He’d never thought himself a particularly brave man. He had his faith. Were he to meet death in the air, then he could look forward to staring God in the face, standing with humility at his lowly station and pride at the lif? he had lived, for Robin Zacharias was a righteous man, hardly ever straying from the path of virtue. He was a good friend to his comrades, a conscientious leader mindful of his men’s needs; an upright family man with strong, bright, proud children; most of all, he was an Elder in his church who tithed his Air Force salary, as his station in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints required. For all of those reasons he had never feared death. What lay beyond the grave was something whose reality he viewed with confidence. It was life that was uncertain, and his current life was the most uncertain of all, and faith even as strong as his had limits imposed by the body which contained it. That was a fact he either did not fully understand or somehow did not believe. His faith, the Colonel told himself, should be enough to sustain him through anything. Was. Should be. Was, he’d learned as a child from his teachers. But those lessons had been taught in comfortable classrooms in sight of the Wasatch Mountains, by teachers in clean white shirts and ties, holding their lesson books, speaking with confidence imparted by the history of their church and its members.
It’s different here. Zacharias heard the little voice that said so, trying to ignore it, trying his best not to believe it, for believing it was a contradiction with his faith, and that contradiction was the single thing his mind could not allow. Joseph Smith had died for his faith, murdered in Illinois. Others had done the same. The history of Judaism and Christianity was replete with the names of martyrs – heroes to Robin Zacharias, because that was the word used by his professional community – who had sustained torture at Roman or other hands and had died with God’s name on their lips.
But they didn’t suffer as long as you, the voice pointed out. A few hours. The brief hellish minutes burning at the stake, a day or two, perhaps, nailed to the cross. That was one thing; you could see the end of it, and if you knew what lay beyond the end, then you could concentrate on that. But to see beyond the end, you had to know where the end was.
Robin Zacharias was alone. There were others here. He’d caught glimpses, but there was no communication. He’d tried the tap code, but no one ever answered. Wherever they were, they were too distant, or the building’s arrangements didn’t allow it, or perhaps his hearing was off. He could not share thoughts with anyone, and even prayers had limits to a mind as intelligent as his. He was afraid to pray for deliverance – a thought he was unable even to admit, for it would be an internal admission that his faith had somehow been shaken, and that was something he could not allow, but part of him knew that in not praying for deliverance, he was admitting something by omission; that if he prayed, and after a time deliverance didn’t come, then his faith might start to die, and with that his soul. For Robin Zacharias, that was how despair began, not with a thought, but with the unwillingness to entreat his God for something that might not come.
He couldn’t know the rest. His dietary deprivation, the isolation so especially painful to a man of his intelligence, and the gnawing fear of pain, for even faith could not take pain away, and all men know fear of that. Like carrying a heavy load, however strong a man might be, his strength was finite and gravity was not. Strength of body was easily understood, but in the pride and righteousness that came from his faith, he had failed to consider that the physical acted upon the psychological, just as surely as gravity but far more insidiously. He interpreted the crushing mental fatigue as a weakness assignable to something not supposed to break, and he faulted himself for nothing more than being human. Consultation with another Elder would have righted everything, but that wasn’t possible, and in denying himself the escape hatch of merely admitting his human frailty, Zacharias forced himself further and further into a trap of his own creation, aided and abetted by people who wanted to destroy him, body and soul.
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.’