by Jerry Ahern
It had been a night she wanted quickly to forget. She understood why Diego Santiago was the way he was with a woman. She didn't think it was that she had so excited him. It was a problem that only a man could have, she thought. He had apologized, then fallen silent. She had rubbed his body, kissed him, tried to soothe him afterward. And she felt now that he trusted her, feeling somehow she knew a guilty secret.
She had washed her thighs three times, but the memory of what had happened to Santiago before he'd been able to do what he'd wanted to her still lingered. She would have felt sorry for him normally, she thought. But he was such a lie, such a fake, she thought. The "macho" general was like a young boy.
She was glad nothing had happened with him-because she hadn't wanted it. In the days with Karamatsov she had sometimes used her body to gain information. But she had never liked it, even though Vladmir had told her he would not blame her for whatever she did.
When Santiago kissed her, she had thought only of Rourke, wished it were Rourke, and afterward known that with Rourke it would have been so much different. She hugged her arms about her against the chill of the wind, looking skyward, thinking it was perhaps going to rain.
"John," she whispered.
Rourke had killed Karamatsov, but for her, as her uncle had explained it. Should she keep the vow she'd made and kill Rourke?
The uncertainty inside was destroying her, Natalia thought. But more than ever now, she knew, she loved the American. She wondered, absently, if he had yet found his wife and children. Somehow it would be easier to know he was with them. Then he would have no reason to think of her and she would know for herself that he was out of reach.
Natalia smiled, thinking of Rourke, knowing that if she were to fight something that lived only in Rourke's heart she could never win.
Chapter 31
John Rourke downed half the tumbler of whiskey, looked at his watch, then walked from the table and to the curtained window. He drew back the curtain, squinting against the sunlight. There were dark clouds on the horizon, but above them the sun was bright. He threw the curtains open, and light filled the room.
He walked across it again, snapping off the lamp which had illuminated the table through the night and early morning. He looked at Chambers, then at Sissy Wiznewski.
"I don't know which one of them is the Communist agent. The information in their files is too ambiguous."
"It's all we have," Chambers said, his voice sounding old.
"I know that." Rourke nodded. "I trust Reed. I don't think he's the traitor. Couldn't be just a small fish—
gotta be somebody with access to practically everything you do."
"Why haven't they attacked here?" the girl asked. Chambers shrugged his shoulders. Rourke answered for him: "To mount a full scale attack here would be time-consuming, expensive, and use a lot of troops the Russians can't spare. As long as they have President Chambers under a microscope, know his every move, it doesn't bother them. It's almost better than capturing him. If they captured him, somebody else would assume the leadership function and they'd be in the dark as to what U.S. II is planning or doing. This way, they know everything. Once we find the traitor, it'll be a different story. I think this area will be too hot for you." He turned to Chambers. "You'll have to leave here, go into hiding somewhere else." He turned and looked back at the girl. "This traitor, whoever he is, is the reason they've left this place alone. In a pinch, they could probably have used the spy they have to assassinate the President anyway. Got the best of both worlds. The KGB people aren't fools enough to cut off their nose to spite their face."
"You're sure there's a traitor here?" Chambers groaned.
"Has to be. There's only one way I can see to flush him out, too. The best ruse is no ruse at all. I want you to call an emergency meeting."
"Why didn't you ever run for President, Mr. Rourke? I'd have voted for you," Chambers smiled.
Rourke smiled back. "Better things to do," he said.
Chapter 32
Sarah Rourke stood on the beach, the blanket over her shoulders, her body still cold. Harmon Kleinschmidt's arm also was around her shoulders— to support himself as he stood, she told herself. Michael and Annie were standing a few feet in front of her. She glanced over her shoulder, at the fishing boat beached in the surf.
She turned back to look up the beach toward the rocks beyond. She'd been following the movement there for some time and now, finally, the people who had been watching her were coming down.
Unarmed, Sarah took a step forward, Kleinschmidt moving beside her.
"Here they come, Sarah," he told her.
She only nodded, watching. About two dozen women were walking across the beach, some of them holding pistols, some with rifles. One woman had a baby suckling her left breast and she held a pistol in her right hand. There were children, too, about Michael and Annie's ages. And most of the women looked young.
Michael looked at her and Sarah nodded, saying, "It's all right, Michael. Here are children for you and Annie to play with. You'll see." She saw him staring at Kleinschmidt, the dark eyes boring toward the man holding her, the jaw set like John's was so often.
"See, Sarah— children for your kids to play with while we wait here."
"Wait?"
"I want you to come with me, Sarah. I mean that. I'll convince you I'm right."
"Hey, Harmon!" A woman holding a baby in one hand and a pistol in the other shouted at him. She stopped, her bare toes moving in the sand as she stood.
"Hey, Mary Beth— this here's Sarah, the children are Michael and Annie— good kids, too."
Sarah watched Michael looking at Kleinschmidt, not liking what she saw in his eyes.
"I'll get somebody to take the boat out and scuttle her," Mary Beth said.
