Survivalist - 21.5 - The Legend (30 page)

“Here is the plan, Bob. I will take the top floor. You take the second floor. If you see someone coming out into the parking lot and getting into the car-“

“The little guy and the hooker with the blonde hair?”

“Probably, but possibly just the little guy*. Anyway, if you see him but he didn’t pass you we know he spoke with someone in an apartment on the first floor. If you see him coming down toward the second floor and I didn’t see him, we will know his meeting was on the third floor. You uaterstand?”

“So, we let him go and go after whoever it was he met?”

“That is the idea. Fifty apartments on each floor, that still will not be easy.”

“Twenty-five apiece,” he grinned.

They had parked beside a fence and near one of the large electric trams which took men to the bio-project, so there was little chance they had been seen from one of the upper floor windows. “I will go in first,” she said, setting down her gun, pulling her hair back and putting it up quickly in a litde bun. “Follow me after five minutes or so. Keep your gun handy, but we cannot kill Gruber, just in case this leads us nowhere. Do you understand?”

“Any chance my buyuf you dinner?”

Natalia looked down at her shoes and her ruined stockings and then up into his face. She laughed, telling him, “If this helps me to kill Deitrich Zimmer, Bob Jessup, I will buy dinner for you. And that’s a promise.”

Eight

The man had evidendy been raking his discomfort, but when Michael Rourke moved his father’s Zippo lighter back and forth a few feet from the man’s eyes, the pupils did not track the flame. Temporarily at least, the man who, with his five associates, would have killed them was, indeed, blind.

Paul and Michael exchanged glances. Then Michael asked the question that had been eating away inside of him. “Were you part of the attack on the hospital? Tell us everything.”

“I had rwthing to do with the attack on your family, Herr Rourke. Believe me. I was hired by Herr Doctor Zimmer to get you to follow us here and kill you. That is all!”

“What’s Zimmer planning and where is he?” Paul insisted. The man cleared his throat. After a long pause, he said, “You must promise me that you will protect me from Zimmer. You must promise me-“

“If you help us, well help you. What if we brought you back to New Germany and got your eyes fixed and made a big deal out of how you told us everything you could about Zimmer and his movement, hmrn? What do you think Zimmer would do to you then? What’s your name, anyway?”

“Decker, Horst Decker.”

“All right. Decker. Stop wasting everybody’s time. What’s it gonna be?” Michael asked.

“Yes, yes, all right. But you must-“

“We’ll see you get protection,” Paul told him.

In the light from the lamp, as Michael moved it closer, he could see the man’s face, sweat dripping down it despite the cool wind here. This was sheer terror, plain and simple.

“Herr Doctor Zimmer was leaving for the place called Eden.” Michael Rourke swallowed hard. So did the Nazi. “One of the Herr Doctor’s lieutenants talks a great deal when he drinks. Herr Doctor Zimmer was going there. But that is all I know, Sirs.”

“Eden,” Paul said slowly. “The perfect name, and the perfect place for a snake.”

Michael Rourke only nodded, his wound hurting …

The whole evening was turning into an incident out of some piece of lurid hardboiled detective fiction, and ruefully Natalia realized she was the babe. When she heard the shot, she drew her gun from her purse and started running across the parking area and toward the front door of the four-story building. The shot was very light, from a medium caliber pistol, but very-close.

She looked back once. Bob Jessup was mounting his motorcycle, not coming after her. “The hell with him,” Natalia said under her breath, the sound of his motorcycle rising behind her.

She saw the blonde with the tight black vinyl skirt. Where was Armand Gruber?

The woman was running from the foyer, into the dirt parking lot. Natalia shouted to her in German, “Stop where you are!”

The woman shrieked back, “They want to kill me!” And she kept running.

There was a blur of motion and Natalia dodged right, Jes-sup’s motorcycle rocketing past her. Bob Jessup shouted, “You get her! Tm goin’ in, lady!” And he cut the fork of the bike

toward the entrance to the building. There were steps, to elevate the first floor, because of the problem in Opentown with roaches, rats and other vermin mat followed human habitation.

Jessup jumped his machine and took it over the steps, getting the machine up on its rear wheel and using the machine like a battering ram to punch through the door; the door crashing down and part of the frame with it.

