Survivalist - 21.5 - The Legend (12 page)

“No, John, there’s nothing you should be sorry for. And the only person whose fault any of this is, is mine.”

” ‘The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves,’” Rourke whispered, exhaling smoke, but unable to see any stars through the doors at the end of this cold and dark corridor.

“Julius Caesar?”

“Yes,” Rourke nodded.

“You used to watch the stars a lot, John, on those nights out in the desert. What were you thinking?”

John Rourke extinguished his cigarette beneath his heel, held Natalia’s right hand in both of his, exhaled. “I was trying to convince myself that there was something better out there. I didn’t know about the Eden Project then, and I wouldn’t exactly say we’ve been touched by the finger of God in their return.”

“Are you that much of a cynic, or only on certain subjects?”

“Only on certain subjects,” he laughed. “For example, I think the New York Stock Exchange will never rebound.”

Natalia started to giggle like a little girl, saying through it to him, “Be serious, John.”

“Well, as an ex-Communist you should be familiar with the cyclical view of history.”

“And?”

“Well, I sometimes wonder if we came in at the end of one cycle and lived through into the next.”

“Do you think that years from now two people like us will sit here having this same conversation, John?”

“Maybe, or maybe two people already did,” Rourke told her.

Natalia hugged his left arm very tightly. “Would you tell me that you love me just one more time?”

He looked at her, touched his fingertips to her chin, raised her face, said, “I love you now and will always love you. But stop

loving me-“

“If I love you? Thaf s a logical absurdity, just like it would be to stop loving you.”

John Rourke kissed Natalia Tiemerovna, telling himself that he would never kiss her like this again, inside himself hoping that what he was tWnking would be a lie.

Four

Natalia Tiemerovna pressed her palm against it and pushed open one of the two exterior doors, passed through the foyer, then the inside doorway. “Heat,” she whispered to herself. But there wasn’t enough warmth that she was tempted to remove her coat, just let it fall open.

The coat was a relic of her past, and in that respect she detested it. But it was both very warm and very beautiful, and for that reason she kept it. Russian sable, the very best, ankle length, full enough that she could almost wrap it round her body twice, could have been wearing her double holster rig with the stainless L-Frame .357 Magnum revolvers beneath it and no one looking at her would have been the wiser.

The shawl she’d thrown over her head against the biting wind she now tugged down to her shoulders.

And her hands had been warm enough in her gloves.

But her toes were stiff with the cold, the Chinese silk shoes terribly ill-suited for the near arctic conditions here in American Georgia.

She had never been inside this hospital of John’s and she stood now just inside the inner doorway, looking around. “May I assist you, Fraulein?”

Natalia looked toward the desk at the far side of the hallway. Beneath a desk lamp’s light, she could see a woman’s face, plain but with a pleasant smile. “You must be Magda.”

“Yes, Fraulein-but-“

“John-Doctor Rourke, I mean. He said you might know where his wife was.”

“She’s in her husband’s office. I can show you-“

“It’s Fraulein Tiemerovna-Natalia. And if you’ll just point

the way for me, Fm certain FU be all right.” The nurse directed her down a corridor and Natalia told

her how John had spoken so highly of her, then started toward

John’s office.

There were lights burning inside and she knocked, hearing Sarah say, “Come in.”

Natalia entered and saw Sarah behind John’s desk, sitting there with a .45 in her right hand. “Hi.”

Sarah smiled, lowered the pistol. “Sorry.”

“You’re like John, still carrying a gun,” Natalia noted.

Sarah shrugged her shoulders, a German arctic parka draped across them. “Aren’t you?”

Natalia moved her left leg forward, then lifted her dress, revealing the Walther PPK/S, sans its usual suppressor, in the black fabric Galco thigh holster. As she let her clothes fall back in place, she gestured to the small beaded bag she carried “My Bali-Song. I guess old habits-“

“Not just old habits,” Sarah told her. “John hasn’t been elaborating on what’s going on here, has he?”

Natalia didn’t wait to be asked to sit down, merely did, opposite Sarah. “What do you mean? I know that the election between Dodd and Akiro is-“

“Bitter? Maybe that’s too mild a word. John refuses to take it seriously, but I think Dodd sees John as a threat and wouldn’t stop at trying to kill him.”

