The Quest

by Jerry Ahern

  Sarah leaned against the doorframe and stared at the sunlight. The wind through the slightly open win­dow blew the white curtain wildly. “Thank you,” she said if anyone were listening. She wanted to see the outside, and turned and ran down the stairs, almost tripping in the unfamiliar slippers and the floor-length gown. She saw Mary Mulliner in the liv­ing room, but passed her, and went to the front door, opened it, and ran onto the porch. The sky—the sky—there was a breeze blowing, a dog barking and, for the first time in weeks, that sound didn’t terrify her. She stared up at the sky and heard herself laughing, threw her head back, her arms outstretched. It was as if there were some beautiful music playing, she thought, then she stopped laughing, turned and saw Mary Mulliner and her teenage son staring at her, standing behind her on the porch. The older woman just said, “I understand you—least I think I do, Sarah.”

  Sarah Rourke turned to the woman and hugged her.

  Chapter 15

  Varakov sat in the back seat of his staff car, a Lin­coln Continental expropriated from a parking lot near what had been the United States Federal Building in downtown Chicago. There had been, he reflected, that one more urgent reason for sending Vladmir Karamatsov to the southeast, more urgent he felt than the brigands and the Resistance.

  After Texas, Karamatsov had moved directly to Florida, working through Cuban liaisons to deter­mine what the exact nature of the launches at Cape Canaveral from the space center there had been the night of the war.

  All the missiles the U.S. had launched, Varakov understood, had been accounted for. These launches were the only exceptions and that worried Kremlin leadership. It worried Varakov because it hinted that somehow the Americans had prepared for the possibility of war and, despite the crushing losses, perhaps had some new weapon no one had dreamed of—up in space now perhaps. He stared up at the gray Chicago sky through his back seat window. He wondered. During the exchanges, each side’s hunter-killer satellites had destroyed spy satellites of the other side. Nothing remained in orbit except the hunter-killers and the Soviet space platform—which was now useless, Varakov thought, since the Soviet Union had no time, money, or desire to explore the reaches of space—surviving after the war would take all the efforts the people of the Soviet Union could muster.

  If the Americans had put some mysterious weapons system in orbit, there remained no way of detecting it. The Soviet manned platform was in a polar orbit, and all the Americans would have needed to do was place their vehicles in an orbit out of range of the platform, perhaps around the South Pole regions. He was not an astronomer or a missile scientist; he didn’t know nor could he guess. He thought that perhaps it was some doomsday device, placed in orbit to detonate after a specific period of time if some radio signal were not received to scrub the mission—some gigantic burst that would blow away the atmosphere, the final retribution for the Soviet attack. The thought unsettled him. He had survived much, always because he had willed himself to do so—this he could not impose his will against. There had been a mysterious reference found in a looseleaf notebook in an Air Force Intelligence in­stallation: the words “Eden Project” and the draw­ing of an upward vectoring rocket ship beside it. Nothing else. Varakov wondered if the words Eden

  Project and the mysterious multiple launchings from Cape Canaveral were related. This was Karamatsov’s prime and secret reason for being in the southeast.

  Intelligence also indicated that apparently one of­ficial of the National Aeronautics and Space Ad­ministrations—NASA—survived, an official with the level of responsibility that he might know what ex­actly had been launched that night. He was a chief public information officer for NASA, the name in the file had been James R. Colfax. Varakov recalled the man had been an astronaut, then moved into ad­ministration with NASA after a heart condition had disqualified him for space flight. He had piloted one of the space shuttles the Americans had been so proud of. This Colfax, Varakov thought, he would know.

  He had been making a speaking tour, recruiting for NASA at the time of the war and had a home somewhere in Georgia in the mountains. If he would be anywhere he could be “officially” found, he would be there, Varakov had reasoned. People and animals were of little difference. A wounded animal goes to its burrow or nest or cave; a man whose world is destroyed goes to his home—it was the same.

