The Charm School

Vadim was not angry with the pilots for their lack of sympathy, but was still glaring at Hollis as the source of his pain.
Primitive,
Hollis thought. But Russians reacted to the moment, not to abstractions. That was something to keep in mind in the days ahead.
    Hollis said to Lisa in a light tone, “Well, do you want to say the words, ‘I quit’?”
    She looked at him and said softly so no one else could hear, “I’ve been thinking. You and Seth promised I would be kept informed in exchange for my help.”
    “I’m keeping you informed. We’ve been kidnapped.”
    “Not funny, Sam. I think you both
knew
this might happen.”
    Hollis stayed silent a moment, then replied, “We suspected.”
    “More than suspected, I think. Do you know that Seth didn’t want me to get on that flight?”
    “No, I didn’t know that.” But that was very interesting, Hollis thought. He said, “No one ever promised to keep you informed, Lisa. Not in this business.
I’m
not fully informed, obviously.”
    She nodded. “He… he was trying to tell me something, but I guess I wasn’t listening.”
    “Nor were you telling me what he said.”
    “Sorry.” She added, “He said you were a target and I should stay away from you.”
    “But you came along anyway.”
    “I love you, stupid.”
    Marchenko piped in, “I hear whispers. No whispers. No secrets.”
    Lisa ignored Marchenko and said to Hollis, “If I didn’t love you, I’d really be pissed at you.”
    “I’ll make it up to you. Dinner?”
    “At Claridge’s.”
    “You got it.”
    Marchenko said, “Dinner? Yes, we missed our lunch. I’m hungry.”
    Hollis said to him, “You can live a month on your fat.”
    Marchenko turned and looked at Hollis. “You will be eating rats to stay alive in the Gulag.”
    “Go to hell.”
    “That’s where we are going, my friend.”
    Nearly three hours after they’d begun their flight, the helicopter began to descend. Hollis spotted the old Minsk road running along the Moskva River and noticed a dozen clusters of
izbas,
any one of which could have been Yablonya. Then, unexpectedly, he did spot Yablonya. He knew it was Yablonya because it was a stretch of black charred log cabins along a dirt road. Grey ash lay where kitchen gardens and haystacks once were. A bulldozer had dug a long slit in the black earth, and half the burned village had already been pushed into it. Hollis looked away from the window. To the list of scores to be settled—Fisher, Bill Brennan, and the three hundred American fliers—was now added the village of Yablonya.
    About three minutes later, Hollis looked back out the window. They were at about five hundred feet now, and he saw the beginning of Borodino Field, the earthworks, monuments, then the museum. The pine forest came up, and the helicopter dropped more quickly. He saw the wire fence and the cleared area around it, then the helipad that Alevy had pointed out in the satellite photograph.
    Lisa leaned over beside him and looked out the window. “Are we landing?”
    “Yes.”
    “Where?”
    “At the Charm School.”

 
    PART IV

    Wherever your travels in the Soviet Union take you, consult our Guidebook, and you will find the addresses of the camps, jails, and psychiatric prisons in your area: Slaves are building Communism… Visit them!
    —Avraham Shifrin
The Guidebook to Prisons and Concentration Camps of the Soviet Union

 
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