Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake Read online

  please.”

  Feyedorovitch picked up his chair, righted it, and, almost as though his mind were totally consumed with something else, sat down. “The other man—yes—he— ahh—he was not as tall or obviously muscular as this twin of John Rourke, but he was a very courageous fighter. He—”

  “This other man’s appearance. Was his hair thinning?”

  “Yes—John Rourke and this man who looked just like him had high foreheads, but hair as thick as yours, comrade marshal, or mine. But this other one—he dressed very much like the man who was John Rourke and this other man he fought beside. But his hair was much thinner. Ahh—”

  “Weapons. Did he have a weapon that looked at all singular to you?”

  “It was a submachine gun, comrade marshal. I had assumed that, and after my return from the mission, I consulted with several references and was able to place it as a submachine gun certainly. It looked to have more fluidity in its design than—”

  “Could it have been a Schmeisser, a German MP-40?”

  “I do not know these terms, comrade marshal.”

  Karamatsov sipped at his vodka. “The man you describe—the one with the peculiar gun, is a man named Paul Rubenstein. He is a Jew.”

  “What is a Jew, comrade marshal, if I may ask in order to better understand?”

  Karamatsov indulged the officer. He was, after all, a guest. “Are you familiar with the concept of a God?”

  “I have heard of this, comrade marshal.”

  “Jews believed they had a God who was unlike any other, the true God. Christianity grew out of Judaism when one of their number proclaimed that he was the Son of God, the same God as the Jews had. They were a bothersome race of self-styled intellectuals and in the years prior to the Night of the War, they were quite militant, even possessed of their own country called Israel, although not all of them lived there. This Jew Rubenstein is the

  compatriot of John Rourke. I would very much like to have him as well. But, you say, this Jew fought beside the man who looked just like John Rourke?” “Yes, comrade marshal.”

  Karamatsov poured another small glass of vodka for himself, not offering any to Feyedorovitch, who had still not touched his drink since the toast. “Tell me—were their any detectable differences between this man you say was Rourke and the man who looked like him? You said, I believe, they could almost have been twins. Why almost?”

  Feyederovitch seemed to consider that, his dark eyes shrouded beneath heavy lids. And then he raised his eyes. “The one who fought beside this Jew, comrade marshal— he was somehow—somehow younger-looking. John Rourke had some slight grayness present in his hair, and yet—although I could be mistaken—I recall no impression of this with the other man. But I was looking only from a distance and through—”

  “And you say,” Karamatsov persisted, “that the one you said was John Rourke was killed while attempting to rescue my wife from your Colonel Kerenin?”

  “Yes, comrade marshal. He was to have been executed, but fought his way out of the—”

  “What kind of guns did he carry when he was arrested?”

  “Small, as I said, comrade marshal. And he secured them at some time during his flight from the Marine Spetznas guards and used them unfortunately to great effect.”

  Karamatsov drew his pistol from the shoulder holster he still wore. “Were the pistols dark in color, like this?”

  “No, comrade marshal. The pistols the other one who looked like him had were very much like that weapon which you hold, comrade marshal. But perhaps a little longer. And that other man had a very loud revolving-cylinder gun that was brightly polished. Stainless steel or titanium perhaps.”

  “And the man you claim was the real John Rourke. His oistols were not dark like this?”

  “They were shiny, comrade marshal. The muzzles had very large bore diameters. But they were automatics of a primitive design such as yours—forgive me, comrade marshal.”

  Karamatsov let himself smile benignly. “No, colonel. There is nothing to forgive. This is quite old. It has a story. Would you like to hear it?”

  “Yes, comrade marshal. You honor me.”

  Karamatsov set down the pistol beside the bottle of vodka and sipped at his fresh drink. “This is a Smith & Wesson Model 59, the earliest version of Smith & Wesson’s large-capacity 9mm pistols, unless, of course, one counts the preproduction guns made for use, reportedly, by the American SEALS.”

  “Seals, comrade marshal?”

