Doomsday Warrior 12 - Death American Style (5 page)

“Now I do hope everything is running according to schedule,” Zhabnov said, looking over at his righthand man. “The food has arrived? The tables are all set up?”

“All done, Excellency. I checked on the banquet halls this afternoon. Inspected every one of them myself. The pigs are roasted, the banners proclaiming The New Peace are up, the fifty-foot photographs of the Grandfather—everything is done.”

“And the girls—there are plenty of them, yes? There will be much entertaining to do. Favors to be kept—or given, votes in the Presidium to be parlayed my way. As you know, Boobie, I am next in line for the premiership when the Grandfather passes away.” He looked down mournfully at the ceramic-tiled floor of the elevator, as if Vassily’s death was the last thing he wanted—when in fact it was the first. Zhabnov had enjoyed some things about his stay here in the Americas. But he longed for home. He had been away from Mother Russia for decades now, and was turning into an old man before he had had a chance to sample the pleasures of his homeland. It was not that he hated Vassily—or even particularly disliked him. All things considered, the doddering old fool had helped him tremendously—giving him the post of absolute ruler of the United Soviet States of America, appointing him President.

Gudinov broke the mood as the elevator ascended.

“Yes, the whores are bathed and scented—and waiting. We have four houses full. Nearly two hundred girls in all, with several dozen true virgins. Young ones. Those are being kept particularly well guarded—hidden away. Just the thing your Excellency can use, I would imagine, to get a little influence here and there.”

“Good, good,” Zhabnov said, rubbing his small hands, surprisingly small on such an obese body. “You have the lists of each delegate’s favorite—shall we say—diversion? I trust you will see that they are properly realized.”

“I understand completely, Excellency. You can rest assured that all will be carried out. And reported back to you in full detail, with video surveillance of all important personages’ sex acts.”

“I can hardly wait,” Zhabnov chuckled, rubbing his hands together. Sometimes it was so much fun being President. Fun made it all worth while. All the years of being in this hellhole of a country—with its radioactive wastelands, its Freefighter counter-revolutionaries, its mutants crawling through the fogs. He hadn’t ventured out of Washington for years, not even in the “sealed vehicles,” which he didn’t trust worth a damn, since any time a really strong wind blew up he could see the sand blowing in beneath the seals. No, he stayed here, inside D.C.—in his totally sealed and purified White House and Capitol Building, or in his limousines where his Elite Guards could accompany him everywhere. So that he could carry out his pleasures. For here he had complete control over pleasure. It came to him from everywhere. Food, sex, booze. And the power of life and death.

“And the
best
ones?” Zhabnov asked slyly as they got off the elevator on the second floor of the White House, the antique wooden plankings beneath their feet gleaming with the ancient golden shine of a floor that has lived, has seen the centuries, the feet of the world’s most important men.

“The
best,
Excellency, we have of course saved for you,” Gudinov answered conspiratorially, so that Zhabnov broke into an even wider smile. “The three-breasted virgins you love so, Excellency? We managed to trap a band of them out in the wilds of Kansas. Wild ones they were, roaming free. Stark naked, like animals out there. Cost us plenty of troops. The mutants fight like—”

“Oh don’t worry about the cost,” Zhabnov laughed. “It is a trifle. The important thing is that you carry out your tasks so well. If you have any mansions along the Volga in mind for yourself—they may be closer than you think.”

“Excellency, I am touched,” Gudinov said, bowing slightly toward the portly man who waddled away down the carpeted floor.

This particular hall always gave Zhabnov a sort of shiver down his spine. For it was lined with immense oil paintings of the great Presidents of the past. Before the Great War. Before the Russians had moved in and taken over everything lock stock and barrel. And that included the White House and everything that was in it.

The damned paintings stared down at him. Zhabnov swore they stared. Like those black market pictures he had seen of Christ, whose eyes followed you wherever you went. One had been presented to him once by some slovenly dignitaries from the mountain tribes as a gift. That had amused him—but these were not friendly eyes. Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, their faces so grim and dead. More like zombies than men, like things ready to leap down from their canvasses. Their eyes seemed unusually alive today, almost throbbing with power. It was just the sun—that was all. It was very bright today, the rays streaming through the closed windows of every room in the place, lighting the golden floors, the rugs, the antiques, the tapestries.

