Survivalist - 21 - To End All War (7 page)

Paul spoke. “One thing that was an inescapable reality of the Cold War, Michael, and is a reality now: The primary mission of submarine warfare changed in the period following World War II, when submarines had been utilized only to attack and disrupt shipping and surface maneuvers. Any such roles after the advent of submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles became secondary to the primary mission of attacking land-based targets.”

“You see,” John Rourke picked up, “the mission of the submarine during the Cold War and in our present situation is to stay hidden. Its conventional weapons array is primarily for the defensive context, so it will uninhibitedly be able to maintain its primary mission goal of being in position to launch its missile battery against land-based targets. Its very mobility is the threat … that it can’t be neutralized before launch. During the Cold War, sophisticated satellites and other monitoring devices were utilized on both sides to track enemy submarines and plot their positions for interdiction in the event of conflict. Although doubdessly there’s still quite a bit of satellite material still in orbit, even if it were functional, there’d be no way in which to utilize it for tracking. German aircraft haven’t the ability to cover the entire Pacific, let along all the world’s oceans, in search of enemy submarines. If the Soviets elect to launch a thermonuclear conflict predicated on the invulnerability of their submarine fleet, regardless of the morality concerning the effect on the planet, the logic from a military standpoint is impeccable.

“Mid-Wake,” Rourke went on, “has historically fielded a smaller fleet, and its submarines have no such nuclear delivery capability. Our only prayer in the event the Soviets elected to utilize SLICBMs against us would be the Mid-Wake fleet taking out the Soviet fleet. The chances for effectively accomplishing this task without one missile or an entire missile battery being launched would be so low as to be incalculable.”

“Are you saying, then, Dr. Rourke—John—that we have lost before the war has begun?” Wolfgang Mann asked, his voice strange-sounding.

“No,” John Rourke told Mann, Dieter Bern, and the other Germans. “I’m saying—we’re all saying—that we need to strike before they can strike. And, even at that, our chances for success are very slim. That’s the reality of the

situation. The Soviet presence near Mid-Wake in the Pacific has become the wild card, gendemen. If the Soviets of the Underground City can manipulate things so there is a coordinated offensive incorporating land forces and the Soviet submarine fleet, we’re in very deep trouble.”

This had to be the crucial meeting, because it was being held in the official hall of the triumvirate—three very tired-looking old men—the rulers of this Soviet civilization beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

Nicolai Antonovitch sat at the conference table, his eyes drifting over the gray-black marble walls and toward the long desk that dominated the far end of the vaulted chamber. Pillars—of marble or whatever the substance was—supported the roof structure. The desk was empty now, nor did anyone sit behind it. When he had first come here days ago, and after days of negotiation there on the surface, first on the platform, then inside one of the monstrously sized Soviet submarines, he had seen the three men.

They reminded him of Party officials from five centuries ago, the men who had worked behind the scenes and behind the backs of the leaders who had realized the absurdity of global war. And they reminded him of the leader of the Soviet Underground City.

Possessed by their own ability to wield power, they were its prisoners.

Here, Soviet society had crumbled to almost a Stalinist military dictatorship. And the citizens had been relegated to the status of workers within a colony of ants or bees.

No one here besides him had ever seen an ant or bee, because no one here remembered the old days … had endured cryogenic sleep carrying him from the horror of the present to new horrors in the future.

He had once been a loyal Communist and in his heart still believed in Communism. It was the men who practiced it, who ruled through it, who were the ones that corrupted it. But, did not mankind corrupt all that it touched?

And Antonovitch suddenly wondered what he was doing here.

He had come for the sole purpose of effecting an alliance that would bring about the destruction of mankind. He knew that, just as surely as he knew that if he did not do this thing, the next man behind him would forge the alliance in his stead.

And the woman, Dr. Svedana Alexsova.

She sat opposite him, chatting gaily with the Soviet military leaders, and each night slept in his bed. But he would not, at least in the figurative sense, turn his back on her. She served the State and herself. He was only her tool.

