Survivalist - 20 - Firestorm (11 page)

“Yes,” Natalia said. “But only if you let me help.” She stood up quickly, went to the cupboard, found an apron, began putting it on. Annie just watched.

Maria Leuden was talking again, her voice sounding odd. “I don’t know if he wants to marry me or if he still loves his dead wife too much or-” Maria Leuden dropped an egg onto the floor, then dropped to her knees, bringing the apron up in front of her face, weeping loudly.

Annie’s hands were trembling.

Natalia went to her knees beside Maria, folding the girl into her arms.

Annie Rourke Rubenstein looked at her mother.

Sarah Rourke stood up, went to the counter, took one of the rinse-able German fabric towels-like reusable paper towels-and began to mop up the egg.

Annie wanted to cry, too.

She cleared her throat. “Omelettes are fine for little old ladies. Not us. How about steaks? Natalia? Give me a hand. Get out some of those fresh onions. I mean, we won’t be kissing anybody so we don’t have to worry about eating onions, right? Maria? Maria!”

Maria Leuden-she looked as if she felt hopeless-stared at Annie. She was still on her knees beside where the egg had fallen and cracked.

“Maria-you come back to the freezer with me. HI need your help. Momma?” Sarah Rourke looked at her, smiling a little. “You pour us all a drink. Make mine some of the Seagrams, please. The stuff Daddy had them make for us.” Sarah Rourke nodded.

“Mine, too,” Natalia added. “Bring back some of the dehydrated potatoes, Annie.”

Annie looked at Maria. Maria was standing up now, arms limp at her sides, tears running down her cheeks. Then Annie looked at her mother. “The same for Maria.” And then Annie took the girl by her elbow and started propelling her out of the kitchen, toward the storage room where the large freezers were. “Germans make terrific desserts, I understand. Will you show me how to make something really special, Maria?” The girl didn’t say a word, only sniffed, daubing with the hem of her apron at the corners of the tear-glistening hazel eyes shielded by her glasses.

His dapple gray horse, Rommel, was the finest steed he had ever I ridden arid he had taken every opportunity he could since his boyhood I to ride. He had named Rommel after the almost universally respected German Field Marshal of World War Two. And now, Rommel was 1 shifting nervously, tossing his black mane, snorting his flared nostrils I at the wind. Such behavior was frequendy a sign of something about | to happen. Horst Hammerschmidt saw no rhyme or reason for the I animal’s having some sixth sense of possible danger, but Rommel ; seemed to and Hammerschmidt heeded the warning. { “Sergeant.” j “Yes, Herr Lieutenant?” | “Extend the column anticipating possible attack. Then deploy two outriders to standard distance front and rear of the column. Have everyone check their weapons.” I “Yes, Herr Lieutenant.” I Horst Hammerschmidt listened only half-heartedly as Schlabren-j dorff echoed and amplified on the orders given him. He could also | hear the ratde of slings, the movement of bolts. He patted the pistol holstered at his right side. But these ambient sounds-like the wind, the crackling of dislodging gravel pieces beneath the horses’hooves as they trailed upward along the gradually rising granite apron-he forced from his consciousness.

He listened for something else. The drawing of a bolt, the scrape of metal or synthetic against rock or fabric, the cracking of a pine twig in the rocks above them.

And his eyes were squinted against the gray clouds and gray rocks, watching intentiy each patch of green for something moving in black, the uniform color of the KGB Elite Corps. | “All is in order, Herr Lieutenant!” Schlabrendorff announced. f Horst Hammerschmidt nodded, almost whispering the words, “Very good, Schlabrendorff. Be ready.” And Hammerschmidt stroked Rommel’s wide forehead as he leaned forward in the saddle.

The crack of a rifle shot, but he felt the pain across his shoulder blades before he heard the shot. Hammerschmidt lurched over his animal’s neck, his right fist knotting in Rommel’s mane, his left hand clutching at the horse’s bridle.

Rommel vaulted ahead.

Hammerschmidt began to shout, but there was a sound over the crack of rifle shots from the rocks above, a sound like nothing he had ever heard before. “Casmir! Deploy the men!”

Hammerschmidt drew back on Rommel’s mane, his feet slipping from the stirrups, finding them again, numbness creeping ahead of the pain which spread across his back and shoulders and neck in a wave, a green wash over his eyes. He lowered his head, knotting both fists into Rommel’s mane now.

The animal reared.

The sound.

Rommel’s eyes were fear-wide and red-rimmed.

The sound, like the buzzing of some huge insect. A crater appeared in the granite before them, a puff of smoke and dust forming into a mushroom shaped cloud, Rommel rearing again, then leaping through the cloud and over the crater.

The buzzing.

