Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake

by Ahern, Jerry

  The balding man repeated it in German. “Why is it that you wear what it known as a marriage ring and the woman you claim is your wife does not?”

  Natalia answered before Rourke had finished composing the lie. “It was several months ago—perhaps a year ago. We were exploring some old ruins much further inland and my hand became caught, and the only way to free it was to cut the ring from my finger. But in my heart, I will always wear his ring.” Rourke looked at her, the surreal blueness of her eyes, the love there.

  He liked her lie better than his. He rolled onto his left side and told the newer man, “I demand that you release my wife and me. We have done nothing wrong. We were merely walking along the beach and your men set upon my wife, and I attempted to aid her and was also viciously attacked!”

  The balding newcomer spoke in hushed tones at some length to the tall, athletic-looking man. The first man crossed the compartment again and stepped half over Natalia, one leg on either side of her. Rourke shouted at him, “Leave my wife alone, sir!”

  The other man translated.

  The taller man knotted his fingers in Natalia’s almost black hair and drew her head up, her back arching. She let out a little scream, Rourke uncertain if it were contrived or genuine. Rourke started to speak. The first man, still holding Natalia by her hair, said in Russian, “Tell this man that I think he and this woman are liars. And that I wish the real truth from them or I will cause them a great deal of pain.”

  Rourke tried to place a suitably puzzled look on his face as the balding man laboriously and less than one-hun-dred-per-cent accurately translated his superior’s threat. Rourke intentionally made his breathing shallow so his voice would reflect fear. “Please—do not hurt my wife so! I will tell you anything you wish. But I can only speak the truth. We were walking along the beach.” The balding man began a running simultaneous semi-translation. “We are survivors from a community in the Western Hemi

  sphere which lived for many centuries underground after the great war between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Many of us— many of us—we left our homeland in these last centuries and began exploring the world in order to seek out any others like ourselves who might have survived.” His mind raced. “We were elated when we discovered that some Chinese apparently survived there along the coast.” He tried to think if there could have been anything he or Natalia might have had which could have linked them to the Chinese. He licked his lips. He kept talking, keeping his breathing intentionally shallow, his words intentionally fast. “We were about to approach the Chinese. We had lost most of our belongings during the recent blizzards. We had eaten the last of our food and were nearly out of ammunition. We had no choice. Are the Chinese your enemies?” It was time to stop giving information, however spurious, and start getting some.

  As the running translation wound down, Natalia spoke. “My husband is telling you the truth. We are pleased that you have found us. We wish to be your friends, to tell our people that other people still survive on the face of the earth.”

  The balding man was catching up on the translation again and Rourke caught the first man’s eyes as “face of the earth” was translated for him. And the first man began to howl with laughter.

  After several seconds—Rourke’s palms were sweating— his laughter subsided. Still smiling—but his face, not his eyes—he said to the balding man, “Tell them that they are either very innocent of who we are, in which case their interrogation will be long and painful and useless, or they are very good liars. In which case they will have the opportunity to tell the truth as convincingly perhaps.” And the tall man stalked from the room laughing again.

  The balding man began translating into his sterile, fumbling German. John Rourke’s and Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna’s eyes met. He saw real fear in her eyes and imagined she saw the same in his eyes. Bound, weapon

  less, beneath the sea, and prisoners of a Russian-speaking enemy force that by all rights could not exist and was possessed of technology that, on the surface at least, appeared vastly superior to anything ever experienced.

  The balding man completed his translation and left, the watertight door swinging to behind him.

  “We won’t escape this—will we? We won’t,” Natalia whispered.

  Rourke didn’t answer her because if he told her what he felt, she wouldn’t like the answer at all… .

  The wind whipped the skirts of Han’s black dragon robe. Maria Leuden thought of her own skirt and realized that subconsciously her left hand already had her skirt under control. The wind that noisily buffeted Han’s garment was cold and there was a heavy mist on the air, the mist visible as long streaks of gray against the whites and yellows of the flashlights Han, the Chinese security personnel, and both Paul and Michael held in their hands.

  She had given up on holding her flashlight. It was in the wide, deep slash pocket of her arctic parka, her right hand buried in the pocket beside it, her left hand freezing like her legs.

  She dogged after Michael, feeling more like his puppy at times like these than his woman. She had become acquainted with the concept of dog following master from Bjorn Rolvaag, the Icelandic. Rolvaag and his dog were inseparable, Hrothgar his master’s shadow. Rolvaag and Hrothgar now explored further along the beach on then-own, the perenenially green-clad Icelandic policeman always solitary except for the dog, which sniffed at him, nuzzled against him, while he himself was almost invariably silent. Bjorn Rolvaag gave the impression of considerable intelligence, but since she spoke no Icelandic and he spoke neither German nor English, it was impossible to converse with him beyond a smile or nod.

  Michael was examining the sand near her feet and, suddenly aware of him, she took a halting step back.

  “What is it, Michael?”

  “Heel mark from a Vietnam-era combat boot. See?” And he gestured with his right index finger to some ridges in the sand that seemed barely distinguishable in the beam of his flashlight from ordinary patterns in the sand. But she assumed Michael Rourke was right, as he invariably proved to be, as his father always was.