Behind the desk the wall of marble was smooth, but he knew that set within the wall was a door, all but seamless. And he watched for the three men to emerge from that portion of the wall now.

And then the final round of talks would begin.

They would share the power, thus dividing the Earth that would be the spoils of this war to end all wars forever, because there would be no one left alive to fight another war. The situation would have been humorous in a black comedy sense, a group of vile little boys planning to divide a ball into segments after playing and winning a game that would destroy the ball forever.

But no one understood that as he did.

To them, the chance of destruction was a risk to be taken.

To him, destruction was not a risk; it was a certainty.

There was to be a formal dinner tonight, Natalia was told shortly after their arrival. The people of New Germany in Argentina did not utilize money, but rather—like something out of the science fiction novels so popular in the twentieth century—a system of credits, hence credit cards. Such a credit card was presented to her, and identical ones—save for the names and registration numbers—were given to Sarah, Annie, and Maria.

Sarah and Maria had gone off together, and Natalia was now alone with Annie—alone save for the seemingly thousands of other persons milling about the streets and byways of the German city.

And to Natalia, after all this time, any sort of crowd was difficult to adjust to.

She wore the only “decent” clothes she’d brought with her, having thought more along the lines of fighting than shopping, and for once saw some advantages to Annie’s more normally formal attire. Except when situations demanded otherwise, even in the field, Annie wore a skirt. As they walked down the street a friendly policewoman had directed them toward, Natalia looked at Annie and smiled. “Isn’t this absurd?”

“Shopping? You used to be able to shop. I’ve never been able to shop. What do you do?”

“Well, you walk around the store and pretend as if you’re disinterested, but always politely disinterested. A salesperson comes up to you and asks if you need help. You tell her you’re just looking, and she tells you to call if you need any assistance. You keep walking around and then the saleswoman comes up to you again, asks what you’re looking for. You tell her in general terms, and she immediately shows

you something she thinks would look perfect for your purposes. Then you tell her you’re still just looking around, and you eventually find something you want to try on. Well, then you find the saleswoman and she shows you where to change, and when you come out, wearing it, she tells you it looks lovely on you.” “What if it doesn’t?”

“That’s why they have mirrors,” Natalia laughed.

Michael Rourke considered his options as he cleaned his pistols. All of his options, of course, were predicated on survival of the coming battles for the domination of the Earth. But, if his side was victorious, then what?

He was a grown man of thirty years old, and he had no truly marketable skills other than those related to warfare. He had, ever since his father had awakened them, spent five years with them and then returned to The Sleep, telling himself that, someday, he would be a doctor … a doctor like his father.

Michael Rourke wondered now if that would ever happen.

And New Germany made his concerns all the more real. Because here, in New Germany, was probably the finest medical school on the present-day Earth. Even without competition, it was more advanced by far than anything that had existed in the days his father had attended school.

And here, in New Germany, Maria Leuden was in her familiar surroundings, where she belonged.

He loved her, but did he belong here? Could he belong anywhere?

And did he love her enough?

For the thousandth or millionth or billionth time, Michael Rourke opened his wallet and studied one photograph there … Madison, beautiful in her wedding dress, standing beside him.

He had always thought she looked like the popular concept of an angel, and now she was among them, apart from him forever; or, if there was a Heaven and by some fluke, with all the death and destruction to his credit, he was admitted there, apart from her until his death.

In an odd way—a way in which he somehow felt ashamed for even considering—he was somewhat comforted that she was not alone. Their unborn child had gone to death and to the grave with her.

He’d sometimes pictured himself if, somehow, Madison had died after the birth of their child. What would he have told his son or daughter about its mother?

He would have told the child, he knew, that she had been incredibly lovely, incredibly gende, incredibly loving, and that she had returned to the place of her origin, with the angels, where she waited, watching over them.

