by Ahern, Jerry
“I’ll come to my point then, hmm? So—you are a
young man. You have just lost your wife and unborn child. You are filled with hatred. I simply thought it might be best if we were to talk.”
Michael Rourke shifted slightly in his seat, anticipating the conversation, already disliking it.
“I consider your father and mother, though I have only known them a short time, to be among my friends. And since your father is not here, and I have witnessed the grief experienced by your mother, I felt perhaps we should talk.”
“Counseling?” Michael asked, not smiling.
“Call it that if you will. What are your plans?”
Michael Rourke shifted his eyes from the eyes of Doctor Munchen, studying his cold weather gear. “What would you do, Herr Doctor?”
Munchen laughed. “You are your father—but in some ways I think you are not.”
Michael looked at him, letting his eyes smile. “You didn’t answer me?”
“All right,” and Munchen lit a cigarette, offering the case toward Michael first who refused with a shake of his head. “Very well. I would blame the so-called Hero Marshal. I would also anticipate Herr Doctor Rourke’s reactions once radio silence can be broken or he otherwise learns of your wife’s death. I would think that you are even now planning to precipitate some action which will allow you to get to Karamatsov first.”
“Very good,” Michael almost whispered. “And very correct. I am working under a few handicaps my father doesn’t suffer, however.”
“Since our base’s construction was begun, you have been taking instruction in flying a helicopter. I understand you seem naturally gifted and are doing well, extremely well. That soon you should be able to fly one of our machines with great skill and relative
ease”
“Just the excellence of your country’s training, Hen-Doctor—that’s the only reason I’ve learned fast. I’ve been soloing since the day of the funeral.”
Munchen was silent for a long moment. Then, “You are planning a personal mission against Karamatsov.”
“Right you are. If I can borrow a helicopter for the purpose I will. Otherwise I’ll steal one.”
“You are admirably frank, sir,” Munchen smiled, stubbing out his cigarette, getting up, coming around to the front of his desk, leaning against it. His boots shone above and below the discolorations from the snow. “What sort of mission, Michael?”
“Punitive,” Michael smiled.
“You wish to find Marshal Karamatsov and kill him before your father can.”
“That’s the spirit of the thing, yes,” Michael nodded.
“Hmm,” and Munchen raised his right hand, the fingers splayed. And as he spoke, he lowered the fingers, ticking off item after item. “You have been studying German—doing well there also I understand. You have been reading all the military manuals in our library.”
“I’m afraid I understand only a little—I’m about at the talented six-year-old stage with your language.”
“What sort of operation do you plan?”
Michael mentally and physically shrugged. “My father and Natalia and Captain Hartman are looking for the entrance to the Underground City in the Urals. But the last intelligence data I heard through Major Volkmer was that Karamatsov was heading for the Mediterranean—what used to be Egypt. Karamatsov’s private plane, a large number of his troops, some heavy equipment. While my father is looking for the
Underground City, I’m going to Egypt. It’s not all selfish, although there’s nothing wrong with selfishness if the concept is properly understood. If Karamatsov is going there, he must be going there for a reason. The desert is probably as forbidding as it would have ever been. Can’t be going there for his health. If we could contact my father, he’d be going there too. We need to know what’s the reason. I’m going to find out—and if I can kill Karamatsov in the process, all the better.”
“Will Paul Rubenstein be going with you?”
Michael shook his head. “Mom’s pretty washed out—and so’s Annie. Somebody from the family has to be here for when my father finally contacts us. Anyway, the fewer people go, the fewer people get killed if it goes wrong.”
Munchen seemed to be reflecting on this. Michael stood up. “I’m running late for my last lesson, so to speak—unless you plan to pull the plug on it. But like I said, if I have to, I’ll steal a helicopter.”
