The Web s-5

by Ahern, Jerry

  Understood?" rtYe$, I understand," he told her. She knew he understood; whether he would do as she asked was another question. "And watch out behind you—for those people." She didn't know what else to call the wild men and women who had attacked them.

  She stepped down from Tildie, her rear end suddenly cold from leaving the built-up warmth of the saddle. She handed Michael Tildie's reins. "Hold her. I'm going down there to look."

  Sarah settled the AR-across her back, on its sling, then thought better of it. She took the rifle off and held it in her right hand, a fresh thirty-round magazine in place, the chamber loaded already. Her pistol, John's pistol, was freshly reloaded and back against her abdomen under her clothes. It was starting to rust a great deal; she didn't know what to do to stop it except to oil the gun.

  With her gloved left hand she tugged at the blue-and-white bandanna on her hair, pulling it down where it had slipped up from covering her left ear.

  She smiled at the children. "I love you both. Michael. Take care of Annie." She started down from the rise, toward the houseboat. It appeared as though there were no moorings, that something like a tide was forcing the boat toward shore.

  She hurried as best she could, slipping several times where the iced-over gravel was still loose, the red clay

  She stopped beside the closed door and reaching around behind her, got the AR-and worked the selector to full auto. Reaching up to it, she tried the door handle. It opened under her hand, swinging outside to her left.

  Not entering, she looked inside. A man and a woman lay on the bed at the far corner of the large room, the sheets around them stained; the smell assailed her nose. They were locked in each other's arms, their bodies blue-veined and dead.

  "They killed themselves," she murmured, resting her head against the doorjamb.

  Sarah Rourke wept for them—and for herself.

  Settling his glasses back on the bridge of his nose, Paul Rubenstein pulled down the bandanna covering his face as he slowed the Harley, the snow under it slushy and wet. He looked up, and for a brief instant could see a patch of blue beyond the fast scudding gray clouds.

  "It is breaking up," Natalia said from behind him.

  '"Bout time." He smiled. He suddenly had the realization of the air temperature on his face. rtMust be twenty degrees warmer than it was when we broke camp," he told her, looking over his right shoulder at her.

  "We should be getting into my territory soon, Paul— there may not be time," she began.

  "I know; give John your love, right?"

  He felt the Russian woman punch him in the back. "Yes." He heard her laugh. "And this is for you." And he felt her hands roughly twisting his head around, her face bumped his glasses as she kissed him full on the lips. "I won't ask you to give that to John—that was for you." She smiled.

  "Look, you don't have to—"

  "To go back to my people? John and I went over that. I have to. I'm a Russian—no matter how good my English

  is, no matter how much I can sound or look like an American. I'm a Russian. What I feel for John, what I feel for you as my friend—that will never change. But being what I am won't change either."

  "You know you're fighting on the wrong side," Rubenstein told her, suddenly feeling himself not smiling.

  "If I said the same thing to you, would you believe me? I don't mean believe that I believed it, but believe it inside yourself?"

  "No," Rubenstein said flatly.

  'Then the same answer ior you, Paul. No. My people have done a great deal of harm, but so have yours. With good men like my uncle, perhaps I can do something—* to-"

  "Make the world safe for Communism?" He laughed.

  She laughed, too, saying through her laughter, "You're not the same barefoot boy from the Big Apple that I met long ago, Paul."

  He was deadly serious when he said to her, "And you're not the same person you pretended to be then. I'll tell you what your problem is. You grew up believing in one set of ideals and you've been realizing what you believed in all that time was wrong. Karamatsov was the Communist, the embodiment of—"

  "I won't listen anymore, Paul." She smiled,*touching her fingers to his lips.

  "All right." He smiled, kissing her forehead as she leaned against his chest for a moment. "Just think what a team you and John would make," he told her then.

  She looked up at him, her eyes wet. "Fighting? Always fighting? Brigands or some other enemies?"

