It wasn’t a long walk, and after a few minutes up concrete tunnels and pedestrian ways, and showing the paper from Jim Rowley to two more frowning men, and leaving their belongings and the holstered pistol behind, they entered an office that was luxurious compared to Jim’s. There were two wooden desks with leather chairs, an Oriental rug, and a side bar. Bright lights illuminated the office and there Were two men sitting behind the desks, both wearing white shirts and skinny black ties. It sure was amusing, he thought. They were the first clean shirts and ties he had seen in days.
The man on the left was smoking and drinking a cup of what looked like tea, and his black hair was cut in a fine crewcut. His companion was balding, but sported a thick black mustache. The man with the mustache looked at their letter of introduction. ‘That’s good words from Jim,’ he said. ‘And that counts for somethin’ over here. I take it you’re Carl Landry and you’re Sandy Price. It says here you’re both writers, and Jim’s asked me to help you folks.’
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘We’re on an assignment from the Times of London and we’re trying to get to Philadelphia.’
The other man was silent, and the man with the mustache scratched at the back of his head. ‘Well, I think we might be able to pull something off. Feel like a walk?’
‘As long as it gets us going.’
‘It sure will. Let’s head out.’
They left the office and Carl and Sandy retrieved their gear and shouldered their knapsacks. ‘By the by, my name is Tony Sculley,’ one of the two men said as they retraced their earlier steps. ‘I’m co-mayor of this burg.’ He hooked a thumb at his companion, walking with a teacup in his hand. ‘The strong silent type over there is my partner in crime. Yuri Malenkov.’
Yuri nodded. ‘Pleased, I’m sure,’ he said, with a trace of a Russian accent. Carl stopped and found himself staring at the Russian. If Tony had said the co-mayor had come from the moon, he would have found it as likely.
Sandy spoke up, her voice almost squeaking. ‘I’m sorry, are you Russian?’
A tired nod and a sip from the teacup. ‘Da. And congratulations, my miss. You are probably the ten thousandth person to ask me that since I arrived here.’
Carl found his voice. ‘Embassy. Were you on the embassy staff in New York City when the war started? How in hell did you end up as co-mayor?’
Tony held up his hands. ‘Folks, here’s the story, but you’ve got to promise not to print it. It’d cause too much problems. Do I have a deal?’
‘Well,’ Sandy began cautiously. Carl nudged her with his elbow, not wanting to upset anyone or hold up their trip for any reason. ‘You’ve got a deal,’ he said.
Tony smiled and they resumed walking, heading down the concrete corridor. He said, ‘You’ll see why we’d like to keep things quiet. I’m a former Air Force captain, and most people would probably consider me a deserter. You see, I came back from my mission and I sort of ended up here, looking for my family instead of reporting to a superior officer. Yuri here is a former lieutenant in the former Soviet Air Force and a hell of a nice guy, but there are a lot of people out there—not in this city but elsewhere—who’d probably like to kill him, just for the hell of it.’
Even a decade after the war, Carl was surprised at what was struggling inside of him. Part of him saw the thin man as the enemy, the source of all that had happened, the source of the destruction and the death and disease and starvation. But another part of him was looking at the tired and lined eyes, realizing this man was a horrible living example of the character in the Philip Nolan story, a man truly without a country.
‘What was your mission?’ Carl asked.
Tony laughed and said, ‘Even ten years later, it’s hard to believe. I was in Europe, in a top secret squadron called 510. We flew F-100s, single-seat jets.’
‘Fighters?’
‘Nope,’ Tony said, ‘Bombers.’
‘Oh,’ Sandy said, her voice quiet.
‘Ah, yes, “oh,”‘ he said, shaking his head. ‘The favorite phrase of someone meeting a bomber pilot for the first time. Well, lady, I hate to use an old and dishonored phrase, but we were following orders. And my target, at least, was a military target. I wasn’t a city buster.’
‘Tony, please,’ Yuri started, but the other man waved him off as they started down a set of stairs.
‘No, no, these are reporters and, this being the tenth anniversary of that fuck-up, maybe they can use this as back-ground. You see, our F-100s each carried a single bomb, a lovely little five-megaton device. You know what our mission profile was? We were stationed at a base in West Germany, and when the balloon went up, we went deep into the Warsaw Bloc, flying about fifty to a hundred feet above the ground, trying to evade their radar. Then when we got near the target point we’d pull back on the stick, fly straight up, and release the bomb. It traveled about two miles in a big arc, if you can believe it, and while that happened, I turned tail and headed back west, before the explosion. Barely made it, but I did. Pretty sure I took out the target.’
And what was your target?’ Sandy asked.
He shrugged his shoulders and opened a set of double doors that led into the ground floor of a warehouse filled with shelves and bustling people. Some were moving handcarts of crates and boxes. ‘Hell, it wasn’t much of anything. A reserve Soviet Air Force base in northern Ukraine. Probably nothing there except some old propeller bombers from World War II, but it was a target nonetheless. Had to have targets, you understand. You know how many nuclear warheads we had in our arsenals back in ‘62? Care for a guess? No? Well, try more than twenty thousand. And if you had twenty thousand warheads, you had to find a place to use them. We had planners in the Air Force back then, they were targeting cow pastures, calling them alternate landing fields. That’s how crazy it was.’
