by Ahern, Jerry
Paul swung from the rope, the Schmiesser in his left hand, the submachine gun chattering toward the same target.
Natalia shrieked, “Watch out for me!” and streaked past Michael, her knife in her right hand, a pistol in her left. She dove over the packing crates and was gone from sight.
There was a hideous scream. But it was a man’s scream …
Paul Rubenstein swung forward on the rope, his feet touching a desk top.
A figure moved behind the desk and Paul, still holding the rope in his right hand, took a half step forward, his right foot snapping out, contacting something hard, like bone.
And then he looked, listened.
Face bloodied, eyes streaming tears, hands over his ears from the stun of the grenades, Christopher Dodd begged. “Please don’t kill me!”
Paul Rubenstein’s left hand squeezed more tightly on the submachine gun’s pistol grip, his left index finger against the trigger.
It would have been so easy to kill Commander Dodd. But then, he would have become like him.
Seven
There was no law to which he could be surrendered except his own, which would not prosecute him. And they were not murderers, which Dodd already knew. Commander Christopher Dodd would live if he talked, and Dodd was not courageous enough to do otherwise.
Paul’s eyes met his, and Michael shrugged his shoulders, feeling somehow inadequate because he was chained to a moral code that Dodd was not.
Paul Rubenstein said. “The good die young that they may not be corrupted; the wicked live on that they may have the chance to repent”
“Shakespeare’?” Natalia asked.
“The Torah,” Paui said quiedy, his eyes shifting to settle on Commander Dodd.
Bjom Rolvaag waited guard outside, Hrothgar at his side, lest more of Dodd’s Nazi confederates were in the vicinity, although that seemed unlikely, and to alert them-Natalia, Paul and Annie, and Michael Rourke-should the crowd outside attempt to storm Eden One. So far, they milled around, waiting. People had come from Eden, armed and ready (for what, Michael was uncertain). He addressed them when they were assembled outside. “Commander Dodd and his neo-Nazi sympathizers are responsible for the burning of my father’s hospital, the killing of the patients and on-duty staff, the assassination attempts on the lives of my parents and the kidnapping of a newborn infant my mother had just delivered of herself. Don’t interfere.”
There had been grumbles from some of the persons outside, Dodd sympathizers, but no overt moves of hostility. One voice from the crowd shouted, “Maybe this is just an attempt to discredit the commander so the Jap can win the election.”
There were more grunts, no more intelligible words.
Michael retired to the cargo bay then, where he stood now. staring at Dodd.
Annie stood behind Dodd.
Michael said to Dodd, “You have us at no disadvantage, because a single radio message will bring in a German helicopter to pick us up. Your people outside won’t be able to whip up a mob and ‘arrest’ us,, or kill us, either. The longer you let this go, the more what’s happened here is going to start to smell badly to all those potential voters outside. If you get out there quickly enough, maybe you can lie to them while there’s still time.”
Dodd’s eyes took on a hint of arrogance. “You never voted, did you? You were a little kid when everything happened, too young. You don’t know the power of rhetoric. How you can turn things around and people will be saps enough to believe you, vote for you?”
“I can imagine,” Michael almost whispered. “Where’s mom and dad’s baby?”
Dodd sneered.
Natalia’s right hand moved in a flash, the Bali-Song making the click-click-click sound, the point of the knife hooking into Dodd’s left nostril. “I was trained by the KGB, remember? We actually had courses in making people talk. I always had high marks. First it will be the left nostrd, then the right. Then the left side of your mouth, then the right. Then the left outer ear, then the right. By the time I am through with you, the only way you will win votes is out of pity. And, if you do not tell us right now, and the truth, it will not matter to me if you speak after one nostril is gone, or if I am still at work on one side of your mouth. I will do all that I have said, regardless. And, if you refuse to tell us how to find John and Sarah’s
child after all of that, then I will flail the skin from your testicles and make you eat it.”
