“Good. That should make it interesting.” Hollis moved closer to Burov.
Burov snapped, “Stay where you are.”
Lisa spoke. “Sam. Please.” She said to Burov, “I’ll work for you.” She turned to Hollis. “Please, Sam. We discussed this. It’s not worth our lives. Tell him yes. Please.” She grabbed his arm. “What difference does it make if there are two more instructors?” She turned back to Burov. “He’ll do it. Just give me some time.”
Burov seemed to consider. He stared at Lisa awhile, then said, “I have orders to get an answer from you today. If you don’t say yes by six this evening, you’ll be taken to the cells forthwith. Do you understand?”
Lisa nodded.
Burov said, “I’m in a good mood today, and I’ll tell you why. Major Dodson has been captured. He was not two hundred meters from the west wall of your embassy. So whose side is fate on?”
Hollis didn’t reply, but turned to leave.
Burov said, “Yes, you may go now. Report to me at my office at six P.M. with your answer.” He pointed the way out.
Hollis and Lisa went out to the foyer, and the guard opened the door. They walked down the path to the guardhouse, where one of the KGB men opened the gate. As they headed back along the main road, Lisa said, “You want to buy time, don’t you?”
Hollis nodded. “But you didn’t have to do that.”
“I did it for you, Sam. I saw your ego was getting in the way of your brain. I never thought you’d lose your cool like that.”
Hollis replied, “I was okay when I went in there. But… I started thinking about him.”
“About what he did to me? I shouldn’t have told you that.”
Hollis didn’t reply.
“And you were also angry at what he was saying about America.”
“All of the above.” Hollis said, “Thanks for cooling the situation. I’m sure that wasn’t an easy act for you.”
“You owe me one.”
“Right. And dinner.”
They continued their walk away from Burov’s dacha. Lisa said, “They captured Dodson.”
Hollis nodded. “Damned bad break for Dodson. But maybe that takes the pressure off Burov to break camp.”
“If you’re concerned that this place stay put, you obviously believe someone is coming for us.”
“That’s a good deduction. You’re starting to think like an intelligence officer.”
“And you talk like one. Answer the question, Hollis.”
He smiled. “I think it’s better that we’re here and not someplace else if a rescue attempt is made.” He added, “Don’t press me on it, Lisa. I think out loud sometimes because I have no one to talk to about any of this. I’ll think to myself now.”
Hollis thought that undoubtedly Alevy knew he and Lisa were kidnapped and, in fact, had anticipated their kidnapping, which was why Alevy, in an uncharacteristic display of sentiment, had tried to talk Lisa out of taking that flight. And in the two early-morning sessions he had with Alevy, Alevy hinted at some sort of rescue operation at the Charm School — perhaps, as Burov had guessed, an operation to get at least two or three men out of here as evidence. Thus, all Alevy’s questioning about the Soviet Mi-28 helicopter, which was obviously how Alevy planned to do it.
But then Alevy, at Sheremetyevo, had indicated a swap, now that they could lay their hands on most of the three thousand Charm School graduates in the States. Alevy never actually lied to his peers; he just gave ten correct answers to the same question.
He tried to get into Alevy’s mind, which was not totally impossible because they were both in the same business and ostensibly had to think alike to solve the same sort of problems. He thought that Alevy not only knew he and Lisa had been kidnapped, but guessed that they had probably been taken to the Charm School. Alevy would not want Lisa to spend much time in Burov’s hands, because Alevy, above being an intelligence officer, was a man in love. And Alevy would not want Hollis to spend too much time in Burov’s hands either, because Alevy did not want Hollis’ brain in Burov’s possession too long.
Lisa broke into his thoughts. “I think we underestimated Burov’s intellect.”
“Yes, I was impressed with his little speech.” Hollis added, “What makes him tick is a weighted chain. He’s cuckoo.”
Lisa laughed. “You are too glib for your own good. Let’s go back and tell him that one.”
“Later.”
“What do you want to do between now and six P.M.?”
“Explore. Discover. Are you up to a long day?”
“Sure. I like watching you work. You intrigue me.”
He put his arm around her, and they continued down the main road.
They passed the shopping plaza, then the headquarters building and approached the VFW hall. Hollis said, “I’m to run into Poole here by accident at ten A.M.”
They climbed the porch steps and went into the building. There were about a dozen instructors in the rec room and twice that many students. Four men played billiards at one end of the room, and a group was in front of the television watching Platoon.
They found Poole at a card table with three students playing poker. Poole had a stack of chips in front of him and a wad of camp scrip. One of the cardplayers was Jim Hull, the young man whom Lisa had caused some discomfort in the gym. He smiled at Lisa, but she gave him a frosty look that sent him back to his cards.
Poole looked up from his hand. “Oh, hello, Colonel. Ms. Rhodes. Do you want to sit in?”
“No, thanks. Someone told me you were on the firewood committee.”
“Oh, sure. I’ll be with you in a second. Let me finish out the hand.”
Hollis and Lisa sat at a nearby table.
The men played out the hand, and one of the students took the pot with aces and sixes. Poole said to the three students, “That’s called the dead man’s hand.”
“Why?” one of them asked.
Poole explained, “It was the hand that Wild Bill Hickock was holding when he was shot in the back by someone in Deadwood. That’s a town somewhere in the American West. I don’t remember what state. But it’s an unlucky hand, even if you win with it. Aces over sixes. When someone gets that hand in poker, you say ‘dead man’s hand.’” Poole stood. “I’ll be back later. Don’t swipe my money.”
The three young men smiled.
Poole led Hollis and Lisa outside and stood at the edge of the main road some distance from the VFW hall.
Hollis remarked, “Dead man’s hand is aces over eights.”
“Really? How stupid of me.” He grinned and whispered, “I have to pull a fast one on them at least once a day, or I’m depressed.”
Lisa asked, “Have you ever been caught?”
“Sure. About a dozen times. Then Lena — that’s my wife — does a week in the slammer.” He looked at Hollis, then Lisa. “She doesn’t care. She’s proud of me when they take her away. She did four years in a logging camp before she came here. The cells here are like R and R in comparison, and she doesn’t have to do laundry in the slammer or make the bed because there are no beds. I cook her a big meal when she comes home.”
Lisa said, “But surely they can do more to her and to you if they chose to.”
“They can. But they hesitate. I explained to you, they’re using more carrots and fewer sticks now. They’ll go through the stick phase again one day. In fact, I kind of sense it coming.”
“And will you still sabotage the curriculum?” Lisa asked in a quiet voice.
“Absolutely. You know, it may not seem much to you — these little lies, like the aces and sixes. But I remember a true story I read once about a British flier imprisoned with other pilots in a German castle during World War Two. He was there a few years, not fifteen or twenty years, but his sense of frustration at not being able to do damage to his enemies became obsessive. So he would cut slivers of dry rot from the castle timbers and implant them in sound timbers, knowing that fifty or a hundred years later, the whole castle would be eaten by rot. Can you understand the psychology of that?”