov shrugged. “We simply cannot have people trying to get out of here. It would ruin everything. For all of us. For world peace. For the Americans here as well. They’d be sent somewhere else and probably shot. You understand how important this all is.”

“I understand,” Hollis replied, “that if Dodson had made good his escape, you would have been shot. I understand a system that finds merit in cruelty and uses terror as a management tool.”

Burov shrugged. “And so do I. But that’s the way we’ve always done it here, Hollis, since even before the czars. I terrorize the people below me, and Lubyanka terrorizes me. So terror breeds terror. So what? It works.” He looked directly at Hollis. “I value my head, and Major Dodson’s head is not so valuable to me. I have a family to support.”

Lisa asked, “Can’t you just imprison Major Dodson?”

“No. We must make a public example of him.”

Hollis said, “If you kill him, you may have trouble here.”

“Yes?” Burov looked at him. “You’ve heard that? Well, you can tell your compatriots that I’m prepared to shoot as many of their wives and girlfriends as I have to if they even think of trouble. Will you tell them that for me, Colonel Hollis?”

“Yes, I will, Colonel Burov. But I was thinking too of your compatriots. These young students. How will their new American sensibilities be affected by this execution?”

“Don’t try to bait me or cow me, Hollis. My students are not going to be affected in any way by Major Dodson’s execution. Even those who knew him will not shed a single tear.”

“I ask you to consider all the possible consequences of your action, Colonel Burov.”

“It was up to Dodson and his friends to consider the consequences.”

Hollis drew a deep breath. “May we go?”

“In a moment. I want you to report to this headquarters immediately after the execution tomorrow. Yes, it will be a public execution. On the soccer field at eight A.M. You may pass the word around. Any man who does not attend will have his woman shot. Any woman who does not attend will be shot herself. Children are exempt from attending. There will be two hundred Border Guards there, heavily armed. Tell that to General Austin. Let’s try to avoid a bloodbath tomorrow. All right?”

“Will anyone else be executed?”

“Yes. Ten others. Major Dodson is now being interrogated regarding his accomplices. If he doesn’t divulge any names, I’ll pick ten people at random, including women.” Burov added, “Don’t feel sorry for them. They knew the rule. I’m sure there won’t be another escape attempt for at least another ten years. Good evening.”

Hollis and Lisa stood.

Burov said, “You will attend the Halloween festivities tonight. The camp will turn out at the soccer field at eight A.M., hangovers notwithstanding. You may leave.”

Hollis walked quickly to the door, followed by Lisa and the two guards.

They made their way out of the headquarters building and onto the dark road, leaving the guards behind. The night was very cold, and through the pine bough canopy Hollis could see stars but no moonlight. They both walked in silence toward the VFW building. Hollis suddenly stopped and kicked savagely at a fallen branch. “Damn him!”

Lisa put her hand on his shoulder.

“That son of a bitch! He knows. He knows the difference between right and wrong, between good and evil, and he chooses wrong and evil. Evil is an industry here. He has a family to support. Do you believe what you just heard? I thought I’d heard it all. Jesus Christ.”

Lisa said, “Let’s walk. Come on, Sam. Walk it off.”

They continued along the road. Lisa said, “Tomorrow… will there be trouble? A revolt?”

“I don’t know. I do know that six hundred unarmed men and women have no chance against two hundred armed Border Guards.”

“But could you use this to spark a revolt?”

“Maybe… as far as the people here are concerned, we just dropped in from heaven with God’s last commandment. But… is it right to incite a revolt that will end in a massacre?”

They walked slowly up the road toward the VFW hall, which was all alight for the party. Lisa asked, “What are we going to do about the interrogation, Sam? We both have two strikes before we even walk in there.”

“We seem to be running out of time and space, don’t we?”

Hollis thought of the secrets he had to protect. He had to protect Surikov in the event Surikov had not gotten out of the country yet. He had to protect the fact that the three thousand graduates of the Charm School were about to be blown and swapped for Burov’s three hundred Americans. He had to keep Burov thinking that Alevy had no plans to try to grab a few Americans out of here to show the world. But he could no longer stall Burov, and Burov would get what he needed from Hollis through drugs, clubs, electric shock, or just the polygraph paper. Then Burov would evacuate the camp, and the KGB would alert its three thousand agents in America. Then that would be the end of the operation and the last of America’s MIAs would finally and forever be lost.

Lisa stayed silent as they walked. Finally, she said, “Nina Sturges and Mary Auerbach.”

“Who?”

“The two American women who killed themselves here.”

Hollis didn’t reply.

“Sam… tomorrow we are going to watch eleven good men and women die in a horrible way. Then we are going to be interrogated for weeks. We may not ever leave that building back there. You know that.”

Again Hollis said nothing.

Lisa said softly, “I’ve been thinking… if we went to bed tonight… and just kept on sleeping… together… you and I… forever. Wouldn’t it be better? In each other’s arms?” She added, “They used the propane heater….”

He looked at her. For the first time since he’d met her he felt totally responsible for her fate. But now she was trying to take her destiny and his destiny into her own hands. He said to her, “There have been a lot of sunrises I haven’t looked forward to. But we’ll see this one. Together. I don’t want to hear any more of that.”

“I’m sorry… I don’t want to do it without you… but it’s going to be such a long night.”

“Maybe we’ll find the answers in the long night.”