There was a sound almost too soft to notice.
Michael looked down, then looked away to conceal his amusement. Natalia would never have done such things-at least he assumed she would not.
Commander Dodd’s coveralls were dark near the crotch and there was a small puddle on the floor between his legs.
Dodd’s voice shook as he said, “Deitrich Zimmer. It was all, all his idea. They reformed the new SS, along the lines of the old one from World War Two. The party has a new leader. The man claims descent from Adolf Hider, direct lineage. I don’t know who he is. Zimmer knows.”
“How many are there, in this new SS?”
“Zimmer told me a couple of thousand. A lot of them escaped right after Doctor Rourke overthrew The Leader’s regime, more of them drifted out during the weeks afterward. Some of them still live in New Germany, but not revealing their politics.”
“Some of the ones who tried to kill Sarah, and then Annie and me. that time.” Natalia whispered.
“What’s their goal?” Paul asked, breathing hard as he spoke.
Dodd evidently had some of his courage back, because he snapped. “To rid the world of scum like you, Jew, and anyone who isn’t white.”
Paul smiled, turned away, punched his right fist into his left palm. Without looking at Dodd, he said, “We’re the scum? Why don’t you look in a mirror, ubermench.”
Annie went to Paul, put her arms around him.
Natalia’s voice sounded hard. “Where have they taken the baby, and why?”
“I don’t know why, and-“
Natalia moved the knife back into his nostril and jerked it slightly, Dodd screaming, blood trickling down over his mouth.
“Where and why were the questions,” Michael reiterated.
“I swear to God, I don’t know why!” Natalia started to move the knife again. Tears fell from Dodd’s eyes and there was the unmistakable sound of the commander’s bowels loosening, followed by a fecal smell that was sickening. “I know wherer
“Where?” Natalia hissed.
They moved their headquarters, Zimmer told me. Ifs in the high peaks of the Andes Mountains in Peru. But you can only get in there by helicopter and they have antiaircraft weapons. You don’t have a chance. The Leader had the place built in the event of a revolution forcing him out of power. A bunker, that’s what it is. You’ll never get in there, and if you do, youll never get out alive. It won’t do you any good.”
“Are you finished with him?” Natalia asked.
“Let’s see if he can pinpoint it on a map,” Michael said.
“And then you tell us everything else you can think of about Zimmer, about this secret place, all of it. And maybe I won’t turn you into a grotesque.”
Dodd looked at Natalia and started to cry even harder.
Eight
Wolfgang Mann’s fingers knitted into the shape of a tent.
He looked across those fingers, saying, The Leader could very well have diverted men and materiel within the structure of the old SS to construct such a thing. It would be highly secure. Dodd may have been right, that you cannot get in or get out. But we will die in the attempt, if necessary. The four of you with Rolvaag helping cannot hope to penetrate such a place.”
Natalia lit a cigarette.
Paul paced, Annie perched on the edge of a chair watching him.
Michael Rourke exhaled as he said, “Dodd seemed to be telling the truth. He gave us that set of map coordinates just before we called in the chopper to get us out.”
“Cartography and Electronic Intelligence is working o
n the coordinates even as we speak, and I have contacted New Germany to begin an exhaustive records search in the hopes of verifying the site, then ascertaining just what has gone on there, what we will be facing.”
Michael fingered his father’s lighter in his pocket. “Is there arrything you can think of, Colonel, that might indicate why Zimmer would want the baby, give us some sort of clue as to what he’s planning?”
Colonel Mann swiveled his desk chair to better view the screen of his computer terminal. “Zimmer is a physician and surgeon, a very good one. He specialized, according to this, in genetic micro-surgery, pioneered a variety of techniques I
do not understand, but evidendy important ones.”
“That scares me,” Paul volunteered, ceasing to pace for a moment. “The genetic surgery bit.”
“And what about this man that Dodd says Zimmer told him claimed descendency from Hitler?” Natalia asked.
