Doomsday Warrior 12 - Death American Style (19 page)

They all wore false smiles atop their freshly pressed, razor-creased uniforms. Zhabnov had a bizarre combination of Russian eighteenth-century czar-style outfit, mixed in with a little George Washington-type ruffles and brass buttons. He looked quite grotesque. Vassily, on the other hand, wore what he always did—his gray suit, with a fur throw over his lap and chest. He was always cold. Never did his frail, slowly dying body feel warmth.

“Ah, Mr. Rockson, so good of you to come,” Zhabnov said with puffed red lips, extending his manicured hand toward the Doomsday Warrior. “We were becoming afraid that you weren’t going to come to this historic meeting.” Rock took the hand with a look of disgust and shook it. The President’s grip was loose, hardly able to squeeze, like shaking hands with a balloon filled with dough.

“Mr. Rockson,” The Premier said with a softer, subtle smile as he held up his trembling, liver-spotted hand. Rock shook this hand with slightly more respect. Although he hated the man, he did respect him. He was a dictator, but at least not a thief or a liar like the fat man by his side. Rock held out his hand as well to Rahallah, who looked surprised at the gesture, as did the two others. But Rockson believed in the freedom of all men, black, white . . . Besides, he liked the black African prince, having talked with him when he had been “invited” to Moscow.

Rahallah’s eyes seemed to flutter for a moment like a television slightly out of focus, and then a broad smile came on his face and he took the hand and shook it with strength.

“Well, tell me—why didn’t you take one of our planes or helicopters?” Zhabnov asked, clapping his hands together like it was all a big pajama party or something. “The others did.” He gestured around at the milling crowds of delegates, nearly a hundred of them, who had formed in groups around the immense marble floor.

“I didn’t take your offer,” Rock said coolly, “because frankly I don’t trust any of you worth a damn. Besides, I like to take the scenic route—get to see what you Reds have done to my country. See it in intimate detail. What the others did—that’s their business. That’s one of the nice things about being a free man—you can do whatever the hell you want.”

“Come now, Mr. Rockson,” Vassily said softly, coughing slightly as he spoke. “Let’s not start off this ultimately important meeting with unfriendly words. My offer to you—to all the Freefighters—is sincere. I assure you. Do you think I would come all the way from Moscow, risk my health—my generals trying to overthrow me back home—just to
capture
you? I assure you—you are but a
snag
in a vast machine turning throughout the world.”

“I distrust because the last time I saw you,” Rock said icily, “the offers you made to me were insults—nothing more than an official agreement that Americans agree to be your slaves.”

“I promise you, it is different this time,” the Premier replied, starting to look a little angry. He saw himself as a benign man—but he was also a total and autocratic ruler. He was used to having his own way, and in his world no one ever dared question him. Here was a filth-coated rebel challenging him in front of his stupid nephew, in front of his officers. But he swallowed it and somehow forced a smile from his pencil-line-thin lips. “I learned from the last meeting—and thought. I ask only that you give my ideas a fair hearing. Isn’t that what ‘free men’ do—weigh things without prejudice, give all ideas a chance?” He said the words “free men” with a certain sarcasm, but Rock relaxed just a little.

“Sure, Excellency,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m listening.”

“Oh, not now, not now,” Zhabnov exclaimed, throwing his plump hands into the air. “Come, come—you and your huge friend there. We shall talk tomorrow—tonight is a time for relaxing, food, a chance for us to become better acquainted.” The President was beside himself with a chance to show off the huge banquet hall, the many decorations, hangings, pictures, crystal chandeliers he had put up everywhere. He had spent weeks on the preparations, the feasting, supervising every aspect of it. And now he wanted to show it all off. Although the Premier had made him take down all the smile faces, he had gotten the Grandfather to allow him to put up two immense banners, which hung from either side of the room: an American and Russian shaking hands, and an American and Russian flag all meshed together as if they were one—with stars and stripes and hammers and sickles spread throughout the thing in a complex, interwoven pattern.

“Yes, Rockson,” the Premier echoed as Rahallah started to push him slowly after the obese Zhabnov. “It is the Russian way—first we must break bread face to face, share some wine like civilized men,
then
we shall talk.”

