Survivalist - 21.5 - The Legend (22 page)

The notes, on both the cryogenic chambers and the serum, existed in original form at the Retreat. But duplicates had been given to both New Germany and Mid-Wake officials.

One cryogenic chamber each had been carefully transhipped to Mid-Wake and to New Germany for a period of thirty days, then returned to the Retreat and put back in storage. During those thirty days, with his father’s notes to guide them, scientists and engineers of both countries labored to duplicate the technology.

Michael Rourke, alone, sat in the office used by Colonel Mann, waiting.

At last, the telephone on the desk buzzed and Michael picked it up. Colonel Mann’s secretary, a pretty enough young woman named Irene, came on the line. “Herr Rourke, the can from Doctor Munchen has come through. One moment please.”

“Yes.”

Then he heard Munchen’s voice, the transmission clear, despite the fact that it originated half a world away beneath the

sea at Mid-Wake. -Michael?” “Yes, Doctor.”

“It has to be the cryogenic chambers. There is no other choice, for either of them.”

“I understand. Are you certain that the chambers and the serum are adequate for the task, Doctor?”

“As certain as we can be. The serum is the identical duplicate of that used five centuries ago. Logic dictates that had the serum broken down, your father would not have been able to utilize it again after he awakened to spend those years with you and your sister. So, we are as certain as can be under the circumstances of the formula’s integrity. As to the chambers, they are identical to the originals, except they are made of better materials and would endure longer than the originals. And, lastly, the American Marine, Captain Aldridge requested that he be allowed to volunteer to test the chambers and the serum-“

“You shouldn’t have-*

“He thinks as highly of your parents as do the rest of us, Michael. As of five minutes ago, all vital signs, all readouts, everything was perfect. We will awaken Captain Aldridge shortly before we inject your parents. That wdl be-” There was a pause. Munchen presumably looking at his wristwatch. “-in precisely three hours and twelve minutes.”

Michael Rourke licked his lips, looked at his own watch, a Rolex like his fathers, but the Sea-Dweller, not the Submariner model. “We will be en route at that time, Doctor. Once we are on the ground-“

“I will of course stand ready for your call as soon as it is safe for you to make it.”

“What are their chances? Honesdy.”

There was another pause, then Munchen’s voice came back again. “I will not lie to you and your family, Michael. I respect all of you too much for that. The chances are slim at the very best. We are relying on the body’s natural recuperative powers to revive your father from the coma into which he slips more deeply by the minute. There is precedent for this

hope.

“Paul Rubenstein’s eyes are the best example,” Munchen went on. “I have seen the glasses he had to wear before The Sleep, as you call it. He was near sighted to a considerable degree. Yet, since The Sleep, his vision is perfect. Your father carried numerous scars on his body from violent encounters, he once told me, yet John Rourke bore none of those scars after The Sleep.

That is the chance,” Munchen concluded.

“And my mother?”

“We put her into The Sleep-well-I have heard your family speak of God, a concept we at New Germany had all but dismissed. If there is a God, then placing your mother in The Sleep is something that we do with a prayer on our lips and in our hearts. I will try it as well, prayer. Her only hope of survival is that someday in the future, micro-surgery will be so advanced that the bullet can be removed from her brain and that somehow, with medical skill and patience, she can be restored. Such processes may never be discovered, most certainly will not be discovered within our lifetimes, Michael.

“Perhaps, in the future, your mother and your father will be able to share the life which they have been denied in this time,” Munchen said, a catch in his voice.

“You, uhh, mentioned-mentioned God. Well, God bless you for-” Michael’s voice broke, the tears starting, his throat too tight for him to speak.

“I know, Michael. Believe this: All of us, even the Russians, have done all that is in our power. Their lives will soon be out of our hands. And I hope you are right, that there is a God. Goodbye.”

The line went dead.

Michael Rourke still held the receiver, his head bent over Mann’s desk. His face and his eyes, felt as if they were about to explode.

He leaned his head back, closed his eyes, re-opened them, the tears too strong to keep them closed. He would never see his mother and father again.