Wolfgang Mann laughed, but it was in irony, Michael Rourke surmised. “During World War Two,” Mann began, stubbing out his cigarette then quickly lighting another, “there was a program in which the most presumably genetically perfect from among the ranks of the SS were selected to breed with the most genetically perfect German girls that could be found. The children of these unions were known as Reichskinder. The man to whom Commander Dodd referred is named Albert Heimaccher.
“Heimaccher claimed,” Mann went on, “that his ancestor, was the illegitimate son of the Fuhrer, and was a part of this program. There may be truth to the claim. Hider was outwardly quite the moral man, oddly enough, according to the consensus of history, marrying Eva Braun in those last days in the Bunker in Berlin. But there were always those who claimed that Hider never died there.”
Michael volunteered, “Fve read quite a bit about that period. I don’t claim any expertise, but I was always mildly amazed that Hitler chose to stay in Berlin with the end coming, that he was quite that insane.”
Mann shrugged his shoulders. “Insane he most assuredly was, but I agree that remaining in Berlin was tantamount to suicide, which is, of course, what he is credited as having eventually performed.”
“He was more afraid of our troops than those of the rest of the Allies,” Natalia said. “Because our troops had the memory of Stalingrad.”
Colonel Mann said, “This Albert Heimaccher was on the fringe of the Leader’s inner circle, part of it but never fully trusted, I think. Heimaccher is an engineer, very talented as an architect as well.”
“Does he do water colors?” Paul asked bitterly.
Mann answered, “I know what you are thinking, Herr Rubenstein, that perhaps Heimaccher is some true descendant of the Fuhrer and that he will be able to somehow duplicate the terror of his antecedent. This is a different age.”
“Is it?” Michael asked. “But, regardless of any of this, we have to penetrate this redoubt in the Andes and find the child before it is too late. Why they took him is something I still cannot fathom, but conjecture is immaterial at the moment.”
Colonel Mann, his face drawn down into a frown, only nodded …
Deitrich Zimmer sat at the console of his computer, the program converting videotape of the child’s face and body into a digital format.
He punched in that he desired split screen.
On the right hand side of the screen he summoned up the countenance and vital statistics of Albert Heimaccher, the self-proclaimed descendant of Adolph Hitler.
Over Heimacchers countenance he super-imposed the face, five centuries old which had nearly dominated the entire world, the Fuhrers face.
There was some superficial resemblance, indeed.
The video of the Rourke baby was fully digitized.
He studied both sides of the screen, simultaneously now.
There was. of course, no Adolph Hider to study, not even some bit of genetic material.
But, if Heimaccher were a true descendant, as some physical characteristics and talents seemed to suggest, some of that raw material was present, waiting to be discovered and used in a better man.
Deitrich Zimmer lit a cigarette as he stood up, turning away from the computer console, leaving his desk and crossing the room toward the window. The window could be shuttered in the event of attack, the shutters bombproof steel alloy molded and colored to resembled the surface of the mountain itself, in which the Redoubt was set.
But now, the shutters back, the view was breathtaking, peaks ranked one after the other toward the north and the south, the very spinal cord of the continent. A glint of early monring sunshine could be seen in the crystalline snows, making what was white, gold against the gray of granite.
He inhaled on his cigarette.
The only problem was to get Heimaccher to agree, of course, because one could not perform such testing without the knowledge of the subject. But for all his shortcomings-he could never lead them, now or ever-Heimaccher did have a sense of history and the very idea of the exercise might just appeal to that sense. The baby had been examined by the very best doctors, was sound, perfect, as fine an example of humanity as one could wish to find.
Zimmer recalled the data concerning the Rourkes.
John Rourke’s I.Q. was nearly off the scale, his physical prowess, stamina, dexterity and agility all better than the best of athletes. A physician, a true Socratic man-what a fine party member, what a magnificent commander in the SS, be would have made, embodying all that was perfection.
