The Quest

by Jerry Ahern

  He crossed past the semicircle of men on the edges of their seats, rounded the corner of his desk and plopped into his chair. He leaned forward across the leather desk top, then pushed off his shoes, his white stockinged toes splaying against the carpet under them.

  “We all are aware,” he began, looking at no one in particular, “that the complete military occupation of the United States is impossible at this point in time. Those fragmented units of American, British, and West German troops and others are still making life in Europe miserable for our forces. China is holding its borders and we are holding ours—a land war with China, gentlemen, would be madness. I am convinced we would never have occupied this land if it weren’t for the fact that we need the industrial output possible from the still-standing factories— weapons, small arms, tanks, food, chemicals. And this—” and he hammered his fist on the desk top— “is our primary mission in the United States. I em­phasize this because many reports have come to me that it seems instead we are bent on the total pacification of America. That is not within the realm of possibility at this point in time—regardless of of­ficial line, it is not!”

  He leaned back and stared past the men. “I have decided to take personal charge of the fine details of the plan for civilian pacification. It is a limited plan to achieve limited and realistic goals, Comrades. Since the restarting of vital industries and their pro­tection from sabotage is our most important goal, we shall act accordingly. I shall borrow something from the psychology and experience of the very people we are attempting to control—and I emphasize control. Control! I have signed an order establishing what can best be called forts, military outposts designed to be as largely self-sufficient as possible, like the American frontier outposts we have all seen in the American Indian capitalist exploitation films. We—” he leaned forward, raising his first finger on each hand, staring briefly into the eyes of each of the men in the semi circle before him—“we will be the cavalry! Our functions will be simple—to prevent the rise of organized resistance and protect the civilian population as well. Notice that: protect the civilian population. There are bands of blood thirsty brigands prowling this land, killing and looting. We must prove to the surviving American civilian population that we are not out to facilitate their ex­termination; we must protect them from these brigands, and at the same time we must realize that some of these brigand forces could become the kernel around which massive armed resistance can grow. As a formal resistance movement de­velops—and much of my intelligence information in­dicates this may already be happening—we must be so actively engaged in protecting the American peo­ple from these criminal brigand elements that we can lump together these resistance fighters with the lawless brigand elements and combat them all. We must not let resistance become a popular movement as it did in Afghanistan, or years earlier as it did for the Nazis—” he almost spat out the word— “as they fought the French.”

  For the first time one of his subordinate officers, General Novadkhastovski, spoke.

  “Comrade General,” he began, then his face softened into a smile as he glanced around the room. “Ishmael. We are to protect these people?”

  “That is right, Illya, we will never, not within our lifetimes at least—” he stared past his old wartime friend to the bony mastodons in the main hall near the fountain beyond— “but if we can make them see that their safety,” he stopped, realizing he had skipped an entire portion of his idea (he was getting old, he sighed) then backtracked—“we will never get them to like us, to willingly accept our rule, but if we can at least make them rely on us for their safety we will have won the most major of psychological bat­tles. And, as long as the brigands are roaming free, we too must worry about their harassment. These gangs of ruffians are heavily armed and kill without mercy. They are animals.”

  “It is wise, I think. You are right, Ishmael.”

  Varakov nodded to his old friend. Such a thing for the man to say was worth more than an official commendation; he valued the man’s mind.

  “Thank you, old friend,” Varakov said. “The first of these forts will be established in northeastern Georgia.” There were smiles because of the similarities in Soviet Georgia and American Georgia—but in the name only. “It will be charged with patrolling northeastern Georgia and the Carolinas and extending to the Atlantic Coast.” And then Varakov laughed. “We have given Florida with its sinkholes, forest fires, diminished water table and rising coastline, etc., to the Cubanos. And as our loyal allies we wish them well!”

