Empire of Women & One of our Cities is Missing (Armchair Fiction Double Novels Book 25)

by Fletcher, John

  In the rearview mirror I saw the redhead kneeling on the seat and aiming my rifle at the planes overhead. She pulled the trigger again and again, while the hammer clicked against the empty chamber.

  “Let her be,” Pat Thatcher told us. “It may bring her out of the shock.”

  We were at the top of the hill, close to the mountain village of Running Springs. It was not a large village. Half a dozen stores, a tavern, and a tourist lodge. In the hills back of the highway were a number of vacation cabins. I banged on the door of the general store, which was also the post office and service station. When I had no answer, I tried the other stores before I crossed the highway to the tavern. A note, hastily block-printed, fluttered from the door.

  “Running Springs and Arrowhead evacuated. Inquire at Victorville.”

  I walked back to the car. The red-haired girl was crying softly. Her logjam of emotion had been broken. I told Thatcher Running Springs had been evacuated. He got out and looked thoughtfully at the gasoline pump in front of the general store; then he broke the lock and pushed the hose nozzle into our tank.

  Thatcher and I got back into the car. The girl was no longer crying. Mom still sat beside her, caressing her hand; Jim moved into the front seat, between Thatcher and me.

  “I—I want to thank you,” the girl said, “for taking care of me.” She bit her lip to hold back her tears. “I’m Cheryl Fineberg. If we could get through to our house at Palm Springs, we would be able to stay there. We’ve plenty of food and—and—”

  “Your father was the movie producer?” Thatcher asked.

  “Yes. I saw him die. And mother—she threw herself in front of me. She was trying to say something. I saw her lips open. Then—then blood came from her mouth. And father slumped down and the car rammed into something.” She clenched her fists over her eyes.

  “Don’t think about it,” Mom said. “We all lost someone back there.”

  “I won’t give in to it again,” the girl promised.

  I put the car in gear and we wobbled out of Running Springs, driving east toward Big Bear Lake.

  “Jerry,” Mom said. “I just happened to remember: Dr. Clapper has a mountain cabin somewhere near here—between Running Spring and Snow Valley.”

  Thatcher put in, “Clapper took off for the hills before noon; I picked up the rumor somewhere.”

  “Jerry, if we could find him,” Mom proposed eagerly, “I’m sure he’d put us up for a while.”

  “I’d rather take a chance on the Commies,” Thatcher answered.

  Jim Riley spoke up, “I’m sure I smell smoke!”

  So did I. Half a minute later, as we swung around a granite shelf towering over the road, we saw the wall of fire lapping at the pines a mile or so north of the highway.

  “We can’t go back,” Thatcher snapped. “We’ll have to outrun it.”

  “In this junk heap?” I asked.

  I pushed the car faster than I should. Once or twice, on a sharp curve, the shimmying wheels almost sent us off the bank. Yet I didn’t seem to be able to increase the safety margin between the fire and us. If anything, the smoke in the air was getting thicker. The billowing white blanket blotted out the moonlight. The haze and the darkness reduced our visibility to less than ten feet.

  A big buck darted suddenly in front of us. I had no time to jam on the brakes. We hit him. The body jolted under the wheels. I heard the sharp snap of metal; the wheel spun in my hand; and the car lurched out of control into the embankment.

  Thatcher leaped out and looked beneath the car. He straightened slowly. “Well, that finishes the axle; we start walking now.”

  “What about our food?” Mom demanded. “And our clothes—”

  “We’ll take everything we can carry. Jerry, do you know where we are?”

  “We just passed Snow Valley. It isn’t much more than a mile to Lakeview Point, at the top of the grade.”

  “We may be all right on the other side. A firebreak runs along the ridge; if the wind’s right, there’s a good chance the fire won’t cross it.”

  Mom and Cheryl Fineberg took the bundles of clothing, which were lighter. Thatcher and I carried the cartons of canned goods. Jim Riley insisted on doing his part, so we gave him the water thermos. I’ve handled a fifty-pound pack on camping trips and it never bothered me.

