by Ryder Stacy
“Sorry,” Rock said, not even sure himself what he meant by the words, and he turned, heading back out toward the noisy festivities three rooms down. Rahallah shut the door firmly and tended to the Premier, giving him several of his heart pills and a tranquilizer. Within a minute or two Vassily’s color returned and his trembling ceased. He looked up at the black servant with thanks.
“Ah, I am so old, I can barely converse with another man without nearing death. It is pitiful. Ridiculous. Did I not have so much responsibility, such weight on my shoulders—I would have killed myself long ago.”
“Grandfather,” the black man said, scolding the Premier as he pushed his wheelchair in front of the electric fire behind fake logs that were in the fireplace, the hearth in front of which Kennedy, Roosevelt, old Honest Abe himself, had warmed their feet, had tried to collect their thoughts. “Please, it is bad to even talk like that. You’re tired because you have had a hectic schedule, done things in the last few weeks that would tire a man fifty years your junior. Even I have felt myself weary to the point of fainting several times,” the African prince lied. “As the Americans are fond of saying—don’t kick yourself in the ass.”
The Premier laughed out loud at the words and then shook his head softly. “Ah, faithful Rahallah, what would I do without you? You get me through the worst, the darkest of times.” He looked up at the black man with wistful eyes—as if somehow he wished he could undo all that history had wrought, but knew at the same instant that nothing could be undone.
“Read to me Rahallah, Son of the Plains Lion,” the Premier said, his voice growing weary again. “Read to me from where you left off last night. I feel the need for nourishment from the masters, from the past.”
“Of course, Grandfather,” the black man said, going to a small reading platform and taking up an old leather book in his spotless white gloves. He sat on the couch in front of the Premier and, opening the page to the marked spot, began where he had stopped the previous evening.
“Oh trumpeter, methinks I am myself the instrument thou playest,
Thou melts my heart, my mind—thou movest, drawest, changest them at will,
Thou takest away all cheering light, all hope
I see the enslaved, the overthrown, the hurt, the oppressed of the whole earth,
I feel the measureless shame and humiliation of my race, it becomes all mine,
The revenges of humanity, the wrongs of ages, baffled feuds and hatreds—all become my possession.
Utter defeat upon me weighs—all lost—the foe victorious.
Yet amid the ruins Pride colossal stands unshaken to the last,
Endurance, resolution, to the last . . .”
Rahallah looked over to see if he should read on. But the Premier was already sound asleep, his head fallen to his right shoulder, like a child’s, his mouth and eyes strangely smooth and young looking in his sleep. The black servant put back the silk bookmark inside page 326 of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and placed it as gently as if it were a fragile egg back on the cherrywood stand until it’s next use. Then he sat back on the velvet couch where John F. Kennedy and Jackie had once made love through a winter’s night—and watched as the Premier of all the Russias sank into deep sleep and dark, terrible dreams.
Twenty
Dhul Qarnain led his men in the death prayers. They kneeled before him on their prayer rugs, each unfolded out, so that two hundred squares of fabric with two hundred souls prostrate atop them filled the main quadrant of the oil tanker.
“Oh, Allah, we who are about to join you in Paradise send our prayers of thanks now—that you will allow us to die in your name, in your spirit.” He bowed toward Mecca as his followers made themselves even more prone, grinding their foreheads into the rugs and the hard steel beneath.
“We who are about to join you,” they all intoned as part of the sacred ritual.
“We are joyous, oh Allah,” Dhul Qarnain went on, spreading his arms wide to the heavens, as far above him steel covers were sliding back, revealing the star-spattered sky like an explosion of diamonds everywhere above them. “For we shall know Paradise. We shall know the dark-eyed houris, the pomegranates falling into our hands, the cool breeze of the afternoon, the call of the dove as our music, and the nectar of the angels as our wine. This, all this shall be ours, my loyal fighters for Allah.” He shook his fists dramatically as his long red robe—red for battle—swirled around him wildly as the night breezes came down through the ever-larger opening in the steel roof above them.