Yuri spoke up. ‘But at least you survived, Tony. Not many in your squadron could say that.’
Carl said, ‘I’ve read about the Soviet Air Defense system. It must have been tough.’
Tony laughed. ‘Didn’t see a damn part of the Soviet Air Defense system. Everything that happened was according to plan. You see, our jets, we didn’t have enough fuel to get back to base. That was also part of the plan. After we delivered our warhead, we’d fly back west as far as we could, staying away from major population centers and military targets, and when we bingoed—ran out of fuel—we’d eject and start walking home, using escape and evasion techniques.’
Carl was speechless and Sandy, too, was quiet. Tony laughed as they strode across the warehouse floor. ‘You guys look like you’ve seen a ghost. Well, a couple of times, I sure as hell thought I was going to become a ghost. I survived the ejection, which was thankful in and of itself, and then I landed in a forest in Poland. Started walking west, and kept going. Ate a lot of potatoes, slept in a few hay fields. Got rid of my flight clothes and got some civvies. Made it through Poland and East Germany, and thought I had it made when I got back to West Germany. Just get back to base and head into debriefing. But by the time I got there, everything was gone, and I mean everything. General Curtis had brought everyone home, and being an American right about then -especially an Air Force officer—was not very popular. So I walked a little more, to Denmark, and took myself on a cargo ship bringing Americans out of the country. By then I had long hair and a beard, and I convinced everyone I was a beatnik who’d lost his passport. Got to Maine and then decided that the months I spent walking used up my term of service, so I came south here, to try to find my wife.’ His eyes furrowed and he frowned at the memory. ‘I guess you could say I’m still looking. But one thing I did find’—and he smiled as he gestured to the man walking next to him—‘was this guy, an ex-commie running some of the neighborhoods in Hoboken. Can you believe that?’
‘I can, but it’s hard to,’ Carl said, hearing the disbelief in his voice. ‘You...you were on the Bear bomber that was shot down over New Jersey, right?’
Yuri nodded. ‘True. My story is not as exciting
as Tony’s.’ He smiled weakly as they approached another set of doors. ‘All my life, I wanted to come to America, to see it for myself. I learned English in school and practiced with my brothers, in Moscow. Then, in 1962, my dream comes true. I come to America. But it is not how I planned it, for I came over as a navigator for the TU-95.’
He repeated himself, emphasizing the words as he opened the doors which led outside. ‘You understand that? The navigator. Not the bombardier.’ Yuri glanced over at Tony. ‘Like my friend Tony, here, I was a young man following old men’s orders. We had our mission to do, and we did it. And I will not speak of it further. I am sorry for what happened here, just as I am sure Tony is sorry for what happened to my country. When my bomber was shot down over New Jersey, I was separated from the rest of the crew, which was later to prove to be a blessing.’
They were outside now, on a wide loading dock. Yuri grimaced at the memory. ‘The copilot, he was not a good man. His name was Leonid. A cruel man. But he did not deserve to die the way he did, hung from a tree. Those weeks and months after I parachuted out, I lived by my wits here in this Restricted Zone, until I began organizing the people in the houses nearby. They were sick and they were starving, and they did not care much of where I was from. They only cared that I helped, that I was able to do things for them.’
Tony spoke up. ‘Yuri was an organizer from way back, a Young Communist. True?’
‘A Komsomol member, true, but everyone then was required to join the youth groups. I was no different.’ He sipped from his teacup and said, ‘Now there are no more communists. Just survivors. I helped one survivor, and then another. We got food, medical supplies. We started trading with other buildings, other towns. When they saw who I was, face to face, they were no longer scared of me or my country.’
His eyes suddenly betrayed him. ‘My country. One of these days, I will return. I may be an old man and there may only be a square kilometer of unburnt ground, but one of these days, I will return to my Russia.’
~ * ~
About fifteen minutes later Carl helped Sandy up on the tailgate of an old Ford pickup truck, its fenders rusting and dented. The windshield had long ago been broken, and the doors were dented and stained with rust. Yuri had left but Tony was still with them, in the shadow of an old brick warehouse. Seagulls hovered overhead in the gray predawn. Two trucks were being loaded with bundles and crates. Tony shook their hands and said, ‘Sorry we couldn’t do better for the transport, but this is all we’ve got here. They’re making a delivery through the RZ fence and they have to be on the other side by dawn, before the Army patrols start. They’ll drop you off by the delivery spot. Nearest place to catch a bus will be Morristown, and it won’t be much of a walk. You could be in Philly by noon.’
‘We appreciate your help,’ Carl said. ‘Have you heard anything from PS 19 since we’ve gotten here?’
Tony grimaced. ‘No, not a word. We have a telegraph line set up between us. We heard about the Zed Force raid but the wire’s been dead since after it started.’
