The Charm School

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