“All this shall be ours,” they sang as one. The warriors of Allah were dressed as well in red from head to toe; swords hung at their sides, long and curved, submachine guns and Kalashnikovs over their shoulders. Behind them the chopper fleet was already warming up, testing engines, the smell of petrol filling the large innards of the oil tanker in rolling clouds.
“Oh what a blessed dream to die the Warrior’s Death,” Qarnain continued, his eyes burning like the true fanatic. And thus it went as the Arab warrior exhorted his followers, told them why it was much better to live in the other world than this one. Made them get horny for death.
Hundreds of feet away, Killov stood in the bridge with the captain who was slowly pulling away from the moorings they had been anchored to for days. Killov could feel it now—so close. His heart was beating so hard he had to take an extra Motrilium to calm down. After a minute his heartbeat seemed to slow to jungle drum instead of the pounding locomotive it had been seconds before.
At last, revenge. How sweet it was. Literature had always said that it was bitter, and destroyed whole lives. But the colonel didn’t feel that way at all. Revenge was sweet. Sweet as sugar, as honey. He could taste it on his lips and it was delicious. He could see their faces as he stared ahead into the night sky, just beginning to break slightly into dawn as little edges and gulleys of violet appeared far off to the east. Could see their bloody faces in those crackling neon stars. Zhabnov, Vassily, Rockson. They were everywhere he looked—above him, around him. From defeat and total disgrace, he was returning to claim what was his. This would be the greatest day of his life.
He took another up—a Dydrex—and looked down into the little pill box with the numerous compartments for all the ups, downs, in-betweens, muscle-relaxants, pain-killers, mega-tranqs—and a dozen other things that were in there. The man was hardly more than a walking drug himself anymore. He knew it. If they took blood from him they could bottle it and sell it back to him again. The thought amused him, and he actually laughed as he felt in such a good mood. His mouth hadn’t moved in such fashion for a long long time, and it hurt as he did so. But yes, the thought was funny. He could take an intravenous needle and stick it in one arm—and just stick the other end back into the other arm. Why, he could recycle his own drug supply. Why, the idea was positively genius. Again his mouth shook and wretched little cawing sounds came out. The captain of the boat didn’t dare look around to see just what it was that the colonel was doing. He didn’t want to know.
They moved slowly up the Potomac, so clear and beautiful this morning with the cherry blossoms reflected in its flat waters, with the stars above shining back up from the surface. The tanker headed forward like some leviathon from the Bible, some promised beast of destruction. Headed inexorably toward an ocean of blood.
Twenty-One
The spectacle the next morning as all the parties assembled aboard Premier Vassily’s supership, the Dreadnaught, was awe-inspiring indeed. Vassily had let Zhabnov have his banners and his feast—but now, now the Premier would make the Freefighters, make Ted Rockson, feel the pressures of history. For all men can be seduced by power. By the trappings of power. The rituals and sounds, the silk and the gold that makes a man feel stirred in his blood. Rockson was a great man, like himself, and Vassily was sure that he would not be unmoved by the display of power that was being put on for him.
Buglers, hundreds of them, lined the sides of the great carrier deck, flags a hundred feet high depictin
g American-Soviet friendship, immense paintings in great Soviet realism—American and Red workers shaking hands over tractor seats. Farmers, fishermen, all the workers of each land joined together in a fairy tale of “art” in which everything was peace and love. Behind them, at the far end of the Dreadnaught, were rows of choppers and super-advanced MIG fighters, their wings folded back like broken dragonflies. The huge guns of the great ship were poised straight ahead as if they would destroy the surrounding landscape should they wish to. The covered missile silos shone in the sun, the promise of megadeath inherent in their curved domes.