Dr. Munchen shook his head. “No—I have discussed what I had, it turns out, correctly assumed your plans to be—discussed these plans with Herr Colonel Mann. He too has fears that Marshal Karamatsov is going to Egypt for more serious purposes than seeing if the Pyramids somehow survived the Great Conflagration. And for that purpose, he applauds your desire to pursue this information, despite your bereavement—” Michael stared. Munchen was more complex a man than Michael had supposed. “It is for this reason that I recommended that Herr Colonel Mann secure the consent of Deiter Bern, that you be shown all possible aid. To that effect,” and he raised his voice. “Come in, Captain Hammerschmidt!”
Michael wheeled toward the door leading into the
corridor. It opened. A man, tall, gaunt featured, muscular, his face well-tanned, making the eyes bluer than Michael imagined they really were, entered the room, doffing his peaked cap, a shock of close-cut blond hair showing. Following him into the room was a woman and following her six other men, one of them a sergeant, big, burly, a seamed face that was set in a half smile. The woman was tall, nearly six-foot it seemed, thin. But despite the height, she wore medium heeled shoes and her posture was erect, not an attempt to disguise above average female height by slouching—he had seen that in films with his father’s videotape machines, read of this anomaly in books— that tall women somehow considered themselves at a disadvantage and, consciously or unconsciously, tried to reduce the appearance of height. This woman did not. Brown hair, the color not spectacular or memorable, simply brown. He couldn’t see her eyes clearly— she wore glasses, round-framed, dark-rimmed. The hair hung loosely, almost disorganized but neatly combed. It was past shoulder length. The clothes she wore only seemed to accentuate the appearance of height and thinness—a long, straight skirt that came nearly but not quite to her ankles, the material heavy, like wool, a brown tweed. She wore a sweater, long sleeved, the length almost that of a short skirt, the sweater overly large for her, drooping down at her left shoulder, the sweater gray, a gray blouse visible beneath it, the collar of the blouse tied into a loose bow at her throat.
“Herr Rourke, may I present Captain Otto Hammerschmidt.”
Michael Rourke took a step forward, as did Hammerschmidt and they exchanged glances first, then handclasps, Michael finding the grip firm, solid—it went with his first impression of the man.
“Herr Rourke, may I further present Fraulein Doctor Maria Leuden, our greatest living expert on Egyptian culture as it existed since its earliest beginnings until the Night of The War.”
Michael looked at the woman—her left hand moved to her glasses, brushed back a strand of the straight brown hair—there was a touch of red in it in the light beneath the overhead fixture. And the eyes were the closest in color he had seen to his mother’s eyes, gray-green, what some called hazel. “Fraulein Doctor,” Michael nodded, taking her offered hand—there was strength here too.
“Herr Rourke,” she smiled, the smile guarded, the voice alto. “I’m afraid the good Herr Doctor,” and she nodded toward Munchen, “exaggerates my abilities.”
Michael released her hand and looked at Munchen. “I am a great admirer of American popular music from the latter half of the twentieth century. There is a song,” and Munchen looked down at his boots, then, his face lighting, he smiled. “Something like, ‘I get by with a little help from mein friends—my friends’,” and he gestured toward Hammerschmidt, the six soldiers with Hammerschmidt and Fraulein Doctor Leuden. “Your new friends then, Michael!”
Hammerschmidt spoke, “If I may, Herr Doctor, Herr Rourke—” Munchen
nodded, Michael watching Hammerschmidt. “It is the opinion of Colonel Mann that Marshal Karamatsov has some sort of hidden weapon. The Herr Colonel discussed this matter with your father,” and Hammerschmidt nodded toward Michael. “Colonel Mann further believes that Marshal Karamatsov’s expedition to the Egyptian desert is in some way related to this hidden weapon. There would seemingly be no other purpose to it.”
Michael Rourke studied Hammerschmidt’s eyes, then looked to Doctor Munchen. “And what about
my purpose?”
Doctor Munchen’s eyes no longer smiled. “If the killing of Marshal Karamatsov can be accomplished, I should think so much the better? Hmm?”
The girl sat down in the chair Michael had vacated, crossing her legs, taking a pack of the non-carcinogenic cigarettes the Germans had from the right pocket of her skirt, a silver cigarette lighter from the left, lighting it, exhaling a thin stream of gray smoke through her mouth and nostrils, but saying nothing.
