“You know I do,” Rourke said, his voice sounding tired to himself.
“Yes, I know—come in.” And Karamatsov stepped aside and Rourke walked into the office. There was a dirty ring on the wall behind the desk at the far end of the long, low-ceilinged room—Rourke assumed there had been an air force or other military insignia on the wall, taken down after the neutron bombing of the area had killed most of the resistance and the Soviets had occupied the facility. As the helicopter carrying himself and Rubenstein and the girl had swept over Galveston coming into the base, the sun was already up, and Rourke had seen much of the real estate below them generally intact, but no signs of life, the trees and other plant life dead—even the grass brown and withered.
He saw Natalie sitting on a soft chair by the wall flanking Karamatsov’s desk. She looked at him and smiled. Rourke sat down in the chair opposite Karamatsov’s desk and waited, hearing the soft footsteps of the KGB officer coming across the carpet behind him, then seeing the major circling the desk. Karamatsov stood behind the desk for a moment, smiling, then sat down, saying, “So—I understand you saved Natalia’s life—you and the injured one— Rubenstein. He’s a Jew, isn’t he?”
“I thought you were a communist, not a Nazi.”
“We have found Jews to be troublemakers in the past—I was only curious. We as yet have located nothing about him in our data banks. He is new to your agency?”
Rourke started to answer, but Natalie cut him off. “Vladmir—stop it! I have told you—Rourke no longer works for the CIA and Rubenstein is just a magazine editor who fell in with John after their plane crashed.”
“Then what about this?” and Karamatsov hammered his fist down on the desk, Rourke’s identity card revealing the reserve connection with the CIA in his hand, the same card Rourke had shown on the airplane before he had taken over the controls after the pilots had been blinded the night of the war.
“You know they have a reserve list,” the girl said.
“That is easy for you to say, Natalia—you are tired, this man saved your life, you have both undergone a great deal together. But I will handle this!”
Rourke reached across onto the end of Karamatsov’s desk, opened a small wooden box there and saw cigars inside. He took one, unbidden, and then reached for the desk lighter. As Karamatsov reached toward his hand, Rourke eyed the man and Karamatsov drew his hand away. The KGB major said, “You apparently were given to understand by Captain Tiemerovna that you would be released after the Jew was treated by our doctors. You will not be released, of course, as I’m sure you realized. But, you will have the opportunity of assuring your continued safety and good treatment, simply by telling us everything you know about the remaining strength of the CIA in your country, all that you have learned in your travels since the purported crashing of your commercial jet—everything. If you do this, you will remain alive and be treated fairly. Otherwise, I need not be specific. We are both men of the world.”
Rourke studied the tip of his cigar, saying to Karamatsov, “No, I didn’t believe her—but I’m glad she believed herself. I’m no longer in the CIA, haven’t been for a long time. And if I were, I wouldn’t tell you anything anyway—you want information, get out the guys with the pentathol and the hypos, then you can find out I don’t know a damned thing. If you want to know what I saw after the plane crashed, I’ll tell you—it’s no military secret. Every town we passed was either abandoned or knocked off by the brigand gangs—like the people your troops grabbed back on the plateau when they picked us up. At least you guys did somethin’ right.”
“He’s right,” Natalie said, her voice sounding low and cold to Rourke.
“Then I will tell you some things, Rourke—your president committed—he is dead. You have a new president—Samuel Chambers. We captured him less than an hour before you arrived here. He is resting comfortably under guard in this same complex. I will give you time to rest as well—while the surgery is completed on your fellow agent. Then—”
“He is not my fellow agent,” Rourke almost hissed, hammering his right fist down on the edge of Karamatsov’s desk.
Karamatsov leaned back, a smile crossing his lips, saying, “Rourke—I remember when we met in Latin America. You were so confident, so good at what you did—even Natalia commented about it. I understand from what she has reported to me that your talents have remained undiminished. If you now show the intelligence you did then, you will make a decision— a decision for life, rather than death. Natalia tells me you still entertain the hopes that your wife and children survived the bombing. As well you should. I will propose to you something that you may wish to consider.
“If you show what you are really made of, if you are the man of wisdom Natalia has told me of,” Karamatsov went on,” you will not only survive—you can become one of us. We will help you to find your family if they still survive. You can have a position of prominence in the new order—”
Rourke interrupted him. “You sound like a Gestapo officer from The Late Show or something. Bite my ass.”
Karamatsov stood, his face livid, his voice quaking with rage, “You speak to me this—”
Rourke, his voice barely above the level of a whisper, said, “I’d chew you up and spit you out if those guards weren’t out there, Karamatsov. And I’ll tell you this. You’d better make sure your people keep a good eye on me, or kill me right now, or you’re gonna wind up with the prettiest widow in the KGB.” And Rourke glanced toward Natalie, watched her face, emotionless, watched her hands bunching into nervous-looking little fists.
Karamatsov pushed a buzzer on his desk and in seconds the door behind Rourke opened and Rourke could hear the guards coming. He didn’t turn around. In Russian, Karamatsov, his voice still unsteady, rasped, “Take this man out and secure him in the rooms on the lower level—watch him!”
Rourke smiled, standing. He set the burning cigar down on the desk, stubbing it on the blotter and letting it lie there. “Get out,” Karamatsov growled in English.
Chapter Forty
Captain Reed sucked on the empty pipe in his mouth, glanced one more time over the shoulder of the radio operator and turned on his heel and started through the doorway. He strode down the narrow basement hallway and up the stairs two at a time to the main floor of the house. He could hear through the open doors to the library the voice of Colonel Darlington, calm, collected, and the raving of Randan Soames, the paramilitary commander. Soames was shouting, “Over a hundred of my men were killed by them gawd-damned commie bastards, colonel—and you want me to calm down!”
Reed knocked on the door, then entered without waiting to be bidden to do so. Soames was starting to speak and Reed cut him off. “Colonel—I just checked down in the radio room personally. The frequency for the Harrier is open, and if Lieutenant Brennan were aboard, he’d be picking us up—I ordered a shutdown on that frequency. I figured the Russians could try and use it as long as we keep it open to get a fix on us. I think they got Brennan and captured the president.”
Soames was still talking, as if, Reed thought, what he had just said had no meaning. “They got more than a hundred of my boys while they was attackin’ this gang of renegades up on some damned plateau out there in the middle of the night in a gawd-damned rainstorm. Just come down in their helicopters nice as they pleased like they owned the whole damned place.”
“They do, for now at least,” Colonel Darlington said, knitting his fingers together and glancing to Reed.
Reed said to Soames, “Sir—haven’t you heard what I said? I mean, the loss of your men is important, it’s terrible—but they must have nailed President Chambers, when he landed in Galveston!”
“We can get a new president,” Soames said quietly,
“No—we can get this one back,” Darlington said. “I’ve been considering this, and I think Captain Reed and the others would agree with me. It’s time we showed the Russians we can still fight. According to what’s left of military intelligence in the Galveston area, the Russians have taken over one of our top secret air bases down there—I worked there for a time. The underground complex is hardened and would have protected anyone inside from a neutron air burst. They would have been trapped there until the Russians landed and by then it would have been too late. That air base is probably being used by the Russians right now—probably where they have Chambers. Probably got a couple hundred of our airmen imprisoned there too—wouldn’t have had the time to get ’em out to a detention center, or the equipment free to do it with.”