The Charm School by Nelson DeMille
Hollis took Lisa’s hand and led her to the door. “Keep low.” He pulled her away from the cabin and toward the clearing where they knelt in the knee-high grass. About a hundred meters out, Hollis could see the white helicopter against the black tree line beyond it. Above the sound of the gunfire, Hollis could hear the turbines running. “Do you see it?”
“Yes.”
“Tell O’Shea we’re all right and we’re coming.”
She looked at him. “You’re coming with me.”
“Later.”
“Now!”
Hollis grabbed her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “I need you to go out there and tell him we’re coming or he might take off. I have to go back for the others, Lisa.”
“I’ll jump off, Sam. I swear I will. If you’re not there, I’ll come back for you—” Tears filled her eyes, and her body began to shake.
Hollis turned her toward the helicopter. “Run. Low. Go on!”
She glanced back at him, then began running through the grass toward the helicopter, turning her head back to him every few strides.
Hollis watched her silhouette getting smaller against the distant helicopter, then turned toward the cabin and found himself face-to-face with Alevy.
Alevy watched Lisa disappear into the night, then looked at Hollis. “Go ahead, Sam.”
“I’ll get Burov.” Hollis moved past Alevy and headed back toward the cabin, Alevy beside him. Alevy said, “At least she listens to you. She never listened to me.”
Hollis didn’t reply. The sound of gunfire was closer now, and Hollis could see green tracer rounds streaking through the woods, though most of them were impacting in the trees.
Hollis and Alevy sprinted the short distance to the open door of the cabin and dove onto the floor. Brennan said, “There are a lot more of them now. They’ve fanned out into the woods and are moving tree to tree. They’re playing it cautious, but they’ll be here in about ten minutes.” Brennan added, “If they break out of the tree line over there by the clearing and see the chopper, we have a problem.”
Alevy nodded. “We have to slow them up a little.” He grabbed an AK-47, poked the muzzle through a window, and fired long bursts into the nearby trees until the thirty rounds were expended.
The firing from the woods slackened for a few seconds as the Border Guards took cover. When the firing picked up again, Hollis noticed that most of it now seemed to be directed toward the cabin. He could hear the thud of impacting rounds on the far side of the logs, and an occasional green tracer sailed through the shattered windows, hit the opposite wall, and glowed briefly before it burned out. Overhead, tracers ripped through the sheet metal roofing, and the rafters began to splinter. Brennan said to Alevy, “Maybe you want to hold off on that until you see the whites of their eyes.”
Alevy reloaded another magazine. “Okay, Bill, you take Burov and get to the chopper.”
Hollis said, “No, Dodson goes first. I’ll take Burov.”
Alevy nodded to Brennan.
Brennan gave his sniper rifle to Alevy. “You can track them through the night scope, and the muzzle makes no noise or flash. Use this until they get closer. Then use the AK’s and the stuff in the bag.” Brennan added, “Better yet, let’s all get the hell out of here.”
Alevy raised the sniper rifle above the windowsill, aimed at a muzzle flash, and fired off a round. He said, “I have to wait a bit longer for Bert. See you later.”
Brennan was kneeling beside Dodson now. “He’s got an okay pulse, but he’s really out.” He put Dodson over his shoulder and moved toward the door, which was not in the direct line of fire from the woods. “Okay, see you on board,” Brennan said with no conviction. He charged out the door, and Hollis watched him as he moved rapidly away from the cabin toward the clearing and disappeared in the darkness.
Hollis dropped down on one knee beside Burov and checked his pulse and breathing. “He’s okay. Worth taking.”
Burov stirred and tried to raise his head, but Hollis pushed him back. Burov mumbled through his swollen lips and broken teeth. He spit up blood and gum tissue, then said in Russian, “You…” He opened his eyes. “You… Hollis… I’ll kill you… I’ll fuck your woman.”
Hollis said in Russian, “You’ll live, but you won’t feel much like fucking.”
“Yeb vas.”
Alevy moved beside Burov and said to him, “Do you know where you’re going, Colonel? To America. Lucky you.”
“No… no…” Burov raised his tied hands and swung weakly at Alevy.
