Last War Dance td-17

by Warren Murphy

  Remo slapped the gun away, and Burning Star blinked in amazement, then covered her face and cried.

  "She always gets like that after a food delivery from the Episcopalians," Lupin said. "They send it in on a truck with a minister, and he thinks he's got to preach a sermon. Like the Salvation Army, except the food is shit. The preacher thinks he's got a special message for us, cause he's an Indian."

  "So?" said Remo.

  "No," said Lupin, "Cherokee. Funny eyes and everything. We let him hang around sometimes and trot him out for photographers."

  The war council was being held in what was left of the pretty white church. Pretty on the outside. Inside, the pews were in disarray, the bibles torn, human feces stinking in corners. Men and women slept in pews. Some leaned, half-awake, against shattered stained-glass windows, trying to drain sips of whiskey from bottles that had run dry. The American flag was shredded over a shattered piano.

  And there were guns. Handguns in belts, rifles cradled in arms, stacked against walls, piled up in corners. If someone had built an arsenal in a never cleaned lavatory, this would be it, thought Remo.

  A man in braids and deerskin sat where the pulpit had been. He waved at Remo. "Keep that bastard outside. I don't know him."

  "He knows how to get food," yelled Lupin. "And whiskey."

  "Bring him here."

  "That's Dennis Petty," said Lupin as he and Remo approached.

  Petty looked down from the pulpit, a sneer rising from his thin lips. "He looks like another reporter," he said.

  "He ain't, Petty," said Lupin.

  Petty had a pale, almost shiny face that looked like a pocked victim of too many chocolate bars, milk shakes, and peanuts. He had a gold cap on a front tooth, which made his sneer look like an attempt to shine the tooth or at least to air it.

  "How are you going to get us food and why?"

  "I will lead a war party, a raiding party," said Remo.

  "We had two hunting parties, and all we got for it were two dead cows, which are now rotting."

  "That's because you don't know how to hunt," said Remo.

  "I don't know how to hunt? I don't know how to hunt? I am supreme chief of the Sioux, of the Iroquis, of the Mohawk and Cheyenne and Dakota. Of the Arapaho and Navajo and…"

  "Hey, boss, I think he can really get some food in here."

  "Bullshit. He can't even stay alive," said Petty and snapped his fingers. "It is written that the supreme chief should not look upon blood while in council." Petty turned his back on the intruder, who obviously had not read the New York Globe or Washington Post. Otherwise, he would have recognized Petty immediately.

  "I tried," said Remo's companion apologetically.

  "Don't worry about it," said Remo. He saw five men approach him from the sacristy. One wore feathers, the others braids, like Petty. The feathered man slipped a switchblade out of his floppy poncho. He clicked open the blade.

  "He's mine," he said.

  The man made a low-line lunge, looking for a fast kill between Remo's ribs. Unfortunately for him, one does not make fast kills with knives when one's knife has lost contact with one's shoulder. And it is even more difficult when one's throat suddenly feels a thumb go through it and into one's spinal column.

  Whistling "Nearer My God to Thee" in honor of what was left of the liberated church, Remo brought thumb and forefinger together and flipped the knife wielder into a back pew.

  He caught the man with the longest braids and tied them tightly around the neck so that the warpaint on the face would have a nice blue background. A simple step left and he took a forehead with a downcrack of the left hand. A step right and another crack on another forehead felled the fourth Indian revolutionary and left the fifth with a sudden vision. "You're my brother," he said to Remo. "Welcome to the tribe."

  Hearing this, Petty turned around and saw one man gurgling red from his throat, another choking to death on his own braids, and two others with ugly dark welts in their foreheads, lying against church pews, their most recent cares being their last forever.

  "Welcome to the tribe," said Petty.

  "Thank you, brother."

  Suddenly the pew shook and the church shivered at its beams.

  "What's that?" asked Remo.

  "Nothing," said Dennis Petty. "We're blowing up the monument. Let's go see if the first blast did it."

