Survivalist - 15 - Overlord (3 page)

Hammerschmidt’s musical baritone habitually ill-concealed amusement, as it ill-concealed it now. “A wild duck chase, hmm?”

“Goose,” Michael automatically corrected. “But you’re

probably right, Otto.”

“Then where are the Communists going?” It was Maria Leuden who spoke now, her voice musical as well, deeper than a woman’s voice often was, a throaty alto. Michael turned and looked at her. Her gray-green eyes were barely visible above the scarf which swathed the lower portion of her lovely face against the cold, the hood of the parka all but obscuring the dark brown hair except for the few stray wisps which fell across her forehead and caught in an errant gust of wind now as she continued to speak. “Karamatsov cannot be taking his army just nowhere. That would be irrational.”

“Most likely, yes,” Michael agreed. “If he is moving without a definite geographic goal, we’ll all have been operating under a misapprehension, a potentially dangerous one.”

They were near what, five centuries ago, had been the city of Harbin, northeastern China’s most important industrial base. But he doubted any of it would remain now, no gutted ruins.

But Harbin had drawn him. From.his readings in the endless nights of the long years during which his father had returned to the Sleep, he had learned that Harbin had been a “Russian” city in the China of old, the Russians and the industry drawn there by Harbin’s uniqueness as a railhead. He had wondered, when Karamatsov’s line of march had seemed to indicate the direction of China, if somehow Harbin or its environs still possessed something Russian, or Russian lusted.

Karamatsov — the name still filled Michael Rourke with hatred. It was on Karamatsov’s orders, whether directly given or merely established as policy that the suicide raid on the Hekla Community in Iceland had taken place. And as a result of the raid, Michael’s wife, Madison, and their unborn child had died.

His father had spoken little of the desire for vengeance which Michael attempted not at all to conceal. His father,

almost more than he, wished vengeance as well. Karamatsov was Natalia’s husband and tormentor. Karamatsov was a relic of the five centuries ago war which had nearly destroyed all of humanity and which was still being fought. Karamatsov was incarnate evil.

To Michael, Karamatsov was all of these things, but they mattered not at all. Karamatsov was the man responsible for the death of Madison and their baby. For this reason alone — none of the others really mattering—Karamatsov would die. Michael did not desire conflict with his father over the ultimate fate of Vladmir Karamatsov, the Hero Marshal of the reborn Soviet Union, but it would not be his father, John Thomas Rourke, who would kill Vladmir Karamatsov. It would be him. And the desire so consumed him that he was prepared to fight his father for the right.

Maria Leuden’s voice interrupted his ruminating. “He must have a purpose.”

Michael looked at her again. She was obvious about her feelings for him. Love, perhaps, Michael thought. But the memory of Madison Rourke mitigated against that now, perhaps always. There was always sex without love, and he did not dismiss the idea out of morality. There was, though, in sex, the risk of love. And he would not be so destroyed within himself again until he had eradicated the cause of this destruction — forever.

“Otto,” Michael told the captain of commandos from New Germany in Argentina, “signal the gunships that we’re going up into those mountains.” It would have helped, Michael Rourke mused, if he had known what he was looking for.

He looked into the eyes of Fraulein Doctor Maria Leuden, archeologist. What he saw in her eyes—love for him —was not what he was looking for at all. Not now …

Bjorn Rolvaag stroked Hrothgar behind the ears and the massive animal seemed almost to purr, although purring was

not something a dog could really do.

He sat in the back of the vehicle, watching, slightly nervous as he always was in one of these modern contrivances, but less so in this one which bumped and josded over the rocky ground than in those which flew like great ugly birds in the sky. There were birds in Hekla, in aviaries. He understood that they had once flown freely in the skies of the entire earth. A pleasant thing to see, he thought.

He watched the young man who successfully ignored him, the young man an identical duplicate of his father, the great John Rourke, who seemed at once to ignore everything yet notice everything. The boy and the man —both men, though Rolvaag understood not at all truly how father and son could be well less than a decade apart in ages —were as alike as snowflakes falling from the gray winter sky when viewed at great distance. But he wondered, if like snowflakes when viewed very closely, would differences emerge.