  "That's not what I meant. You can find other ways to

  be invincible together." He laughed because he'd sounded so serious, so philosophical.

  "He—he can't. And I can't."

  "What if he never finds Sarah?"

  "He will," she told him flatly.

  Paul said again, "What if he never finds Sarah? Would you marry him?"

  "That's none of your business, Paul," she said, then smiled.

  "I know it isn't—but would you?"

  "Yes," she said softly, then started to fumble in her bag. She took out a cigarette and a lighter, then plunged the tip of the cigarette into the flame with what looked to Rubenstein like a vengeance.

  "Stay where you are. Raise your hands and you will not be harmed!"

  Rubenstein looked ahead of them—a half-dozen Russian soldiers, greatcoats stained with snow, and at their head a man he guessed was an officer. "You are under arrest. Lay down your arms!"

  She said it in English—he guessed so he could understand. "I am Major Natalia Tiemerovna,"—Rubenstein thought he detected her voice catch for an instant before she added, "of the Committee for State Security of the Soviet."

  Ill

  Varakov pushed the button for his window to roll down—it was warm now, so much warmer than it had been.

  He glanced at his driver; this driver was not as good a man as Leon had been. Varakov exhaled hard, waiting as the Soviet fighter homber taxied across the field.

  He decided to get out. "You will wait for me here." He opened the door. "I can get out myself."

  "Yes, Comrade General," the driver answered, turning around.

  Varakov smiled. There was no reason to act gruffly toward the young man simply because he was not Leon. "You may smoke if you wish, Corporal,"

  Varakov added, stepping outside, then slamming the door.

  Varakov snorted, stretched, and started walking toward the slowing-down taxiing aircraft.

  Was there a doomsday project that the United States had launched? Was an end finally coming? he asked himself.

  He had avoided philosophy—meticulously. Philosophy and generalship were not compatible; they never had been.

  He had lived a full life—full because of his achievements, because of the friendships he had made, because of the daughter he had raised—not his daughter, but his brother's daughter, Natalia.

  He had done that well, he thought. The thing with Karamatsov behind her, she would grow away from it. She would meet another man. Or had she met him already, the American Rourke?

  He shook his head.

  He worried over Natalia, and the people like her, the new Russia he had fought all his life to make survive, to make triumphant. "Doomsday," he murmured, thinking once again about the Eden Project.

  The plane stopped, the passengers' doorway opening immediately. Uniformed Soviet soldiers rolled a ramp toward it; and already framed in the doorway, civilian clothes as rumpled as though he had slept in them, his blond hair tousled in the breeze, stood Rozhdestvenskiy.

  Varakov walked the few extra yards toward+he foot of the steps.

  Rozhdestvenskiy was already halfway down them.

  "Did you learn anything, Colonel?"

  The younger man stopped. "I learned it all, Comrade General—all of it."

  Then he turned away for an instant, to shout up into the plane. "Those six cartons of documents—the seals are to remain untouched, unbroken. They are to be de
livered to my car—immediately."

  Varakov glanced down the airfield. There was a black American Cadillac waiting, and Varakov assumed it was Rozhdestvenskiy's car. As the younger officer reached the base of the steps, Varakov extended his right hand—not in greeting, but to Rozhdestvenskiy's left forearm, to hold him there a moment. "Is there a doomsday device?

  What is it?"

  "Not a device, Comrade General," Rozhdestvenskiy said, not smiling. "And I cannot tell you any more; those are the orders of the Politburo." Then Rozhdestvenskiy added, "I am sorry, sir."

  He shrugged off the hand and walked away.

  Varakov watched as the first of the red-sealed packing crates was carried down and past him.

  The old man's feet hurt.

  Glancing at his Rolex, Rourke wiped the steam of the shower away from the crystal.

  It was nearly noon, the woman having let him oversleep—or perhaps just the fact of sleeping in a bed in a normal-seeming home had done it to him.

  During the night he had dreamed—about Sarah, about Michael and Annie . . .

  and about Natalia.