And he was gone from view.

The blonde in the tight skirt was running through the parking lot, but not toward the battered electric car, not toward anything, it seemed, just away.

Natalia stood on one foot, catching at her right shoe, then took off her left one, staffing both shoes into her purse as she ran after the woman in earnest. “Stop. I will not hurt you!”

But the woman kept running.

Life as a prostitute, which Natalia was more and more convinced the woman was, evidently didn’t breed physical fitness. The woman was stowing down, running clumsily. Natalia starting to overtake her.

There was gunfire from inside the building, but Natalia was committed to this now, chasing down the woman.

Natalia, her pistol in her right hand, closed the gap. The woman, as if on cue in some American monster movie, fell, sprawling into the dirt, and struggled to get up.

Natalia snouted, “Damn’!” as she jumped, catching the woman at the shoulders and knocking her down again. Natalia rolled past her, came up on her knees, pointing the gun at her. “Stay where you are!”

But the woman started running again, evidently more afraid of what she’d seen inside the domicilary unit, than anything another woman could do to her.

Natalia was up, running, overtaking the woman in a half dozen strides, grabbing at her. The woman shook her off, but Natalia grabbed for her again, hauling her off balance and knocking her to the dirt. Natalia dropped on her, Natalia’s

right knee into her abdomen, knocking the wind out of her. And now Natalia straddled her chest, the muzzle of the suppressor against the tip of the woman’s nose. “What do you run from?! Answer me!” “They killed him.”

“Who was killed? The man in the bar?” “Yes. Let me go!”

“Who killed him? Tell me, or so help me I will take you back inside.” “No! Three men. Nazis, I think.” “Why?” “I do not-“

“Why?” Natalia screamed.

“He was selling information to them and they killed him.”

Natalia stood up, her dress torn at the skirt up the side-seam. She looked at the prostitute. “Get out of here or wait until the police come. Someone will have reported the shots. Your choice.” And Natalia turned away from her and started running back toward the building …

The motorcycle was beside the base of the stairs leading toward the second floor and above. Natalia dropped her shoes to the floor, stepping in them, the bottoms of her stockings ripped through. As she started up the stairs, she heard two things almost simultaneously: the sound of a police siren in the distance and the sound of a pistol shot. Natalia ran up the the stairs, trying to pinpoint the sound, passing the second floor, reaching the third floor and noticing a partially open door midway along the length of the corridor.

She ran toward it, her purse slung cross body and back so it wouldn’t get in the way, both hands gripped on the butt of the suppressor-fitted Walther. She slowed as she neared the doorway, moving along the wall now, listening.

She heard voices. One of them sounded like Jessup’s voice, but there was something wrong with it. She licked her hps,

her lipstick gone and her mouth dry. She took a short breath and turned into the doorway.

Bob Jessup was on the living room floor, a gun a few inches from his extended fingers, blood on his hand and covering the front of his shirt. Two men lay on the floor at the other side of the living room, one of them a stranger, the other Armand Gruber. And a third man, evidendy one of the Nazis, stood over Bob Jessup, a pistol in his hand, his body weaving slightly as he aimed the pistol toward Bob Jessup’s head and said in German, “You will never tell what we have transmitted.”

As he made to fire, Natalia pulled the trigger on the Walther. doable actioning the first shot into his neck, the second shot-single action-into the man’s left eye at an upward angle that would strike the brain.

He swayed for an instant longer, then fell back, knees buckling under him and his pistol discharging into the small sofa, a cloud of stuffing rising around the hole.

Natalias eyes scanned the room. There was a high frequency transmitter in an open suitcase on the small coffee table, still turned on, the frequency diode reader visible. She cornmmed the numbers to memory as she crossed the room. The police sirens were louder now. There was a large ceramic ashtray, pieces of something that had been burned inside it, smoke still rising from it.

Natalia dropped to her knees beside Bob Jessup. He had at least two sacking chest wounds and there was nothing she could have done for him without an emergency room staff standing by. She set down her pistol and raised his head. He coughed blood as she rested his head in her lap. “Bob?”

He smiled with his pretty eyes.