Michael closed his eyes, nodded his head. “All right—well do it.”
His eyes still closed, he heard Munchen’s voice. “Bravo!”
Chapter Three
Michael Rourke stood alone beside the bed. It was cold, forbidding to him now. He didn’t think of Madison every waking moment, because he planned his revenge for her death, the death of their unborn child. But he realized something—that soon, if he survived, his vengeance would be sated by the blood of Vladmir Karamatsov.
And then there would be nothing left but to remember.
The loss of all the children he had played with, gone to school with before the Night of The War. It had never been personal to him—there had not been time to think of it. He remembered the Jenkins family—the murder of the father, the suicide of the mother unable to cope with the horror, leaving her own child an orphan, his own mother taking the Jenkins girl and finding her a home while they had continued their search for John Rourke.
Death to Michael Rourke had become an impersonal thing inflicted upon the enemy, and there was no shortage of enemy. He had killed his first man before he was ten, stabbing the man in the kidney with a boning knife to save his mother from what he realized now would have been forced oral sex and then rape. He had killed during the defense of the Mulliner
farm house.
Killing, but never experiencing death.
He sat on the edge of the bed.
Gentleness—that was Madison. And gentleness in this world was more doomed to extinction than mankind could ever be, Michael Rourke thought.
On the top of the dresser were his weapons.
The dresser drawers were empty, his own clothes that he would take packed, Madison’s clothes given to Annie and to his mother. He had kept nothing of her except her memory—he had no picture of her. And her wedding ring that she had given him, hers buried with her and their unborn child. He studied the ring on his finger. It was of stainless steel, high in nickel content, one of two, made for them by old Jon the swordmaker.
Michael turned the ring on his finger—he felt the tightness starting in his throat and chest again and he stood up, shaking his head to clear it.
Old Jon the swordmaker had given another present to Michael the day of Madison’s funeral.
The former scientist, his ancestors for generations workers of steel, had crafted for Michael a knife. Michael withdrew the knife from its pouched sheath now, the pouch fitted with a whetstone, one side fine grit, the other side coarse. He turned the knife in his hands, the bowie patterned blade nine inches long, two inches wide, a quarter-inch thick, the handle tubular shaped, six-inches long, more than half its length hollow. The blade gleamed only dully, sandblasted. “I have made a knife for you, Michael Rourke,” old Jon had said out there in the snow, withdrawing the plus fifteen inches of steel from the rags in which it had been wrapped. “Before what you and your family call the Night of The War, there were things called knife shows, if I have the term correctly.
My ancestor at that time would visit each of these shows that he could in his travels. When he would see a blade that seemed somehow out of the ordinary, he would ask its maker the permission to take a photograph. It was that way with this blade.” And old Jon had taken from the pocket of his heavy overgarment a piece of paper. He read from it. “It was in a place called Texas and he met a man named Crain. In this case, my ancestor,” and his blue eyes looked toward Michael’s through the swirling snow, “became friends with the maker and eventually purchased one of the knives.” And Jon consulted his paper again, a lock of white hair falling across his forehead. “It was called,” he read, “a Life Support System I.” He looked up from the paper. “After the Night of the War, when things were settled here, when my ancestors could again resume their craft, the knife was copied. There seemed to be no way to improve upon it and the design has been passed down. The blade is hand ground from bar stock—440 C stainless. The hollow handle is machined from a solid block of steel. The guard is double quillon style, three and one-quarter inches long, a quarter-inch thick with holes drilled into each side of the guard for lashing the knife to a pole for use as a spear. The original Crain knife, I understand, had the handle wrapped with nylon cord—this is not available here. Perhaps your German friends would have this. The sheath is made to fit the knife, out of ten ounce leather, and vat dyed so the black color will remain fast whatever you do. You will need such a knife if I read the look in your eyes correctly.”