  And, according to intelligence files, the man Varakov knew had defeated Karamatsov—John Rourke—had his home in Georgia as well. If Rourke had survived after the affair in Texas, he might be there by now. It was food for Karamatsov’s ego to have suffered defeat at the hands of an American—and perhaps the two men would cross each other’s paths again.

  Varakov’s driver pulled up to the white painted brick house in the expensive suburb, the house where Karamatsov and Natalia lived.

  “Stop here. I will walk up the driveway. Stay in the car. I will get my door,” Varakov said, scrunch­ing his feet into his shoes, wrapping his great coat closed around him and stepping out onto the con­crete driveway. He had not called. He had not taken a helicopter in order to call as little attention to this personal business as he could.

  He was cold. The weather in America was insane, he decided. It had been hot three days earlier. He walked toward the low steps, then mounted them heavily, and stood by the door. He rang the doorbell and waited. He rang the doorbell again; thinking then that perhaps it was out of order, he knocked his gloved right fist against the white wooden door, not bothering with the brass doorknocker.

  There was no answer. “Natalia!” he shouted.

  Again there was no answer. “You are home—I know that—answer the door. It is an order.”

  There was no answer and as he began to speak he could hear her voice from beyond the door. “Please—I am sick—I can see no one.”

  “Let me in—now!”

  “No, I’m going upstairs, please leave.” And the voice stopped.

  His thick lips twisted downward. He stomped down the steps toward the car and his driver. The man started from the car and Varakov waved him back. “My briefcase—give it to me—now.” He took the case through the open window, set it roughly on the hood of the Lincoln, spun the combination and opened the lock, then took a battered 9mm PM from the case, slammed the case closed and spun the tumblers. “Put it away,” he commanded without looking at the driver.

  Varakov strode up the driveway, his feet not hurt­ing him, drawing the slide back on the Makarov and chambering a round, leaving the hammer back as he mounted the steps.

  “If you are near the door, stand away!” There was no answer. He took a step back and fired the pistol once, then again into the mechanism of the lock, then threw his shoulder against it. The door sprang inward. He regained his balance, then manually lowered the hammer on the Makarov and pushed up the safety lever, dropping the pistol in the pocket of his great coat. With his hamlike left fist he punched the door closed behind him. He stood in the vestibule, looking down into the living room and shouted, “Natalia!”

  “Uncle.” He turned and saw her standing by a swinging door leading from the opposite end of the living room, he assumed into the kitchen. Women spent a great deal of time in kitchens even when they weren’t cooking. It was like a man and his office, Varakov thought.

  He stopped thinking when he saw her face. She wore heavy makeup, and she usually wore little or none. Despite the makeup, he could see the darkness of bruises. He stepped down into the living room, stared at the dark stain in the white carpet, then saw tiny red stains on the couch.

  “You and Vladmir—you fought—he beat you.”

  “He told—” and she seemed to catch herself.

  “No, he told me nothing. Come here to me, child.” He reached out his arms. Natalia ran toward him and sank her head against his massive chest. His arms went around her. She was crying. He stroked her back and she winced. He pushed her away.

  “Let me see your body.”

  She took a step back. He studied her. She wore a long sleeved white
blouse, buttoned high at the neck, a black skirt extending to the middle of her calves, and low-heeled black shoes. He repeated himself, “Let me see your body, child. I changed your diapers when you were a baby; I bathed you once. I am your father’s brother. You should not fear my eyes. Either remove your blouse so I may see your back or I will call to my chauffeur and have him use the radio to send two women here to undress you—six women if I need it—let me see your back.”

  Varakov watched her dark eyes, watched her long fingers move slowly to the buttons at her collar, watched her slip the bow there, then slip each of the pearl-looking buttons through the button holes. She left the cuffs of the blouse closed, pulling the blouse from her skirt, letting it drop behind her, her arms limp at her sides. She wore a slip that covered her abdomen and much of her back.

  “Turn around.”