Sandy said, ‘Those poor people…’
‘Jim and his folks, they’re smart and tough,’ Tony said. ‘Have to be, to live on that island. You’ll see, they’ll be all right. I’m sure we’ll hear from them in a couple of hours.’
Two young men came up to the truck, dressed in short leather jackets, dungarees, and work boots. They had reddish-brown hair and both had stubble on their faces. Revolvers were holstered at their sides and they nodded politely. Carl looked at them and thought they belonged someplace else, in a different time. Dodge City, perhaps, a hundred years ago.
Tony said, ‘This here is Sam and Drew Cooper, your drivers for today. They’re originally from Virginia but came up here after they had some problems with the Treasury folks in their home state. Something about illegal whiskey stills, right? They’ve been doing the out run for almost a year now and know the towns and roads better than most. Guys, you’ll get ‘em there in one piece, won’t you?’
Both men grinned and the one on the left said, ‘Does this mean we get a bonus, delivering livestock?’
Tony smiled back at them. ‘Not hardly. Now get your butts out of here. This here’s important cargo.’
The brothers got into the truck and after a few grinding tries, the engine finally turned over, belching out a thick cloud of smoke. Then the truck sped away, leaving Tony at the loading dock, waving. Carl and Sandy waved, too.
~ * ~
The truck made its way slowly through the deserted streets, heading west, and Carl undid one of the blanket rolls from the pack and spread it across their legs. Sandy moved so she was sitting next to him and she said, ‘I don’t care about the Official Secrets Act, I don’t care about my editors. I want to get this story out, Carl. We’ve got to stop the paras from going in.’
Do you, he wondered, thinking again about the radio. ‘Even if you do get the story out, what then? Official denial, Sandy. Your government will deny anything is going on, if it suits them. You know how governments work. Don’t be naive.’
She shot back, ‘I don’t like being called naive, Carl.’
He kept silent as the truck made its way through the deserted streets. The roads weren’t as crowded with abandoned vehicles as Manhattan, which made sense. There were more roads leading out of here than there would be on an island with a handful of bridges and tunnels. They passed shuttered factories and brick warehouses, faded signs that advertised storage and electrical motor works and plastic manufacturing. A few dogs scampered by, one limping on three legs.
Sandy spoke up. ‘You know, you must be proud.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of what your people have done, all of the things that they accomplished,’ she said. ‘When we were debriefed by the generals, the way they talked about the Restricted Zones, you would think that they were deserted, that no one dared live there anymore. But we found quite the opposite, Mr. Landry. These places are alive, they are vital, and they’re not giving up. When all is taken care of, you should put this in your book. About the generals’ lies.’
Carl said nothing, his hands clenched underneath the blanket, and the truck bumped along on its way. The sky grew lighter, and dawn was only a few minutes away. He looked again at the deserted streets but saw something else in his mind. He thought about streets filled with uniformed soldiers with gas masks, crowds of civilians gasping for breath and being herded forward into trucks or buses for the long trip to a decon camp. Snipers on the rooftops, firing back, the opening shots of another civil war. He was very tired, he finally realized, and he didn’t want to talk or listen anymore.
‘You’re not saying anything,’ she said.
‘That’s right.’
‘And why is that?’
The truck hit a pothole, and they bounced against some of the crates. ‘Proud? What’s there to be proud of? Oh, what everyone has done here, in this part of New Jersey and Manhattan, in getting some sort of life together, that’s admirable. But in a few weeks, probably, the people who are in charge of this country are going to crush them. With your country’s help.’
‘Not if I can prevent it,’ Sandy said.
The radio. He knew he should confront her about it but he was concerned about her agenda, what she was really doing here. She might deny it all and when they got out of the RZ, the both of them would be picked up by British intelligence. And then what? How could he help Jim if he was being held prisoner?
‘You’re still not saying anything,’ she continued, brushing her hair out of her face. ‘I thought you said we were going to do something to help them. And now, nothing. Are you giving up?’
‘What do you think this is?’ he said suddenly, his exhaustion and fear and suspicions of her all boiling together. ‘Some sort of adventure, put on for your benefit, so that you can get material to write about? Like your grandmama, sent into the deepest wilds for a wonderful safari among the poor natives? These are real people out here, people who’ve survived ten years of poor
food, little medicine, and lousy shelter. They’re not here for your entertainment, so the Times can print a glowing story about “our correspondent” who saved them.’
They were now in a residential area, with small houses separated from each other by nicely sized yards. Walls of shrubbery—free from years of pruning—nearly overgrew some of the houses, and the lawns were a brown, waist-high tangle of weeds and saplings.
‘You’re not being fair,’ she said sharply. ‘I’ve never said anything of the sort, not once. Why are you so angry? Can’t you trust me to get things done?’
‘Trust,’ he said, feeling his voice get louder. ‘Let’s talk about trust, all right, let’s—’
And an explosion at the front of the truck blinded him, and his world turned upside down and went black.
~ * ~
TWENTY-THREE
His head hurt. His back hurt. And his legs...God, how his legs hurt.
Resurrection Day Page 39