  “American forces, perhaps in some ways similar to your Marine Spetznas units, only of course dedicated to the furthering of American Imperialism. But this pistol—it was stolen along with several others for use in those days in America—this pistol has been with me since Before the Night of the War. In a place called Athens, Georgia, I met with John Rourke and we faced each other and we drew our guns. He was an American gunman all his life and he ‘outdrew’ me.”

  “Comrade marshal?”

  “The Americans had a peculiar custom on their frontier a century or so before the Night of the War. Two men, both armed, would face each other in the street of their town, and at an agreed signal they would remove then-guns from their holsters as rapidly as possible and each would attempt to kill the other. John Rourke and I did this. He won.” Karamatsov sipped at his drink. “I was so badly wounded that even Rourke, a doctor of medicine, gave me up for dead. But some of my faithful Elite Corps conveyed me to emergency medical aid, then killed the doctor who gave it in order to safeguard my person. I was transported to—” He almost mentioned the Underground City in the Urals, where Soviet civilization had survived for five centuries while the earth had been uninhabitable.

  But it was not time to mention that.

  “The Underground City, Comrade Marshal?”

  Karamatsov sipped at his vodka. Natalia had talked. “Yes. Yes, colonel. There, I was restored to my full vigor and I took personal charge of the Underground City’s defenses, the training of its KGB. And then, I slept. Cryogenic sleep. And I slept for two reasons. I knew that the earth would not be habitable on the surface for five centuries. And I knew that somehow John Rourke would survive the fires which swept the earth clean. And I wanted him. By cruel subterfuge he had subverted my wife from her post of honor and trust. He had made her his mistress, while deceiving his own wife. And I knew that someday I would meet John Rourke again and kill him with this pistol.” He raised the pistol from the table. “You may have deprived me of that pleasure, or you may not have. Someone was here—whether it was John Rourke as has been reported or his son, Michael, it is of little consequence now. Because Natalia will tell me the truth. I have ways of convincing her of the error of her ways and eliciting the truth from her.”

  “We have drugs, comrade marshal—”

  “I have ways older than drugs, colonel.” Marshal Vladmir Karamatsov stood.

  Colonel Feyedorovitch stood up as well.

  Karamatsov holstered his pistol, then looked into Feyedorovitch’s dark eyes. “I will not return with you to your city beneath the waves. I would be placing myself at perilous disadvantage. But I will dispatch one of my most trusted officers to accompany you and retrieve my wife. If all goes well and this matter is carried out in good faith, I will gladly entertain a delegation of your leaders for the purpose of reuniting the Soviet peoples and forming an effective alliance against, as I believe you have put it, our common enemies. Are these terms acceptable? Because they are the only terms I shall allow.”

  Feyedorovitch did not answer immediately and Karamatsov guessed that likely he was forcing the young rolonp.l to oversten his nresr.rihpd authoritv. “Verv well

  comrade marshal. But I can assure you that if you were to accompany me yourself, your safety would…”

  Karamatsov smiled. “Colonel—you show promise. But, there is one thing you must learn. We discuss the future of the world here. I have much to gain from an alliance with your leaders. And they have much to gain from an alliance with me. Such negotiatio
ns are never based on a footing of mutual trust but rather on mutual need. If your leaders perceive that my death would advance their purposes, then, quite justifiably so, they would engineer my death, despite the sincerity of your protestations or whatever you have been told. Just as I would cause their deaths should such serve my purposes. Keep that in mind. And see to it to the best of your abilities that my officer and his entourage return safely with my dear wife. If you value your own life.”

  Feyedorovitch didn’t speak… .

  Michael Rourke’s father always preached the doctrine of planning ahead, but Michael told himself he could not have planned for swimming in the sea toward an enemy submarine when such things as submarines were thought no longer to exist and no submarines had ever existed of such enormous size.

  But he had done the next best thing to planning ahead, compensating for deficient planning.

  The only way to reach the submarine short of stealing the launch which had brought the vessel’s officers to shore was to swim. But the sea would be icy cold. Salt water would damage his pistols beyond repair perhaps but, of more immediate concern, could possibly render his ammunition defective.

