“That you’ll be lonely,” she whispered. “I know that feeling, Paul. John has me and he has Natalia and you have no one.”
He looked back at her, saying nothing. She watched his eyes.
There was nothing she could say. She closed her eyes.
Chapter Thirty-two
General Ishmael Varakov sat at his desk in his office without walls amid the splendors of the museum. He stared at the mastodons from the distance.
Two extinct creatures fighting each other in death.
He shook his head slowly.
Reports.
No trace of Natalia or of the American Rourke, or of the young Jew who had accompanied Natalia. As if all three had disappeared from the face of the earth.
He felt a smile cross his lips—an ironic smile, he thought.
His feet hurt, and shoeless under his desk, his toes wiggled.
Reports.
There was no trace of the American Rourke’s wife and children either. Clandestinely, Varakov had been searching for them for weeks, as further inducement to Rourke—and because it was the decent thing, he supposed.
Reports.
Karamatsov’s ghost, Rozhdestvenskiy, had succeeded at the Johnson Space Center. Varakov’s agent inside the KGB had verified that Rozhdestvenskiy had recovered what was presumed to be the serum and twelve of the American chambers. The American chambers could be compared to the Soviet chambers, the Soviet chambers modified if necessary. The serum, if Varakov understood the way of it, would be enough for thousands.
Reports.
All available army units were being mustered to a central staging area near the Texas-Louisiana border. A final battle with the surviving forces of U.S. II, but not for victory, for slaughter. But not even for that, he realized—simply to keep the army preoccupied, lest the true nature of The Womb be discovered and the horrible, final deception that it constituted.
Reports.
The small band of GRU and army personnel whom he trusted were in place, waiting. They did not know the mission, nor did they know the purpose. But to activate them without his niece and without the American Rourke would have been useless.
They might wait, never activated, until the End.
He stood up, heavily, slowly.
He began to stuff his feet into his shoes, watching Catherine as she slept curled up in the leather chair beside his desk. She had wanted to be with him, because dawn had been coming.
But dawn had come and gone.
And they both lived, at least for another day.
He began to walk, his feet hurting him badly because he had slept so little, rested so little.
He walked to his figures of the mastodons, studying them as he did in the museum’s shadows. The building was nearly deserted. Some army functionaries, some KGB to keep Rozhdestvenskiy posted as to his—Varakov’s—actions.
Nothing more. Soon, nothing at all.
He looked at the battling giants, battling in death. “Marx was right about history,” he whispered in the darkness.
Chapter Thirty-three
Colonel Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy stood in the unopened doorway of the commandeered Lear executive jet, staring through the porthole in the pressure door at the airfield and beyond it Cheyenne Mountain—The Womb.
The Lear finally stopped its movement under him, settled as he peered out on the central elevator pad. And a new sensation of movement began—lowering.
There was brilliant sun like a halo around the field as he stared through the porthole, then a flicker of darkness, shadow, and then the brilliance of artificial, more yellow light.
The copilot was suddenly beside him, working the controls to open the door, the door pushing outward, passenger stairs folding out automatically, before him as the down motion stopped.
Commander of the North American Branch of The Committee for State Security of the Soviet, Colonel Nehemiah Gustafus Rozhdestvenskiy—he was keenly aware of who he was, what he was—looked to his blue-black uniform’s left shoulder—the green shoulder board bearing the triangular formation of three stars denoting him as full colonel, KGB, had a speck of dust on it. He flipped it away with his white-gloved right hand.
Before stepping outside—the band already playing the national anthem—he glanced at himself in the lavatory door mirror near the exit.
His nearly knee-high black jack boots gleamed with the richness of their leather and the labor of his aide. The brass of his buttons and the buckle of his gold parade dress uniform belt caught the overhead lighting, sparkled. His medals—not all of his medals, for to wear them all would have shown a lack of taste, something he despised in others of his rank or above, something he detested in men beneath his rank—followed the line of his left lapel, plunging in a sharp angle from the uniform above his left breast toward his belt. The red collar tabs high on his lapels, the redness of the wide band that encircled his uniform cap—he adjusted the angle of his cap to where it dipped slightly over his left eye.
