Survivalist - 22 - Brutal Conquest Page 4

  turning her around abrupdy to face him. “Look. Maybe you don’t want my approval, but you’re getting it anyway. I love you. I have since the first time I saw you. But it wouldn’t work for us. Sure, if things had been different … but they weren’t. We can still be friends. We can still have that kind of love. I’m happy for you and I’m happy for Michael. And maybe when Sarah awakens, comes out of it …” His words slowed, as if somehow they were recorded on a machine and the electricity were dropping off. “When she has that—that operation.” He sniffed, and she saw tears forming in the corners of his eyes. “Maybe … maybe Sarah and I can just live like two—two—”

  And he started to turn away from her. Natalia broke free of his hands, threw her arms around his neck, and drew his head down. He bent it toward her easily.

  She held him.

  Natalia knew the words he had been about to say. They were her dream, too.

  The words he couldn’t say without weeping were simple words, ordinary words. But they did not apply. She doubted they ever would to John and Sarah, to Paul and Annie, to Michael and herself, either.

  Normal people were the words.

  Normal people from the era in which they were born had all died one morning, except for those who were already dead or those who hid within the ground to die and raise another generation to die, and so on for centuries.

  Normal people died… .

  Michael Rourke listened. Gunther Hong talked.

  “We can turn this thing with Rourke to our advantage, Martin. You should see what the Herr Doctor thinks about it.”

  “How do you mean?” Michael asked noncommittally.

  “Well, I mean, Babinski and his lieutenants know about Rourke, and of course the women taken from the Babinski’s people. And I’m sure there are some others, but once he’s taken care of … well—”

  “Well?”

  “Well, I mean, I don’t see it as detracting at all from the messianic thing you and Dr. Zimmer are planning. I mean, anyone who has seen him will think he’s seen you, except those few who know. And we can always liquidate Babinski. Like we talked about, if he becomes bothersome, we test a warhead out there. There’d be litde to lose in country like that. Wait until the winds are right.”

  “Messiah,” Michael Rourke repeated.

  Gunther Hong laughed. “It is interesting, Martin. You’ve got to admit that. I mean, maybe this will push up the timetable a litde bit, but, hey … He couldn’t possibly realize it, of course, but John Rourke is almost helping you out. And the son, too. There’s the body you need.”

  Michael didn’t say anything.

  He shifted in his seat to cover the effect of the chill, which ran along his spine.

  8

  Deitrich Zimmer’s right eye moved over the computer screen.

  On the hard disc, he had every bit of data that he felt was extant concerning the life of Dr. John Thomas Rourke. Like he himself, John Rourke’s doctorate was in medicine. But Deitrich Zimmer doubted that their skills could at all be compared. In the Twentieth Century, when Rourke had learned the trade, medicine had been little better than sophisticated witch-doctoring.

  And John Rourke had once been a case officer with the American Central Intelligence Agency. There was no telling how good Rourke was at that, but that he lived to leave the occupation at least said something for him. Rourke was a survivalist, prior to what was universally called The Night Of The War. He wrote and taught survival skills to military and police personnel around the globe. And he was a weapons expert.

  Rourke was a peculiar man, his apparent tastes hardly describable as merely eclectic. The music in The Retreat ranged quite literally from Beethoven to the Beatles. One of the books Rourke liberated from The Retreat upon his return to the land of the living was Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. The book was banned in Eden, of course. Martin should have pulled that copy as well.

  Deitrich Zimmer had met John Rourke once, more than a century and a quarter ago. Their meeting had been very brief, taking place in a hospital corridor. And their meeting had been very violent. At the time, he had wanted John Rourke dead and thought that goal had been achieved. It turned out otherwise. Zimmer still wanted Rourke dead, and he would correct past errors in due course in order to achieve that goal now, one hundred twenty-five years later.

  But in those intervening years, John Thomas Rourke had slept.

  John Rourke had sustained injuries in that corridor, which had nearly claimed his life. Had it not been for cryogenic sleep, those injuries would have ended Rourke’s life.