  "I'll bet the first one didn't," said Remo, breathing.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  There were worse posts than Vladivostok. At least it had electricity, and when you were assistant personnel officer for Russia's largest Pacific port, you could get a half-share of a television and your own one-room apartment.

  Granted it was not a dacha outside Moscow and granted there were no limousines, but there was meat three times a week, and in the spring, there would be fresh melons imported from Korea, just across the Sea of Japan.

  It could have been worse. In Stalin's era Valashnikov would be dead—with luck—or in one of those camps that stretched like a sea across Russia. Those who went to the camps were the living dead.

  But this was a new Russia, that is, as new as Russia could ever be, and after the years of failing to find the Cassandra, he was spared a court martial for treason and allowed to employ his mind in the service of the People's Port of Vladivostok, where he watched a lot of Russian television. As he said to a friend, "A man truly is ready for the last sleep when he can watch Russian television hour after hour."

  Valashnikov's dark eyes no longer shone with the precise brilliance of his younger years, and the flesh hung flabby from his jowls. The hair was gone except for graying tufts around his ears, and his fat belly protruded in front of him like a taut balloon. He wore an old silk bathrobe and sipped tea through a sugar cube he held between his teeth.

  "Isn't Russian television the best television in the world?" asked his young friend, a pretty little girl of ten, with plump cheeks and almond eyes, who let him touch her all over if he gave her honeyed dates and coins.

  "No. No. It's rather dull."

  "You have seen other television?"

  "Oh, yes. America. French. British."

  "You've been to America?"

  "I'm not allowed to say, my dear. Come. Sit by your old friend."

  "With my panties on?"

  "No. You know how I like them."

  "Mamma says you should give me more money for this. But I'd rather have candy."

  "Well, money is scarce. But I'll give you a lemon drop."

  "I'd like to watch the news first. We must tell in school what we see on the news."

  "I will tell you what the news will say. It will say capitalism is disintegrating, Communism is rising, but we must all be watchful for the fanatic revisionism of the Chinese warmongers abroad and for the secret fascist writers at home. There you have the official party view of the world. Now let me touch."

  "If I can't watch," said the girl, "then I will have to tell my teacher why I didn't. What I was doing."

  "Let us watch," said Valashnikov, outmaneuvered by a ten-year-old girl. If his great but now sleepy mind had not accumulated so much vast knowledge, he would have thought that this was the lowest point of his life. But he knew better. A man never sinks so low that he cannot sink even lower.

  The news began with America disintegrating. Riots were sweeping the capitalist land. The Indians—the ragged remnants of the slaughtered tribes—were rising, trying to regain their stolen lands through a better knowledge of Marxist-Leninist theory, as taught by the true keepers of dialectic materialism and not by the Chinese revisionists.

  "What is that?" asked the girl, pointing to the screen.

  "That, my dear, is a monument to the massacre of a small band of American Indians in 1873, which their government at first kept secret and then acknowledged in the early 1960s, building a monument to their own perfidy. The monument is of black marble, is fifty feet long by twenty-five feet wide, and has a bronze plaque exactly twenty feet in diameter, set precisely in its c
enter. It is a monument. Just a monument. Just a monument. Around it has grown the town of Wounded Elk, whose inhabitants are the Apowa. Those men in imitation Indian clothes are not Apowa. I know about Apowa. What you are seeing is not Apowa, but don't tell anyone. No Apowa, I might add, has ever worked for the United States government in any official capacity, nor has one ever taken a course in nuclear physics. An estimated hundred thousand people now visit Wounded Elk each year, this being attributed to a book by one Lynn Cosgrove.

  "Miss Cosgrove never worked for the United States government, either, being originally a member of the Socialist Party. Nor was she paid by the CIA to write the book.

  "There are no military installations within forty miles of the monument, and the only government employee there is one man who visits the monument once a month to mow the grass and wash the marble.

  "Would you like to know that man's name, age, education, and speech habits? Would you like to know the name of the motel that man lives in? You should. Your labor paid for it. So did my career, as a matter of fact.