“That is the reason for the gun, then” Natalia nodded. “No. John said nothing about things being that bad.”

Sarah turned the gun around on the desk blotter. “He thinks Fm being a worrier. Maybe I am funny” Sarah smiled, still looking at the gun. “before The Night of The War, I wouldn’t touch a gun except to move it so I could dust. God, how things change us.”

“Maybe events merely awaken us to necessity,” Natalia suggested. “Will it bother you if I smoke?”

“So long as it’s not one of John’s cigars,” Sarah laughed.

Natalia took cigarettes and lighter from her purse, fired the

lighter, looked at Sarah as she exhaled smoke. “How are you feeling?”

“Fat.” Natalia was momentarily taken aback. But then Sarah laughed. “You remember Michael and Annie when they were little.” There was a slight catch in Sarah’s voice, but then she went on. “You should have seen me when I was carrying Michael. He weighed nine and a quarter pounds at birth. I looked like the Goodyear Blimp. I don’t think this little guy’s gonna be as big.”

“Then it will-“

“Amniocentesis? Me? A needle in my navel?”

Natalia laughed, remembering the reason she had come here. “Akiro and Elaine will be getting picked up in a little while. John wanted to know if you’d like to come and see them off.”

“My back was killing me, just standing. Not used to even a little heel like these things anymore,” Sarah said, gesturing toward her shoes as she stood up …

They moved along the street now, walking side by side, Natalia walking more slowly than she would have liked, but terrified that Sarah would slip on the icy road surface and fall and hurt herself or the babv.

“Ever hear the acronym D.R.E.A.D.?”

Natalia had heard it. “I assumed it was just disinformation.”

“John said he assumed the same. By the way, thanks for being a friend, especially now.”

“What do you mean?” The wind was blowing stronger, colder, Natalia huddling her shoulders deeper into her coat, her feet starting to go on her again. But it wasn’t that far a walk to the Eden headquarters, so she told herself her toes would be fine. “What do you mean?”

“About which?”

“Being your friend. I mean, I think we are, friends.”

“I mean with John, now, then. He’s a strong man, but he could have been pushed.” And Sarah laughed “Did you see a lot of American movies?”

“Every one I could. I had to pretend to be American often enough and they helped a lot.”

“Ever notice, with rare exceptions of course, women were never shown to be buddies?”

And then Natalia laughed. “You and I should have been fighting over liim?”

“Yes, scratching each other’s eyes out and that sort of dumb stuff.”

“I couldn’t see either of us doing that.”

“But if we were really buddies, just like guys,” Sarah smiled, laughing again, “we would have flipped a coin over him, letting the best ‘man’ win.”

“I suppose. I don’t know. You are the best Vnan’, and you have nun already. I am happy for you both.” She wanted to change the subject. “What did you hear about D.R.E.A.D.?”

“I can’t see how you ever passed the spy school course in lying, Natalia, because you’re terrible at it. But you’re nice to try,” and Sarah reached out and took Natalia’s hands in hers. “You are a good friend.”

Natalia leaned forward and kissed Sarah’s cheek, very cold from the wind, but that didn’t matter. They held each other for a moment, neither of them saying anything …

The helicopter was arriving, one of the German machines from the base just outside Eden. The wind was rising, too, and she stabbed her already gloved hands into the pockets of her coat, drawing the garment more tightly around her, pushing her knees together more tightly as the helicopter’s downdraft ricocheted off the landing pad and the icy cold blew up under her dress.

But Natalia smiled, thinking how interesting it would have been if someone had thought to invoke the old American custom of tying tin cans (had there been any) to the wedding car (the helicopter). But, of course, the honeymoon was to be a httle out of the ordinary, too. No Niagara Falls, instead a quick flight to the German base, then by J7-V to the flcating landing field the Germans had just erected over Mid-Wake.

John had offered them the Retreat, she understood, but advised them against its use. The only peace they would have would be at Mid-Wake, because it was the only place on Earth with totally controlled access.

It was no way to start a life together, in fear.

Sarah had only said that John believed there really had been a project with the code name D.R.E.A.D., and that Akiro would search the duplicate Eden computer files while he and Elaine were at Mid-Wake (they were stored there now) in order to know for certain.