  Natalia obeyed. He could see the trailing edge of red welts above the lace forming the upper portion of the slip against her back. He took a step closer to her, both his hands grabbing the slip, then ripping it down the back. He stripped away his right glove and undid the back of her bra. He saw her hands raising to her chest.

  “I need to see no more, child,” Varakov said slowly, studying the dozen or more welts across her back.

  “He beat you with a belt. Is the rest of your body like this?”

  He looked at her face in profile over her left shoulder, her eyes cast down. He watched her nod.

  “What else did he do?” Varakov asked, forcing his voice to remain even and sound calm and fatherly.

  “He—” Her voice faltered, and she turned toward him, her hands still holding her clothes against her breasts, her face against his chest. He knew what she was going to say, but couldn’t. When he was young, a husband raping his wife was a logical absurdity. If a man wanted his wife and she did not want him, that was her misfortune. Things were different these days, he thought, and the thought didn’t distress him.

  “I know, Natalia. Why? It is none of my business, but why?”

  “The man, Rourke—I cannot—”

  “I am your uncle, not your commanding officer. I don’t care. Tell me.”

  She looked up into his eyes. Her eyes were sad like they had been when her father—his brother—had died. “I fell in love with . . . with Rourke. But nothing happened between us. He saved my life, I had to save him, it was my honor to do this.” Varakov loved his native language at times, and her soft contralto gave it the beauty it deserved.

  “You should remember the first duty of a soldier, Natalia, child—duty is ranked before honor—and honor is often a luxury. But I respect honor. Tell me.” And he looked into her eyes again.

  “What, Uncle?”

  “Would you go back to Vladmir?”

  “He only punished me as I deserved to be punished.”

  “You are not only beautiful, but you are naive. Punishment is in the soul. The body is not punished; it is given pain. A man beats a woman—” he sighed heavily— “a man hits a woman perhaps in anger, once, perhaps twice—perhaps that is just. A man beats a woman not to punish her, but to expiate himself, child. He did not do this to you because of something in you, but because of something in him. And I was afraid you would say such foolishness that you would return to him.”

  He said nothing else, just sat down with her on the couch and listened to her cry, listened to her tell him very slowly what had happened, sat quietly and thought while she changed clothes, then stayed to the early hours of the morning with her, lingering over a dinner she made for him as she had many times when she was a child. They talked about her father, about trips to the Black Sea resort they had loved, about her marriage to Karamatsov.

  He left after drinking too much; his chauffeur was almost visibly angry at the late hour. As Varakov sat back in his seat, his great coat huddled around him, he softly verbalized two thoughts. “She is a sincere cook, but not a gifted one; I will cause Karamatsov somehow to die.”

  Chapter 16

  “Comrade General!”

  Varakov opened his eyes. He heard gunfire, the hum of the engine was louder than it should have been. He looked out the window, startled. The area he recognized from his initial tour of the city was the portion of the city that had been all but destroyed in racial riots many years back in the 1960s. And now there was gunfire all around him.

  “What is it?” he asked, but he already knew: the freedom fighters, the people who had survived by being far enough away from the neutron bombs, the people who lived in basements and hidden bomb shelters, who carried guns, killed Russian soldiers, and threw crude gasoline bombs at Soviet vehicles; they called them—the nerve—Molotov cocktails.

  No sooner had the thought left his mind than it returned, the shattering of a glass bottle in the street beside them and the roar of an explosion, a fireball, the car swerving to the side.

  “Get out of here now, Leon, and you get two weeks leave in Moscow and a letter to a brothel a woman I know keeps.” He smiled. Leon was the best driver to be had and would get him out of there anyway—if it could be done. Varakov drew the pistol from his greatcoat pocket where he’d left it, pushed the button for his window to roll down, then fired into the street. He saw figures running, their shadows made larger than life by the flickering of the flames, a Soviet truck overturned and burning.

  He almost lost the gun outside the window as Leon, his driver, wheeled the Lincoln around a cor­ner and onto a highway feeder ramp. “We are going in the wrong direction, Comrade General Varakov.”

  “It does not matter, Leon,” he rasped across the seat back separating them.