  "The man who cleans the monument is beyond a shadow of a doubt, a cleaning man. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics spent two full weeks finding out that the cleaning man was truly a cleaning man. From womb to washpan, that man is a cleaning man.

  "And do you know why it was so important? Because we had to make sure that monument was a monument. If it weren't a monument, it would need a technician or a scientist, not a cleaning man, once a month. A Geiger counter, not a broom. But the cleaning man was colored."

  "What color?" asked the girl as the television screen showed people parading around the prairie near the monument. It was a stupid question.

  "Lavender," said Valashnikov sarcastically.

  "There are many colors a person can be," said the girl, pushing herself away from the fat old man.

  "I'm sorry, my dear," said Valashnikov. "He was tan—Negro, African, black. There are no black nuclear physicists operating in America. Therefore—and this was the final proof—the man was a cleaning man. Many blacks in America are cleaning men, because of racism, my dear, which comes from capitalism and which we, the true Marxist-Leninist state, are free of. Now get your plump little ass over here or get the hell out of my apartment.

  "White people turn brown in the summer," said the girl defensively. "We learned that in school. The capitalist oppressors go south during the winter to turn brown, and then they return north to keep the real brown people out of their palaces and castles, built with the sweat and blood of the laboring class."

  "A top agent," shouted Valashnikov, "would not confuse a summer tan with a race!" The girl clutched her panties, which were half-off, snapped them up over her behind, and grabbing her books, ran from the apartment. Just then Valashnikov spotted on his television a kimono with a pattern he immediately recognized as Korean—Vladivostok was just a short trip away from the friendly northern part of that country. He saw the kimono get into a car, where a familiar looking man in a light suit sat behind the wheel. Valashnikov had seen the face before, in color photographs taken near the end of his career. But now the face on black and white television appeared white. And the features, which he had always thought had a high degree of Caucasian about them, now on the screen looked absolutely Caucasian. Valashnikov slapped his forehead with his open palm.

  "Of course. Of course."

  Now the announcer was launching his heavy explanation of what was happening in the capitalist state. But Valashnikov was not listening. He was shouting joyfully at the television, "Not cleaning man! Not cleaning man! Not cleaning man!"

  Laughing aloud, Valashnikov dressed quickly and ran out of the door, past the candy dish. Since he had come to Vladivostok, he had not once left his apartment without taking a piece of candy. But now there was no time for it. He ran, chugging, laughing, perspiring in the muggy port heat, to his office, which had a telephone.

  He dialed Moscow. Since the number of KGB's foreign branch changed every few months, he had long since lost access to it, and now he was talking to KGB local, which could cover anything from counterintelligence to selling tomatoes on the black market.

  "This is Colonel Ivan Ivanovich Valashnikov, and if you don't recognize my name, your superiors will remember it. I must get to Moscow immediately… No. I am not currently colonel. I am colonel retired. I must get to Moscow immediately… No, I cannot tell you… Then, damn you, get me a military priority on aircraft leaving Vladivostok… Yes, yes, I know… I am Ivan Ivanovich Valashnikov, and I am assistant personnel officer, and yes, I know what I risk by demanding immediate flight. Yes, I understand that I may fly in one of your special aircraft but that if this is a game or drunken trick, I will take a train out to one of the camps. Yes, I agree. You may phone me back."

  And Valashnikov hung up and waited. Ten minutes later the office phone rang. It was a higher ranking KGB officer. His voice was kindly. Didn't Valashnikov want to think it over before he claimed such importance for his mission? The officer had Valashnikov's record in front of him and he saw what appeared to be a career of major importance that had come to a standstill over an obsession with something that was marked Top Secret in the file. That kind of top secret, out of reach of the KGB officer, was an area that showed failure bordering on treason.

  Now, didn't Comrade Valashnikov want to think over his urgent request for an aircraft to Moscow? Perhaps he could write down his findings and give them to Vladivostok KGB so an officer could examine them and forward them to the proper office. If Comrade Valashnikov were wrong, then no harm would be done to him or anyone else.

