by Ahern, Jerry
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.
Chapter Thirteen
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 post
poning 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.
So, the thing to do was force the situation.
For that, she needed to make both Annie and herself appear as irresistibly vulnerable as possible —and very quickly.
The store was called “Olga’s,” and had, by far, the finest selection of any they had visited.
There was a beautiful white dress, but Natalia had no tan and the color would only have made her appear paler than she usually looked. She found the perfect thing in black, and despite her height, it seemed as though with a few quick alterations it would be ideal.
Annie had found a dress as well, also in black. “Ohh, we shouldn’t-“
“It will be fun, wearing the same color. Let’s try them on,” Natalia volunteered. There were closedike booths at the rear of the store, with doors similar to those used in restrooms, the doors starting about eighteen inches off the floor so the legs of the person behind them were visible.
The entire booth was constructed similarly, freestanding in a block side-by-side, each sharing a common wall with the next. They were positioned just a short distance from a rear wall of the shop, behind which probably lay some sort of storage area. The idea that had come to Natalia when they’d first entered the store was now something she was certain of.
They started toward the changing area, Natalia whispering under her breath, “There are five of them, I think, and they’ll try to kill us while we’re changing. You’re wearing boots, so you’ll have to be the maneuver element.” They stopped beside a table and examined junk jewelry. “When we get into the booths, we’ll be side-by-side. If we can’t get two next to one another, well find something else to look at and wait. When we get inside we talk, just loud enough so that anyone listening will know we’re inside. You get out of your boots and leave them standing in the exact center of the space, so anyone looking from the front will see them … think you’re in them. Ill keep talking to you after you’ve left and let my skirt drop to the floor.”
“Where am I going?”
“Crawl out under the back wall of the booth, lose yourself in the racks, and get a position of concealment from which you can observe the entrance and the booths. When the men rush in, open up on them and I’ll open fire from the booth. Well have them in a crossfire, neat and clean.”
“You could get killed.”
“Don’t worry; then I wouldn’t get to wear this dress.” “All right,” Annie agreed.
There were two booths side-by-side. Natalia and Annie walked toward them, entering them but not too quickly. Natalia closed the door behind her. “Annie?” Natalia said in a voice just loud enough to be noticeable.
“Yes?”
“Do you still have those black pearls?” Annie didn’t have any black pearls. “And I brought them with me, too!”
“Ohh, good! They’d look wonderful with your dress or mine.” Natalia looked toward the floor. Stocking-footed, Annie was crawling out under the back partition. Natalia kicked out of her shoes. “You know, it was really good luck coming in here, Annie.” She had the suppressor fitted stainless steel PPK/S American out of her purse, hanging it by the trigger guard on a hook on the partition nearest her right hand. She unbuttoned the waistband of her skirt, thumbed it down over her hips, and shrugged the garment to the floor around her ankles. She reached into the neckline of her blouse and tucked the solitary spare magazine she had for the PPK/S into the cleavage between her breasts. “I wish we’d known about this banquet tonight. I don’t even have any good shoes. We’re going to have to find some, Annie. What?” She paused for an instant, as if listening to Annie. “That’s a good idea!” She had one of the two evening gowns in her left hand (the one she wasn’t planning on buying, just in case it took a stray bullet) and her pistol in her right hand, the litde .380’s slide mounted thumb safety up and off. “Ohh, all right, you can use it, but I thought you didn’t like that scent.” She hoped, if the men were already in the store and listening, her conversation sounded vacuous enough. She peered through the crack between the door and the side wall, and she thought she saw men’s shoes near a rack of hostess skirts.
And then Annie, from about twenty feet away, to the right and nearer the front of the store, shouted so loudly she could have awakened the dead, “Now, Natalia!”
Natalia kicked the stall door open and threw herself left and down, going into a roll as the first shots came. Annie’s .45 boomed earsplitting in the confines of the shop, the chatter of an M16 starting as Natalia came up on her knees. Four men were clearly visible, a fifth on the floor already dead. Natalia’s right hand raised instinctively as she pulled the Walther’s trigger through double action and shot the man with the chopped-down Ml6 through the right temple.
She swung the muzzle of the PPK/S, Annie’s .45 and Natalia’s .380 discharging almost simultanously, killing a third man holding a Beretta 92F in both hands as he was just turning to fire on her. The last two men broke for the doors.
