Hollis found that the brandy had gone to his head and found too he was sick to death of Burov. He said to Burov, “We’d like to be alone.”
Burov stood. “Of course. You’ve both had a trying few weeks.” He went to the door. “Speak to the quartermaster at headquarters if you need anything. There’s a shopping plaza at the east end of the main road. Everyone here draws a salary. I’ll get you your pay for the week in advance. You’ll find your overnight bags in the bedroom through that door. Unfortunately, your luggage has been sent to your next of kin.”
Hollis asked, “Ms. Rhodes’ icon?”
“Oh, I’ll have that sent over if you wish. Who cut that hammer and sickle into it?”
Hollis replied, “The Kellums, I presume.”
“Really? I remember them from when they were here — ten years ago it was. We don’t often send them over as a couple like that, but they had the idea of hiring themselves out as domestic servants to a powerful political family. Servants, I understand, are hard to come by in America and easy to place. Once they are in the house, they have unlimited access to things.” Burov added, “We teach individual initiative here too, which is unfortunately not a Russian character trait. But in the spy business it is half the game. Don’t you agree, Colonel?”
“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.”