  There was a broad round of laughter, even Varakov’s usually reserved secretary smiling, almost blushing as she sat on the small chair by the side of his desk taking notes on the meeting. As the laughter subsided, Varakov cleared his throat, then began again. “This fort will be located in what I under­stand is one of the oldest universities in the United States. I would encourage that this structure remain as unaltered as possible. If we appear to show respect for what the American people themselves respect, perhaps we too can gain some of this respect, if not affection.” Then Varakov looked at his secretary, saying, “Call in Colonel Korcinski. We need him now.”

  The young woman got up, smoothing down what Varakov thought was an overly long uniform skirt, then walked across the open-walled office and out to the main hall. She returned in a moment, following discreetly behind Col. Vassily Korcinski. The Col­onel was middle-aged, white-haired, handsome to the point of effeminacy, Varakov thought. He leafed through Korcinski’s service record file—airborne qualified, wounded twice in combat, married with two teenage sons in Moscow. They were still alive and had survived the American attack, the file noted. Varakov wanted no man in a position of authority with a personal vendetta.

  Korcinski stood at attention before the desk, and Varakov nodded to him, saying to the assembled staff officers, “Gentlemen, the Commander of our first outpost!”

  Chapter 7

  Natalia reeled under her husband’s blow to her left cheek. His knuckles were bloodied. She stared up at him. She started to her feet, saw his hand com­ing for her again, and tried to raise her hand against the blow, but he knocked her right arm away with his left hand and his right fist crashed down against the side of her face. She sprawled back across the couch, somehow feeling indecent that her robe and nightgown had bunched up past her hips. She looked at Vladmir’s eyes, watched him watching her, felt the tears welling up in her eyes, then shrank back as she saw him undo his uniform belt and draw the heavy leather from the trouser loops. He picked up the vodka bottle.

  “I have decided, Natalia,” he said, his voice low, edged with tension and trembling. “I will have you and that way I will know if someone else has had you.” He tilted the square bottle upward and she watched the colorless liquid pour from the narrow glass neck into his mouth and his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. She edged back along the couch, pulling down at the hem of her gown.

  Karamatsov laughed, throwing the half-empty bottle across the room, then reached toward her. She tried to push away, edging back. Then his right hand clenching the belt, swung back past his left shoulder and slashed downward, and she screamed as the leather stung against her legs. She cringed, burrow­ing into the couch, feeling the sting of the leather on her bare behind, then feeling her husband’s hands pulling her up. She was on her feet but looked away from his eyes. He had been like a father, yet a lover, her leader as she grew into her womanhood, the only man to have her. Now she could not look into his eyes. She felt the belt swish lazily against her flesh and his hands at the neckline of her gown, the robe open now. There was a tearing sound, and her neck and shoulders ached. She realized her eyes were closed. She opened them as he stripped away the tat­ters of her nightclothes. Automatically, her right arm crossed the nipples of her breasts and her left hand cupped over the triangle of hair at her crotch.

  “Vladmir, please,” she begged.

  “No,” he answered so softly she could barely hear him.

  She watched the belt starting
up again and tried to move aside, but his left fist crashed into her stomach and she doubled over, dropping to her knees on the carpet. Then she felt the belt across her back, felt his hand in her hair as though it were being ripped out by the roots, her head drawn back and her neck bent back to where she could barely breathe.

  She looked finally into Vladmir’s eyes. He said, “You won’t fight.” The belt, looped double in his right hand, lashed across her left cheek and the bridge of her nose and, as her left hand went to her face, it came away bloodied. She couldn’t open her left eye.

  His left hand was still knotted in her hair and he hauled her to her feet, then shoved her back onto the couch. He stood over her, his hands dropping the belt to open his uniform trousers, pushing them down as he fell on top of her.

  “No,” she whimpered. Then she turned her eyes away. She felt his hands on her, pulling at her breasts, his fingers knotting in the hair at her crotch, then his hands coming inside her.

  “No,” she murmured, then felt the hardness stab­bing into her. “No!” she screamed. She stared up at the ceiling until he finally sank against her. Tears streamed down her face, but she felt she wasn’t crying.