"No you don't," Sarah told her. "I'm just a taxi service. Harmon was wounded, I brought him here. I hope nobody minds if I stay for a little while, let my children rest a little. But then I'm leaving."
"We're both leaving," Harmon entered.
Sarah looked up at him, watching his eyes. She didn't know if she liked what she saw there.
"Then you get it down into the shallows along the beach there." Mary Beth pointed to the left with her pistol. "And get her moored and camouflage it. Them Russians see a boat here, they're gonna come lookin' for us for sure."
"Agreed," Sarah shouted back.
"Come on then," Mary Beth said, smiling for the first time. "I'll give you a hand and watch the kids. Some of the girls here can help you with Harmon, gettin' him up to the cave. Then I guess we can all give you a hand with the boat. Come on." She started toward Michael and Annie, Michael's arm going around his sister's shoulders, his feet moving back across the sand. Mary Beth looked at Michael and Annie. "Suit yourself, boy. Just follow everybody else then."
"See," Harmon Kleinschmidt whispered. "It's gonna be fine."
Sarah just looked at him. He was the only fully grown man on the island and couldn't take more than two steps without someone holding him up. She shook her head, shivering a little, not thinking it was going to be fine at all.
Chapter 33
John Rourke waited in the shadows by the corner of the building, watching. Chambers had called the emergency meeting, not announcing Rourke's arrival but did reveal the presence of Sissy Wiznewski. Chambers had announced to his advisers that disaster in Florida was imminent; he told them everything that had nothing to do with Rourke's plan to flush the traitor. Prior to the meeting, Chambers had selected eleven men, Rourke making the twelfth. The eleven had been chosen from Army Intelligence, men Chambers knew Reed personally trusted.
The meeting finally broke up. Rourke waited. On mere chance, he had selected to follow Randall Soames, commander of the Texas Volunteer Militia. Each of the other men would also follow one of the advisers. If someone left the compound, it would be almost a dead giveaway that this person were the traitor, Rourke had determined.
As he studied the compound, looking for some si
gn of Soames, Rourke wished it were merely as simple as finding the traitor. But once the traitor was recognized, it would be necessary to follow him to his contact, his radio, whatever means he used to notify the Soviets. And through that chain Rourke could contact Varakov. Already time was running out and there was little hope of an evacuation, however limited.
Rourke turned up the collar of his coat, the wind cold on his neck. He'd left the pistol belt with the Python and the CAR-15 with his bike. As he closed the leather jacket he checked the twin Detonics .45s in the double Alessi rig under the coat— they were secure, with spare magazines for the pistols on his trouser belt in friction retention speed pouches.
Cold still, Rourke hunkered back into the niche in the wall beside which he stood, then stopped. Randall Soames, dressed in a pair of Levis, a black Stetson and a western-style plaid shirt, was walking across the compound toward the gates. It was almost too easy, Rourke thought. As soon as Soames disappeared through the gates, Rourke took off at a dead run after him, reaching the gates, nodding to the guard there and looking down the road. Soames was walking. Rourke turned to the guard. Both the Intelligence people and the MPs were under Reed.
"Did he say where he was going, Corporal?"’
"No, sir— just for a walk, I guess. He does that a lot, but so do some of the others."
"How long is he usually gone?"
"You're Mr. Rourke, aren't you?"
"That's right, son," Rourke told him.
"Maybe half an hour. But if he were going anyplace on foot, the only place he could make in that amount of time and get back would be the town. It's abandoned now, and there wouldn't be time for him to do anything except turn around and walk right back."
"He always walks that way?" Rourke said, pointing down the road.
"Leastways every time I've seen him, sir."
"Thanks, Corporal." Rourke smiled, starting down the road after Soames, hugging the compound wall until the man disappeared over the rise. Then he started running as fast as he could, getting to the rise and dropping down beside the road.
Randall Soames wasn't walking quickly, wasn't turning around— nothing suspicious. Rourke waited. Maybe all Soames was doing was going for a walk— for a man his age he looked reasonably fit, and riding a desk all day could make any man antsy. He watched Soames pass over the next rise— there wasn't even a weapon visible. Rourke couldn't see anyone going out these days unarmed unless he were a complete fool.
Rourke ran ahead to the next rise, barely catching sight of Soames as he finally looked behind him, then pushed his way into a stand of trees. Rourke watched, waiting, thinking that a radio might be concealed in the trees there. But as Rourke started to push himself up, to move over the rise toward the trees, Soames reappeared, pushing a small motorcycle. A smile crossed Rourke's lips, then the corners of his mouth turned down. It was a small Honda, the kind that had been made years earlier and designed for compactness— the handlebars folded down for easy storage. He remembered reading about the small cycle. Top speed was about thirty-five miles per hour he recalled.
Soames looked from side to side along the road, then mounted the cycle, starting it and continuing down the road toward the abandoned town.