Alevy removed a spring-loaded Syrette from his pocket and jabbed it into Burov’s neck, releasing a dose of sodium pentothal. He said to Burov, “You can send postcards to Natalia.”
“You bastard.”
“Look who’s talking.”
Burov seemed to notice the sound of gunfire. “See… they are coming for you.”
Alevy said to Hollis, “Well, Sam, it’s your turn. Take your prize home.”
Hollis replied, “Why don’t you come along? Mills is dead.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Come on home, Seth. You deserve it. Lunch at the White House.”
“I’ll give the orders, General Hollis. Get moving.”
Hollis and Alevy looked at each other a moment, then Alevy said, “The sleeping gas will pop in a few minutes. I’ll be all right. You’d better go.”
They heard the sound of running footsteps outside, and they both grabbed rifles as a voice called out, “I’m coming in!”
Mills dove headfirst through the open door and rolled into Burov, who gave a grunt. Mills sat up on the floor and caught his breath. “They’re close. Less than a hundred meters.” He looked at his watch. “Jesus… time to go.”
Hollis noticed blood on Mills’ hand and on his neck. He smelled of burnt gasoline, and his clothes were singed. “You hit?”
“I’m all right. I got away from the car before it blew. Well, are we waiting for anything?”
“Just you,” Alevy replied. “You take Burov. We’ll cover you with smoke.”
“Right.”
Hollis lifted the unconscious Burov onto Mills’s shoulders as Alevy tore open the black leather bag and removed a smoke canister. He stood to the side of the door and peered around the jamb. “They’re damned close.” He pulled the pin on the canister and flung it out the door. The black smoke billowed and began drifting southward with the wind toward the advancing Border Guards. Alevy took a CS gas canister from the bag and flung that out also. The CS riot gas hissed into the air and wafted along with the smokescreen. He said, “Okay, Bert, see you in a minute or so.”
Mills stood in a crouch near the door with Burov on his back and watched the ground-blinding smoke roll away from the cabin into the tree line. The sound of a man gagging could be heard above the sporadic weapons’ fire. Mills said, “Good luck.” He held on to Burov and ran from the cabin, the smokescreen behind him. Hollis lay in the doorway with an AK-47 and fired a full thirty-round magazine in a sweeping motion across the tree line, getting little fire in return. He glanced back toward Mills and saw he had disappeared.
Hollis rolled back into the izba and sat with his back against the log wall. As he reloaded, Alevy knelt by the window and fired long bursts into the black smoke. Spent shell casings clattered to the floor, and the smell of burnt cordite filled the cabin.
Hollis said, “Okay, Mills and Burov are on board by now. You want to go first? I’ll cover.”
Alevy glanced at his watch. “No, you go first. We have a few minutes.”
Hollis moved toward the door, then looked back at Alevy.
Alevy smiled. “Go ahead.”
Hollis could hear the sound of the helicopter turbines coming from the clearing. “He’s going to leave. Come with me.”
Alevy sat with his back to the wall beside the door but didn’t respond. Hollis thought he looked very relaxed, very at peace with himself for the first time since Hollis had known him. “It wasn’t sleeping gas tha
Alevy replied, “No, it wasn’t.”
“Nerve gas?”
“Yes. I used Sarin. Tabun is good too, but—”
“Why? Why, Seth?”
“Oh, you know fucking well why.”
“But… Jesus Christ, man… nearly three hundred Americans… the women, children—”
“They can’t go home, Sam. They can never go home. They have no home. This is their home. You know that.”
Hollis glanced out the window and saw the smokescreen beginning to dissipate. He rummaged through the leather bag and found the last smoke grenade and the last of the CS riot gas. He pulled both pins and flung the grenades out the door. There was still some firing directed toward them, but the predominant sound now was of vomiting and swearing. He said to Alevy, “So, the State Department and the White House got their way. This place never existed. And you went along with it?”
Alevy glanced at his watch. “Go on, Sam. I’m not asking you to die here.”
“Are you going to die here?”
Alevy did not reply directly, but said, “I’m about to murder a thousand people.” He looked at Hollis. “It was my idea. The poison gas. It’s good for the country.”
“How is it good for the country?”