Zhabnov tried to stare the paintings down, turning back and forth nervously at both walls, trying to exert his will over the canvasses, as if over a dog. But the paintings won, after just a few quick angry stares, and he pulled his head straight forward, not daring to look anymore, to fall into those accusing eyes, eyes that said “YOU HAVE STOLEN MY COUNTRY AND I WILL NOT REST UNTIL IT’S RETURNED.” Zhabnov had wanted to have them all taken down, destroyed—or at least painted over with mustaches, scars, ridiculed down to size. But the Premier would have none of that! Years earlier, hearing that just one of the precious paintings had been damaged, he had sent strict orders to Zhabnov not to harm an oily hair on a single one of their painted heads. Or it would be
his
head. For the Grandfather was a great student of history. He respected the past, the greatness and power of tradition, of faded glory. Soon his picture would be hanging in some Kremlin spire somewhere. All that was left of him after the flesh rotted in the ground. He didn’t wish to have crudities drawn on his image, and not on these images either.

But if Zhabnov couldn’t touch the “heritage of America,” he could at least add his own favorites. When they reached the Blue Room on the first floor, he relaxed as his pigeony eyes took in his own collection—small children with huge, doelike eyes, so moist and large they were like lakes of overcooked sentimentality into which one could fall and drown in sugary sweetness forever.
Keane
paintings. Original Keanes. He had been one of the U.S.’s top painters a century and a half ago. Zhabnov had read that the man hadn’t met with great critical acclaim in his own time—though he
had
become rich. But the President couldn’t understand why the artist had not been acclaimed for the perfect blend of art and emotion. Besides, they were all of young girls. The thing Zhabnov loved most. He wondered if Keane had done any nudes, and made a mental note to have his art collector check into that.

It had been sunny, fortunately, for days, and Zhabnov, who had been tied up with state affairs, longed to see his garden, too. He went to the door, flung it open.

He could see instantly that his garden was flourishing—his Rose Garden, which surrounded two entire sides of the White House, hidden beneath barbed wire just in case any of the riffraff ever got through the elaborate security precautions. Roses—row after row of them. Roses—the most beautiful things on the face of the earth, as far as Zhabnov was concerned. Red ones and blue ones, violet and pink. Mixed breeds, hybrids that he himself had bred. It was perhaps the one thing he could actually do well, though half of his crops died of rad-disease. He treated those flowers that survived like his children, walking around the rows, talking to them, patting them, spraying here and there as servants walked behind him handing him gardening implements as if he were a surgeon performing emergency surgery.

“Ah, the Rosa Carolina, a hybrid tea rose. I have named it President Eisenhower, after the line of succession, as these seeds originally came from his stock. Did you know that, Frederick?” Zhabnov asked the stooped old gardener who bowed to him now. The gardener would wring his hands anxiously at every visit, afraid that he had done something dreadfully wrong—that Zhabnov would find one of his favorite roses dead, and would consequently have the gardener disposed of as well. There had, after all, been six vacancies in the position in the last eight years.

“What, Excellency?” the Official Gardener asked, hardly hearing the question as his heart was beating so fast.

“I said, did you know that Eisenhower, President Eisenhower, was a rose breeder, too? Even wrote about it. Why, I have his essay on interbreeding cross-continental strains right in my library. I’ll even let you read it someday, perhaps,” Zhabnov said, as if giving some honor to the smocked man.

“I’m very grateful, Excellency,” the Official Gardener said, bowing and sweating profusely. “Very grateful.”

Ah, yes, things were going well, Zhabnov thought as he patted his round belly. He reached down and stroked one particular mix of yellow and pink and red, an odd mix of hybrids that made it look aflame. It was beautiful. And just to show what a generous man he was, Zhabnov would give that flower to Ted Rockson when—and if—the man showed up. The Grandfather would like that, would think it was more subtle than Zhabnov was usually capable of. Yes, maybe he was getting more clever after all. And he’d show his cleverness when—
if—
the Peace Conference convened.

“Put an armed guard around this one,” he commanded the gardener, pointing down to the flaming flower. “I want it guarded twenty-four hours a day—until I cut it. Any man touches one petal, scars or mars it in any way—” Zhabnov looked skyward and the gardener gulped audibly, as did four of his tool-toting lackies, who had left a trail of the implements all along the rows of brilliant flowers.

