The Chairman responded. “All are well, save for Mr. Rolvaag who has sustained head injuries and whose condition is guarded, Captain Hammerschmidt.”
Before Hammerschmidt could speak, Rourke did. “What have your security people ascertained concerning the Russians who penetrated the First City, Mr. Chairman?”
“Several guards at the perimeter and at the tunnel were, unfortunately, liquidated barbarously. By this means, the interlopers were able to gain access to the Petals and to yours and your family’s respective apartments. Steps have already been taken to increase the efficiency of the guard. But I fear this shall not be the last attempt on your persons.”
“They’ve reorganized quickly,” Hammerschmidt said under his breath, almost as though thinking aloud. “We ought to pay them back in kind, I think,” Hammerschmidt added, raising his voice a little.
John Rourke looked at Hammerschmidt, saying nothing . . .
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He had given Sarah a mild sedative that was safe for her to use even with her pregnancy, one of the drugs he had learned about at Mid-Wake. She had taken it under protest, but he had convinced her she needed the rest. Her pistol freshly loaded and left beside the bed, he left her, Chinese guards at the door of this new suite of rooms where she slept, their original apartment was a melange of the blood and gore and bullet holes, a memento of violence.
John Rourke sat in the small conference room, Otto Hammerschmidt opposite him across the black lacquer table. John Rourke lit the thin, dark tobacco cigar that he had kept clenched in his teeth since leaving Sarah asleep.
“I have the word that you sought from Colonel Mann, Herr Doctor.”
“And?”
“Deiter Bern has authorized the production of nuclear weapons as a possible defensive measure against the armies of the Soviet.”
“That’s insanity.”
Hammerschmidt’s eyes flickered. “He has the welfare of all peoples at heart, Herr Doctor, I am also told that it is his full intention to share this technology with the personnel of Eden Base and with the Icelandic’s. It is only self-defense.”
“And then with the Chinese eventually, I suppose?”
“I should assume so, Herr Doctor. Permit me.” And he lit a cigarette, exhaling smoke in two thin streams from his nostrils. “If the Russians realize, Herr Doctor, that they cannot hope to win a full scale confrontation-”
“That philosophy didn’t work five centuries ago. Although God knows rational men on both sides tried to make it work. This time there won’t- be any second
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chance.”
“I was told, Herr Doctor, that Deiter Bern would most welcome personally discussing this with you at your convenience.”
”That’s very good of him, Hammerschmidt. Look — ahh — I know you and Michael are close friends. I didn’t mean to put you in the middle of this. All of us consider you a friend. I had to know, though.”
“It is for the good of all mankind, Herr Doctor. If whoever has taken over the leadership of Karamatsov’s armies should find the remainder of the Chinese nuclear arsenal, or effect some sort of treaty with the Soviet forces based in the Pacific and thereby obtain nuclear weapons —it is unthinkable.”
Rourke smiled at the word. “Unthinkable” had become reality five centuries before, which he supposed proved that just because something was unthinkable it wasn’t undoable. “What if,” Hammerschmidt continued, “this new Soviet force should decide to launch its missiles against us even as we speak?”
“The numbers of missile tubes aboard their submarines are optimistic at the moment. Only ten percent of those on the captured Island Class submarine were loaded with anything besides ballast.” The captured submarine had been investigated from stem to stern, everything that could be disassembled, analyzed, reassembled, tested, stressed. As an ancillary benefit, since by coincidence it had been the same Island Class monster submarine by which he and Natalia had originally been taken against their will to the Soviet underwater complex, the Mid-Wake teams had also found his musette bag, his leather jacket, Natalia’s holsters and the, rest of their miscellaneous gear. “That’s probably typical. And certainly that’s a threat, and a serious one. And maybe that’s the point. Just one or two nuclear explosions might do it this time. Burn the atmosphere
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away so totally that the planet will die and no matter where you are or how well you’ve planned ahead, nothing will matter. There will never be a surface to return to. It almost happened before. This time it will happen. Your own scientists can tell you that.”
“And what are we to do, Herr Doctor? Let the Soviets have all the thermonuclear missiles and then, when they make their demands, merely submit? We are free men now. You —better than anyone because you gave us our freedom — should appreciate that, Herr Doctor. What are we to do, then?”
John Rourke noticed that his cigar had gone out in his fingertips. He didn’t answer Otto Hammerschmidt because there was no answer to give.
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CHAPTER THREE
Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna sat up in bed. She remembered it all in a rush and it sickened her. Or perhaps, she told herself, it was only the aftereffect of the gas.
There was a noise and she reached for the suppressor fitted Walther PPK/S beside her bed. The door into her bedroom opened as her hand closed over the black plastic grips. But already, gas was filtering across the room toward her, the cloud enveloping her as the men — how many had there been? she couldn’t remember — had closed with her. She held her breath, but somehow — She remembered awakening here in the hospital and being told by someone that everyone was all right and she should rest. Without wanting to, she had closed her eyes. She closed them again as the tears came. Each day, they had come more and more . . .
John Rourke stood beside the Chinese doctor, a pretty woman dressed in nursing whites interpreting. “What is the nature of the injury to Mr. Rolvaag’s head? May I see the X-rays?”
She spoke in rapid Chinese and the doctor nodded, took up a small gray paper envelope and withdrew a black plastic object about the size of a computer printer ribbon from the twentieth century, then walked toward the wall unit which looked like a flat, large screen video
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monitor. He inserted the black plastic object into a slot at the base of the screen and the screen came alive. First, there was a visual representation in the usual two dimensional X-ray format, unusual to a twentieth century trained doctor only in that the representation was in color. But he was used to that. Next, although he had seen it before, was something he doubted he would ever cease to marvel at. Like a computer diagram with the pixels being added in sequence to develop image, the cranial cavity of Bjorn Rolvaag began appearing as a rotating three dimensional laser hologram.
There was a hematoma visible near the inferior genu of the Fissure of Rolando. The nurse began translating again. “Doctor Su has preparations already begun for the lasering of this hematoma. It is a procedure similar to operations he has performed in the past and he anticipates good success and, barring complications, full recovery.”
John Rourke looked away from the machine and at the red-haired giant unconscious on the bed. Rolvaag had saved his daughter’s life. A silent man, close only to his dog, Rourke barely knew him. And if he were to die in this place so far from his native Lydvel did Island, it would be another in the mounting heap of random injustices since the Night of The War.
And that this bothered him, John Rourke realized, reaffirmed his own humanity.
Rourke walked to the bed, placed his hand on the Icelandic policeman’s shoulder and whispered in the English which Rolvaag understood so little of, “It will be all right, Rolvaag. Your dog is well. All of us are well. You will be well, too. So rest for now.”
Rourke stood beside the bed for a while, watching the man breathe.
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CHAPTER FOUR
The shadows of the rotor blades, black against the alternating splotches of white and gray, became more pronounced, more solid, the machine subtly changing pitch to compensate for some errant crosswind (a regular condition here), then touching down with a barely noticeable sideways lurch. What little noise had been audible within the confines of the fuselage became for an instant totally imperceptible as the rotation rate radically dropped. But in the next second, the winding down whine could be heard as the fuselage door was slid open. And there was the sound of the wind which had assailed the machine. He unbuckled his harness and rose, then walked to midway along the helicopter’s length, turned and stared out into the morning.
An Arctic Cat, a half-track truck, the tarp covering the bed turned back, a dozen men with assault rifles held at port —this was the reception honor guard. He smiled at the thought. His eyes drifted back to the truck bed. A heavy machinegun was implaced there surrounded by sandbags.