And a cold feeling, starting as a hollowness deep in his guts, swept over him.

He was orphaned. What went right went right because of him, and what went wrong was his responsibility, too. And he raced what might be the most difficult task of his life, the attempted rescue of his newborn brother.

If he failed at this, he was not his father’s son, not his mother’s son.

Michael Rourke stood up, setting down the telephone receiver, his shoulders shaking, his hands shaking. He balled his fists, standing there at the desk, his body racked with sobs. His father and mother would not want him wasting another precious second weeping for them.

Michael hammered his fists against the desk and shouted to God, “All right!”

If men had a Fate, he marched toward his…

Paul Rubensein sat in a chair in the corner of the rooms he shared with his wife. And he wrote in his journal. “My father-in-law. who was my best friend before I married his daughter, and has been my best friend, and will always be, may soon die, if death hasn’t claimed him already. I think back a lot these days, because Annie and I are thinking about having children of our own. And what will I tell them about their grandparents?

“My father was an Air Force officer, a man finer and more honorable than I ever suspected while he lived, my mother, a wife and mother and friend, to him, to me. Annie’s parents, John and Sarah, were the two most remarkable persons I could ever imagine. How do I tell the children, Annie and I will some day have, about these people? It would be empty and meaningless to merely recount their accomplishments, but just as hollow to say that had my parents and Annie’s parents lived, they would have loved these Children.

“Of course they would have loved them, taught them, listened to them, cared for them.

“Does my wife have the same feelings now inside her as I felt when I realized my parents died along with millions and millions of other people that morning the sky caught fire and scoured the earth of life?

“Annie was closer to her parents, spent her entire life with them until these last weeks, since the War finally ended.

“I have never understood why Annie chose me. She is so beautiful, so intelligent, so brave. I’m just me, and thafs what I have always been. Yet she is a Rourke, and she loves me.

“It will be up to us, to Annie and me, to teach our children that being both a Rourke and a Rubenstein means something, that there was something very special about their grandparents, that each of them, in their own ways, was a hero. We will have to teach them what heroes are, and that there are many types of heroes and that any man or woman can be a hero just by trying.

“A few centuries from now, perhaps sooner, the earth will be rebuilt, repopulated. But we must make certain that our children know the stories of these times just past, and of the times before, and never forget either, so they can tell their children, and in turn their children can tell theirs.

“Otherwise, if what has happened is forgotten, it may happen again.

“As I write these lines, we are prepared to fly to what was once Peru, there to meet with a large force from our allies and friends in New Germany, then to launch an assault against a mountain redoubt where we believe the newborn son of John and Sarah is being held. If our enterprise succeeds, it has been agreed that Annie and I will raise this baby as our OWE child until the day he is old enough to know his heritage.

“May God watch over us all.”

Paul Rubenstein laid down his journal and closed his eyes.

Twelve

Himself.

It was up to him.

Michael Rourke dressed, in the black battle dress utilities of Mid-Wake, as his rather had in recent times. He stepped into the pants.

To find his brother. That was the issue at hand and all other considerations had to be set aside. They would have to give the boy a name, and he had one in mind-John Thomas Rourke. the second. There could be no finer name, albeit a challenge to live up to.

He pulled on the long sleeved, black knit, placket front, shirt, pushing the sleeves up along his forearms. Maria, whom he had so cruelly treated, had come to see him before returning to New Germany, telling him, “I realize now that you were right, Michael. I will always love you, but I do not think that being married, living together forever, was ever our fate.” And she kissed his cheek, then left.

Michael Rourke pulled on his combat boots.

His father’s boot size and his own were the same, but not for a moment did he think he would be able to fill his father’s shoes in the classic figurative sense. All he could do was make the attempt, however vain or successful such effort might prove to be.