Sarah Rourke was more ‘normal,’ of course, but in her way equally as perfect. The baby was the living proof of that.
The child had her eye color, rather than that of the father, but facially the resemblance between the child and the father was otherwise hauntingly close.
If the child had his father’s genes, his father’s intelligence, his father’s athletic abilities, then the child could be molded, to attain still greater heights, to lead…
Jason Darkwood shut off the pocket viewer. The news video fiche clicked out and he withdrew it from the viewer, crumpling it in his hand, then looked about for a place to discard it. There was a trash neutralizer on the far wall and he stood up, pocketing the viewer in his uniform and leaving his hat on the sofa.
Mid-Whke Todays banner headlines carried news that medi
cal specialists from Mid-Wake, New Germany, Lydveldid Island and even the Soviet Underground City were working round the clock in an effort to save the lives of John and Sarah Rourke.
Jason Darkwood already knew that, and all the other facts the paper had not gotten to print.
Sarah Rourke’s condition, although near death, was stabilized. John Rourke’s condition was worsening by the hour. He was slipping away and, at least to the degree that Darkwood could understand the information Maggie Barrow passed on to him, there was virtually no hope.
Admiral Rahn had relieved him - Darkwood - of regular duties until there was a change, for better or worse, placing him in charge of security, but Tom Stanhope was actually handling the details with his Marine guards.
The flags of Mid-Wake flew at full mast, but details stood by to lower them to half-staff at a moment’s notice. A friend who worked for one of Mid-Wake’s television stations had told him that video obituaries were already fully assembled, merely awaiting update when the time came. There would be security camera footage seized from the Soviet Underwater Complex, footage contributed by the Soviet Underground City that actually showed some scenes from The Night of The War.
The President was already planning to ask Congress-a mere formality-for a national day of mourning to be declared, a statue to be built, all the customary things mat were done when a figure or figures of heroic stature, died.
Darkwood pushed the video fiche into the neutralizer, then walked toward the windows.
He could look down from here over much of this sector.
Women in dresses pushed baby strollers.
Rowers grew.
Life went on.
Without John Rourke, there would have be none of tha
t ever again.
Nine
Michael Rourke set down the radio telephone receiver. “Well?” Annie insisted.
He looked at his sister, then at his brother-in-law, then at Natalia. “Mom’s stabilized. Dad is slipping away. The doctors are still trying, but nothing seems to work. Whatever damage was done to his brain when all that rubble fell on him is the cause, but nobody seems to know what to do about it.”
Annie just looked away, apparently no tears left.
Natalia closed her eyes, leaned her head back, the pulse in her long, graceful neck visibly moving.
Paul, leaning on Colonel Mann’s desk, held to the desk top so tightly his knuckles were white with it.
Annie, without looking at them, asked, “So. Are we going after our brother, or going to Mid-Wake to be with them when he-uhh-when-when.” She looked at Michael now, and Michael knew he had been wrong. There were still tears.
Annie had ceased sensing anything from their father, hours before, as if his mind were simply turned off.
Natalia said, “It is your decision, now, Michael.”
“She’s right,” Paul nodded, his voice hoarse, strained sounding. “What do we do?”
Michael Rourke had tried his father’s cigars once or twice over the years while his parents and Paul and Natalia had slept. He went to Natalia, reached to the desk top where her cigarettes were, took one, and lit it with his father’s bartered old Zippo. He inhaled the smoke, remembering why peopk
did such a stupid thing as to take smoke into their lungs intentionally. It was a diversion.
From reality, for even just a microsecond.
“Mom and Dad, given the options we have, would tell us to go after the baby. Our being at Mid-Wake-” and he forced himself to say it, his throat so tight he thought he would choke. It wasn’t from the cigarette. “Our being there when he dies won’t make any difference to him or to mom, but if there’s an afterlife and somehow he can know, well-” The tears came and he couldn’t speak, his chest tight, his body shaking.