Rozhdestvenskiy turned from the mirror, glancing neither to right nor to left, stepping through the doorway, standing on the top step of the egress, raising his right hand in salute, the voices of the assembled troops raised in chorus, his own joining their voices: “Soyuz nerushimy respubliks-vobodnykh. …”
The hammer and sickle—he stared at it as it waved in the breezy downdraft from the elevator opening above him.
The men—their uniforms worn proudly, the 7.62mm Kalashnikov rifles with bayonets fixed held at high port across their chests, all eyes turned as the men—more than a thousand strong—all looked at his face.
Still holding his salute as the strains of the Soviet national anthem died, he turned fully to face his troops.
Smartly—so they would know how he meant it—he snapped away the salute—to them.
Rozhdestvenskiy descended the steps, Major Revnik, his executive officer, striding forward, saluting as he called out in stentorian tones, “The troops are assembled, comrade colonel!”
Rozhdestvenskiy returned the salute smartly, starting forward, Revnik falling in step to his left.
Faces—young, healthy, strong, dedicated. Men. And ranked behind them, in white blouses and black skirts with red neckerchiefs tied at the throats of their blouses, were the women. A thousand strong as well—the finest and best and strongest and most beautiful.
The men, armed, ready, the women—all were ranked in identical formations on both sides of him as he walked the length of the underground hangar bays of what once had been North American Air Defense Headquarters—NORAD.
Now, The Womb.
Tanks—the massive T-72—ranked endlessly beyond them as far as he could see.
In the distance, he viewed the generating equipment for the particle beam weapons that formed their air defense and that would make them ultimately masters of the earth.
Standing at the far end of the ranks as he walked, in the exact center, was a solitary young woman. In her arms was a bouquet—roses, he thought.
He walked toward her, seeing her face, her flowing black hair—her eyes were dark, her figure exuding the radiance of health.
Rozhdestvenskiy stopped.
The woman stepped toward him.
“Comrade colonel—the loyal women of the Soviet Union who have been honored by their selection to perpetuate forever the noble spirit of the triumphant peoples of the State salute you!”
She handed him the bouquet. She leaned up and kissed his left cheek and his right cheek.
Revnik’s voice: “To the triumph of the Soviet!”
Two thousand voices shouted, the halls ringing with it— “Triumph!”
Chapter Thirty-four
Rourke was awake, having slept while Natalia flew, and as he sat up in the copilot’s seat, he could watch the ground below them—at treetop level they were coming in. “John—your restraint—”
Rourke checked the lap and shoulder harness—it was secure.
He watched her hands as they played over the instruments, then looked away, watching through the plexiglass—the treetops were now even with them as the jet skimmed over a fence, Natalia already throttling back—he could hear it—as she committed them to landing.
It was a small country airstrip—but the runway surface in good shape as he watched its grayness seeming to swallow the forward view, rising up in a blur of roughness and bleakness—and he felt the impact of touchdown, hearing the skidding, hearing and feeling as Natalia throttled down.
Into his microphone, he whispered, “You’re a fine pilot.”
“Now is a poor time to verify that, isn’t it,” her voice came back….
There was no chance to land the plane somewhere where it might not be detected—and so the plane, Rourke considered, was written off. Speed in reaching Varakov was the ultimate concern and the small airfield just north of the Illinois-Wisconsin line was the closest thing his map had shown and small enough, he had hoped, that there would be no Soviet guards.
So far, as they left the plane in the field, as they walked, their assault rifles ready, no guards were in evidence.
“We will steal a car?”
“If we can—you can always try your Soviet I.D. and see if you can convince them you arrested me—”
“I do not think I would find greater favor now with the KGB than would you, John—”