“Sounds okay to me, I guess,” Rock replied, wanting to mingle with the other delegates anyway and see just who the hell was here. Besides, from the look on Archer’s face after he had just spied a table full of appetizers, Rockson knew the huge near-mute wouldn’t be easily contained. The strange procession moved across the vast floor as the Russian officers and the American Freefighters moved out of the way. Rock took a quick look around the place as he always did when entering any structure—if only to see the quickest way out, if and when the shit hit the fan.

The Doomsday Warrior was introduced to some of the top Red brass—bull-chested men with rows of medals hanging across their uniforms like Christmas tree ornaments. But he made his way quickly over to some of his own as soon as he could make a decent exit. Rock hadn’t seen so many Freefighters since the Second Constitutional Convention of several years before. And a wild crew they were.

Since every free town and city had its own way of doing things—and of dressing—there were numerous outlandish and colorful outfits worn by the delegates. The cowboy get-ups of the Texans, the burlap bag suits of the Georgian delegates, the almost Robin Hood-type duds—feathered hat and all—of some of the Appalachian crew. There were men—and women—with everything from bearskin robes to silk gangster suits, from Scottish kilts to chain armor. It was hard to take it all in. But Rock appreciated it. In comparison to the military garb of the Russians, the eccentricity of his fellows made him proud in a way to be an American. For that was what they all fought for—the right to be different, even crazy.

“Rockson,” a voice said behind him and Rock turned. A large man, nearly as big as Archer himself—who, Rock noted from the corner of his eye, was grabbing up canapés and mousses with both hands from one of the silk-covered banquet tables. He stuffed them into his mouth like there was no tomorrow. The fellow was dressed in something approximating a pirate costume, with black vest, sword at his side, long mustache that drooped over his lips—even an eyepatch.
Captain Turner.
He was nearly as well-known around the country by Freefighters as Rock himself.

“Turner,” Rock said with a double-take. “I’d heard you were dead—killed in an engagement in the Louisiana bayous.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” the scar-faced man answered with a grin. “Takes more than a few bullets to get rid of ol’ Cap’ Turner.” He lifted his vest, and then the pink silk shirt beneath it, to show three ugly purple scars that ran across his stomach. “Took ’em out myself—with only a shot of bourbon to guide my trembling hand.” He laughed, slapped himself hard on the healed holes to show they were watertight and let the shirt and vest fall back over his ample belly.

“Well, I’m glad to see you, pal,” Rock said. “With you here, at least I know that if there’s trouble we have a shot at fighting our way out.”

“What do you think, Rock?” the mustached mouth asked in a low whisper, so none of the Red officers who were standing nearby could hear. “What the hell’s going on, anyway? You think the bastards really mean any of what they say?”

“I checked out half of D.C.,” Rockson whispered back.
“Seems
okay . . . If you hear me start yelling—come running with that big sword of yours.”

“Right, man,” the Freefighting captain replied with a snort, like he was ready to kick ass right then and there. Their conversation was suddenly interrupted by a blare of horns, from the Minutemen-garbed Russian hornblowers who surrounded them on a balcony.

Zhabnov yelled out from the center of the vast floor, clapping hard and herding everyone into another, even larger banquet room. “Come on now—time to eat. You must all be famished from your long journeys. We’ve prepared a sumptuous feast for you. Now come—all of you.” He led them through the open oak doors into a banquet room with ten long tables, each covered with delicacies, steaming platters of every description and odor. The delegates’ stomachs started growling even as they filed in.

Black-tuxedoed waiters led them to their various tables, with Rockson of course sitting at the main table with Zhabnov on one side of him, the Premier on the other. Archer sat across from the trio and had not even slammed down in his chair when he reached out a baseball mitt of a hand. He grabbed hold of a pheasant leg, which he lifted, gravy dripping off of it, onto the finely embroidered tablecloth, and began gnawing at the thing like some sort of half-starved wild beast. Rock could see Vassily look aghast at the scene, but the Premier made no comment as he daintily lifted a small cup of white soup and took a single careful lick from a spoon.

