Trust was a wonderful thing, the total lack of trust self-evident here.
Colonel Nicolai Antonovitch, once Kremlin liaison officer for the KGB Elite Corps in the days prior to the Night of The War, before that subordinate to Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna (faces passed fleetingly through his memory like phantoms since he had left China and
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begun the flight to the Urals, a flight at once into his past and his future), stepped down from the helicopter. He was now, in the absence of any challengers of sufficient influence, master of the armies once commanded by the Hero Marshal, Vladmir Karamatsov. Possessed of Karamatsov’s armies, but by neither his jealousies nor his egotism.
It seemed there was always snow here, splotching the gravel and the shale which was like flaked gray skin from the mountain itself.
Antonovitch started walking, hunching his shoulders beneath the turned up collar of his dress uniform black greatcoat. When the wind gusted, it chilled him to the depths of his being. It had not been that long ago when the Hero Marshal, after four years of self-imposed exile, had returned here in triumph and anticipation. And in the whole scheme of things, precious little time for men born five centuries ago had passed between that day and Karamatsov’s abortive bid for ultimate power over the Soviet people. There were, quite likely, wild creatures who would devour the womb which nurtured them.
So it had been with the Hero Marshal.
The wind shifted and Antonovitch’s eyes involuntarily began to tear as he focused on the head of his welcoming committee. Yuri Vanyovitch waited a respectable distance beyond the outer redoubts of the Underground City. Much had changed with the defenses here, Antonovitch, drawing nearer, noticed with a militarily critical eye. Assistant to the party secretary, about Vanyovitch there was an air of importance —both genuine and assumed —well beyond his apparent youth.
“Assistant Secretary Vanyovitch. As always, Comrade, an honor,” Antonovitch began, rendering a salute, not waiting for any return since Vanyovitch was a bureaucrat.
Vanyovitch smiled thinly. “Comrade Colonel An-
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tonovitch. We were most startled at your communication.”
No pleasantries, Antonovitch thought. He mentally shrugged. “You may be more startled by other news I have to tell.” He gestured to the mountains beyond the level ground on which they stood. “And I imagine you know that German troops move about out there and monitor the Underground City.”
“Did you come all this way to tell me that, Comrade Colonel?”
“Hardly. But I will tell my story to the First Secretary, Comrade. You may listen if it is his desire.” Certain persons needed to be put in their place immediately, He had learned that— been put. in his own place at times. Karamatsov had been his teacher. “Shall we?”
Vanyovitch said nothing, but turned and started to walk toward the Cat .
Michael Rourke waited at the monorail station, beside him only Maria Leuden, the monorail which had left a moment earlier carrying Annie and Paul to a different petal of the flower-shaped Chinese First City. “When I was a kid I rode a subway —at least once.” . “A subway?”
“A train like this,” he told her, “but it rode on two rails and if I remember correctly it received its electrical power from a third rail. I remember my father telling me that you never touch the third rail.”
“Where was this?”
“Atlanta, I think. I couldn’t have been more than a couple of years old. Five, maybe —tops.”
“And Atlanta was the capitol of the province —”
“State. The state of Georgia. It was nuked, as they used to say, on the Night of The War. That was why we had to leave the farm. Even up there in northeast Geor-
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gia, we were uncomfortably close to Atlanta, the possibility of fallout, and the people who fled the city. All of that.”
The train came — the monorail, he mentally corrected himself.
Her voice quiet, low-key as it usually was, Maria Leuden asked, “Do you think Natalia will be all right?”
“Shell be fine. Must have been a bad reaction to the gas, that’s all. Artificially elevated her blood pressure. Shell be fine,” and Michael Rourke stepped partially through the doorway to block it open for Maria as she passed through, then stepped after her and seated himself beside her, shifting his shoulders as if the double shoulder rig for the two Berettas were in place. But it wasn’t. Being unarmed, even here, made him uncomfortable. Guns and knives had been an integral part of his-daily existence since he was a little boy and the Night of The War came.
He looked at Maria’s pretty green eyes and folded his arms around her shoulders. “Natalia’ ill be fine. Don’t worry.” Maria Leuden leaned her head against his left shoulder, but first touched her lips gently to his cheek.
Tension, his father had said. Tension was what was bothering Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna . . .
Natalia looked up at him. She squatted cross-legged in the middle of the bed and the hint of circles under her eyes was dramatized by the contrast between the blue-ness of the eyes themselves and the whiteness of her skin.
“You need a rest,” John Rourke told her.
“Maybe you can call a travel agent and arrange for me to have a few weeks in the Bahamas —or the Black Sea. Pretty much the same and the prices are cheaper at the Black Sea.”
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“I’ve been having some talks with the chief archivist here. Some of the clues to the whereabouts of the Third City that baffle present day Chinese seem to make sense to me with a Twentieth Century perspective. At least I think they do,” Rourke smiled. “How about we take a few weeks and check it out.”
“What about Sarah? The baby?”
“She’ll be all right.”
“You can’t have one wife to make pregnant and one wife to go adventuring with, John.” He didn’t say anything. Natalia did again. “Did you tell Sarah I appear high strung? That a few weeks in the wild with me would get me calmed down and back to normal?”
“No.”
“Did you tell her we’ll wind up sleeping beside each other but never together?”
“No. I didn’t tell her that.”
“Vladmir’s dead. These new Soviet commandos. Probably Antonovitch. He’s the logical man. Served with Vladmir before the Night of The War, took the Sleep with him, served him faithfully afterward. He inherited by right.”
“You told me he’s rational.”
“He’s still KGB. He’s not a sadist. He’s not an egomaniac. At least he wasn’t. But in his way, he’s just as evil. But for practical ends. Not because it gets his rocks off. I’m tired” she concluded.
“I can come back.”
“No. You don’t have to go. I can’t rest.”
“What is it? Us?” Rourke asked her. Her hands shook as she tried lighting a cigarette and Rourke found the battered Zippo in the pocket of his Levis and rolled the striking wheel under his thumb, the blue-yellow flame flickering as Natalia drew it into the cigarette.
“There is no ‘us’, John. There can’t be. There never could have been. Both of us have always known that. But
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I’m Russian and Russians are so adept at tragedy. And I guess gods are too,” and she looked him hard in the eyes.
“This is-”
“Self-defeating? If anyone recognizes what’s self-defeating, it should be me. I mean, after all, I’m so experienced. Aren’t I?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I used to think I’d be willing to die if once you made love to me. And do you — ”
“Don’t-”
“No —and the silly thing! I still feel that way. I’m crazy. That’s what I am.”
“You’re not —this —”
“Crazy?”
Natalia had been (was she right?) this way since — and Rourke closed his eyes for an instant . . . Karamatsov crawled to his feet, staggered back, by the edge of the precipice over the sea,
Karamatsov’s right hand shot forward and in his fist was the little snub-nosed Smith & Wesson revolver he had carried five centuries ago. “You are dead, John Rourke!”
John Rourke stood there, hands clutched to his abdomen, about to throw himself against Karamatsov and hurtle them both over the edge and into the sea on the rocks below.
And then he heard Natalia’s voice. “No, Vladmir!” And she rose up beside Karamatsov and Karamatsov turned to look at her and in both her tiny fists she held the short-sword-sized Life Support System X and the steel moved in her hands over her head and around in an arc to her right and then —
The Grain knife stopped moving.
Karamatsov’s body swayed.
The little revolver fell from his limp right hand.
His head separated from his neck and sailed outward into the void,
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Blood sprayed geyser-like into the air around Karamatsov like a corona of light.
The headless torso of her husband rocked backward and was gone over the edge.