The procession walked up the long aluminum gangplank covered over with plush red carpet as the crowds of Freefighter delegates and Red officials headed up onto the top of the ship. Premier Vassily, pushed by Rahallah, then Zhabnov, then Rockson, then the rest. The pecking order of the world. They were greeted by a great blast of horns, then a hundred drummers pounded out a martial beat that could set a man’s heart to doing double-time. Huge flower arrangements, twenty, thirty feet high had been set up here and there as adornments for the conference. If Vassily thought he would win Rockson’s mind with such trappings, he was sorely mistaken. For the Doomsday Warrior was, if anything, more amused by it all than either taken in or even angered. It was hard to take it seriously when he recognized in some of the towering bouquets or flowers some of McCaughlin’s favorite ingredients for his stews. If the big Scotsman were here he would doubtless be surreptitiously snipping off whole stalks.
They were led by Russian naval officers, every one of them decked out in ceremonial garb, strikingly colorful, with wide plumed hats, all circa nineteenth century—pre-revolution days, when the czar had ruled things with no less an autocratic thumb. Two long tables had been set up, each a good two hundred feet in length—actually a number of twenty-footers pushed together—their surfaces uncovered so that their shining mahogany wood glistened like red fire in the noonday sun burning down on them.
It was an afternoon hot and sultry in a way that D.C. had been famous for all the way back to the pre-revolutionary days, when the first bold men had settled here. Fortunately, the breezes coming in off the bay and the high, billowing, parachute-like tents that had been set up above the tables made it seem far cooler than it was.
When they had been marched in, saluted, bugled, drummed and a hundred other little ritualistic ceremonies, they were at last all seated. First Premier Vassily made a little speech about peace—then Zhabnov. Then it was Rock’s turn, but he merely stared at the Premier.
“Why don’t we just get on with it, Vassily. We both have a lot of better things to do than listen to bullshit all day.” Archer, sitting next to the Doomsday Warrior, grunted with approval—not understanding his mentor’s words, but feeling the emotion behind them. He couldn’t see any food anywhere, though he looked hard. And the sudden realization that he might have to sit here all day without a single bite was starting to dawn on him with depressing clarity.
“Excellent idea, excellent,” Vassily answered without missing a beat. Behind him Rahallah stood, his hands folded in front of his waist, sunglasses on, as impenetrable as an Egyptian sphinx. “Then before we go on with the proceedings at hand, I would like to know why you violently attacked—and killed—a number of Russian officers in the city of Washington on your way here.”
Rockson testily replied, “My delegation came in the way we had to—making sure you weren’t planning a betrayal.”
“It’s indeed an unfortunate incident,” Vassily coolly admonished, “but, there have been many such incidents in the history of our relationship . . . Perhaps now we can begin to change that. I don’t want to stall the peace process . . . Look, Rockson—you killed some of my men, we hurt some of yours. Let’s just call it even, a stalemate, a sad episode that had no winners—and move on.”
“All right with me,” Rock said, leaning back in one of the ornate antique Russian chairs that the Premier had had dug up from the czar’s old palace museum and brought here by the hundreds. Every man was sitting on a priceless relic from the imperial past. “But how about fatso here.” Rockson looked at Zhabnov, who appeared ready to pop a gut. “He tortures young girls; he’s a pimp.”
“Why you—you,” he sputtered, knowing that he’d been screwed by Rockson, trumped—and he wasn’t even quite sure how.
“Sit down, Nephew,” Vassily said firmly to Zhabnov. “Or I’ll be forced to have you escorted from the premises.” Vassily looked coldly at his stupid nephew. The fool’s sex mania was abominable. Yet Zhabnov couldn’t even begin to comprehend that. Zhabnov seemed to turn about five different colors as his brain tried to calculate all the various levels that were going on. But it couldn’t. So he breathed out hard, made himself sit back.”