Bjorn Rolvaag watched Maria Leuden as well. The German was very beautiful, though he considered the trousers she wore, trousers like a man might wear only tighter fitting, to be immodest. And it was evident, when she looked at Michael Rourke, that she loved him. Bjorn Rolvaag somehow felt pity for her because of that. She spoke to him — Rolvaag— in dulcet tones, the words something of which he could understand precious lhtle. But she seemed kind, and her voice was like the sound of melting ice welling up as cool water and breaking free in the spring. She would stroke his dog, Hrothgar, beneath the chin, behind the ears, the careless attention of her fingers something the animal seemed to adore. There was great love in her.

And for this, he felt all the more the sorry for her. Bjorn Rolvaag closed his eyes, sleeping something that would be required when soon this contraption would no longer be able to go on and they would walk as men were meant to do …

Maria Leuden huddled inside the coat, but the cold came from within her. She glanced beside her as her gloveless left hand stroked the fur of the mighty animal, wolf-like but so much like a child, eager for affection. Hrothgar showed no sign of sleeping, though his master was apparendy of a different mind. The green clad man of Iceland’s lids masked his eyes and his breathing was regular, even. Despite the jerky movements of the vehicle over the roadless rockstrewn terrain, he seemingly slept. She wished she could.

Her eyes drifted forward, settling for a moment on Captain Otto Hammerschmidt, his massive shoulders, his gloved hands smothering the steering wheel. But her gaze shifted. Michael Rourke. His head was obscured by the hood of his parka. His shoulders were equally as massive as those of Hammerschmidt, both men together seeming to be dwarfed by the massiveness of Bjorn Rolvaag who, along with his dog, occupied the rear seat. But unlike Rolvaag, Michael showed no signs of being asleep. And unlike Hammerschmidt, there was a tenseness which seemed to radiate from him even when he sat unmoving, an energy waiting to change from its kinetic state at the slightest provocation.

She had not said to him, “Michael — please make love to me.” But she had let him know in other ways that she wished that he would, would beg that he would if she thought that her entreaties would make him do so. And she felt terribly brazen for this, and at once terribly embarrassed. She had never been what some of the older novels in English which she had read—underground books —called “loose.” There had been plenty of men who had tried to make her their own. She had not wanted them. She wondered if it were somehow poetic justice or divine retribution that the man she desired with all of her being was intentionally cold to her.

But his coldness did not alter her desire.

She closed her eyes. She could see Michael Rourke. Tall. Straight. Dark brown hair, full. The eyes — penetrating.

Dark. His muscles rippled beneath his shirt and he moved with the grace of an animal rather than a mere man. His hands—when he touched her for whatever the reason she felt inside herself something she had never felt before.

If she kept her eyes closed, the image of Michael might remain. And perhaps it would carry her into sleep.

There was an advantage to the dresses worn by the women of Iceland, Annie Rourke noted. Though her mother’s pregnancy was showing, the high waisted dresses Sarah Rourke wore effectively camouflaged her condition. Annie longed for the same condition, but had agreed with Paul that they would not have their first child until the thing with Karamatsov was over.

She felt cheated, having to stay behind while Natalia and even the German girl Maria Leuden went into the field. In part it was to keep her mother company. In part that was the reason that she stayed. But in part it was to keep a Rourke presence in Iceland among the peaceful people who were its inhabitants and the New Germany allies who were its guardians.

Madame Jokli had come to rely on her, in fact, in her dealings with the German commander, Major Volkmer, asking her —Annie —to accompany her when necessity demanded going to the German base just outside the cone of the volcano that walled Hekla against the ice and storm of the arctic environment in which it was an island of warmth and flowers and beauty.

And Annie Rourke looked forward to it as she did now, because the meetings allowed her the opportunity to meet

with Dr. Munchen, Munchen always arranging his appointments so they could talk without interruption, disregarding the occasional emergency.

Annie Rourke had boarded the German helicopter following closely at Madame Jokli’s heels, the President of Lydveldid Island swathed in a woolen shawl which covered the tiny woman from the tip of her head nearly to her ankles and could have wrapped around her at least twice.