  Cryogenic sleep’s peculiar side effect, Zimmer himself discovered through his own experience, was physical rejuvenation. Even though cryogenic sleep was not some mythlike fountain of youth, which would have been wonderful, it did erase much of the toll of the years, strengthening the body and the mind to go on even stronger than before.

  At the time of that encounter in the hospital corridor, a few moments before Martin was born to Sarah Rourke and Deitrich Zimmer shot her in the head, Zimmer had been thirty-four. He took cryogenic sleep twelve years later.

  In those twelve years, Deitrich Zimmer had meticulously raised young Martin as his own son, his finest experiment. Escaping with the boy after killing the fortuitously available second infant, Deitrich Zimmer found asylum in a modest but adequate encampment that he had prepared as a last refuge. The site was in a remote portion of what was once known as Brazil.

  With the assistance of several loyal Nazi comrades, he

  accomplished the required genetic surgery to alter the Rourke child and make him his own.

  The result proved to be all he had hoped it would, except for Albert Heimaccher’s tendency toward petulance, which Martin unfortunately displayed. And, perhaps, that had been a characteristic of Adolph Hitler as well. Some accounts alluded to the trait.

  The result was a boy he raised as Martin Zimmer, with the mental and physical capacities of John Thomas Rourke spliced to the genes of the greatest leader in human history, Adolph Hider. Heimaccher, the source of the genetic material, was a direct descendant of the Fuhrer through the Reichskinder program. After twelve years of intensive education utilizing the most dynamic techniques then available, it was time for them both to sleep.

  The seeds of change were planted in Eden, and as Deitrich Zimmer had hoped, the intervening years allowed those seeds to take hold and flourish.

  Deitrich Zimmer had awakened eighteen years ago. And he had awakened Martin Zimmer, his son now, in order to complete the boy’s education and make him ready for power. Although Deitrich Zimmer’s age was best calculated at sixty-four, according to comparative data, he was as fit as a healthy man of fifty. And this was adequate to his purpose as counselor to the new Hitler.

  Cryogenic sleep not only rejuvenated the body, but in direct proportion to the duration of sleep, it prolonged the life span. Perhaps John Rourke suspected that.

  Rourke slept five centuries between what was commonly called The Night Of The War and the period in which the great war between the Allies and the opposing Soviet culture was concluded. Then Rourke slept for another century and a quarter.

  The effect of six hundred twenty-five years in cryogenic sleep on a human body such as Rourke seemed to . possess could not be calculated. The computer model Deitrich Zimmer constructed indicated strongly that barring catastrophic illness or violent death, John Rourke would live well beyond the normal human life span, maintaining youthful vigor for a vasdy extended period of time as well.

  What if each year lost were a year gained? Zimmer’s body shuddered with the thought.

  And the same scenario, more or less, held for the rest of the Rourke Family.

  And then there was Sarah Rourke, young Martin’s mother.

  Try as he had since his own return to life eighteen years ago, Deitrich Zimmer found himself unable to locate the cocoons in which the sleepers rested. But he knew there were two more. In one chamber slept Sarah Rourke, a bullet lodged deep within her brain. As long as John Rourke lived, Deitrich Zimmer wanted Sarah Rourke to live as well, but not a moment longer.

  Because John Rourke had to know that the only man alive who possessed the surgical skills and techniques sufficient to remove the bullet was the man who had put it there. And that man could not be killed. To do so— for John Rourke to kill him—would be to sentence Sarah Rourke to sleep forever in something like death, perhaps even worse than death.

  The remaining sleeping chamber held the odd man out.

  Colonel Wolfgang Mann, field commander for the victorious Allied armies, was that man. Why had he abandoned the adulation of New Germany for the uncertainty of cryogenic sleep? Did he lust after one of the women? What was the answer?

  But the survival of Wolfgang Mann provided an excellent opportunity for revenge. Mann, with the considerable aid of the Rourke Family, toppled the National Socialist regime of New Germany, and under Deiter Bern, there was established a democratic republic dedicated to stamping out forever National Socialism as the driving force of New Germany.