“Nephew will reform himself, or face punishment,” old Vassily said.” Now, I propose that all procurement of American women as ‘volunteer’ concubines cease, and that ‘volunteer’ labor camps in this country close down immediately!” There were gasps from every Russian mouth at the table, including Zhabnov’s. The American slaves were the backbone of the Russian economy here. Why, they didn’t have a single Red worker in America. Rockson sat up a little straighter, his ears perking up at the words. He had never heard them make such an offer, even if it were couched in face-saving terms.
“Secondly,” the Premier went on, and Rock noticed that today his voice was strong, clear, his color good. The man clearly believed in what he was saying. “A joint Soviet-American military command force should be set up to become a national police force, working together to rid the countryside of bandits and murderers.”
Again there were gasps and sounds of consternation everywhere. The ideas were too radical to the Russians. The Freefighters, on the other hand, were wondering if they were awake. They hadn’t expected anything of this magnitude. And suddenly they began to grow afraid, their stomachs knotting up in fear. For if it all was true, then they would have to sign a peace treaty—and God help them if it all turned out to be lies. They could be the greatest heroes, or the greatest villains, the country had ever seen.
“Thirdly,” the Premier went on, his voice if anything growing stronger with every word, “America will be returned to a democratic form of government in which Russian and American citizens will share equal voting rights. And fourthly, all Freefighters shall be given political amnesty—all political prisoners released from jail.” With that, he stopped, and sat back in his wheelchair, suddenly a little tired from talking. The hundreds of delgates, officers and mid-level bureaucrats all stared at each other, not knowing what the hell to think, say, do, or even the right expression to make. For they weren’t sure, to a man, if it was wonderful or the most terrible thing they had ever heard. For an instant, peace was possible.
But only for an instant! For suddenly the sky was filled with what was at first an irritating whine, then within seconds a drone that filled the very heavens with a roar. All eyes looked up to see a whole fleet of helicopters swooping in on them from four sides. There must have been thirty, even forty of the rushing black helis, moving like hawks, looming ever larger as the Dreadnought’s crew and the delegates’ eyes focused on them.
Then all hell broke loose. The choppers unleashed a hail of rockets and machine-gun fire that tore into the top of the great Dreadnaught like scythes of death. Though the fighting vessel had enough firepower to take out whole nations—nuclear missiles were stored in silos below—and conventional forces to take out a whole fleet with cannon and non-nuclear missiles systems, still they weren’t prepared for or able to deal with this quick strike, coming in at a hundred feet above sea level. Somehow, no one had ever thought of that particular possibility. Where were they from?
Many of the delegates didn’t have a chance. Russians and Americans were cut to ribbons where they sat, their bodies jerking wildly in their seats as if they were dancing, arms and legs jumping as slugs tore into them, dismembering bodies. Tables crackled from explosions; small clouds of smoke began risin
g all over the deck as the shells and rockets soared down in eruptions of blood and flame. It was a massacre. Everywhere the attendees of the Peace Conference were turned into steaming raw hamburger.
Rockson barely had time to throw himself down and under the heavy table when the saw a scissor of slugs coming right down the center of the long table, cutting men apart like a they were in a slaughterhouse. He saw Rahallah grabbing the Premier and diving, trying to shield him. Rock hit the cold metal deck and slid halfway under the table. He felt the shuddering of wood above him as .50 caliber slugs tore into it every six inches or so. Splinters flew in the air all around him, some getting in his face and eyes, blinding him momentarily.
Then everything was a kaleidoscope of color, heat and pain. He heard the choppers roaring in from every direction like a herd of screaming hawks. The whooshes of their rockets being fired could be heard every second or so, then the explosions a second later. The machine guns never let up, as dozens of the helis roared back and forth fifty feet above the deck, taking out everything and everyone they could. It was as if they were exterminating cockroaches—not wanting one to live.
It was a trap! Rock realized with horror. The whole thing had been a set-up from the start. And yet? And yet, it didn’t make sense. If it was their trap—why were the Premier and the fat President hiding under a table just feet away from him?