Michael Rourke made a last minute check of his personal weapons, the two Beretta 92F military pistols, the four-inch barreled Model 629, the knife made for him by old Jon, the Swordmaker. The knife’s edge was sharp. He holstered each

handgun in its turn, dropping the double rig made for him at Lydveldid Island across his shoulders. He secured his gunbek at his waist, the .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson carried crossdraw, the knife old Jon, the Swordmaker had crafted for him at his right side, the spare magazine pouches for the Berettas and the ammo carriers for the .44 filled on the belt.

He caught up his rifle, checked that the chamber was empty, ran the action several times, finally snapping it off. then placed a loaded magazine up the well.

His father had told him on several occasions that the measure of a man was his desire to do what was right and good, and the sacrifice he would endure in order to fulfill such a desire.

Michael Rourke took his wallet from his trousers, opened it and looked at the small photo of his father and mother that he carried there. He wondered what their thoughts were when the photo was taken five centuries ago, a few months before The Night of The War.

He’d seen happier smiles on his mother’s face, and his father’s face too.

But there was happiness there, and love, despite complications. As a child, he’d known his mother and father did not quite get along, but he’d never doubted then nor had he since, that they loved each other and loved his sister and him.

It was that image-of love-that Michael Rourke tried to keep in his mind’s eye as he left his quarters, not the image of two people who were nearly dead going into cryogenic freeze in a city, thousands of miles away and far beneath the sea …

Natalia Tiemerovna packed as she always did for something like this, with a modest amount of everything she might require, all of it fitting into her backpack/shoulder bag.

Clothing could be just as important to a female agent as a gun or knife might be to her male counterpart. For that reason, there was a slip, a skirt, a blouse, a pair of casual shoes.

And a spare black jumpsuit, identical to the one she wore

now.

She buckled on her gunbelt, the belt something John had looked long and hard to find for her, the holsters, along with the two stainless steel Smith & Wesson L-Frame .357 Magnums they carried, the gift of the last President of the United States, Sam Chambers.

Mid-Wake had a President, and he was President of The United States, but it was a different United States over which he presided, a different world.

Each of the revolvers carried engraved on the right barrel flat, an American Eagle.

Natalia had often looked at these images. The American philosopher and inventor, Benjamin Franklin had wished that his young country’s national symbol would be something besides an heroic appearing vulture. But the American Eagle had come to mean more svmbolity than in reality, the essence of a proud if sometimes hard to fathom nation of people, who could be described in exactly the same way, as proud always and hard to fathom often.

Peace.

What an odd concept.

She should never have given it any credence as long as humanity infested this place called Earth.

She caught up her coat and bag and rifle and the long, thin black fabric case and started from her quarters, forcing herself not to consider the fact that thousands of miles away, the only meaning which had ever been in her life was dead or dying and would be lost to her forever …

Wolfgang Mann stood by bis aircraft, smoking a cigarette, the wind cold but stirring to the blood. Soon, they would be boarding the aircraft, and with others like it, flying toward a rendezvous in what had been Chile. The rendezvous was a staging area, and from the staging area, an assault would be launched against the mountain redoubt where Albert Heimaccher and Deitrich Zimmer could be found. With them, as best

they could guess, would be the Rourke child. What remained for him then, for Wolfgang Mann? Duty?

He had done his duty, was prepared to do his duty again.

But, then, after his duty was done?

His wife had been murdered, assassinated by the vile Nazis whom even now he was on his way to fight against again. He had no living children, something which saddened him and always had.

Mann exhaled, smoke and breath mixing in a gray cloud on the frigid air …

The cursor on his terminal’s screen blinked.

Deitrich Zimmer watched it. His thoughts were not on the printout, nor were they on the data on his screen.

Rather, he was concerned with implications.

Albert Heimaccher’s genealogical background checked. Albert Heimaccher was, indeed, the descendant of a Reichskm-der whose biological father was Adolph Hider.

Hitler had not direcdy fertilized the woman, of course. But data in the official fdes compiled over centuries of historical research at New Germany confirmed that der Fuhrer, in a moment of great generosity, allowed his sperm sample to be taken. The sperm sample was used, in fact, to fertilize several women. Albert Heimaccher was descended from one of the ‘unions’ which resulted.