The Charm School

by Nelson DeMille

  “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 acorn
s 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 t
o 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.”