  Paul Rubenstein and Han, the Chinese intelligence agent, each dropped into a crouch, flanking Michael. As she looked down at them she had the silly thought that some uninformed observer might think that three men were proposing to her at once. As a little girl she had read forbidden books that her mother had stored in a trunk in the hall closet, the books so old and musty-smelling that their memory was almost physical to her. And in these books men would sometimes drop to one knee to profess their love and sue for the hand of their lady.

  Michael Rourke stood to his full height and suddenly she was looking up at him, into his eyes, his face intermittently in shadow and in light from the flashlight beams which played over the beach. The surf was loud, the wind louder, but as Michael spoke again she had no difficulty discerning his voice. “It appears he was alone. Now why would Natalia have left him?”

  She wanted to tell Michael that she thought she knew why—Natalia loved Michael’s father and Michael’s father was married to Michael’s mother^Sarah, and they expected a baby, and Natalia felt useless and afraid inside. It was the way she herself had felt after the death of Michael’s wife had made him “available” and she had found herself insanely in love with Michael and he had refused all affection in his all-consuming sadness and lust for revenge. But then Michael had come to her in the night and made love to her and she had known that it would somehow … She didn’t know what. “I don’t know, Michael,” she told him, because she really didn’t know why Natalia would have walked away from John Rourke here on the beach. She would not have walked away from Michael.

  Han’s radio was making static sounds and she heard a voice that would have been one of the defense force people speaking through it to him. He answered in Chinese and then announced in English; “Your friend, Mr. Rolvaag— he has found something.”

  Michael, Paul in step with him, took off down the beach. Maria Leuden, hug
ging her coat around her, both hands in her pockets now, ran after him, her modesty be damned. Han was shouting orders to his men as she ran past him. The wind felt good in her hair, despite the cold and damp. She had felt more alive since she had left New Germany than she had ever felt there, and the only way she would return to it would be if Michael took her there, because she would always be with him. She kept running, breathless by the time she stopped. Rolvaag was stooped over, peering into the sand, his huge dog sniffing, whining, sniffing, moving between Rolvaag and some spot in the sand further along the beach, running, skidding in the sand on his hind feet, running again.

  Michael was crouched beside the red-haired, red-bearded man. Maria heard occasional snatches of what Michael called “pigeon” English and Icelandic being exchanged over the heightening wind and the encroaching surf. About a battle or something.

  Michael clapped Rolvaag on the shoulder, grabbed a handful of Hrothgar at the scruff of the neck and petted the animal vigorously. He looked up at Maria. “Bjorn seems to think there was a fight here. Several men with strange-looking footgear—I think they must have been wearing scuba gear.”

  “Scuba?”

  “Self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. For diving.”

  “Ohh, yes.” She nodded, recalling the term now. “But what would these scuba swimmers be doing here?”

  Michael stood. “Logic supported by the physical evidence dictates that for some reason Natalia and my father split up further down the beach—back where I found that heel print. And then they got involved in some sort of

  fight here with these persons in flippers.” ” Flippers—ohh, flippers.’”

  At some time in the interim, Natalia and my father must have gotten together again. But then, there are these deeper ridges in the sand as if something was dragged into the water.”

  “Your father and Natalia?” she asked, frightened for them.

  Paul Rubenstein answered her. “No—not heel prints or anything like that. Heavy objects, almost appearing cylindrical in shape. Most of the impressions are gone now, wiped away with the tide coming in, Maria. Looks like big tanks or something.”

  Michael hugged her to him and she rested her head against his right shoulder, his parka feeling rough against her cheek. She liked the feeling and she felt warmed now. “Must be Karamatsov,” Michael whispered.

  She stared up into his face, visible only partly in the light of Paul’s flashlight. When Paul spoke, she still watched Michael. “If Karamatsov’s been behind these raids Han’s been telling us about—”

  Maria Leuden shivered.

  “Your Soviet nemesis.” Han said slowly. “Perhaps he was preparing for some time to penetrate China in search of his nuclear weapons. And if he has seapower…” The Chinese let the thought hang.

  Maria Leuden could see Michael’s eyes now, narrowed almost to slits. “If he has seapower,” Michael said slowly, “then he’ll be using his divers to go after those missiles, to recover them from the train wreck.”

  “Either a submarine or—shit,” Paul Rubenstein snarled, slamming his open left palm against his submachine gun, making the metal parts rattle like something cheap. “An island, maybe—ahh—”

  Han spoke. “Surely Doctor Leuden’s friends in New Germany would have detected such an island. Or, for that matter, could they not have detected a submarine? Hmm? This is most baffling.”

  Michael said, “You’ve been experiencing these raids for

  some time now. And never an inkling of the source, Han?”

  She nuzzled closer to Michael, burying her nose in the front of her coat. “This is the first defeat—the first true defeat that these seaborne invaders have encountered at our hands. They strike with uncanny quickness and withdraw into the sea, below the surface where we cannot follow them. And then at sunset!” And he threw up his hands in disgust.

