looking to be Annie’s age—five or so.
Boys in green slacks and white shirts and green bow ties—only a few boys
(hough—stood beside them, all in a rank. They started dancing; clogging,
it was called.
Rourke srnelled something, then turned and looked to his right. A gleaming
truck, the kind that would come to factories to bring coffee and doughnuts
and hamburgers, was parked at the edge of the square.
He saw a sign above the open side that formed a counter—the sign read,
COKE.
Rourke walked toward the truck. A little girl passed him, coming from the
truck, a half-eaten hot dog in her right hand, yellow mustard around her
mouth and dribbling down her chin.
Rourke automatically felt his pockets. He still carried his money clip—but
was there anything in it? “Yes,” he murmured. Something just hadn’t made
him give away or throw away money. He pulled out a ten and walked over to
the truck.
“What]] ya have, mister?””
“Ahh—two hot dogs and a Coke. Make it three hot dogs.”
“You new in town, ain’t ya? Related to anyone ’round here?”
“What’s the occasion?” Rourke asked, something making him evade the
question. He jerked his thumb toward the town square behind him.
“It’s the Fourth of July, mister. Ain’t you got no calendar?”
“I—I’ve been camping—up in the mountains. Kind of lost track of time.”
“I reckon you have.” The man smiled, handing Rourke the three hot dogs in
a small white cardboard box. Rourke handed him the ten-dollar bill and
took the Coke, then started away.
“Hey!”
Rourke turned around.
“You forgot your change!”
“Keep it,” Rourke told him. “Maybe I’ll wan! another hot dog later.”
Rourke turned and spat his cigar butt into a trash can near him. He walked
across the square a short way, finding a tree and leaning against it,
listening to the music, seeing the children clog. He took a bite from the
hot dog nearest him in the box, the Coke set down beside Jiim on the
ground. It wasn’t near the Fourth of July.
The man who had sold him the hot dogs wasn’t from here, either—he had said
“you” not “y’all” and that went with the territory. Rourke had made the
speech pattern as midwest em.
Maybe it was the Russians—something that would be a trap. But for whom?
The town, the dancing, the Fourth of July. If he wasn’t crazy, all of them
were.
He wasn’t crazy, he reminded himself, feeling the comfort of his guns
under his jacket as he nudged his upper arms against his body. “I’m not
crazy,” he verbalized. The hot dog had tasted good and he started to eat
the second one, dismissing any worry it was drugged. The little girl was
dancing around, helping the doggers; the only thing apparently wrong with
her being terminal mustard stains. . . .
Rourke sipped at his Coke—it was real Coca-Cola. He hadn’t had any since—
He worked along the perimeter of the crowd, watching the faces, the
genuine smiles. He nudged against a man and the man turned, smiled,
and said, “Hey!”
It was the universal southern greeting that Rourke had learned long ago as
a transplanted northerner.
“Hi.” Rourke smiled, as the man turned away to watch the clogging. This
was a second group of doggers, dressed the same but in red and white
rather than green and white. The green- and white-clad girls and boys
stood at the edge of the crowd now, watching the others.
Rourke saw a face; it was the only face not smiling. It looked promising,
he thought, and gravitated toward the woman belonging to it. \
As he neared the woman,” the clogging stopped— abruptly—and an announcer,
a fat man wearing a red-and white-checkered cowboy shirt and a straw
cowboy hat, said through the microphone, “Let’s give these little folks a
big, big hand!” Rourke held his cup in his teeth a moment and applauded,
then kept moving toward the woman with the unsmiling face.
Slower country music started to play and the crowd started splitting up.
Rourke cut easily through the wave of people now, some of them gravitating
toward the edge of the square, some pairing off and dancing to the music.
The woman with the unsmiling face apparently wasn’t with anyone; she
turned and started away. Rourke downed the rest of his Coke and tossed the
cup into a trash can nearby, then called out to her. “Hey—ahh.” The woman
turned around.
Rourke stopped, a few feet from her, saying, “I, ahh—”
“Y’all want to dance?” she smiled.
“All right.” Rourke nodded, stepping closer to her.