Zhabnov burped as if to emphasize the idea and then turned and headed back toward the White House. He was getting bored again. And angry. He knew it was anxiety. Anxiety over the coming Peace Conference. It was so important to him that he not appear the fool, that he impress the Grandfather instead of making himself into a dunce. Zhabnov had bitter memories of past meetings where somehow, no matter how carefully he tried to avoid it, he had done something
stupid.
And all eyes had looked toward him, and though none had dared show it, he knew they were all laughing at him inwardly.

He let his mind drift back to the perfect rose he had cultivated. He
was
an artist. An artist of the greatest skill and power. The world didn’t know it. But he did. And it was that which enabled him to withstand the ennui of life in America. “Roses and virgins, virgins and roses,” the President of the U.S.S.A. hummed to himself beneath his breath, hardly aware of the words he was subconsciously muttering like some kind of paeon from his infantile libido.

“Breasts and roses, thighs and roses.” And in his mind, as he mumbled the words and headed for his bedroom to see what little squirming prize awaited him there, Zhabnov knew suddenly why he loved the flowers so. Because they were so pure and clean. Virgins, ready to be plucked,
deflowered.

Five

I
n Yalta, U.S.S.R., the Premier of all the Russias was being wheeled down a long dock covered with red carpet—from his sleek black limousine to the immense ship that awaited him. The fanfare was loud, crowds lining both sides of the area kept back by chain-link fences. Signs hung from wires were strung up everywhere. PEACE IN OUR TIME. THE PAX SOVIET. THE PEACE THAT WILL RULE THE WORLD. Vassily had been telling them all on television and radio for weeks. He would stop all the fighting. The Russian Army would not of course withdraw from its territories. But some autonomy could be granted to the occupied countries. It could all be negotiated. Reasonable men could work out such things. You give a little, I give a little. Or such were the ideas. Such the phrases uttered, the banners drawn, over the Black Sea’s dockside.

“Tired, Excellency?” a deep voice asked, looking down with concern at the frail and aged Premier. Vassily’s face was so covered with liver spots that he looked like he had the measles; foam flecked each side of his mouth. Yet the voice that answered back was somehow firm and clear.

“Yes, fine Rahallah,” Vassily replied, looking up for a second and away from the crowds that cheered him. For the Grandfather was genuinely beloved by many. A benign man, he had limited torture, had allowed a live-and-let-live attitude to prevail—at least a lot more than some of his predecessors had. Thus, some of the cheers were even real. But many eyes recoiled at the Premier’s servant—a black. Tall and broad shouldered with the look of a prince about him, which, in fact, he was—descended from African royalty of the Masai. He wore a white tuxedo with black bow tie and spotlessly buffed black shoes. They had heard of the “blackie.” The rumors were rife that a Rasputin-like man had heavily influenced the Premier—and was nearly in control of the Kremlin. They didn’t like at all his princely, almost
arrogant
air, not even deigning to look at one of them, but just pushing the Grandfather in his wheelchair straight ahead, moving like a leopard down the long red carpet that led right to the water’s edge.

And there, looming over them, stood the largest fighting ship on the planet earth. The
Dreadnaught,
battleship/aircraft carrier/missile launcher—the largest military craft that had ever been built. It had been fitted out originally in the days that first followed World War III, when the Russian navies had sailed the world,
owned
it. But now it had been refitted, modernized; only its 2,567-foot length of three-inch thick armored steel remained from the original—the rest was now filled with electronics, computers, communications centers, and an array of nuclear and nonnuclear weapons systems. All this in addition to a 50-plane megaforce that could take off its long deck and bomb within a range of 1,000 miles.

The
Dreadnaught
was a floating armada all by itself—a death ship. Even Premier Vassily felt the sheer power of the gleaming steel ship. It was Death—death incarnate. The man who controlled such a ship could wipe out a country, let alone another fleet. Vassily—
his
was the hand that could do it. He felt the sheer power of being supremely potent rush through his veins like a drug, and a small smile escaped from his usually tight and hidden lips. The feel of the pure power was better even than the morphine that Rahallah occasionally injected in him when the pains of his failing body racked him too hard even to sleep. But not today. Today the drug was the knowledge of his vulnerability, his mortality.