Annie sat beside Madame Jokli, fixing her dress, slipping her own shawl down from her shoulders. It was equally as heavy as that of the Icelandic President but Annie, rather than cocooning herself inside it, had felt its warmth re-pressively heavy here inside the cone. But when she disembarked the German gunship, there would be a few moments of bitter arctic cold between the helipad and the heat lights which blanketed as much of the base exterior with warmth as could be arranged. And for that Annie knew from experience, she would need every calorie of warmth.

It was a routine to which Annie Rourke was well used now. As the helicopter rose over the Hekla cone, she surveyed the landscape below through the swirling snow, her throat catching slightly as she spied the patch of ground which was the common cemetery, where Madison Rourke and Madison’s and Michael’s unborn child rested for all eternity. The cross could no longer be seen and she consciously lied to herself that it was merely the altitude at which the German gunship flew and the swirling snow around it which obscured the gravemarker. But it was none of these. She shivered and drew the shawl up about her shoulders and tightened her knees more closely together beneath her navy blue woolen ankle length skirt. For a moment, she had pictured herself lying cold and dead beneath ground that was forever still colder than death itself. It was not a psychic flash —she recognized those when she had them. It was no premonition of her own death. Instead, it was, she realized, her empathy with the dead girl, her

“little sister,” her sister-in-law, her girlfriend, really the only one she could ever remember having.

They had shared their wedding day, worn identical dresses, arranged their hair identically, carried identical bouquets, married two of the three finest men in the world together. And now Madison was dead.

Annie Rourke drew herself deeper into the folds of her shawl, the helicopter starting the downward leg of its arc, the swirling snow parting sufficiently around them that she could see the helipad and the warm yellow of the lights beyond it.

Habit took over. Methodically, her eyes rivetted to the helipad for a moment, then to the movements of the pilot at the gunship’s controls, then alternating back and forth between them. She began to cocoon herself within the shawl, draping it over her hair, swathing it across her chest and folding it back over her left shoulder so it all but completely covered her face.

The helicopter began to hover, then seemed to skid downward —she imagined an unexpected gust of wind—and then settled just over the helipad, touching down. German soldiers in arctic gear ran from the heat lamps and toward the helicopter’s hatchway, wrenching it open, profferring hands to assist Annie and Madame Jokli down from the machine. Annie, though she needed no assistance, took it, waiting despite the cold on the snow-slicked tarmac for Madame Jokli to disembark. Then, together, huddled in their shawls, they walked on the arms of German soldiers from the icy blast into the yellow warmth.

She lifted the double fold of wool from her head and arranged the shawl about her shoulders.

Madame Jokli remained as she was, still apparently cold, Annie passing through the open airlock-like door after the Icelandic President, then stepping over the second flange and at last inside.

In here, she was warm and she slipped the shawl com

pletely down, beginning to neatly fold it, one of the enlisted men saying in poor but sincere sounding English, “May I take Frau Rubenstein’s coat?” It was not a coat and the temperature in some portions of the base structure was at times at considerable variance from the warmth of the entrance foyer.

Annie Rourke Rubenstein smiled. “No—but thank you, soldier.”

He smiled at her.

She followed Madame Jokli along the corridor, an officer—a lieutenant—joining them and ushering them along.

The matters of diplomacy were none of Annie’s concern unless requested by Madame Jokli to assist. There had been no such whispered remark aboard the helicopter this day and so, Annie volunteered, “If it is all right, Madame, I’ll visit with Doctor Munchen while you confer with Major Volkmer.”

“Yes child,” she smiled, her blond hair, her blue eyes, all in concert with the smile somehow.

Annie entered the medical laboratory section off the main corridor and started across it. There were ranks of test tubes, retorts and burners and lab coated men and women, German military and civilian, working here. A few, whose faces she recognized, nodded, smiled, then returned to their work. She returned their greetings, stopping before Doctor Munchen’s office and knocking.

After a moment, the door opened, Munchen tall, rapier thin, his face beaming as it always seemed to when he saw her. “Frau Rubenstein —I anticipated you.”