She slung her handbag in the crook of her left arm on its straps. Rourke
took her right hand in his left, his right
arm encircling her wais*- She was about forty, pretty enough, but not a
woman who seemed to try to be pretty at all.
Her face was smiling, but not her eyes.
“Who are you?” She smiled, coming into his arms.
“John—my name’s John,” he told her.
“You’re carrying a gun, John,” she whispered, her head close to his chest.
“I read a lot of detective stories. I’m the librarian. I know.”
“You oughta read more,” he told her softly. “I’m carrying two.”
“Ohh—all right, John.”
“Hasn’t anyone heard about World War III here?” he asked her, smiling as
they danced their way nearer the blue-grass band.
“If anyone else heard you mention the war, John, the same thing would
happen to you that happened to all the rest of them. We’ll talk later, at
my place.”
“Ohh.” Rourke nodded. He wondered who the rest of them had been. As he
held the woman’s hand when they danced, he automatically feit her pulse;
it was rapid and strong. . . .
Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy stepped down from the aircraft to the sodden
tarmac of the runway surface. “The weather—it is insane,” he shouted to
the KGB man with him.
“Yes, Comrade Colonel.” THe man nodded, offering an umbrella, but the
rain—chillingly cold—had already soaked him, and Rozhdestvenskiy watched,
almost amused, as a strong gust of wind caught up the umbrella and turned
it inside out.
He shook his head, and ran through the puddles toward the waiting au
tomobile. He read the name on it as he entered. “Suburban.” He ran the
name through his head—it was a type of Chevrolet. . . .
The ride had taken longer than Rozhdestvenskiy had anticipated because he
had been unable to use a helicopter. But as the large Chevy wagon
stopped, he felt himself smiling—it had been worth the wait.
There was already a searchlight trained on the massive bombproof
doors—they had been bombproof at least. They were wide apart now, gaping
into darkness beyond.
“Mt. Lincoln,” Rozhdestvenskiy murmured. The presidential retreat.
He stepped out and down, into the mud.
“Comrade Colonel,” the solicitous officer, who had tried the umbrella,
said as he joined Rozhdestvenskiy in the mud.
“It is all right, Voskavich—do not trouble over the mud. The facility is
secured?”
“Yes, Comrade Colonel—there were no prisoners.” The KGB officer smiled.
“I wanted prisoners.”
“They were all dead when we arrived, Comrade. A fault in the
air-circulation system. The bodies, were, ahh . . .” The younger man let
the sentence hang.
“Very well—they were all dead, then.” Rozhdestvenskiy dismissed the idea.
“We will enter—it is safe to do so then?”
“Yes, Comrade Colonel.” He extracted from under his raincoat two gas
masks.
“This is for—”
“The bodies, Comrade Colonel—they have not all been removed as yet and—”
“I understand.” Rozhdestvenskiy nodded. He ran his fingers through his
soaking hair as he started toward the entrance, nodding only at salutes—he
was dressed in civilian clothes—and stopping before the steel doors. “You
were able to penetrate these?”
“One of the particle-beam weapons ordered here by the late Colonel
Karamatsov, Comrade. It was brought here for this purpose I presume?”
“Partly. It is sensitive material that we cannot discuss here in the open.
It was efficient,” Rozhdestvenskiy said, looking at the doors and feeling
genuinely impressed. The entire central section of both doors looked to
have been vaporized.
He ran his fingers through his hair again, pulled on the gas mask, and
popped the cheeks, blowij^out to seal it; then he started forward with a
hand torch given him by the younger KGB officer. Through the gas mask,
hearing the odd sound of his own voice, he said, “You will lead the way
for me, Voskavich.”
“Yes, Comrade Colonel.” The younger man was a captain and Rozhdestvenskiy
decided that the man had no intention of remaining one.
“You have done well, Voskavich. Rest assured, your superiors are aware of
your efficiency.”
“Thank you, Comrade,” the younger man enthused. “Be careful here,
Comrade—a wet spot and you might slip.”
Rozhdestvenskiy nodded, staring ahead of them. There was a lagoon; or at
least there appeared to be one in the darkness of the massive cave inside
the mountain.
“We have boats, Comrade Colonel. The Americans used them I believe to