  After a long while, she heard him mutter, “Bitch—unfeeling bitch.” His right hand cuffed her face, then his left, then his right. Her mouth was bleeding, and she tried to raise her head because she was choking on the blood.

  He was standing, reeling, the vodka bottle was back in his hand, some of the clear liquid somehow still inside, then he tilted the bottle. A smile—something like she had never seen—crossed his lips as he picked up the belt, looked at the bottle in his other hand, then lashed out with the belt, the heavy leather almost instantly raising a dark red welt across her breasts. He knocked her back to the couch, the bottle still in his hand.

  The neck of the bottle was pointed toward her, held low, and she stared at it with her good right eye through the tears.

  Vladmir Karamatsov whispered, “If I do not please you, then perhaps this will.” And he laughed as he started toward her.

  Natalia screamed, gagging on the salty taste of the blood in her mouth, her puffed and cracked lips drawn back in horror.

  Chapter 8

  “I don’t know,” Rourke said, not looking at Rubenstein, but staring up at the stars. They were less than a mile from the principal entrance to the retreat. “Sometimes you get the feeling there’s something happening, you don’t know where or what, but that you’re involved with it anyway, and that someday you’ll learn what it was and when—sort of like the feeling you get when a shiver runs up your spine and people say that somebody’s just walked across your grave. Maybe they have.”

  “What do you mean?” Paul Rubenstein asked, his voice sounding tired.

  “I don’t know,” Rourke almost laughed. “Come on. Not much farther now.” Rourke looked at the balding younger man in the starlight. Rubenstein was exhausted, his wounds still depleting his strength. The road to the entrance of the retreat was twisted and difficult. “Come on.”

  They rode the bikes, the engines barely above stalling, up the narrow pathway. Rourke eyed the familiar landmarks; he knew each tree and each rock. He had found the site of the retreat six years before, purchased it, then over the last three years was able to afford to convert it. It was a natural cave, carved over millions of years by the forty-foot-high waterfall from an underground spring, filtering from the natural pool at its base down into the rocks, coursing below in a narrowing cavern to God-knew-where—its origins, he guessed, perhaps as far away as the Canadian border, the water icy cold, crystal clear, perhaps only coming to light as it passed through the rear of the cave. He could mark the places where the waterfall had been over the millions of years since it had begun, how it had gradually carved out the cave. Giant stalactites were suspended from the cave ceiling and gradually bled their substance to form the stalagmites below them.

  He used the underground portion of the stream as his hydro-electric power source, his own generators capable of supplying three times his maximum power needs. He had left the structure of the cave basically unaltered, the natural rise at the rear of the cave to the waterfall’s right forming the main sleeping quarters, smaller natural mezzanines forming the ad­ditional rooms: two more bedrooms, the kitchen, and the bath, the latter shielded from the rest of the massive cave by a natural, opaque curtain of limestone. Rourke had electrified the cavern, plumbed it and, using a four-wheel drive pickup truck, gradually furnished it with appliances, bedroom furnishings, everything that would be needed to preserve the comfort if he were ever forced to live permanently in the retreat. Spare parts, ser­vice manuals, all were carefully catalogued and stored. The great room was the room he liked. It was the main body of the cavern and its rear was formed by the pool at the base of the waterfall. In this room were his books, records, videotape library, guns—his room, he had always thought of it. As he slowed his borrowed Harley Low Rider and signaled Paul Rubenstein to do the same, he almost felt a longing for the place, a sense of normalcy there.

  “We’re here,” Rourke whispered.

  “Where? I don’t see anything.”

  “You’re not supposed to.” Then Rourke ex­plained. “Once I had the retreat I realized it would be useless to me if I couldn’t absolutely rely on the fact that it wouldn’t be discovered. That meant I had to have some sort of secret entrance. In comic books, movies, science fiction, they put branches or shrubs in front of the cave entrance, but none of that works. I wanted something more permanent.”

  “So what did you do?” Rubenstein asked.

