It was then that things became worse. The door to his cell opened. Two Vietnamese wearing khaki uniforms looked at him as though he were a stain on the air of their country. Zacharias knew what they were here for. He tried to meet them with courage. They took him, one man on each arm, and a third following behind with a rifle, to a larger room - but even before he passed through the doorway, the muzzle of the rifle stabbed hard into his back, right at the spot that still hurt, fully nine months after his painful ejection, and he gasped in pain. The Vietnamese didn't even show pleasure at his discomfort. They didn't ask questions. There wasn't even a plan to their abuse that he could recognize, just the physical attacks of five men operating all at once, and Zacharias knew that resistance was death, and while he wished for his captivity to end, to seek death in that way might actually be suicide, and he couldn't do that.
It didn't matter. In a brief span of seconds his ability to do anything at all was taken away, and he merely collapsed on the rough concrete floor, feeling the blows and kicks and pain add up like numbers on a ledger sheet, his muscles paralyzed by agony, unable to move any of his limbs more than an inch or two, wishing it would stop, knowing that it never would. Above it all he heard the cackling of their voices now, like jackals, devils tormenting him because he was one of the righteous and they'd gotten their hands on him anyway, and it went on, and on, and on -
A screaming voice blasted its way past his catatonia. One more desultory half-strength kick connected with his chest, and then he saw their boots draw back. His peripheral vision saw their faces cringe, all looking toward the door at the source of the noise. A final bellow and they hastily made their way out. The voice changed. It was a... white voice? How did he know that? Strong hands lifted him, sitting him up against the wall, and the face came into view. It was Grishanov.
'My God,' the Russian said, his pale cheeks glowing red with anger. He turned and screamed something else in oddly accented Vietnamese. Instantly a canteen appeared, and he poured the contents over the American's face. Then he screamed something else and Zacharias heard the door close.
'Drink, Robin, drink this.' He held a small metal flask to the American's lips, lifting it.
Zacharias took a swallow so quickly that the liquid was in his stomach before he noted the acidic taste of vodka. Shocked, he lifted his hand and tried to push it away.
'I can't,' the American gasped, '... can't drink, can't...'
'Robin, it is medicine. This is not entertainment. Your religion has no rule against this. Please, my friend, you need this. It's the best I can do for you,' Grishanov added in a voice that shuddered with frustration. 'You must, Robin.'
Maybe it is medicine, Zacharias thought. Some medicines used an alcohol base as a preservative, and the Church permitted that, didn't it? He couldn't remember, and in not knowing he took another swallow. Nor did he know that as the adrenaline that the beating had flooded into his system dissipated, the natural relaxation of his body would only be accentuated by the drink.
'Not too much, Robin.' Grishanov removed the flask, then started tending to his injuries, straightening out his legs, using moistened cloth to clean up the man's face.
'Savages!' the Russian snarled. 'Bloody stinking savages. I'll throttle Major Vinh for this, break his skinny little monkey neck.' The Russian colonel sat down on the floor next to his American colleague and spoke from the heart. 'Robin, we are enemies, but we are men also, and even war has rules. You serve your country. I serve mine. These... these people do not understand that without honor there is no true service, only barbarism.' He held up the flask again. 'Here. I cannot get anything else for the pain. I'm sorry, my friend, but I can't.'.
And Zacharias took another swallow, still numb, still disoriented, and even more confused than ever.
'Good man,' Grishanov said. 'I have never said this, but you are a courageous man, my friend, to resist these little animals as you have.'
'Have to,' Zacharias gasped.
'Of course you do,' Grishanov said, wiping the man's face clean as tenderly as he might have done with one of his children. 'I would, too.' He paused. 'God, to be flying again!'
'Yeah. Colonel, I wish -'
'Call me Kolya,' Grishanov gestured. 'You've known me long enough.'
'Kolya?'
'My Christian name is Nikolay. Kolya is - nickname, you say?'
Zacharias let his head back against the wall, closing his eyes and remembering the sensations of flight. 'Yes, Kolya, I would like to be flying again.'
'Not too different, I imagine,' Kolya said, sitting beside the man, wrapping a brotherly arm around his bruised and aching shoulders, knowing it was the first gesture of human warmth the man had experienced in almost a year. 'My favorite is the MiG-17. Obsolete now, but, God, what a joy to fly. Just fingertips on the stick, and you -you just think it, just wish it in your mind, and the aircraft does what you want.'
'The - 86 was like that,' Zacharias replied. "They're all gone, too.'
The Russian chuckled, 'Like your first love, yes? The first girl you saw as a child, the one who first made you think as a man thinks, yes? But the first airplane, that is better for one like us. Not so warm as a woman is, but much less confusing to handle.' Robin tried to laugh, but choked. Grishanov offered him another swallow. 'Easy, my friend. Tell me, what is your favorite?'
The American shrugged, feeling the warm glow in his belly. 'I've flown nearly everything. I missed the F-94 and the -89, too. From what I hear, I didn't miss much there. The -104 was fun, like a sports car, but not much legs. No, the -86H is probably my favorite, just for handling.'
'And the Thud?' Grishanov asked, using the nickname for the F-105 Thunderchief.
Robin coughed briefly. 'You take the whole state of Utah to turn one in, darned if it isn't fast on the deck, though. I've had one a hundred twenty knots over the redline.'
'Not really a fighter, they say. Really a bomb truck.' Grishanov had assiduously studied American pilot's slang.
'That's all right. It will get you out of trouble in a hurry. You sure don't want to dogfight in one. The first pass better be a good one.'
'But for bombing - one pilot to another, your bomb delivery in this wretched place is excellent.'
'We try, Kolya, we surely do try,' Zacharias said, his voice slurred. It amazed the Russian that the liquor had worked so quickly. The man had never had a drink in his life until twenty minutes earlier. How remarkable that a man would choose to live without drink.
'And the way you fight the rocket emplacements. You know, I've watched that. We are enemies, Robin,' Kolya said again. 'But we are also pilots. The courage and skill I have watched here, they are like nothing I have ever seen. You must be a professional gambler at home, yes?'
'Gamble?' Robin shook his head. 'No, I can't do that.'
'But what you did in your Thud...'
'Not gambling. Calculated risk. You plan, you know what you can do, and you stick to that, get a feel for what the other guy is thinking.'
Grishanov made a mental note to refill his flask for the next one on his schedule. It had taken a few months, but he'd finally found something that worked. A pity that these little brown savages didn't have the wit to understand that in hurting a man you most often made his courage grow. For all their arrogance, which was considerable, they saw the world through a lens that was as diminutive as their stature and as narrow as their culture. They seemed unable to learn lessons. Grishanov sought out such lessons. Strangest of all, this one had been something learned from a fascist officer in the Luftwaffe. A pity also that the Vietnamese allowed only him and no others to perform these special interrogations. He'd soon write to Moscow about that. With the proper kind of pressure, they could make real use of this camp. How incongruously clever of the savages to establish this camp, and how disappointingly consistent that they'd failed to see its possibilities. How distasteful that he had to live in this hot, humid, insect-ridden country, surrounded by arrogant little people with arrogant little minds and the vicious dispositions of serpents. But the information he needed was here. As odious as his current work was, he'd discovered a phrase for it in a contemporary American novel of the type he read to polish up his already impressive language skills. A very American turn of phrase, too. What he was doing was 'just business.' That was a way of looking at the world he readily understood. A shame that the American next to him probably would not, Kolya thought, listening to every word of his rambling explanation of the life of a Weasel pilot.