Tears filled Michael Rourke’s eyes, and he sat down on the edge of the bed in his room and whispered her name. But “Madison” didn’t sound quite right, because his throat was so tight, so choked.

The two women pausing before the shop window looked more or less like all the other women on the streets of the city, except perhaps that they were prettier than most. One of them —the tall one with the almost black, just-past-shoulder-length hair, wearing a white blouse and nearly ankle-length khaki skirt, and carrying an enormous black cloth shoulder bag—was exquisite. She was Major Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna, Committee for State Security of the Soviet. The other one had dark honey-colored hair that was much longer, cascading to her trim waist. She reminded him of photos he’d seen in history books of the decadent twentieth-century hippies of postwar Germany and America. Her dress, as long as the major’s skirt, was an explosion of autumnal colors. And peeking out from beneath its hem were boots. A long, wide scarf was draped over one of her shoulders, in a red so deep it was almost the color of blood. She carried a purse but somehow looked awkward with it. Otherwise, she was as beautiful as the darker-haired major, just more litde girl-like, less sophisticated-seeming.

Perhaps there was, in fact, a means of accounting for this Annie person’s marriage to the Jew, Rubenstein. Did the blood of an equally inferior race flow through her veins … that of gypsies? He had thought gypsies extinct, but supposedly they had such wild looks and wild ways about them. The Annie person was laughing.

He nodded to Carl, who watched from the other side of the street. Carl removed his hat, ran his fingers back through his thinning hair—the signal —and moved off.

He watched the two women for a moment longer. With the shoulder bags they carried, they might well be armed.

That would make no difference. Carl was not a pleasant fellow, but he was very efficient at killing. It was Carl who had assassinated the wife of the traitorous Wolfgang Mann, not far from here really, killing two of the traitorous Dieter Bern’s soldiers in the course of his escape.

Carl, indeed, had a knack for his work … enjoyed it.

The two women had moved on and now paused before another shop window, talking, both laughing, it seemed. And then the one who fornicated with the Jew, Rubenstein, did something with her clothes, turning around a full three hundred sixty degrees. Then both women laughed again. They hugged each other briefly as they laughed. Lesbians? That thought amused him.

Then the two women went inside the shop.

He watched the shop for a moment longer, then walked away… .

“Ohh, I like this—for you, I mean,” Annie enthused. She looked at Natalia’s pretty blue eyes, her face. But Natalia was looking at the dress rather oddly. “Don’t you like it?”

“Annie, I just don’t think it’s me, that’s all.”

“You’d look sensational in green.”

“The beadwork … I mean, I just don’t think so.”

Annie nodded. “You want to look more like a princess than a party girl,” Annie said. “Fine. Well both look like princesses.” And she took an off-white formal from the rack, swept it in front of her dramatically, and threw her left arm up and back. “Ohh, my dear, aren’t we just too divine!”

Natalia laughed, saying, “Be serious a litde or well never find anything in time to wear tonight.”

“Right,” Annie told her, suppressing a giggle. Her eyes caught a movement just beyond the window there on the walkway. Why was a man staring so intendy into a dress shop? He walked on.

“What’s wrong?”

“Some guy outside, that’s all.”

Natalia turned around and glanced toward the windows. “I don’t see him.”

“Never mind,” Annie told her. “Ohh, look at this!” She took another dress from the rack of formals. It was blue, very plain, very elegant. “Talk about princesses,” she said.

So far, Natalia had spotted five men, and she was tempted to go to the first German policeman or soldier and report it. But if there were to be an attack and it would be unfocused because it occurred off schedule, many innocent lives might be lost.

Just because someone—a soldier or a police officer—carried a firearm, there was no reason to suppose that person would be wonderfully proficient in its use. She and Annie could have left the shopping area, gotten themselves out of harm’s way. But postponing the inevitable was nothing she’d ever relished, and if an attack were aimed at them, a similar attack might be aimed at Sarah and Maria.