The Charm School

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