  That form of government still endured in New Germany.

  And Nazism in New Germany was all but extinct today.

  That, too, would change.

  Deitrich Zimmer glanced through the file. There was data concerning John Rourke’s relationship with the Russian woman, Natalia Tiemerovna. But there was also data indicating that, while John Rourke had slept, in the relatively insignificant period of time before his Family joined him, the Russian woman and Rourke’s son, Michael, became lovers.

  As much as Zimmer would have wished, he did not consider it likely that he could use this development to drive a wedge between father and son. At best, they might hate each other privately but never question being allied against anyone perceived as their co
mmon enemy.

  And there was Annie, the only daughter of John and Sarah Rourke, wife of the Jew Paul Rubenstein. From what Deitrich Zimmer had learned of her, she possessed many of her father’s skills. And Annie Rubenstein had the peculiar ability that was referred to in the literature as Remote Viewing. Evidently, if the data was correct, she could see things that by all logic and reason she should not be able to see, through the use of her mind alone. If he could get her, he might experiment with her before killing her.

  But her husband would die instantly, of course.

  If there was an emotional link involved with her Remote Viewing capabilities, it might prove enriching to observe her reactions as Paul Rubenstein was killed.

  There was a slowly growing Jewish population on the earth again. Deitrich Zimmer vowed to correct that. Some Jews had remained clandestinely practicing their faith in the Soviet Underground City in the Ural Mountains. Mid-Wake, the American citadel beneath the sea, had included Jews in its population as well.

  Despite his being a Jew, Rubenstein was very clever, Deitrich Zimmer was perfectly willing to admit. But clever Jews died as surely as dull ones, Zimmer smiled to himself.

  Clearly, when he succeeded in killing John Rourke, he would have to kill Michael Rourke and Natalia Tiemerovna and Annie and Paul Rubenstein at the same time.

  Otherwise, the four surviving members of the Rourke Family would become even more formidable enemies than before.

  There came a knock at the door of his laboratory. “Enter.” It was Grundig, his general assistant. “Yes, Grundig, what is it?”

  “Herr Doctor,” she began, “there was a crisis, but it has been resolved.”

  “I am happy to hear that, Grundig. Its nature?”

  Her eyes were wide behind her round rimmed glasses. “Your son—”

  “Martin!”

  “He is all right, Herr Doctor. The Rourke Family invaded the stronghold of the Land Pirates. Your son was kidnapped… .”

  “He was-“

  “He escaped. He returns even now to Eden City. He sustained no serious injury.” Deitrich Zimmer lit a cigarette. Curiosity drove people beyond normal bounds. So did revenge.

  Deitrich Zimmer knew this from personal experience. Revenge and curiosity were his life force.

  9

  John Rourke was reminded of the collection of buildings in a muddy middle of nowhere that was the motion picture setting for Jack Schaefer’s superb novel, Shane.

  Mary Ann’s home was not a town but rather an outpost of humanity. And barely that. A few buildings— seven in all—almost stared each other down across a wide, empty street that was like a gulf between them. Rather than mud there was snow, and although there were no vehicular tracks in the snow, there were hoofprints of shod horses.

  “I see them,” Natalia murmured, referring to the prints.

  John Rourke stopped walking.

  He stood about fifty yards from the nearest building. “Mary Ann?” “Yeah?”

  “Who lives here? A father and mother? A husband?” “My old man.

  Rourke caught Natalia’s eye. Then he looked at Mary Ann again. “Is your old man your father or your husband?”

  “My old man,” she reiterated.