  Maria spoke. “They just exploded bombs attached to their own people—that is barbaric. Would even this Karamatsov…” And then she fell silent, because Maria Leuden knew Karamatsov seemed capable of any evil.

  “We have encountered these personal explosive devices before. They prevent the taking and interrogation of prisoners, the inspection of equipment to determine origin. I believe the English word is ‘insidious.’ “

  “Could be,” Michael Rourke whispered. When he talked she could feel the vibration in his chest. “Maria?” And Michael looked down at her, touching the tips of his fingers to her chin, raising her face. “Do you have any idea what your country might have in terms of under-ocean capabilities?”

  “Our commandoes have no training in undersea operations, as far as I know. But they don’t tell archaeologists everything.” She smiled.

  Michael nodded. “All right—open to suggestions.”

  Paul Rubenstein spoke, his gloved right hand brushing at his nose. “We have to find Karamatsov’s headquarters, Michael. And then get inside.” Paul’s wife, Annie, had told Maria that Paul had once worn glasses and sometimes, when he was tired or “uptight” as Annie put it, he would still brush against his nose as though pushing his glasses in place. When Michael had kissed Maria when she had joined him in the courtyard of the power station after the attack was repelled, he had made her glasses fog.

  “If these men who attacked the power station took my father and Natalia and took them alive, then once these guvs realized who thev had, they’d get them to Karamat

  sov as quickly as possible. Promotion time. So, if they survived the fight and were somehow immobilized or so outnumbered that they had no choice, Natalia and my father’d still be alive. If one of Karamatsov’s men captured a Rourke and didn’t bring his prize to Karamatsov for disposition, he’d be in such deep trouble that he’d wish he had never been born. No—if whoever these troops were took them alive, they’re still alive. And if they were killed—if they were killed, there would have been no sense in taking off the bodies. Their presence was already detected if this took place after the raid, or soon would have been if it took place before the raid.” Michael looked up and down the beach, then out to sea. “It seems likely they were using this as some sort of staging area and spotted my dad and Natalia by accident. Shit.”

  “I’ll get Lieutenant Keefler and his people airborne. Maybe—aw, hell.” Paul Rubenstein stomped off across the sand into the night, the beam of his flashlight bouncing up and down as he cut over a dune and toward the rocks beyond. Then even his backlit silhouette disppeared.

  Han said, “I regret that harm may have befallen such a fine man as your father and such a noble woman as Major Tiemerovna, Michael. I speak on behalf of the Chairman, I am sure, and certainly on my own behalf. Whatever can be done—er—I am truly sorry,” and he walked away along the surf. Rolvaag, perhaps because he was unable to understand English, had drifted off already, Maria seeing him now for an instant along the beach, then losing him as he passed behind some rocks.

  She was alone with Michael. He just held her, didn’t speak.

  It was hard to consider the possibility of John Rourke’s death, and when she tried, it frightened her more than anything she had ever known. Because to consider the mortality of the father was to consider the mortality of the son, and without him she would wither and die.

  “Michael?”

  He turned toward her and she felt his arms encircle her, and she took her hands from her pockets and inched them

  under his coat and around his waist. His left hand reached to her face and plucked away her glasses. She touched her lips to his fingers. He brought his mouth down over hers and she sank against him.

  In the short time since they had become lovers, she had found that sometimes there was a desperation in him, and she felt it in him tonight.

  Chapter Three

  He had crawled toward Natalia, and Natalia toward him. At first they sat back to back to work at loosening each other’s bonds. Then finally, in desperation, Rourke dropped to his chest behind her and tried to work at the restraints with his teeth. After
a few moments, he realized that perhaps a rat could have gnawed through them, but no human could.

  Then the door opened.

  And it began again.

  The tall man carried Rourke’s knives and Natalia’s knife in his hands, holding them as if his palms were somehow the baskets of scales as he spoke. “Translate.”

  The balding man responded to the direct order. And John Rourke learned that their inquisitor was named Kerenin, was a major. And non-Naval rank here aboard this undersea vessel only compounded the mystery.

  “Strip her and search her,” the tall man ordered.

  John Rourke could not react to the words because they had been spoken in Russian. He felt his neck and shoulders tense, saw the muscles around Natalia’s eyes tighten.

  The translator began his work.

  At the appropriate word, Rourke started to shout at Kerenin, “You bastard—you cannot do that!”

  Apparently there was no need for translation, intonation and facial expression sufficient to convey meaning. Kerenin set down the edged weapons, then stepped toward him and slapped him backhanded across the mouth, Rourke letting his head sag away an instant before impact

  to diminish the effect of the blow.

  When Kerenin had reentered the compartment, aside from the men who had originally accompanied him and the conventionally uniformed translator, there were three others, two of them women, all three of them wearing white coveralls with something that could have been medical insignia emblazoned over the heart—a similar insignia worn like a shoulder brassard—all three of them dark-haired, nearly Kerenin’s own height, the women included. And all three of them looked simultaneously unpleasant and bored. The boredom in the eyes of one of the women seemed to wane now as she approached Natalia.