Rozhdestvenskiy studied the glowing chamber, the swirling gases contained inside. “And what of the volunteer—when shall we know something?”
“The longer we can wait, the greater fraction of experimental validity we shall have—I can terminate the experiment now, after only a few hours. I can wait for days—the results might well be a bit more meaningful after a few days’ duration than only a few hours. He is a volunteer, knew what he was volunteering to do.”
“Regardless of the outcome, he shall receive decoration as a hero of the Soviet Union.”
And it was laughter this time—Rozhdestvenskiy could not mistake it as he watched Professor Zlovski. “I have serious doubts, comrade colonel, whether the receipt of such an honor will impress our volunteer greatly, if at all, should the experiment prove to be unsuccessful. But do not despair—for I understand in discussions with some of my colleagues in the scientific establishment here that in the event of failure, The Womb can be hermetically sealed—”
“It will be, at any event,” Rozhdestvenskiy interrupted, realizing his palms were sweating—nervousness.
“Quite—and with the hydroponic gardens that have been planted, oxygen/carbon-dioxide interchange would be of sufficient volume. So, we shall endure regardless.”
“To live like moles?” Rozhdestvenskiy asked rhetorically, turning away from Zlovski, lighting a cigarette. Cigarette smoking was forbidden in the laboratory—it was why he lit it. “To live less than human existences? What does it matter to be masters of a lifeless world? Hmm? To never see the sun?”
“But comrade colonel—there are other avenues of endeavor besides the acquisition of power—are there not?”
“Yes,” and Rozhdestvenskiy turned to face Zlovski. “The preservation of power.”
He dropped his cigarette to the laboratory floor, heeling it out on the tiles there.
All he could hear as he walked away was the clicking of his heels and the faint mechanical hum of the chamber.
If he had not denounced all belief in God, he would have prayed then for the experiment to succeed.
Chapter Forty
Rourke had been there before— he had lectured there once to more than a hundred police officers. Before The Night of The War it had been a public shooting range and gunshop, before that a skating rink. The sign had fallen, was gone—but he knew the place anyway. Waukegan Outdoor Sportsman.
He stopped at the rear metal door, Emily tapping out some sort of code as she knocked.
A peephole had been cut in the steel door, and Rourke saw a tiny shaft of light in the gathering darkness—it was near sunset—when the peephole opened.
And then the peephole closed, the sound of metal scraping against metal, perhaps a security bar being lifted, and the door opened.
Emily stepped through, Rourke going ahead of Natalia, following Emily and, as he glanced back quickly, Dumbrowski and two other men following after.
There were no lights, and in the darkness—gray, indefinite, he could hear the door being closed behind them. A curtain—black, heavy, was ripped back and beyond the curtain burned dim ceiling lights. In a far corner of what had apparently been a shipping area, he heard the hum of a generator. He could smell its fumes.
It was cold in the building, and he followed Emily past new faces, eyes staring at them—Rourke tried to smile. No one smiled back. As they walked, Rourke rasped under his breath to Natalia, falling in beside her as he slowed his pace, “Let me do the talking—please.”
She looked at him, her blue eyes flashing—but she nodded, blinking her eyes closed for an instant as she did—it was like the light flickered out of the world when she closed them, he thought.
They passed through a storage area—there were weapons of all descriptions on tables and on the floors, most disassembled. Reloading presses were in operation, children attending them. As they walked on, two men appeared, one older, one young, both men going to one of the tables, commencing to work on one of the firearms there.
They passed into what Rourke remembered had been the sales floor of the retail store—it was now a hospital, apparently.
“How many people have been treated here?” Rourke asked Emily Bronkiewicz.
“Maybe a thousand since The Night of The War. We have some real doctors, and we have a lot of volunteers. Some of the tougher cases—well, they can’t do anything for them. My husband—he was one of ‘em,” and her eyes flickered to Natalia, but this time the woman smiled.