  Natalia said, “I assume you’ll go in from the front. Why don’t I circle behind the buildings just in case?” “Right,” Rourke nodded. He touched Mary Ann’s elbow and she started ahead, toward the wide street and

  the seven buildings. If her “old man” were neither father j

  nor husband, then what was he? I

  John Rourke was already cold, but he removed the j

  glove from his right hand as he started to walk, then the

  glove from his left… . •

  I

  The German assault rifle she carried was reminiscent ( to her of the short M-16, the XM-77. The barrel of the j German rifle was twelve inches in length, the buttstock i collapsible. It fired a modern caseless rifle cartridge, but | the overall dimensions were more submachine gunlike in j proportion. ‘

  The stock of the rifle extended, Natalia Anastasia I Tiemerovna moved along the scrub brush toward the rear faces of the four buildings on the north side of the street. As difficult as it was was for her to comprehend, the rear of the structures were even uglier than the front faces had appeared.

  She was as close as she could get to the nearest of the buildings, which might be some sort of livery stable. There was a corral behind it, but no animals were in evidence. ,

  Natalia started running, favoring the straight-line-is-j the-shortest-distance-between-two-points theory rather ) than the zigzagging pattern. She had always been a fast { runner, usually able to oudast and outdistance most of the men she’d known.

  But Michael could outrun her.

  She liked that.

  And she thought of Michael Rourke now. She was in love with him, totally. At first that had frightened her, j confused her. And she understood the almost slavish ! manner in which Michael’s dead wife, Madison, had

  treated him, the same way his longtime mistress, Maria Leuden, had behaved. There was something about Michael that made a woman want to yield to him.

  She was afraid for him now, afraid that the terrible risk he took pretending to be Martin Zimmer might cost him his life. And she was afraid for herself as well, because she would be desolate if he left her.

  He was his father’s son, but he was unique unto himself. Where John was reserved, Michael was wild. She realized that if she had somehow been John Rourke’s lover Before the Night Of The War, he might have been like that. Both men had endured the terror and death, but Michael, unlike herself or John, was perfectly innocent of any of its cause.

  And, perhaps that was the difference.

  She reached the rear wall of the building. It definitely was a livery stable. There was smoke filtering through between the slats, likely from a cookstove or something similar, and with the smoke came the smell of manure.

  There was an almost religious quality to the guilt she felt, which she knew John felt, too. To a lesser degree, Paul also felt it. Unlike Annie and Michael, who were children of The Night Of The War, she and John had been part of the opposing forces that had brought the war about. And Paul, although not in what was euphemistically called “the game” by some, was on the sidelines, as was every adult in the world. If one didn’t try to prevent the unthinkable from occurring, then one was part of the reason that it did occur.

  If she and John were guilty by sins of commission, then Paul felt himself guilty by sins of omission.

  In this world, there were only four people who could have that guilt, and one of those was Sarah Rourke.

  If John was right and there was a God, then why was Sarah Rourke on the edge of death?

  Natalia closed her eyes for an instant, then opened them sniffing back a tear.

  Michael had made her feel alive again, and she did not want to lose him, lose that… .

  Michael Rourke cursed his lack of formal education. He knew so litde about computers, beyond the comparatively simple machine at The Retreat, that he could do no more than turn on Martin Zimmer’s unit. He could not access any of the files.

  “Damnit,” he muttered under his breath.

  Inside that computer would almost certainly be information concerning Dr. Deitrich Zimmer. And Deitrich Zimmer could well hold Michael’s mother’s life in his hands.

  Michael Rourke left the desk with its computer console and walked along the near wall of Martin Zimmer’s almost ridiculously spacious office.

  The only thing that pointed to Zimmer’s Nazi leanings was a small brass globe—or maybe it was gold—which was placed on a shelf in the large bookcase before which Michael Rourke now stood. Atop the globe was a small, almost meticulously delicate swastika… .

  The building at the near end of the four structures was a livery stable.

  The building beside it seemed to be some sort of pub-he house.

  Mary Ann, bolder up until now, cowered by the low, wide doorway. “What’s the matter?” “My old manll be in there.” “Don’t you want to see him?”

  “Yeah, but-“

  The unfinished sentence hung there in the air between them. And John Rourke suddenly understood. Sarah or Annie or Natalia would have read the reaction an instant sooner, he realized. She was afraid of her old man … that somehow he would punish her for being gone.