  He had compensated for these difficulties.

  The quartermaster tent he invaded now was the answer

  to all his difficulties. Bags made of polyurethane or some

  modern equivalent of it were utilized in field storage of

  some types of comestibles. These looked to be dehydrated

  __ ;„ u„* ~„___ i;i,„i„ ._______ — ti„–––– **~J *— _x

  these bags and wiped their insides as clean as possible, stashing both Beretta 92F pistols in one and their spare magazines in another. He took a third bag and emptied it, dusted it out, and placed both already sealed bags inside the third. His knife sheath went inside this third bag as well. But the knife he kept free. It was stainless steel, and inside the hollow handle there was a small container of lubricant with which he could treat the steel after its bath in salt water. It would be best—if he got that far—if he could find fresh water to bathe the knife in first, but he would have to wait and see.

  The knife was what he had used to gain entrance through the extended and poorly guarded camp perimeter, killing an enlisted man of approximately his own size and then taking the uniform, wiping the blood off the uniform collar with snow. Michael wore that uniform now. But once aboard the vessel, if he made it that far, he would need dry clothes because there was no telling where he might hide and there was no telling the duration of the voyage once the vessel did “set sail.”

  He borrowed from the quartermaster stores again. The KGB Elite Corps personnel had special battle-dress utilities, entirely black, two-piece, not unlike the few sets of battle-dress utilities his father maintained at the Retreat. He took these, fresh socks, and a fresh pair of boots, and used more of the supply of poly-bagged potatoes to provide carrying cases for them that would be proof against the water. Either the Russians provided their own underwear or the quartermaster had skillfully hidden his reserves. Michael shrugged off the concern. He found the modern Soviet equivalent of a duffel bag and shoved everything inside, the Soviet battle rifle and the knife given him by old Jon the swordmaker his only accessible weapons.

  Circumstance—activity in the bustling camp and a large patrol returning, perhaps after, he hoped, fruitlessly searching for Annie, Maria, Paul, and the others—kept him in the quartermaster tent for at least fifteen more

  to exit the tent with his duffel-bagged gear. He moved obliquely toward the sea… .

  Paul Rubenstein crouched in the rocks, his eyes on the solitary guard who stood lazily beside the half-track truck. Paul knew that he had guessed correctly and that Michael was ahead of him. The body of a dead Soviet soldier, his uniform gone, had confirmed that.

  But this guard and his vehicle, perhaps newly in the area and not an obstacle Michael had been forced to contend with, had trapped him here.

  It would have been easy enough to kill the man with a shot from the battered High Power beneath his own stolen uniform, but a shot would have alerted anyone within hearing distance and not only confound his own plans but perhaps Michael’s as well. Where the man stood and the direction in which he faced precluded creeping up on him and using a knife.

  Paul looked at his watch.

  “Shit,” he almost said aloud… .

  Annie Rubenstein and Maria Leuden crouched together by high rocks looking down onto the terrain below, the trucks carrying the gas which drove men insane with murder parked behind them under camouflage netting. The base camp Han had established still stood, but only three of the Chinese soldiers guarded it. Hammerschmidt had insisted, and Han had agreed, that the trucks and the majority of personnel be moved to more commanding ground that could be better defended if the Soviets came. And there was no reason to suppose they would not.

  A radio message could not be risked lest their position be too soon betrayed, and so Han and one of his men had taken horses and set out to rendezvous with the German crew of the J-7V to summon military aid and German cargo helicopters with which to transport the deadly gas.

  Tl -ll A__ 11 L . i_j — i_ - . __ i J l- - .1 * .

  of the gas.

  Maria Leuden, changed back to her own clothes—green slacks that looked like they were made of wool, a heavy sweater, and a lightweight but warm hooded parka— shifted her position, then spoke. “We should have gone with your husband, after Michael.”

  “Paul told me not to—and he was right. The more of us who go in, the more there’ll be to get out. I wanted to go anyway.”

