The Charm School

by Nelson DeMille

  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. Follo
w 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 cardi
gan 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.”