The woman started up a flight of stairs, Rourke going ahead of Natalia again, following Emily. As they climbed the stairs, he could overlook the vast square footage—he estimated more than a hundred beds in use, crammed together with barely enough room to walk between. And few of them were beds—most were mats, some packing boxes.
The woman turned down a small corridor, past open office doors, men inside the offices, sometimes a face looking up, then quickly turning away.
She stopped at the last office, the door open.
A man perhaps Rourke’s own age, perhaps a little younger, looked up from a paper-littered desk. His face lit up with a smile beneath his close-cropped, light-colored, curly hair.
His eyes seemed to radiate a good humor Rourke had seen in none of the other men or women of the local Resistance. And Rourke remembered the man. “It’s Maus, isn’t it?”
“Tom Maus,” the man said, rising from his seat, extending his right hand, Rourke took it. “And you’re—John Rourke, right? The M.D. who taught survivalism and weapons training—I remember the presentation you gave.”
“That’s right,” Rourke nodded. He watched Maus’s eyes as they took in Natalia.
“And you, miss—I know your face, too—it’s Major Tiemerovna of the KGB—mistress or maybe the wife of Karamatsov before he was killed.”
“Wife,” Rourke heard Natalia answer—lifelessly.
“I guess that’s kind of a negative way of starting a conversation, though, isn’t it—I didn’t mean anything by it. Before the war I used to think I was busy— Reserves, running the shop here, the wholesaling business—hell, I wish I had that much free time now. I get a little testy when I’m tired. Why don’t we all sit down.”
Rourke looked at Natalia—her face seemed to show that she had relaxed—if only a little.
“Emily,” Maus said. “Good to see you’re still alive—” and Maus grinned as he looked at Rourke. “Her husband was one of the best field people I had—and she’s better. But I still miss him. I’d offer you coffee but I don’t like poisoning people—and the pop machine never worked that well before The Night of The War and anyway we ran out of pop.”
“We’re fine,” Rourke nodded.
He noticed Maus looking at Natalia, and then Maus spoke. “I know a lot about you, major— heard through U.S. II all the scuttlebutt about what you did in Florida during the quakes. And I also know through our sources—we have some spies who take a lot of risks and sometimes get us pretty good information—so I know that the KGB has you on some kind of hit list—wants you dead. Why, I don’t know. So,” Maus looked at Rourke then. “Like I said—nothin’ I like better than renewing old acquaintances, but I’ve got a field hospital to run, a weapons repair shop, a reloading operation—”
“What’s where the range used to be?” Rourke asked him, interrupting. “More beds?”
“No—we can’t accommodate the people we have out on the floor down there—no. Since it’s soundproofed, we use it as a training area, a testing area for the weapons we repair—everything it needs to be used for—and a few other things besides. But like I said, if I had twelve hands, I still wouldn’t have a thumb to twiddle—so why are you both here? Something for U.S. II or what?”
Rourke shrugged, saying to Natalia as he looked at her, “You explain it—all of it. We can trust this man.”
Natalia’s eyes—they seemed to look into his soul, Rourke thought, but then she turned to look at Maus. “My uncle is General Varakov, the supreme commander—”
“I sort of figured he was some kind of relative of yours—go ahead.”
And, gradually, she told Tom Maus everything.
Chapter Forty-one
The hospital that occupied the sales floor of Waukegan Outdoor Sportsman, and had almost since The Night of The War, was known to the Soviet authorities—General Varakov periodically sent teams of Soviet doctors into the hospital to help however they could, and what medical supplies—meager—could be spared were sent as well. The plans were simple—when Soviet patrols were in the area, or an inspection was due, or the medical team was to be sent, the beds were spread out into the range area and the weapons and reloading equipment hidden in an underground area left from an old storm drain.
It was risky business, Rourke knew, the timing critical, a gap in information potentially fatal. If the underground storage area were discovered, or the equipment not gotten away in time, or the beds not spread out in time—a firing squad.