She recalled D.R.E.A.D. well, the acronym somehow more chilling than the cold which surrounded her: Defense Recovery Emergency Armed Deterrent. It was an arsenal of nuclear weapons put away for the proverbial rainy day.

And John, according to Sarah, felt that Commander Dodd wanted it under his control.

The man would have to have been insane.

Suddenly, she felt movement beside her. It was John, one arm around Sarah, the other going around her.

She huddled close against him, and when she saw Sarah’s face, Sarah smiled.

Akiro and Elaine, Elaine with an arctic parka over her wedding dress, emerged from the complex, waving at their friends. Elaine throwing her bouquet, Natalia didn’t even try.

Five

Young Martha Larrimore was having trouble-tension, John Rourke surmised as the problem’s root cause, no more than that-getting her child to take her breast.

Sarah and Natalia flanking him, he walked along the street toward the hospital, considering the old aphorism about ‘a rose between two thorns.’ In reality, it never seemed to work that way, and tonight he was indeed the thorn between two roses.

“You, Natalia, are not getting off without being around here after the baby comes. You’re just going to have to make time,” Sarah was saying. “And John and I have already decided, if you don’t mind, that if we have a girl, well, we want to name her after you.”

Natalia said, “Ohh, Sarah, you don’t have to-“

“We want to,” Sarah responded. “And you’d better get used to the idea that, boy or girl, youH be ‘Aunt Natalia’, if-“

Tve never been an aunt before.”

John Rourke revised his estimate of the situation. Rather than a thorn between two roses, he felt more like the net at the center of one of the ping pong tables in the recreation hall at the German base.

He stopped trying to look from one woman to the other, to follow the conversation, merely looked straight ahead, toward the hospital.

Somehow, and he wasn’t quite certain why (which annoyed

him, of course), he felt happier than he had been in longer than he could remember. At least he would still have Natalia as his friend, and Sarah and Natalia seemed better friends than ever. That was good.

Soon, Alriro would know if the D.R.E.A.D. weapons system was a reality, and something which Dodd might realistically hope to obtain. And the election would come and Akiro, respected by almost everyone, would surely win the Presidency.

The only potential for war, now, was minor, the still surviving Neo-Nazi group that was headquartered somewhere in the remote regions of what had been Paraguay. German Long Range Mountain Patrol units searched for them even now, and it was only a matter of time until they were captured or killed.

Annie and Paul had found a true home in helping Madame Jokli to rebuild the Hekla Conmiunity in Lydveldid Island.

“God’s in his Heaven and all’s right with the world,” John Rourke said aloud, both of the women he loved just looking at him …

There was a knock at the hatchway of the Shuttle. Commander Christopher Dodd took the Beretta pistol from the console near his hand and stood up, walking toward the hatchway lock, twisting it open with one hand and stepping back as the hatch moved.

There was a cyclone of swirling snow and wind.

In the doorway stood a solitary man, face obscured by snow goggles and a toque, die hood of his parka snorkled close.

He was a big man, powerfully built, that apparent despite the arctic gear.

In his lightly gloved right hand was a semi-automatic pistol. “Herr Commander Dodd, I am Deitrich.” The man’s voice was a rich baritone, the German accent more of a lilt. And he

gave the code phrase then, a Latin phrase Dodd had new heard in the original, until the Nazi hierarchy had decided upon it. “Aleajacta est.”

But he knew its English translation well, the words that Julius Caesar supposedly uttered when, against orders, he prepared to cross the Rubicon river with his army: The die is cast.

Dodd lowered his weapon …

“Your baby is lovely. And he’s so well developed.”

Martha smiled, touching the child’s face with her fingertips. “He is beautiful.”

“Now it’s your turn to keep your fingers crossed for me.” Sarah said.

Natalia looked at Martha Larrimore and then at Sarah.

Lieutenant Larrimore was putting her baby to her breast again. The advice John had given her had helped, and the baby seemed to be feeding well now. Natalia thought of her own breasts, useless throughout her life for their intended function and destined to remain so.

The more she thought of it, the more she wanted a baby; but, it would have to be John’s baby, and that could never be. She had sometimes pictured herself holding such a child, nursing it, loving it, watching it grow to adulthood in his image.