  We made very slow progress. When we heard the crackling of the fire somewhere behind us, I was ready to drop the boxes and make a run for it. But Pat Thatcher trudged on without looking back and his courage influenced the rest of us.

  The air sucked in by the heat dispersed the smoke. The moon was clear above us again. Looking back, I saw that the fire had not yet crossed the highway. Then, above the roar of flames, I heard the purr of a motor.

  “Someone’s coming!” Mom cried. “He’ll pick us up and get us out of this.”

  Thatcher said doubtfully, “When it’s every man for himself—”

  We moved to the shoulder of the road as a blue Cadillac swung around the curve. In the red light of the fire, we all saw the driver clearly. A big man, as sleekly handsome as his car, dark-haired and bushy-browed: the somber face we had all seen so often on the TV screen.

  “Dr. Clapper,” Mom said, with a sigh of relief. “Thank God. He’ll help us.”

  She stepped out on the road, waving her arms. It was obvious that Willie Clapper saw her. His face was suddenly torn with a terrible fear. He gunned the motor and almost ran Mom down as he swung past us. A hundred yards beyond, he stopped long enough to throw something out of the car. It burst into flame and the fire fed along the dry carpet of pine needles. We began to run, but long before we reached the spot the brush had caught and the fire was across the highway. Behind us the inferno broke out again and we were trapped in a closing ring of flame. The sound of Clapper’s car receded in the distance.

  Mom stood on the road, the flickering flame throwing distorted shadows on her face. “Dr. Clapper did that,” she said. “He did it deliberately—Dr. Clapper!”

  Thatcher said, “When a man panics—”

  “But he wasn’t frightened until he saw us!”

  Thatcher motioned toward a bluff of bare gravel rising beyond the highway. “We might still pull through if we get under there. Nothing within fifty feet of it will burn.”

  We dropped our cartons and slid down the embankment. We had to cross a deep gully. A tiny stream trickled over the rocks. The water was hot, coated with a scum of carbon particles.

  It was the gully that saved us. We were still at the bottom, sheltered by a block of granite eight feet high, when the sky above the fire blazed white.

  “They’ve dropped an H-bomb on the desert.”

  I heard Thatcher say that in the split-second before the chaos tore loose around us. The earth shook. The bare bluff where we had meant to take refuge came apart and the ground lashed toward us like a wave of muddy water. Instinctively we fell flat in the stream, sheltered by the pile of granite. I felt the water flowing hot against my chest. I heard Mom scream.

  The hurricane of loose earth lashed over us. I felt tiny stones cut across my back. A tree fell over the gully, hung there for a moment, and was whipped away again.

  Suddenly it was over.

  None of us was seriously hurt, although in places our skin had been rubbed raw by the abrasive force of flying soil. I stood up. The air was filled with fine dust. The bluff of bare earth was gone.

  But the blast of flying gravel had turned the front of the fire. The road to the crest was open.

  VII. The City, Friday, 1:30 A.M. Dr. Stewart Roswell

  AN HOUR or more after Maria D’Orlez left my room the door was thrown open again. Marvin Dragen III stood on the threshold, kneading his fat hands together. His two strong-arm boys flung a stranger on the floor. The man—slightly built, graying, wearing a dark business suit—was unconscious, his face badly beaten, his white shirt spotted with blood.

  “I’m afraid I must impose on you, Dr. Roswell,” Dragen smirked, licking his paint
ed lips. “We have so many guests. I’ll have to ask you to share your room. You and Comrade Knight—” He indicated the unconscious man. “—will enjoy having a little chat.”

  When they were gone, I lifted Knight into the chair. With my handkerchief I wiped the blood away from his lips. Still unconscious, he muttered in a hoarse, almost incomprehensible whisper, “Turn the other cheek…the other cheek…” His name sounded familiar, and I might have recognized him if his face had not been distorted by welts and bruises.

  At last he opened his eyes. For a split-second I saw fear; then, a quiet composure. “Dr. Roswell!” His voice was low-pitched and gentle, with a faint undertone of a New England accent. “I didn’t know you were one of them.”

  “I’m a prisoner just as you are.”