  “Get down!” the driver shouted and Varakov knew better than not to obey. Rocks and bricks pelted at them from a walking bridge over the ex­pressway, the windshield shattering and the car careening toward a guard rail. Varakov dropped to the floor, felt the bounce and lurch, the jerkiness of the car’s movements, then the shudder as the car stopped.

  With the pistol in his hands, he rose from his knees and pried open the door on the driver’s side. He could hear sirens in the distance. They were Rus­sian, he knew. He saw a figure fleeing across the walking bridge, raised his pistol and lowered it without firing. Then Varakov looked down to Leon. The boy’s face was halfway through the windshield and one of the eyes was bulged out. It seemed that the head had almost exploded.

  He closed his eyes and asked himself out loud, “If all those fools so believe in you, God—why this?” He realized as he walked from the car toward the ad­vancing military police vehicles the mere fact the clouds had not parted and no voice had rumbled like thunder and answered him proved nothing—at least he secretly hoped that.

  Chapter 17

  Rourke revved the jet-black Harley-Davidson Low Rider and glided the machine onto the highway. Traveling on the road was dangerous, he knew, because the Russians might be patrolling it. The wind whipped at his face—cold wind because, again, the temperature had begun to change. He shivered slightly inside the waist-length leather jacket. He stopped the bike, easing over to the shoulder, years of driving habit still forcing him to automatically glance over his shoulder along the deserted road, to work his signal flasher.

  He had seen the signs of a large vehicular force on some of the side roads since he had left the retreat at dawn that morning—brigands, he suspected. He lit a cigar, the blue yellow flame of his battered Zippo flickering in the wind.

  Rourke had told Paul Rubenstein he would be back within four days or less, but experience had taught Rourke to prepare for three times that period. The Lowe Alpine Loco pack was strapped to the back of the Harley with food, medical supplies, clothing—all the necessities. Two straps crossed his chest: on his left side hung the musette bag with some of his spare ammo and a few packages of dehydrated fruit that he’d made himself with the Equi-Flow dehydrator he kept at the retreat. On the right hung the binoculars—the armored Bushnells. Beneath these in a Ranger leather camouflage holster similar to the one he used for the Python was his Colt G
overnment MK IV series ‘70 .45, Metalifed with the Colt Medallion Pachmayr grips and the Detonics competition recoil system installed. The twin Detonics stainless pistols hung in the double Alessi rig under his arms.

  The gunbelt around his waist carried spare Colt magazines for the government and these also dou­bled with the Detonics pistols. From the left side of the belt hung a bayonet for the M-16. It fit the CAR-15 slung across Rourke’s back, muzzle down, muzzle cap off, thirty-round magazine inserted.

  He squinted against the sun despite the aviator sunglasses he wore. There was an expressway exit ramp ahead and he detected smoke, he thought, ris­ing from the road near it. He mounted the Harley again and swung onto the road, leaning back and let­ting the machine out.

  It took Rourke less than three minutes at eighty-five to reach the ramp and begin to slow for it, then turn up on the cross road and cut to the far side of the Interstate Highway toward the smoke—it was a gasoline station, burning, several abandoned cars in the lot—a disgruntled customer, Rourke thought, smiling. He doubted there had been any gasoline in the underground tanks for weeks or any electrical power to pump it. He stopped the bike, dismount­ing, sliding the Colt CAR-15 on its sling from his back to under his right arm, his left hand sweeping back the bolt and letting it fly forward, chambering a round. His right fist locked on the pistol grip, his trigger finger along the edge of the guard, the safety off.

  He saw something in a smashed and battered four-door sedan near the flames of the burning gas station building. He walked slowly toward it, the cigar clamped in his teeth in the left corner of his mouth. He stopped. It was a partially decomposed, partially eaten human skeleton. He moved closer to it. The top of the skull was split wide in the back—a blow, he guessed, from a large, not-so-blunt instrument, maybe a jack handle. He wondered who the man had been, then wheeled, hearing a low growl.