“Yes—do you recall? I believe it was Napoleon, wasn’i it? A messenger
reportedly came to him. Napoleon reac the message and proclaimed something
to the effect: rM) God, peace has broken out!’ It was something like
that.’
“Yes, something like that, Comrade General.” Rozh-destvenskiy nodded.
“This agent—what word did he bring you?” Varakov felt himself smile.
“Surely not that peace had broken out.
“He brought word of precisely where duplicate files on
the Eden Project were hidden, in addition to the first
.copy files which were destroyed during the bombing oi
the Johnson Space Center in Texas. There is now
renewed hope that—”
“You hope for that then. I have more pressing matters than some American
defense project so obscure that—”
“I know what you hope.” Rozhdestvenskiy nodded. “As the wife of my
lifelong friend Colonel Karamatsov, the life of Major Tiemerovna is my
concern as well. Surely in all the troop movements from the East Coast of
the continent there has been some word—”
“Nothing,” Varakov answered sincerely. “She was last seen helping in the
evacuation of Florida at an airfield, only moments before the major
earthquake struck and a high-altitude observation plane photographed the
beginning of the Florida peninsula’s collapse into the ocean.”
“She was with the American agent, Rourke, was she not, Comrade General?”
Rozhdestvenskiy asked. Is he trying to sound innocent, Varakov asked
himself, realizing that for an instant the charming, handsome, blond
officer had penetrated his defenses, made him feel there was something of
a genuine concern for Natalia’s welfare.
“I believe so—but that is only from a—” he began defensively.
Rozhdestvenskiy cut him off. “A reliable report, I
believe, Comrade General? This other matter to which I hope to attend—I
confess both a personal and professional interest in the safe return of
your niece. The major may be able to aid me in locating the war criminal
Rourke—”
“War criminal?” Varakov repeated, without really thinking.
“Surely, the assassination of the head of the American KGB by this Rourke
is a war crime, Comrade General. I understand he was a physician before
going into the employ of the American Central Intelligence Agency.”
Varakov picked his words—carefully—for the first time realizing what kind
of man he truly dealt with. “It is my understanding that this Dr. Rourke
had left the CIA sometime before the war. I do not really concern myself
with him. I belive his major preoccupation is searching for his wife and
children who may have survived the war; I do not know. If you capture him,
I should be interested in meeting him. But that is your affair.”
“Yes, Comrade General. That is my affair.” Rozhdest-venskiy dropped his
cigarette to the marble floor and started to grind it out beneath the heel
of his boot.
“But this is my headquarters building, Colonel; pick up that cigarette.”
“Bat surely, a prisoner used for janitorial service can—”
“That is not the point; pick it up.”
The boyish smile was gone from Rozhdestvenskiy’s face. He hesitated a
moment, then stooped over and picked up the cigarette butt, holding it
between two manicured fingernails. “Will there be anything else, Comrade
General?”
“No—I think not.” Varakov turned and started back
across the main hall toward his office without walls.
Thousands of troops were moving inland to escape the raging storm fronts
assaulting the eastern coast of what had been the United States—regrouping
and searching, he hoped. That Natalia would be safe as long as she was
with John Rourke, Varakov took as a fact. It was after that—with this
Rozhdestvenskiy-—that Varakov worried about her safety.
“Catherine!” He called out the name before he remembered he had told her
to go and rest. He shrugged, deciding he would do the same thing himself.
There might not be time for it in the future.
His hands stabbed into his pockets as he walked away from his office and
he stopped once, glancing back over his right shoulder. The offensive
SS-Hke KGB officer was gone from view. Varakov smiled, remembering the ego
satisfaction he had given himself in making Rozhdestvenskiy pick up the
cigarette. He realized as he glanced once more at the mastodons that he
would likely pay for it, too, and perhaps so would Natalia.