  “And bowed to your husband’s wishes then?” “Yes.”

  “Why?” Maria Leuden asked.

  “If you and Michael had a difference of opinion and it was irresolveable, what would you do?”

  “I—I suppose I would…” And she let the sentence hang with a sigh.

  “Two people with diametrically opposed views concerning the same specific subject can’t both be right, can they? Even allowing for differing perspectives on the problem, in the final analysis one perspective and the perception which it affords will be the more correct one if either of them is correct at all. True?” Annie asked.

  “Yes—I suppose so. Yes.”

  “Then whose opinion should be heeded? And you can’t say the most logical one, because each of the two persons with divergent opinions will automatically consider their own opinion the most logical. And especially if the alternatives are both somewhat irrational. As in this—stay here and wait for an attack or go into the enemy camp to help someone who has decided to take on the enemy leader. So whose opinion should be acted upon?”

  “You mean, in the final analysis, should the woman acquiesce to the man even though she thinks he may be wrong?”

  “I mean that, but not quite. I mean if neither opinion is, as you perceive it, clearly a correct choice, then who in a relationship between a man and a woman should bear the ultimate burden of decision? Say, for example, I had

  result after entering the camp or before entering it or whenever. Even though I was the one who insisted on going, he would still blame himself for not forcing me to stay behind. Or, on the other hand, say I stay behind and he finds that if I’d come, things would have been easier. He’s going to have to bear the burden of his decision either way, isn’t he?”

  “But you will too,” Maria said earnestly.

  “Women don’t have to prove themselves in the same way men do, don’t have to perceive everything as a challenge to themselves in the same way men do. What if I went and because I did, everything worked out perfectly. We’d all be happy with the results, but yet Paul would know that he’d made the wrong decision and that if I hadn’t gone against his wishes everything might well have worked out badly. He’d lose—as a man—either way, wouldn’t he?”

  “I think you are a psychologist, Annie.”

  “When Paul and I decided to marry, I decided one thing. I would always be me, but I wou
ld incorporate into that concept of self what I felt would make me a good wife. I lived with my father and my brother for five years in the Retreat—after Daddy woke up from the Sleep and awakened Michael and me, so he could teach us how to raise ourselves when he returned to the Sleep, until it was time to awaken Momma and Paul and Natalia. I learned a great deal about men in those five years. Michael went from being a little boy to being essentially the man he is today. And suddenly one day it wasn’t Daddy and his little boy, it was John and Michael, two men, competing with each other good-naturedly most of the time. Each time Michael would prove that he was as good as Daddy at something, Daddy would prove he was still a little better. And for a while,” Annie said softly, “I thought it was mean of my father, and then I realized that all he was doing was making Michael just get better and better at everything because Michael still had something to try for, someone to beat.”

  Annie changed position, her right arm getting stiff from

  again. “I heard my dad telling Michael this once. You arm-wrestle with your father until you realize that the next time you do it you might win. And then you don’t do it anymore. Because once you’ve beaten him, you’ll be sorry you did. I guess I looked at it the same way when Paul and I disagreed. If I’d beaten him, I wouldn’t have won and neither would he. We would have both lost.”

  There was movement far off in the distance. A truck or tank. Annie Rubenstein couldn’t tell which. She took up the German binoculars and looked through them, pressing the button to automatically adjust the focus.

  Maria, beside her, said, “If he sends his men against us, and the gas is used, they will all die. Karamatsov could not be so insane.”

  Annie still studied the object through the binoculars. It was a truck. And behind it coming over the horizon was an armored personnel carrier. And then another.

  She said to Maria Leuden, “What if Karamatsov doesn’t send his men—but sends women instead?”

  Chapter Forty-seven

  The trick of entering the Soviet domes, as he had discovered by accident when he had been first officer of the United States Attack Submarine John Wayne years ago, was to capitalize on the one niche of expediency in the Soviet defense posture. Once he had discovered it and escaped with his life, then given over the data to Mid-Wake scientific intelligence, he had been informed as to why it existed.