  The grimace behind the bruises was meant to be a smile. “They expected me to demonstrate how to turn the other cheek. I’m a Quaker, you see. Religious pacifism seems to be particularly obnoxious to them.”

  George Knight, the Quaker: I knew him then. I had met him once or twice at educational meetings. He had been a banker and later a college president; five years ago he resigned in order to give his full time to the work of the American Friends Service Committee.

  “They sent a young man to bring me in,” George Knight said. “A university student. He had visited the Service Committee once.”

  “It still isn’t clear to me what they want us to do.”

  “They aren’t sure themselves. They’re waiting for a boss of some sort who’s on his way from Moscow to direct the occupation. The general idea is to use us in propaganda broadcasts. My young man showed me the list of names of the men they have imprisoned here tonight. Twenty-five of us, handpicked by Moscow; we each have an unusual prominence with special groups.”

  George Knight went on to name them all. I recognized the names; a few of the men I knew personally. Writers, lecturers, priests, a financier, two industrialists whose farsighted labor policies had set a pattern for business, a judge, a newspaper editor, a Senator.

  “All twenty-five of us have one thing in common,” I told Knight. “We’ve been Willie Clapper’s whipping boys.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. Actually, it was his telecasts that gave us the notoriety we have.”

  “And built up the special groups that give such weight to our opinions,” I added. “An interesting coincidence.”

  “You aren’t seriously suggesting —but that’s preposterous!”

  “Is it? Clapper took each of us out of relative obscurity and made our names familiar to a national audience. And we all live in the Los Angeles area, where they could round us up quickly. Why didn’t Clapper dig out any pseudo-subversives anywhere else in the country?”

  “But he must have—”

  “Name one. In fact, Knight, name anyone Clapper attacked who isn’t here tonight.”

  “Your argument can’t hold water. Willard Clapper’s accusations will nullify anything we broadcast. That wouldn’t make sense, if he had been part of their conspiracy.”

  “The Reds can work around that —if they have Clapper here, too.”

  “I saw the list. His name wasn’t there.”

  “He could come in of his own accord.”

  Far away I heard the sound of an automobile motor. It seemed ominous; the city had been quiet too long. I walked to the window. I saw the open car racing down the boulevard. With screaming brakes it stopped in front of the Dragen mansion. The driver sprang out and saluted, while a tall, uniformed man marched smartly up the walk, followed by four Soviet soldiers armed with submachine guns.

  “I think the Moscow brass has arrived,” I said to Knight. He looked at me, with a strangely intent light blazing in his eyes. Very quietly he answered,

  “It will be Gordov.”

  “Who’s Gordov?”

  “A Soviet general—also one of the top men in the secret police.”

  “The university student told you? But what difference it makes—”

  “A great deal. No one told me who was coming; I don’t think they knew. You could say this answers a prayer of mine. If you prefer a more prosaic explanation, say I’m risking a guess on a good probability. Alex Gordov is one of the half-dozen men the Politburo was likely to consider for this job.”

  “You know Gordov, Knight?”

  “I did, long ago. I’ve watched him climb to the top, over the wrecked careers—and sometimes the broken bodies—of his friends. He learned how to develop those traits so essential to the successful Soviet Man. When I met him, at a hospital in Leningrad, he was a youngster of sixteen—talented, a brilliant mind, far too sensitive for the Soviet pattern. He was a lieutenant in the infantry—at sixteen, badly wounded during the last days of the war. Our penicillin saved his arm from amputation. Gordov was very much aware of that, and it disturbed him a great deal because it didn’t jibe with the American stereotype he had been taught. At the whim of some party functionary, Alex had been ordered to study English while he was in the hospital. He talked to me whenever he could—theoretically to improve his skill with the language—actually, because he was trying to find out what made me tick.”

  “It must have taken a weird twist of dialectic,” I suggested, “for him to fit a Quaker into their version of our society.”

  “Alex had the intelligence to see reality beyond the fancy doubletalk of their party propaganda. He knew aggression for what it was, whether they called it peace or liberation. And he had an amazing capacity for love—in the abstract, Dr. Roswell: love for his fellow man—always anathema to the party. It was that, ultimately, which broke him to the Soviet machine. They did it quite simply. The usual technique: they had a use for Gordov, and they took him over in much the same way they did us tonight.