  "But I say it is a crisis," Valashnikov said, "and now you may refuse to order me a plane. I will preface my written report by stating that I spoke to you at four-fifteen P.M. and requested immediate transportation for a maximum-security matter of crisis proportions but you advised me to put it all in a letter."

  Valashnikov heard the gulp that traveled thousands of miles across Siberia from the capital. He had the officer in a box. It was wonderful to feel the power again, to be able to move men just through the power and ability of one's mind.

  "Sir, is that your position?"

  "That is my position," said Valashnikov, tears welling up in his eyes with the joy of his returning manhood. "We have an international advantage, and I am warning you, every moment might mean its loss."

  "Wait at your office. Because of your former position, I am going to authorize private and immediate treatment for transportation for you, Valashnikov, but let me warn you…"

  "You're wasting time, son," said Valashnikov and hung up. He realized he was trembling and wanted a drink or a sedative. No. He would not have one.

  The tension was delicious. But maybe he was wrong. He had seen the picture only briefly. Maybe because the girl had talked about tans and races and that was on his mind, he had only imagined that picture was of the man who visited the monument once a month to mow and trim. Maybe he had been away from the halls of power too long? What if he was wrong? He could be wrong. It was only a fleeting glimpse of the white-haired man in the car.

  And then his great mind began to work, isolating and reducing all the facts to a very simple one: What if he was wrong? Was death any worse really than his life? Hadn't he made calculations for possible megadeaths in nuclear wars when he was in Moscow? Now he was making another calculation. This time for a single death. It was worth it. He would proceed, no matter what, on the assumption that the marble and bronze monument on the Montana prairie was the Cassandra.

  No matter what fact came up, he would assume it was a camouflage. If he were to be shown the top of the monument being removed and if he were to stand on bare earth and then watch the earth being removed by shovels, he would still function on the premise that the Cassandra was there. He had committed his life to it. What else did he have to lose? Nothing.

  He heard a knock at his office door, and before he could say, "Come in," the door opened.

  Two men in KGB street uniforms of blazin
g colors, with gold epaulets and shining boots, marched into the office. They were followed by a plainclothesman, a man Valashnikov had always thought of as the superintendent of his building, a man of no major importance.

  The man carried a cardboard valise that Valashnikov recognized as his own, even to the tears on the leather straps around it. The man snapped his fingers and another KGB officer led in the girl who had fled his apartment.

  "Yes," said Valashnikov.

  "Are you ready for your flight?" asked the man Valashnikov had thought of as his building superintendent.

  "Yes," said Valashnikov coolly. "What is the girl doing here?"

  "For your pleasure, comrade. Your file shows you are pleased with her."

  "Get her out of here," said Valashnikov. His voice earned the hard precision of authority.

  Hearing this, the girl cried.

  Valashnikov emptied his pocket of bills and knelt down, pressing them into her hands.

  "Little girl, just a few hours ago I thought that there was no bottom to life. Now I see it also has no top. Do not cry. Here is money for your mother. You are nice little girl. Go home."

  "You don't want me," sobbed the girl.

  "As a granddaughter I would want you, my dear, but no other way. You grow up and stay away from old men. All right? All right?"

  The girl sniffled and nodded. Valashnikov gave her a tender kiss on the cheek and took his bag from the superintendent, who smiled weakly and shrugged.

  "You will take her home, Comrade Superintendent. Without touching. I will check on you from Moscow."

  And Valashnikov felt good because he had recognized the face of a white man, a man who could only be taken for a black as a result of bureaucratic error.

  Tan, not Negro, thought Valashnikov as he left his office for a plane that would take him back to Moscow. And perhaps back to his career.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Remo saw the two men in blue jeans and flannel shirts stringing wire from the monument, and he suggested to them that they stop what they were doing.

  Obviously, this rather thin stranger impressed them because they immediately dropped their wire spools and fell to the Montana dust, clutching their groins.