Tm sorry-1-~

He winked at her and her cheeks flushed. She leaned over him, kissed him hard on the mouth. He was trying to say something as she moved her mouth away. She couldn’t hear him. She put her ear beside his lips, feeling his hot breath on

her cheek and neck.

And then his body seemed to stiffen and his head lolled back.

Natalia raised her head.

Bob Jessup’s dead eyes stared upward. She thumbed them closed, gently setting his head on the floor.

Natalia stood up, blood all over her dress and her bare arms. Bob Jessup’s blood.

The police sirens were very loud now.

She wondered if she was a curse to men as she stared down at Bob Jessup.

She closed her eyes, shook her head, turned away and walked over to the ashtray. Natalia took the Bali-Song from her thigh and opened it. What had been burned was clearly a magnetic tape, because within the pile of ashes as she stirred it with her knife, was a cassette.

There was nothing marked on it.

Built into the transmitter was a high speed player for audio tape.

Whatever had been on the tape was broadcast at high speed, then the tape burned.

And Armand Gruber had brought it to the Nazis. But what was it?

Natalia looked at Bob Jessup there on the floor, the pool of blood around him still growing, but slowly.

He’d whispered a single word to her. The word was “Cry.”

There were tears inside her for him, but there was no time to shed them.

Natalia ran from the room, along the corridor, down the stairs to the landing, then down the next flight and into the foyer. She mounted Bob Jessup’s motorcycle, kick-starting it as she wrestled the machine toward the door.

She had rwthing to lose except time if she waited for the police, and time might now be very valuable.

She gunned the machine through the foyer, through the doorway and down the steps, gearing up as she saw the lights

from the slow moving electric police cars coming up near the complex entrance. Eluding the police wouldn’t even be a challenge.

Nine

Dodd disliked horses intensely, but they were occasionally necessary here because there were not enough vehicles to go around and, in some places, a vehicle could not successfully navigate the terrain. Despite his work to spur immigration from Mid-Wake, China and Russia, work which Kurinami heartily approved, Dodd had begun a detailed inventory of Eden stores in all the locations so far opened for use. It was inevitable that Kurinami with his duplicate computer records, would eventually send out parties to check the stores farther from Eden, near the nuclear no-man’s land that surrounded what was once the course of the Mississippi.

And then Kurinami would discover that the construction materials were missing, as were the salt dome stored fuel reserves, as were the weapons.

And, eventually, although he had not found it yet, Kurinami would discover the location of D.R.E.A.D.

Something had to be done to prevent all of that, and so Dodd had tried to contact Deitrich Zimmer. Almost surprisingly, Zimmer was already in North America and, after several abortive contact attempts, Dodd was told that Zimmer would be contacting him.

Contact was made. So, Dodd borrowed a horse from among

the two dozen or so the Germans had donated for Eden’s use, had it saddled and rode to his meeting with Deitrich Zimmer, about three miles from Eden, in a rocky defile which had once been a river course but was now dry.

Dodd’s rear end was stiff and sore, and he felt like the insides of his thighs would never be the same. Walking along the defile after tying up his horse was almost a pleasure.

And, as he rounded a bend in the path, he saw Deitrich Zimmer, sitting calmly beside a synth-fuel stove, the smell of hot tea on the calm, cool air.

“Have some tea. Commander.”

“You’ve got to kill Kurinami for me, before he keeps us from getting control of D.R.E.A.D.-“

“Defense Recovery Emergency Armed Deterrent-D.R.E.A.D. WTiat a picturesque name. But even if your nemesis Kurinami locates it, he will be unable to deprive you of it. I have not been idle, you see. While you were unable to reach me, 1 have located the missiles which you so desperately want. Commander, and buried them where no one can find them unless I wish them found.”

Dodd dropped to one knee beside the stove, looking Zimmer straight in the eye. “You cheated me, damn you!”

Deitrich Zimmer was oddly quiet.

“Say sotnethingr

“What is it that you wish me to say Commander?”

“I need those nuclear warheads or-“

“Your plans will be jeopardized? But, you see, I have greater plans. And you have a single choice. You will cooperate with my plans, or you will never leave here.”