  “His mother and sister had been arrested as enemies of the people. The secret police arranged for Alex to discover the name of the agent who was responsible. They allowed Gordov to take his revenge. Then he was arrested. The police showed him their file—enough evidence to condemn him to the firing squad. They made the usual offer. Gordov would go free if he agreed to work for them. They threw in freedom for his mother and sister as an added incentive.

  “Alex learned his lesson and he learned it well. Since then he has climbed high, using the same methods of treachery and betrayal. But locked somewhere in his soul, Dr. Roswell, is the boy I knew—his capacity for love; his clear-eyed vision of the truth. I’m counting on that tonight.”

  “But what do you expect to do? What possible influence—”

  “I shall be myself—the man Gordov remembers. I know it won’t be easy. Alex may have to destroy me; as a matter of fact, I believe he will have no other choice. But, whatever happens, it will awaken the memory of the boy in his soul, it will arouse an inner conflict of mind that only—”

  Just then Dragon waddled into the room, followed by his two armed guards.

  “Comrades, I have exciting news,” he said. “The Comrade General from Moscow is eager to meet my guests. If you would be kind enough to come along with me—” He paused, frowning and fingering his lower lip. “But we do want to make a good impression, now, don’t we? The Comrade General mustn’t think we have bourgeois notions of class superiority.”

  He moved toward Knight and ripped off the Quaker’s tie. When Knight moved back involuntarily, the guards snapped out their guns. “I expect your complete co-operation,” Dragen remarked petulantly. “Stand at attention, please, Comrade Knight.”

  Knight and I were pushed into the hall. They took us downstairs into the living room.

  Four Soviet soldiers, armed with submachine guns, lounged against an ornate table. Dragen and his two guards left the room again. One by one they assembled their twenty-five prisoners.

  Dragen was reciting the familiar Communist cliches when the Soviet General entered from the hall. He was a tall, powerful, swarthy man; brooding intelligence—the crafty wit of expediency—flashed from his eyes, but his face was an impassive mask. A single
medal swung from his tunic, the Order of Lenin. He had a bottle of vodka in his hand and from time to time he drank from it liberally.

  And this, I thought, was Alex Gordov? This was the man George Knight hoped to move by the simple sincerity of his Quaker faith?

  The General paused at the door, speaking crisply in good English almost without an accent to someone beyond my line of vision. “It’s up to you to locate him,” the General said. “Get him here; we don’t accept excuses. At noon, I want to put this circus of intellectuals on the air.”

  Dragen had broken off his tirade when he saw the General. He made an ingratiating gesture and spoke to us in a fawning whisper. “Comrades, may I present your commanding officer—General Anton Zergoff.”

  I risked a glance in Knight’s direction. I saw that his face had gone white; his lips were moving silently.

  Zergoff took a pull at his bottle. He walked slowly along the lineup of prisoners. “I’m afraid I disappoint you—one of you, at least,” he announced in a hoarse, parade ground bark. “Let me set your minds at ease immediately. General Gordov has been—” A slight pause for effect. “—taken care of. He expressed a reluctance to command the occupation when he saw the list of intellectuals we planned to recruit. Before his execution, General Gordov was persuaded to make a full confession. He has been an enemy of the people for years—since he was sixteen. One man was responsible, one of you—one man who had the power to reach into the highest ranks of the people’s government and force a Soviet General to betray the revolution.”

  Anton Zergoff turned to face us, his feet spread wide, his face savage with rage. “Now it is my privilege to meet this pig—this stinking agent of capitalism; I shall personally supervise his re-education. Where is the Quaker who calls himself George Knight?”

  Unhesitatingly Knight moved out of the rank of prisoners. There was a gentle smile on his battered face. He said softly, but in a voice we all could hear,

  “So Alex remembered, God works His will in strange ways.”

  VIII. The Ridge—Friday, midnight until dawn. Jerry Bonhill