Zhabnov restrained himself. Had not the Premier been here, he doubtless would have been tearing into the food in a fashion similar to the mute. But with his every move being watched, and wanting to make a good impression on his uncle, the President took slow, controlled bites from the plates of food in front of him—though inside he was dying not to be able to cram himself to the very gills as he usually did. And tonight—of all nights—when there were so many mouthwatering delicacies!

He had supervised the cooking staff for the last three days, standing over the chefs as they worked in the immense kitchens. Stirring, tasting—everything. There was hummingbird soup, fricasses of mountain elk, roast pig stuffed with wild mushrooms. There were catfish—a nice homey touch—that Zhabnov thought the Freefighters would appreciate, for he had read that in the olden days it was one of the favorite foods, though this particular bunch had been basted in thick French sauces. The fish cooked down to pulp; sponge-like things that bore little resemblance to any fish the Americans ever tasted; virtually inedible.

Still, it was a meal the likes of which most of the Freefighters—many of whom subsisted on roots and small crops of potatoes and squash in their impoverished towns and villages—had never even dreamed of, let alone been surrounded by. Thus they gobbled up every damned thing in sight, trying to smile at the Russian officers across from them—for Zhabnov had thought it would be the friendliest of seating arrangements for every rebel to sit across from a Russian brass. The delegates gulped the food down like pythons who hadn’t eaten for a year, while the Red officers took careful, slow bites, not wanting to create a bad impression in front of the Premier.

They ate and drank for what seemed an eternity, just stuffing every cell of their bodies with food. Every few minutes waiters would bring in yet another huge preparation—whole moose on spits, flaming bowls of souffle, trays with partridge heads, their mouths and eyes stuffed with tiny blue and golden quail eggs. If there were still a
Gourmet
magazine, which there hadn’t been for over a hundred years, this would have been the cover of its gala issue. For on the entire earth, none were feasting like the two hundred men in attendance. Even Rockson found it hard not to fall under the spell of the food—the meats and sauces, the vintage wines pulled up from Zhabnov’s personal wine cellars, bottles going back even to pre-war days.

When they could hardly move, the entertainment began. Russian dancers and acrobats came flying out of every doorway, doing cartwheels, spins, breathtaking leaps into the air, caught by their colorfully attired comrades. They gyrated and leaped as the peasant-attired band sent out a loud and wild accompaniment that filled the hall with melody and thumping beat. Even the Freefighters, filled with food and wine now, loosened up. They had always hated the Russians. And yet men are men, and when they eat and drink and laugh together, ideologies—even hatreds—can lose their hold for a moment. So, many of the strong and acrobatic rebels joined in, doing their own versions of leaps, splits and catches, until the entire hall was alive with activity like some sort of drunken Olympics.

As Rock, the Premier and Zhabnov looked on in amazement, Archer seemed to go into some sort of mad dance, jumping up first on his chair and then the table. He kicked and jigged wildly, trying to imitate the other more accomplished dancers who were largely confining their antics to the carpeted floors in the center of the large room. Then, with a blazing look in his eyes, he leaped high in the air and came down stretching his legs apart, as if trying to do a split. He didn’t make the split—but the table did. For as he came down on one knee, the full weight of his huge body cracked the thick banquet table right in half. A long line appeared suddenly in the middle of the thing and it split down the center, sending food, dishes, glasses of wine flying off and covering everything and everyone.

Rockson frowned. Zhabnov turned pale as a ghost; the Premier merely watched it all as unflappable as a statue, showing no emotion. He had always basically believed that the Freefighters were hardly more than a bunch of savages. This merely confirmed his feelings. But he knew his like or dislike of them was hardly the issue—for in fact he liked only one other person on the whole damned planet, his manservant, Rahallah. Perhaps, in a
strange
way, Rockson himself. At least the man’s word was good. And he noted that the Doomsday Warrior, like himself, watched it all, detached, as if looking from some place a million miles away.

Nineteen

S
uddenly Rahallah was at Rockson’s shoulder, leaning over and whispering in his ear.

“The Premier would like to see you privately in the library,” the black servant said, and Rock glanced over to see Vassily staring at him through tired eyes.