Annie fired, then fired again, one of the men pitching forward through the window glass and onto the sidewalk. But he picked himself up, stumbling into a run at the heels of the other man.
Natalia was already running after him, jumping over one of the dead men, careful of her stockinged feet as she ran past the broken glass into the pedestrian walkway. The few private vehicles were already knotting into what would pass for a traffic jam here, and jaws dropped as faces turned toward her … a woman in a blouse with only the bottom part of a silk teddy covering the lower portion of her body, a gun in her hand; Natalia, never considering herself an exhibitionist, laughed at the thought. The wounded man tripped and fell, pushing a pistol toward her as a female pedestrian near him screamed.
Natalia moved into a crouch and held the Walther in both hands as she fired. The sound of the suppressor-fitted pistol’s report was best compared, she’d always thought, to the sound she’d first heard five centuries ago while posing as an American housewife on an assignment for the KGB. It sounded identical—to her, at least—to the loud plop made when one cracked open a tubular package of oven-ready biscuits against a countertop.
She fired again, then again, hitting the man in the throat and the left eyeball, all three shots killing ones.
The last man turned toward her and fired. Natalia dropped to the pavement, running her nylons as at least two shots sang past her. Annie screamed from behind her, “Watch out! He’s got a hostage!”
Natalia was changing magazines for the PPK/S as she rolled over the curb and into the street, coming up on both knees, the pistol at maximum extension of both arms.
“Don’t!” Natalia shouted to the fifth man.
The last of the assassins sent against her and Annie, thinning hair visible under what these days passed for a man’s fedora, held the muzzle of a Beretta 92F to the head of a woman about Natalia’s own age, the woman very obviously pregnant and very obviously terrified.
Police and soldiers were filling the street, orders barked in strident German, the assassin unwavering as he held the woman before him as a shield. Annie, stocking-footed, was walking forward slowly, her ScoreMaster .45 held in a point shoulder position.
A German officer shouted to Natalia, ordering her to drop her weapon. Natalia shouted back to him in his own language. “I am Natalia Tiemerovna! Do not interfere here or your Colonel Mann will hear of it! Dispatch personnel to locate Sarah Rourke and her party; there may be a similar assassination team ready to assault them. Do it now!”
And she proceeded to ignore his further protestations as, slowly, she got up from her knees, the muzzle of the Walther still aimed at the assassin’s head. “Damned hat,” she murmured under her breath. Without the hat, she could have gotten a clear enough idea of the actual size of his head so she could shoot him there. “Annie! Come up slowly and keep to your side.”
“Right”
The assassin, in surprisingly good English, shouted to h
er, “If you attempt to—”
“To do what?” Natalia screamed back at him. “Youll kill her? Then youll die! If you don’t lay down that pistol now, then you will die. If you do lay it down, I promise you your life—if you cooperate.” She was trying to read what kind of man this was. Was he insane enough to kill the pregnant woman hostage and go down in a hail of bullets? Or was there enough rationality left to him that he would take this one chance? If she could keep him talking, even just a litde longer, there was always the chance he might surrender, but a better chance still that she could make a killing shot.
The Beretta he held … how had they gotten these American military weapons that had been stored for the returning Eden Project? The Beretta was cocked, his right first finger inside the guard and resting against the trigger. A shot to the elbow would have the best chance of success against an involuntary reflex triggering the shot to the head of the hostage.
“I will kill her, Fraulein Major!”
“Then I will kill you. You are not dealing with police, the military, anyone in this but Annie and me. We don’t negotiate, listen to demands. You will surrender or you will die here, Nazi!”
“Don’t come any closer!”
Natalia felt that she was close enough. “Let her go and you live; my word as an officer!”
There was indecision in his eyes.
But Natalia had decided. “Annie!”
As Natalia called Annie’s name, to momentarily distract the assassin —she hoped —she triggered the shot from the Walther, the bullet striking the underside of the man’s elbow, the Beretta flying from his grasp as the pregnant woman screamed. The assassin fell back, his left hand sweeping up from under his jacket.
Natalia had wanted him alive. There was no choice now, her body already moving, her right first finger already squeezing back against the trigger. The PPK/S discharged, Annie’s .45 firing a microsecond after it. The assassin’s left hand held a second Beretta. He triggered a shot into the sidewalk in the same instant that his body rocked back, a bullet hole where his right eyeball had been and a second wound in his throat just under his chin. Natalia’s second bullet hit her original target, the man’s right temple.