“It’s a compromise. In exchange for the CIA and the Pentagon not wrecking the peace initiatives and all that crap, we can keep as many as we want of the three thousand or so graduates of the Charm School that we’ll eventually round up in America. The rest we can dispose of without benefit of trial. That was made possible by you and General Surikov’s files. That’s what broke the deadlock. We’re starting our own Charm School in America. Get it?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Don’t be a goddamned Boy Scout. We’re turning their intelligence offensive against them on this one. We’ll have a class A school for our agents, and Burov and Dodson will be sort of deans of students. Pretty neat, don’t you think?”
“Your idea?”
“Of course.” Alevy added, “But I’ll tell you something else that wasn’t my idea. Neither you nor Lisa were supposed to leave here alive. Your own people in Defense Intelligence, including your boss, General Vandermullen, agreed to that, though somewhat reluctantly, I’ll admit.”
“Then why—?”
“Oh, I’m not that inhuman, Sam. Could I really leave her here to die?”
“Nothing you do would surprise me anymore, Seth.”
“Thank you. But that I couldn’t do. As for you… well, I like you, so I’m giving you a chance to get out.”
Hollis listened to the sounds of the helicopter’s turbines running up. He said to Alevy, “How about Surikov and his granddaughter, Seth? Did you lie to me?”
“I’m afraid so. They’ll stay in Moscow awhile longer. They have to or the KGB will know that Surikov blew the Charm School graduates. We can’t have that until the FBI is ready to round them all up. You know that.”
“You’re a bastard.”
“I’m a patriot.”
Bullets began slapping into the log walls again, and Hollis could now hear the deep chatter of a heavy machine gun. The walls began to splinter, and Hollis lay prone on the floor. “Get down.”
Several rounds hit the radios, and they disintegrated. The porcelain stove shattered, and smoke and ash billowed out of it. The three corpses on the far wall took some hits, and Hollis could hear the sound of popping body gases and smelled death. Hollis reached out and pulled an AK-47 toward him, then rolled to the door and fired at some nearby muzzle flashes. “They’re here, at the front of the cabin now.”
Alevy didn’t seem interested. He remained sitting with his back to the wall. He remarked, “And to add insult to injury, Sam, my people are going to smuggle the Kellums out. They’ll get teaching positions in our American Charm School. They’re quite bright as it turns out and willing to cooperate in exchange for not being thrown in the Moskva.”
Hollis reloaded another magazine. “What a fucking mess. The people you were supposed to rescue here are going to die—”
“Right. Quite painless though. Sarin is quick.”
“And Lisa and I were supposed to die. And Burov the sadist lives, and the fucking Kellums live, and Surikov and his granddaughter who risked their lives for us are stuck here, and Dodson whom you all wanted to kill to shut him up is going from a living death here to another living death in your goddamned new Charm School—”
“That’s about it. Except taking Dodson was your idea. I wanted the general. Anyway, Charlie Banks and his crowd are quite pleased. Your people are sort of pleased because the honor of the missing airmen remains unblighted. It would be hard to explain all those traitors—”
“They weren’t—”
“They were. And needless to say, the CIA got what it wanted.”
“And you? Did you get what you wanted, Seth?”
“I guess. Maybe I just got what I had coming.”
Hollis looked at Alevy in the dim light. “Do you understand how monstrous this is?”
“Absolutely. But do you realize how brilliant it is? This is a classic turnaround of a massive espionage offensive against us into an unmitigated disaster for them. We’ve bought a little more time for the fat, decadent West to consume more designer jeans, play at democracy, talk about peace and understanding, write diet books—”
Hollis sprang across the room and knocked Alevy over. He pinned his shoulders against the floor and put his face near Alevy’s. “Do you know what you’ve done? Has everyone in Washington gone stark fucking crazy?”
Alevy shouted, “They’re scared shitless is what they are! Get off your high horse, General Hollis. This is bottom-line survival.” He pushed Hollis away and sat up.
“Then you’re all missing the goddamned point!” Hollis shouted, “We can’t survive by becoming like them. People like Surikov and his granddaughter… we’re their light in this darkness… don’t you understand, Seth? I’ve just gone through two fucking weeks of totalitarianism. You and I lived here for two years, Seth. Jesus Christ, man, haven’t you learned anything—?”