Rourke realized now how Soames made his walk so quickly and made it appear he had no time to do anything if he did walk down to the town. It had to be risky keeping the cycle stowed there, Rourke thought. But being a spy was not exactly safe either, he knew.
There was nothing to do now but run. Rourke pushed himself to his feet and took off along the rise, wishing he'd somehow had the foresight to stash his own motorcycle nearby, or that he could risk a radio call-in and get transportation. But he had no idea what frequency Soames's Soviet contact might be on, and had eschewed the use of a radio. So he ran, stripping the leather jacket from his back and holding it bunched in his left fist.
He had to gamble that Soames would be headed for the town and stay on or near the road. The small bike Soames rode wouldn't handle the terrain off the road— or at least Rourke hoped it wouldn't. The road, he remembered from the map he had studied earlier, zig-zagged following the terrain, and Rourke ran cross-country now to intercept the road.
He skidded down a low embankment, rolling behind some scrub brush, low against the ground, the road below him as Soames moved along it on the small bike. As Soames passed, Rourke pushed himself up, running across the road and through the grassy field beyond, to intercept the road again just before it turned into the town. His face and neck streaming sweat, his arms back and out like a distance runner going for the tape, Rourke ran on, not daring to lose sight of Randall Soames.
Rourke stopped again, diving half into a ditch along the roadside as Soames rounded a curve.
The commander of the Texas paramilitary forces stopped the bike, looking behind him, then from side to side. Rourke, peering through the tall grass, could see a smile crossing Soames's face. The bike started up again, down the road and into the town.
Rourke pushed himself up, jumping the ditch into the road, then crossing it and running parallel to it, hoping he was in the rider's blind spot should Soames look back. Rourke reached the building at the nearest edge of the abandoned town.
The town-limits sign was down, but he estimated from the buildings and the streets, that it had been a town of three or four thousand before the Night of the War.
He peered around the corner of the abandoned fire station behind which he stood, watching as Soames turned the motorcycle down the street at the farthest edge of the town.
Rourke began again to run, his lungs aching from it. Too many cigars, he thought.
He passed the first block, running across the intersecting street; he then passed broken store windows, a mailbox knocked over apparently by a car in haste to evacuate the city, a fire hydrant with the caps off and a few drops of water still dribbling from it. He reached the next intersection, glanced down it to make certain Soames wasn't suckering him, hadn't doubled back. Then he ran down the next block.
There was a broad expanse of burnt-out lawn, a Baptist church at the far end, the church untouched. Rourke stopped a moment, catching his breath, staring at the church. "Why wasn't it vandalized?" he asked himself aloud, then shook his head and began to run again, reaching the end of the block.
There was one more block to go before the street down which Soames had turned. Rourke, his arms out at his side again, ran it dead out, half collapsing against the side of the corner building— a real estate development firm— then peering around the corner.
Rourke's heart sank a moment. Soames was nowhere in sight, but at the end of the street, approximately two blocks down, was an uncharacteristically elaborate athletic field and stadium.
Rourke stared at it. The stadium looked to have cost more than all the other buildings in the town combined.
Rourke reached up under his left armpit, snatching one of the twin Detonics pistols from the Alessi shoulder holsters. He thumbed back the hammer, pushing up the frame-mounted thumb safety. Bending into his stride, he began to run again, hugging the side of the buildings he passed, getting across the alley, then to the next street and into the next block. He slowed, the athletic field less than two hundred yards way; and beyond the cinder track, with some of the painted white lines in the field still visible, was the stadium.
Something inside Rourke told him Soames was there. The wind was blowing cold again. He pulled the waist-length brown leather jacket back on. Then, at a slow trot, started across the athletic field, snatching the second Detonics from under his right arm into his left hand, thumbing back the hammer and crooking his thumb around to push up the safety.
Rourke stopped beside the stadium entrance, examining the dust on the concrete surface, a smile crossing his lips. Faintly, he could detect a tire tread in the blown sand.
Rourke started through the entranceway, and as he reached the end of the long tunnel, he scanned the bowl of the stadium itself, squinting against the sunlight despite the dark
glasses he wore. A smile crossed his lips again. Apparently the games held at the stadium had once been broadcast over local radio. There was a low-gain antenna beside the booth on the far, topside of the arena, the sort of antenna that could be used to transmit to a more powerful receiver-sender fifty miles or so away.
There was no sign of Soames or his bike.
Rourke walked up the low, broad concrete steps into the grandstand, then started along the circumference of the stadium toward the booth and the antenna.
One Detonics .45 in each hand, Rourke moved slowly ahead, looking from side to side. He no longer cared if Soames detected his presence— because there was nowhere the spy could go. Soames could smash his radio, but that was unlikely. Rather than going cold, out of contact with his Soviet masters, he'd likely try to make a fight of it. Perhaps Soames had weapons stashed somewhere in the stadium; perhaps there had been a weapon concealed on his body— a holster that carried a snubby revolver or medium frame auto in the top of his cowboy boot. It didn't matter, Rourke thought.