  “Watch.” Rourke dismounted from the bike and walked toward the cracked and rough weathered granite wall before them. He looked down; they were approximately half way up the mountainside. He walked to a large boulder on the right of his bike, then pushed against it with his hands. The boulder rolled away. He walked to his far left where a similar, but squared-off rock butted against the granite face. “See,” Rourke began, pushing on it. “This whole area of Georgia is built on a huge granite plate at varying depths. This mountain is an outcropping of it, extending all the way into Ten­nessee, maybe well beyond. I did a lot of research in archeology to come up with this—how the Egyptian tombs were sealed off, Mayan temples.” Rourke braced himself against the rock and pushed it aside.

  There was rumbling in the rock itself, and Ruben-stein drew back. The rock on which Rourke stood began to sink, and as it did a slab of rock about the size of a single-car-garage door began to slide in­ward. “Just weights and counterbalances,” Rourke said, smiling, his face reflected by the starlight. “When you want to open from inside, levers per­form the same function as moving the rocks out here.”

  Rubenstein leaned forward, peering into the gradually opening doorway and the darkness beyond.

  “Come on,” Rourke said, then walked into the darkness. Rubenstein was off his bike now, but Rourke saw the young man standing unnecessarily close behind him. “It’s fine—really.”

  A flashlight was in Rourke’s left hand, one of the angleheads the two men had stolen from the geological supply house in Albuquerque. As the weak beam shone against the granite, Rourke bent down, then flicked a switch with an audible click. A dim light, reddish in hue, illuminated the cavern opening.

  “Get your bike inside.”

  Rourke went back outside to get his Harley and wheeled it through the entrance. As Rubenstein began to move his machine, Rourke rasped, “Paul, there’s a redhandled lever in there, by the light switch. Swing it down and lock it under the notch.”

  Rourke waited a moment, looking up at the stars, then heard Rubenstein shout, “Got it, John.”

  Rourke said nothing, but bent and rolled the two rock counterbalances into position, then stepped into the cave. He bent to the redhandled lever, loosed it safely from the notch retaining it and raised it, the granite doorway started to move, the rock beneath them shuddering audibly.

  “Relax,” Rourke said softly, turned, and saw Rubenstei
n staring beyond at the edge of the red light to the steel double doors at the far end of the antechamber. “I’ve got ultrasonics installed to pre­vent insects or vermin from getting in—closed circuit TV up there,” Rourke said, gesturing above their heads to the low stone ceiling.

  Rourke walked to the steel doors, shone his flashlight on the combination dials and began to manipulate them, then turned the lever-shaped handles and the doors swung open.

  “Paul,” Rourke said, stepping into the darkness, “kill that light switch for red back there, huh?”

  Rourke stepped into the darkness, reached out his right hand and waited until he assumed Rubenstein was beside him in the darkness. He could see the light of the anglehead flashlight.

  “Now,” Rourke almost whispered, then got the light switch.

  “God!”

  Rourke looked at the younger man, smiled, and stepped down into the great room. “Just as I described it,” Rourke said with what he felt was justifiable pride. “Let’s bring the bikes down the ramp.” Rourke pointed to his left to the far side of the three broad stone steps leading into the great room, “then I’ll give you a fast tour before you col­lapse.”

  Rubenstein wiped his brow. Rourke started to back up the three steps, then into the darkness beyond the steel doors. Rourke started his liberated Harley down the ramp, stopped it, went back and closed the doors from the inside, sliding a bar in place on levers across the double doors.

  “Place is stone, so it’s fireproof, everything in it is as fireproof as possible. I’ve got a couple of emergency exits too; show ‘em to you tomorrow.” Rourke returned to the Harley and started it down the ramp, stopping again to hit another light switch mounted against the cave wall, metal wire molding running from it up toward the darkness of the ceil­ing. The ramp was wide enough for the two men to walk their bikes side by side. In front of them, at the base of the ramp, Rourke pointed out a truck.