Alevy pulled his pistol and pointed it at Hollis’ face. “I don’t want a goddamned lecture. I know what the hell I did. At least admit that it had to be done. Or just shut up.”
Hollis lay prone on the floor and listened to the gunfire getting closer. He could hear men shouting orders and guessed they were getting their nerve up for the final assault across the open space between the road and the cabin. He took a deep breath and said to Alevy, “All right… I understand.” He thought of Jane Landis, then of Tim Landis and their little boy. He recalled the quiet suffering of General Austin, the understated bravery of Lewis Poole, and the tragedy of all the Americans he’d met here and their Russian wives and their children. He remembered the female doctor who had checked him over and remembered the other political prisoners who were victims of this madness. He even had a passing thought about the students, especially those who had raised their voices at the VFW hall. And there were the five or six hundred Border Guards, who to some extent were blameless, and there was Burov’s wife, his mother, and his daughter. “Damn it!”
Alevy threw away his pistol and grabbed one of the AK-47’s from the floor. He stood at the window and fired a continuous stream of bullets until the rifle overheated and jammed. He threw it down and stooped for another rifle as a burst of bullets tore at the shards of glass and window frame.
Hollis picked up the remaining AK-47 and moved to the window that faced away from the gunfire. He raised the butt of the rifle and smashed away the glass and wood.
Alevy looked up at him. “Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“No, you’re not.” Alevy swung his rifle around and aimed it at Hollis. “You know too much now.”
“That’s why I’m going home.” Hollis lifted himself into the window. “Let’s go.”
Alevy fired a burst of rounds into the wall above Holl
“No. I’m doing it my way, Seth. Not yours.”
“You owe me, Sam. For saving Lisa’s life. Cover me.”
“I don’t owe you a thing. Hey, Seth.”
“What?”
“You cover me. Okay?”
Alevy looked at him across that dark cabin. “Sure. I always have.”
Hollis nodded. “Thanks, Seth.”
“Yeah. You too. I’ll be right behind you, Sam. See you on board.”
Hollis rolled out the window and lay still on the ground. Suddenly, he heard a shout from a chorus of voices. “OOO-RAH!” The air was split by the deafening round of AK-47’s on full automatic, coming closer as the Border Guards began their final charge across the open space toward the cabin.
Hollis ran toward the clearing, keeping the solid cabin at his back. Stray rounds streaked by to his right and left, but he ignored them, focusing only on the field ahead. He reached the grass and dove into a prone position.
Behind him he could hear footsteps beating on the soft earth. He watched Alevy coming toward him, then Alevy seemed to stumble and fall, disappearing in the tall grass. Suddenly, the undulating grass became the swells of Haiphong harbor, and the figure trying to rise up out of it was not Alevy, but Ernie Simms. A voice called out, “Sam! Sam!” And Hollis could not in truth tell if it were Alevy’s voice or Simms’ voice echoing down through the years. Hollis stood and ran toward the voice.
He reached Alevy crawling through the yellow grass, and Alevy clutched at Hollis’ leg, then rolled to his side as Hollis dropped low beside him. “Sam…”
Hollis tore open Alevy’s tunic and saw the dark stain spreading over his snow white shirt. “Damn it, Seth.”
Alevy rolled over on his back, and Hollis pressed the heel of his hand against the sucking chest wound. “Lay still, Seth. Shallow breathing.” But already Hollis saw the frothy blood bubbling from Alevy’s lips. “Easy. It’s all right.”
Alevy’s eyes seemed clouded, and his breathing was coming in gasps, but he spoke distinctly, “Go… go… they’re waiting… don’t let them wait… .”
Hollis hesitated just a split second, then said, “Not this time. We sink or swim together, buddy.” He grabbed Alevy under the arms and began to pull him up but felt Alevy’s body stiffen, then go limp. He looked into Seth Alevy’s dead open eyes and let him slip easily back onto the damp Russian earth. Hollis drew a deep breath, then said softly, “I think I’m going to miss you, my friend.” And when the KGB found his body, Hollis thought, they would know that it was Seth Alevy who had beaten them, and that there would be no tit for tat this time.