“Oh, yes. The hair stylists in both shops are barbers from the Gulag. All the employees in these places are from the Gulag, most of them women and most of them now married to or involved with American instructors. It’s a strange little world we have here. The milieu is mostly suburban, as you can see. That’s because most of us were suburban, I guess.”
“But no cars or PTA,” Hollis said.
“No. And no travel agency.” Poole seemed lost in thought a moment, then continued, “The population of Anytown is a little over a thousand. There are two hundred eighty-two former American pilots at last count and about an equal number of Russian wives, plus our children. Then there are the six kidnapped American women — seven now — and there are some Russian service people and medical staff also from the Gulag. Then of course there are the students — about three hundred at any given time. And there are about fifty Russian proctors, as they’re called. Control officers, actually, one for each six students. They’re KGB intelligence officers who speak and understand English. Then there is the KGB Border Guard battalion, about six hundred men, living mostly in their own compound and patrolling the perimeter. We don’t really count them as part of the camp population. We never have to deal with them, and they are forbidden to try to communicate with us.”
Poole stayed silent awhile, then took a breath. “So that’s it. One thousand souls, living in this miserable square mile, spending each and every day pretending. Pretending until the pretense seems reality, and the reality we read about and see on videotapes seems like reports from a doppelganger planet. I tell you, sometimes I think I’m a certifiable lunatic, and other times I think the Russians are.” He looked at Hollis, then at Lisa. “You just got here. What do you think?”
Hollis cleared his throat. “I’ll reserve judgment, though I don’t think it matters if you’re all insane. My problem with this place is that it works.”
Commander Poole nodded. “That it does. We’ve hatched thousands of little monsters here. God forgive us.”
They walked through the parking lot back to the main road and continued on.
Lisa said, “Let me ask you something, Commander… do you ever get the impression that these students are… seduced by our way of life?”
Poole motioned them both closer and replied in a low voice, “Yes. But I think only superficially. The way an American might be seduced by Paris or Tahiti. They don’t necessarily want any of this for their country. Or perhaps some of them do, but they want it on their terms.”
Lisa nodded. “The Russians still equate material wealth and good living with spiritual corruption.”
Poole glanced at her as they walked. “You do know your Russians. And yet they are schizoid about it. They have no God, but they worry about their spiritual life; they live in poverty, which is supposed to be good for their Russian souls, yet they buy or steal anything they can get their hands on and want more. And the few who obtain wealth slip quickly into hedonism and drown in it, because they have no guiding light, if you know what I mean.”
Hollis said, “That’s not peculiarly Russian.”
“No,” Poole agreed, “but I’ll tell you what is. Most of them seem to have a dark core, an impenetrable center that will not let in the light around them. It doesn’t matter how many books they read or how many videotapes they watch. They will not hear, and they will not see. Of course, there are a few — more than a few, maybe twenty-five percent of them — who crack open. But when they do, they’re spotted very quickly by the proctors, even though we try to cover for them. The KGB takes them away. Maybe we got a few converts out of here. But I don’t think they get past the oral examination — that’s what we call the marathon polygraph sessions they go through.” Poole, still speaking softly, said to Hollis and Lisa, “We’re always hoping that one of them will get to America and walk right into the nearest FBI office with the spy story of the century.” He asked, “Has that happened yet?”
Hollis shook his head.
“Incredible.”
Hollis was glad to discover through Poole that the men here still had a sense of themselves as American military men and that they still held the Russians in some contempt. Hollis asked, “How many of you have been imprisoned here?”
“It’s hard to say. In the early days from about 1965 to the end of the air war over North Vietnam in December 1973, hundreds of men passed through here. Most of them are dead. We’ve put together a list of about four hundred and fifty fliers who we know were shot, died of neglect, or killed themselves. It was a very turbulent time, and we were not in a position to keep good records.” Poole whispered, “But we do have that list, several copies of which are hidden about the camp.”
Hollis stopped, and the three of them stood close, facing one another. “May I have a list of the dead?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And a roster of the men who are here now?”
“Yes.”
“Did Jack Dodson have that information with him?”
“Certainly. Are you saying you may be able to get this information out of here?”
“I’m not saying that, but that is obviously what I have in mind.”
Poole nodded. He said, “Something else you ought to know. After the Paris Peace Treaty and after all the POWs were supposed to have been freed, we were still receiving American fliers from North Vietnamese prisons. These men were in incredibly bad shape, as you can imagine. There were about fifty of them, back in the mid and late seventies. The last one was in 1979.” Poole looked at Hollis. “These men said there were still American POWs in North Vietnamese camps. We have a list of those men who made the sightings and the names of the POWs they say were left behind in North Vietnam.” Poole looked from Hollis to Lisa as they stood face-to-face in the tight circle and added, “We have signed depositions to that effect. Also, the list of the two hundred eighty-two men who are now here is in the form of signatures, all written under a statement attesting to their imprisonment in the Soviet Union and the nature of this school. It would be very good if we could get this documentary evidence to Washington.”
Hollis nodded. Not everyone thought it would be good at all.
Poole added, “I got here in June of 1971. I’d been in North Vietnamese prisons for about six months prior to that.” He thought a moment, then said, “As I said, I was flown from Hanoi in a Red Air Force transport on a direct flight to a Soviet air base not far from here. I had no idea where we were going. There were ten of us. We had the idea that the Russians might be acting as brokers between the Americans and the North Vietnamese — that we were going to be exchanged for North Vietnamese POWs or Russian spies or something. Even after we were transported here in sealed trucks, we couldn’t comprehend that we were going to train Red Air Force pilots. But as soon as we realized that, we also knew we would never get out of here with that secret.”
Hollis nodded. The secret was out, but the men remained. He wondered if Poole and the others sensed that.
They began walking again, shoulder to shoulder on the road, speaking in whispers. Lisa asked, “Is there a church here? Do you have services?”
“No. That’s one thing they won’t allow, which is very telling. We can hold Bible study groups now, because we demanded that. But the students are not allowed to participate even as a training exercise. In America, they can become capitalists or right wing politicians if they wish, but I’ve heard that they’re not allowed to join a church unless it’s necessary for their cover.”
Lisa remarked, “That’s not consistent with the idea that you should enjoy American freedoms here.”