  He could not remember the dreams, and he was grateful for that. Dreams were something that could not be controlled, an alien environment that merely happened out of the subconscious. Desires, fears—all of them things he could not manipulate to his own choosing. They had always annoyed him—and if anything did, slightly frightened him.

  He turned the water straight cold, the hairs on his chest grayer, he noticed, his body leaner. He shut off the water, opening the shower curtain, snatching the towel, and beginning to dry himself before stepping out into the neat and very feminine-looking bathroom. He glanced once between the shower curtain and the plastic liner; on the lip of the tub was one of his stainless-steel Detonics .s, none the worse for wear apparently.

  He noted the bruise on his shoulder in the partially steamed-over mirror, the bruise from his fall from the plane to the road surface. He flexed that arm to work out the stiffness. It would heal, he diagnosed. He smiled—no doctor worth his salt trusted self-diagnosis, but under the circumstances . . .

  Martha Bogen was making him breakfast, despite the hour, so meanwhile Rourke took the Harley from the garage where it had been locked overnight, and following her directions, headed toward the nearest gas station.

  He turned the machine now, his hair blowing in the warm breeze coming down the mountain slope, his blue shirt sleeves rolled up, both of the Detonics .s stuffed inside the waistband of his trousers under the shirt. He could see the gas station ahead. There was one car at the self-service island so Rourke turned to the full-service island, shutting down.

  He let out the kickstand and dismounted. A smiling attendant in a blue workshirt with the name, "AI," stitched over the heart came from inside the service bays; there was a car inside getting an oil change.

  'Till 'er up?"

  "Yeah. I've got an auxiliary tank—fill that, too," Rourke rasped.

  "Check your oil?"

  "Yeah. Check my oil." Rourke nodded. He looked at his bike. Miraculously, after the air crash, then the skid on the icy mountain roads, there were no visible scratches, no visible damage.

  "Y'all related to someone round here?" The attendant smiled.

  Rourke shrugged mentally. "Yeah. My sister's Martha Bogen. My name's Abe."

  v

  "Well . . . hey, Abe." The attendant smiled. "I'm happy for Martha. It woulda been sad."

  Rourke started to ask why, then nodded. "Yeah—sure would," he agreed.

  "Nice lookin' machine y'all got here," Al said.

  "Thanks." Rourke nodded. "Nice looking town. Cold as a witch's—Real cold outside. You got funny weather."

  "Yeah. Just a little pocket here, I guess. We was always fixin' to get together with them fellers at the National Weather Service and maybe find out why, but never did get around to it."

  Pointedly, Rourke said, "Well, there's always tomorrow," and smiled.

  "Hey, there you go." Al laughed. "All set." He withdrew the nozzle and started to replace the gas cap.

  Checking the pump, Rourke reached into his pocket for his money clip. He handed the man a twenty.

  il get some—

  "Keep the change." Rourke smiled, remounting the Harley, starting it, and upping the kickstand.

  "Say . . . thanks, Abe." Al waved.

  "O.K." Rourke nodded. They were all insane, he decided, as he started back into the street. . . .

  "You're a good cook," Rourke told her, looking up from the steak and eggs nearly finished on the blue-willow plate in front of him.

  "I don't usually get the chance." She smiled. "Living alone and all."

  He smiled back at her. "You haven't lost your touch."

  She turned back to the sink and shut off the water, then turned back to him, wiping her hands on her apron. "You haven't asked me any questions yet."

  "You promised it'd all be made clear. I'm waiting for you, I guess." He smiled. He had questions, but wanted to hear her answers first somehow. "I gather that because I'm supposed to be your brother, it's assumed I'll go along with whatever's going on here?"

  "That's right," she said, smoothing the apron with her hands, then sitting down opposite him. She poured more coffee into the blue-willow cup, then set the electric percolator down on the table top on a large trivet. "I called work—told them I'd be in late. They understood, with my brother coming to town and all."