Rourke’s knuckles were white, Ms fists bunched on the yoke now as the
twin-engine cargo plane skimmed low over over the icy roadway, his
starboard engine hopelessly iced. His mind went back to the only other
time in his life he had crash-landed a plane—the in the New Mexico
desert on the Night of the War. He remembered Mrs. Richards, her husband
gone in the destruction of the West Coast, her compassion in caring for
the dying captain, her tireless help that long night while they had fought
to keep airborne—then her death when the had—Rourke wrenched back on
the controls, trying to keep the nose up. The brakes held, but the plane
started to skid as it hit the ice- and snow-covered road. “Get your heads
down!” Rourke shouted to Paul, strapped in near the midsection, and to
Natalia in the copilot’s seat beside him.
“John!”
Rourke didn’t look at her; he was feeling the tendons in his neck
distending, his body suddenly cold, the air temperature finally getting to
him. The plane was going out of control. He worked the flaps to
decelerate, the brakes starting to slow him as well now. The straight-
away stretched for perhaps another quarter-mile yet and if he slowed the
craft too quickly the skid would become uncontrollable. The aircraft
zigzagged under him, the tail of the craft whipping back and forth across
the three-lane width of Kentucky highway. The straightaway was rapidly
running out. Eyes squinted against the glare of the plane’s lights on the
snow, he could see ahead of him where the road seem to end, to curve in a
sharp S-bend, running to his left. The plane coasted right across the icy
road, toward the drop-off on the far end of the S-bend, a meager metal
guardrail there and beyond it, from what Rourke could see, a drop.
Two hundred yards, perhaps less. Rourke controlled the plane with the
flaps, the braking action worsening the skid. Rourke reached across to
Natalia, punching the release button on the seat harness, grabbing her by
the left shoulder, shouting back along the fuselage, “Paul— we’re bailing
out—get the cargo door and jump for it— jump as far out as you canl”
Rourke didn’t wait to see that the younger man was complying, but grabbed
Natalia, shoving her roughly ahead of him toward the fuselage door.
“John!” Rourke glanced to his left. Rubenstein was struggling with the
seat belt, its buckling mechanism apparently jammed. “Save yourselves!”
Rourke glanced toward Natalia; the Russian woman was already working the
handle on the cargo door with her left hand, in her right hand something
metallic gleamed—a knife. She reached the butt of it out to Rourke. Rourke
snatched it from her hand, wheeling, the aircraft’s lurching and bumping
throwing him toward Rubenstein. Collapsing against the fuselage, Rourke
reached the knife blade under the webbing strap across
Paul’s left shoulder, sliced it; then, as he started for the leg strap, he
could feel the rush of arctic-feeling air, hear the slipstream. The
fuselage door opened. Rourke’s borrowed knife slashed apart the last of
the restraints.
The knife still in his right hand, he snatched at his CAR-, yelling to
Paul, “Jump for it, Paul—go on!”
As Rourke was moving toward the door, the younger man was already on his
feet, the Schmeisser in his right hand; Natalia was starting to jump.
Rourke, at the fuselage door, wheeled, reaching toward his strapped-down
Harley, cast a glance at it because it would likely be the last, and
snatched his leather jacket. He turned and dove, the snow slamming up
toward him as he rolled onto the road surface, his left shoulder taking
it, aching as he hit, the rear stabilizers sawing through the air toward
him as he flattened himself, .the tail of the fuselage passing inches over
his head.
He followed it with his eyes for an instant, then pushed himself to his
feet, slipping on the ice, running, lurching forward. He could see
Natalia, lying in the middle of the road, Paul running toward her. Rourke
heard it, the wrenching and groaning of metal. He wheeled, skidding on the
heels of his black combat boots across the ice, to watch as the plane
crashed through the metal roadside barricade and disappeared over the
side. He waited— there was no explosion. But there wasn’t much hope
either, he thought. Three people, one jacket, a rifle with no spare
magazines and a submachine gun with no spare magazines. A few pistols. He
looked into his hand—and a Bali-Song knife. He turned, starting back
toward Natalia.
But like a little girl after taking a spill on an ice rink, she sat, legs
wide apart, her right hand propping her up, her left hand brushing the