The Charm School

by Nelson DeMille

  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 her
e.”

  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.