“Catherine,” Natalia murmured.
“Comrade Major Tiemerovna,” the woman smiled.
Varakov looked at the woman, her right hand going to rest for a second on his right shoulder, lovingly, Rourke thought, then moving it away, folding it inside her left hand, both hands held in front of her overly long uniform skirt.
Varakov continued to speak, “There is little time. So, very plain talk, Dr. Rourke. Natalia. Captain Vladov. First, Captain Vladov—after our discussion here, unless I am greatly mistaken, my niece and this man, Dr. Rourke—they will be going to Colorado, to The Womb—all is ready for you and your Special Forces to accompany them?”
“Yes, comrade general,” Vladov answered.
“What are you talking about?” Rourke asked softly.
Varakov turned to Natalia. “Child—what does ionization of the atmosphere mean to you? You were very bright at the polytechnic—so tell this to me.”
“The air—it would become charged with electrical particles—and—”
“When the sun heated it,” Rourke interrupted, “the electrically charged particles would—”
Varakov continued to speak, interrupting Rourke. “You are correct—both of you. I had little education—it took me a great deal of time to grasp this idea. But soon, all will understand it.”
“You alluded to the end of the world,” Rourke whispered.
“In the Judeo-Christian Bible, I believe that God promises this man who built the big ship—”
“Noah,” Vladov said.
Varakov looked at him and smiled. “Noah—He promises Noah that the world would never again end by water flooding it over, but by fire instead.”
“I always thought that was a poor bargain on Noah’s part,” Rourke interjected. “I’d rather drown, I think, than burn to death.”
“But this will be swift, Dr. Rourke—so swift—so very swift.”
“Total ionization of the atmosphere,” Rourke murmured.
“Yes—the end of the world. It is coming. Perhaps,” and Varakov looked at a rectangular wrist-watch that seemed like something out of a 1940s movie or a museum, “in less than five hours, perhaps in another twenty-four hours after that, perhaps a few days. As best the data I have compiled can confirm, the total ionization should be complete within five days at the most—most likely, less than that. It will come at dawn, rolling through the sky, fire, consuming everything, the very air that we breathe, purging the Earth. Each sunrise for twenty-four hours will be the last sunrise, the fire storm sweeping the entire planet. Death for all living things, and should something by some quirk of fate survive, there will be no air to breathe for at least three hundred years afterward, nearer five hundred years before the oxygen content would be able to sustain higher life forms without special breathing apparatus. With this War we fought, this insanity—we have destroyed ourselves—finally and irretrievably, and all mankind shall perish from the Earth forever.”
There was nothing John Thomas Rourke could think of to say.
Chapter Fifty-two
John Rourke sat cross-legged on the floor. Natalia had moved from the bench to sit beside him, and she held his hand.
Catherine, Varakov’s secretary, Rourke understood, sat beside the general on his wooden bench—the general looked very old.
Varakov held both her hands in his massive left hand.
The old general had kicked off his shoes.
Rourke smoked a cigar, Natalia a cigarette.
Rourke stared at the mummies—his future brothers, he thought absently.
“The Eden Project,” Varakov said slowly. “With the ionization would come the complete destruction of breathable atmosphere, at the lowest elevations the air thinner afterward than on the highest mountains. The partial destruction of the ozone layer at the very least. All of this was a postwar scenario, one of many. For a time, it was like a guessing game—this War of Wars. World War III.”
“Einstein,” Rourke murmured.
“What?”
Rourke looked at the general. “He said something about it once—something like—it was in answer to a question about what would the weapons of world War III be. He told the questioner that he didn’t know, but that World War IV would be fought with rocks and clubs.”
“World War IV—that is why I have called you here, Dr. Rourke.”
Rourke looked at Varakov. “I don’t understand, sir.”
“You, doctor—your sheer survival, your background—you are like the men in the Russian fairy tales who rode the horses of power and fought evil. My niece—she is consummate in her skills at destruction, yet both of you are human beings, have experienced love—for each other and others. Captain Vladov here—he is, to my reckoning, the finest soldier in the Soviet Army—”
“Comrade general, I— “
Rourke looked at Vladov—the man was embarrassed, but pride gleamed in his eyes again.
“I have found a small cadre of GRU and army personnel whom I can trust. I would advise, perhaps, that you contact U.S. II headquarters through the Resistance—and perhaps they can send forces to aid all of you. Otherwise, the only ones who will survive the last sunrise are two thousand men and women handpicked by Rozhdestvenskiy—ones your husband—” and he looked at Natalia, “had selected, the list only slightly altered after Rozhdestvenskiy took over his position here. One thousand of the KGB Elite Corps, one thousand women from all branches of service, a staff of doctors, scientists, researchers—three thousand in all, perhaps a few less. They will inherit the Earth if you do not act.”