Michael Rourke had embraced the man, words of thanks failing him. The spine of the blade was sawtoothed for emergency cutting of rope, wood or wire. He had secured two hundred pound test braided line from the Germans, let Jon show him the tech
nique for binding it over the handle so both ends of the line would be properly secured without a knot. He had filled the three and seven-eighths inches of storage space with water and wind proof matches, water purification tablets, monafilament line for emergency use (it had once been called fishing line), a magnesium stick for aid in fire starting and other incidentals that might prove of survival utility. There was room in the pouch which carried the stone for a split ring ended wire saw, of the type once called commando saws and useful for sawing limbs or as a garrote. His father had long ago taught him the principles of knife fighting, and as with his martial arts, he practised the katas daily when conditions allowed.
His knife, his pistols, his M-16, his other gear. Michael Rourke looked at his wristwatch, like his father’s a Rolex, but a Sea-Dweller rather than a Submariner, black faced, luminous, simply waterproof to greater depths. As a child, he had swum well—he supposed the skill would return if needed.
Once more he stared at the bed.
It was time to go. Paul, Annie, his mother would be waiting to bid him good-bye.
Michael Rourke slipped on the double shoulder holster with the Beretta 92-F military pistols. He unthreaded the belt of his Levis, threading onto it the sheath for the Life Support System I knife, the Milt Sparks-like four pack for the Beretta’s magazines, the magazines in place. He picked up the knife, staring at it once more. He sheathed it, secured the safety strap, tied the lace which gave it added security in the leather.
He caught up his pack and the rest of his gear, including the arctic gear. He would need it not at all now—he wouldn’t be out in the cold now except for a moment.
Michael looked once more to the bed he had shared with Madison, then left the room …
Paul had taken his gear to put it aboard the helicopter, Hammerschmidt at the controls; the woman, Hammerschmidt’s sergeant and the five enlisted men already aboard. Michael stood, his arms folded about his sister Annie. “I love you, even if you are my sister—ya know that?”
“Uh-huh—I wish you weren’t—”
“I’ve gotta, Annie.”
He felt her nod as she stepped back, still holding his hands. She was pretty—she was always pretty though he had never told her that. Her long hair, darker than the honey blond color of her childhood, the shawl draped about her shoulders, th
e high necked, laced ruffled white blouse and ankle length dark blue skirt, clothes that were the fashion here. “You take care of Paul and take care of Mom— okay?”
Annie licked her lips, nodded only.
He looked at his mother. Like Annie, the long skirt, the blouse plainer, no shawl, her hair shorter than Annie’s hair, pretty—she seemed ageless, looking almost like a sister to him, to Annie, in biological age Sarah Rourke not even old enough to be his mother but for the tricks his father had played with the cryogenic chambers, allowing Michael and his sister to age to adulthood, making parents and children contemporaries.
Michael opened his arms, his mother rushing into them, crying as he hugged her against him.
“I did this all the time—all the time with your father—and now you,” and her voice choked off.
“I’ve gotta, Momma.”
She said nothing, just closing her arms about him, holding him. “Be careful.” She leaned up to him, smiled, tears filling her eyes, kissing him on the mouth, then nodding her head, the smile broadening. The tears welled from her gray-green eyes and streaming down her cheeks. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Michael whispered.
He kissed her cheek, Annie beside him too now, his arms enfolding them both. He whispered, “I love you both,” and then started toward the helicopter, its rotor blades turning lazily, Paul standing at the doorway. Like Michael, Paul had not adopted the fashion here—no loose fitting trousers, baggy-sleeved shirt, high boots. Paul dressed as he always seemed to—a light blue workshirt like Michael’s father habitually wore, faded Levis, combat boots.
Paul Rubenstein ran his left hand along his high forehead and back, into his thinning black hair, the hand stopping. Paul smiled, looking down suddenly at his boots, his voice lower than it was usually. “Gonna miss ya, Michael.”
“Take care of Mom too, huh?”
“They’re as safe as a synagogue,” Paul laughed. “Church to you.”
“Right. I know why you’re Dad’s best friend—I think you’re mine too.”