  Rourke forked the last piece of steak, then looked at the woman across from him. "Telephones?"

  "Um-hmm." She nodded, smiling.

  He looked on the table at the folded newspaper. "May I?"

  "We're probably the only town this size in America with a daily newspaper," she said with a definite air of pride, handing it to him.

  He opened the paper. The headline read: HALLOWEEN FESTIVITIES SET FOR

  TONIGHT. A heading on a column read: SCHOOL BOARD ELECTION RESULTS TALLIED

  "School board election?"

  "Day before yesterday." She smiled.

  "And yesterday was the Fourth of July."

  "Um-hmm." She nodded, fingering back a wisp of dark hair with a touch of gray in it.

  "And tonight's Halloween?"

  "For the children—they love it so." She smiled.

  "Tomorrow night Thanksgiving?"

  "Yes."

  Rourke sipped at his coffee; she had drunk from the same pot so he trusted it. He trusted nothing else in the town.

  Sarah Rourke put a fresh piece of wood into the freestanding stove; it had been converted from propane, she guessed. There were plenty of chairs and table legs remaining and the weather seemed to be moderating slightly.

  She stood up, letting the children continue to sleep in the bed. She had thrown the bodies overboard, and all of the bedding. Because of the fresh air, the mattress hadn't taken on the smell of the bodies, of the dead man and woman. They had worn wedding rings, and Sarah assumed they had been husband and wife.

  The ice had melted sufficiently on the deck of the houseboat, and she could walk there—with care. She leaned against the rope railing; the ice there had completely melted and the rope was wet beneath her fingertips.

  She stared out onto the lake, wondering what horrors lay ahead on the shore.

  After disposing of the bodies, she had gotten the houseboat belayed to a large tree trunk growing near enough to the water, then she'd brought Michael and Annie down the rise with the horses. She had usedTildie and Sam as draft animals to tow the houseboat along the water's edge, toward a better and more even piece of shoreline and to a jetty nearby. There children and animals had boarded. The animals were now tethered in

  the center of the main room of the houseboat—the carpet destroyed and the animals cramped, but warmer. Then with Michael and Annie, she had rigged an anchor from a heavy deadfall tree the horses had towed down. She had planned
to pole the boat away from the shoreline if possible and had been in the process of searching for something with which to do the poling when Annie had pressed a switch on the engine controls—the engines had rumbled to life for an instant. Sarah had dried off the battery terminals, then started the engines again; this time the engines caught. Twin inboards, she had determined, and the fuel gauges read over half full. She had used the engine power to bring them to the center of the lake, and had dropped the anchor there for a safe night— the first she had spent in—She lurched forward, against the railing, hearing a tearing sound, the breaking of wood, the straining of metal. Behind her, the anchor rope had broken. She stared dumbly at where it had been, then down at the water.

  There was a current. There hadn't been a current.

  She ran into the main cabin. Finding her saddlebags and snatching the binoculars from them, she ran back on deck and focused the binoculars toward the dam at the far end of the lake.

  "Jesus!! No!" She screamed the words. The dam had burst. The deck under her rocked; the horses inside the cabin whinnied, screaming, too, if animals could scream.

  Annie's voice rang out to her. "Mommie!"

  The houseboat, the warmth, the safety, the possibility of transportation it had offered, was being swept toward the dam in a rapidly increasing current.

  Sarah Rourke stared skyward a moment at the gray clouds moving on a stiffening wind. She shouted, "Enough, God—enough!"

  Rourke reached down and picked up a can of peaches. It was one of six cans left on the grocery-store shelf, the cans pushed forward, the empty portion of the shelf to the rear and out of casual sight. He was beginning to understand. The peaches, the cereal boxes—even the gasoline he had purchased for the Harley—all "pushed to the front."

  As they walked outside—Martha had purchased a can of coffee inside—Rourke said to her, "I think I see it. Leave everything perfectly normal as long as possible, and then—"