“A final act of revenge—I can’t see you bringing us here for that,” Rourke smiled.
“My letter—to avenge myself on the KGB? Hardly, Dr. Rourke—you are right.”
“You mentioned the Eden Project, Uncle Ishmael,” Natalia almost whispered.
The old man nodded.
“Postholocaust scenarios—the guessing game, yes.” The old man sighed, then continued to speak. “That we would blow away our atmosphere, that we would pitch the planet itself out of orbit and send it hurtling toward the sun, that radiation would blanket the Earth and all living things would die of lingering horror. It is like this boat builder,” and Varakov smiled, looking at Captain Vladov, “this Noah. For this is exactly what was built—an Ark. That is the Eden Project, my children, an Ark, and should Rozhdestvenskiy and his KGB Elite Corps survive, they will use the particle beam weapons installed at this womb of theirs—Cheyenne Mountain, your NORAD headquarters before The Night of The War,” and he looked at Rourke. “They will use these weapons to destroy the six returning space shuttles five hundred years from now, to destroy the last survivors of the human race except themselves, so they will be masters of the new Earth.”
Rourke watched General Varakov’s eyes—the light of reason in them, not hatred or jealousy or fear.
It was rare, perhaps once in a lifetime, if that, Rourke thought, that one sat at the feet of greatness, as he did now.
“Your scientists and ours—for many years they attempted, Dr. Rourke, to solve the mysteries of cryogenic sleep for use in deep space travel and exploration. But, independently, both scientific worlds reached the same impasse. The subject could be placed in suspended animation, but if deeply enough to retard the aging process so the cryogenic sleep would be useful, then too deeply for the brain to be revived. It was the scientific establishment of the United States that cracked the right chemical codes and developed a serum which, once injected into the subject artificially, induced the deep sleep of cryogenic freezing before the actual freezing process took hold. This serum allowed what Soviet scientists were unable to do. It allowed the brain wave patterns of the subjects to stay at sufficient level that the subjects could be aroused from their sleep. Otherwise, without the serum, the subject would sleep forever or until the machine that sustained him was disconnected or became too worn to function.
“The Americans,” Varakov continued, “had this serum and we did not. Utilizing the pressurized cargo bays of the space shuttles, it was your own Dr. Chambers, your de facto President, who was largely responsible for the plan. With deep space travel within reach, awaiting only technological breakthroughs in propulsion or funding level increases, an international corps of astronaut trainees was assembled, of all races, from all nations of the NATO, SEATO and Pan American Alliances—all nations of the world except the Soviet Union and The Warsaw Pact nations. They were trained arduously—one hundred twenty of the finest and best, the healthiest and brightest, the most skilled and most talented. They were never told their other, possible, secret use.”
Varakov stood up and began to pace, Rourke watching the man as he moved—his feet must have been a source of agony, but it was a soldier’s disease, Rourke reflected.
“At times of international crisis, what were called Eden Project drills were held, the participants never aware. The space shuttle fleet was manned with its occupants and their gear, the injections given all aboard except the flight crews. They were never launched, until The Night of The War. It was gambled that always five of the six shuttle craft would be on the ground and at least four functionally ready. All six were on the ground, all six ready because of the protracted nature of the crisis. One hundred twenty souls, plus the six, three-man crews. A cargo bay that held microfilm of all the world’s greatest learning, greatest literature, sound libraries of music, video libraries detailing medical techniques, construction techniques, cryogenically frozen embryonic animals and fish and birds—an Ark. That is the Eden Project. And,” Varakov turned to stare at John Rourke—Rourke watching the man’s dark eyes, the sadness there, “these ships were launched before the missiles destroyed the Kennedy Space Center. They cleared our radar—presumably they are out there, on an elliptical orbit that will take them to the very edge of the solar system and then return them to Earth in five hundred and two years. In Colorado, at this moment, Rozhdestvenskiy and his KGB Elite Corps prepare themselves for the cryogenic sleep, to awaken in five hundred years and destroy the Eden Project when it returns. What I offer you, Dr. John Rourke, is the hope that you and your wife and children will survive this final holocaust. Twelve of the American cryogenic sleep chambers were taken from an underground laboratory in Texas. Along with these, dozens of jars—we know not exactly how many—of the cryogenic serum that prevents the brain death of the subject. Go to Colorado, steal back this serum—what you need for your family and yourself and your friend Rubenstein. And for Natalia—I beg that.