Another explosion.

Another explosion.

Another.

More bursts of automatic weapons fire.

“They are all dead!”

Schlabrendorff?

“Corporal! Look out!”

Another explosion.

More gunfire.

The green wash was a blanket covering him, chilling his stomach, making his head light, nausea rising from the pit of his stomach.

Three black uniforms.A peculiar looking gun in the hands of one of the Elite corpsmen, like a full-sized heavy machine gun, but so odd looking.

Its barrel seemed to pulse with light.

The rocks near Rommel exploded, the horse bolting forward,

straight toward the men. Rommel was climbing from the granite trail into the rocks, slipping, catching his footing, scrambling upward, running on. Schlabrendorff s bay stumbled, pitching Schlabrendorff to the rocks. One of the Elite Corpsmen, his face and even his uniform covered in the green wash flooding over Horst Hammerschmidfs eyes, swung an assault rifle toward Schlabrendorff. As he started to fire, Horst Hammerschmidt drew back on Rommel’s mane with all his strength, Rommel skidding on his haunches along a slick outcropping of granite, shale spraying up in the animal’s wake as Hammerschmidt wrenched his body upright, his right hand releasing Rommel’s mane. His pistol. His fist closed over it, somehow the flap open. He drew die pistol and pointed it toward the green apparition of the Elite Corpsman and fired it out into the man’s head and thorax. Rommel reared.

Hammerschmidt could hold on no longer. The green wash flooded over him completely, suddenly green no longer, only black and cold.

It was too early in the day for serious drinking and Natalia merely sipped at her second glass of whiskey.

Whiskey was wonderfully like a man. The first time it entered, it was warm, so hot it was like fire. Afterward, as it entered again and again, there was the mellowness of possession and being possessed.

She turned her thoughts away from mat. There was only one man who possessed her, ever would. And he treated her as though he did not possess her at all because he could not treat her otherwise. His sense of honor, of course.

Annie sat in the farthest comer of the sofa, her legs tucked up under a whnninous dark gray woolen skirt, her shawl wrapped tighdy around her, her eyes not smiling. The beautifully tied bow which formed the collar of the white blouse Annie wore seemed to droop nearly as much as the comers of Annie’s tightly drawn lips.

Maria sat in the reclining chair, but the chair was not reclined, almost as bolt upright as Maria’s posture within it, hands tighdy clasped to one another in her lap, knees close together beneath a black uniform skirt. Natalia knew the look. Hold yourself very tighdy because otherwise you will burst. She knew the look because she had burst.

Sarah drank the funny tasting cola John had the Germans make for him. It was almost the correct formula, but not quite. German scientists had worked quite diligendy, she was given to understand, to analyze the soft drink from five centuries ago which John had preserved here. Almost successful.

She couldn’t stand to drink it, wondered if she would have killed for a bottle of the original, told herself she would not. More than the taste, it was the nostalgia of having it. But some things, no matter how good they felt or what memories they rekindled, weren’t worth death.

Her nervous breakdown was the best thing that had ever happened to her, Natalia realized now. It had taken her off the treadmill of survival

and combat, given her the chance for introspection, self-analysis. Her situation in life was hopeless, but there was life itself. And she enjoyed the sensation of life now more than she had since years before the Night of the War.

Maria began to talk, as though confessing under truth drugs. “I met Michael when we were about to leave for Egypt to try to stop the Soviets from using their horrible gas.” The gas, a pet project of Natalia’s late husband, Vladmir Karamatsov, reacted with male hormones, virtually transforming men into homicidal beasts. Ifs not easy being a woman and being academically smart. I was always smart. The girls resent that, and the boys resent it even more. You try to hide being smart, but you have to be clever. I never learned where they drew the line between the two, being smart and being clever. But Michael liked me. For what I am.” Maria stopped speaking, as though catching her breath between phrases in a catechism she’d memorized only half-well and was afraid to forget if she lost its rhythm. He loves me,” she added, as though she had, indeed, forgotten the rest.

Natalia, lighting a cigarette, smiled at her. “You are very beautiful, Maria. And, so is Michael, for that matter. You and I have a great deal in common. The Rourke man you adore is still in love with a dead wife, you think. The one I adore is in love with his living one, I know? Natalia made the light, exhaled smoke quickly, picked up her glass of whiskey and raised the glass toward Sarah in a mock toast.

Sarah laughed.

Natalia sipped.

Annie looked uncomfortable, shifted uneasily, rearranged her shawl.

Maria spoke again. “Sarah is right. He is like some sort of god from mythology. Powerful and strong and beautiful. When he makes love to me-” She stopped speaking suddenly, looked at Sarah, blushed and looked away.

Annie almost whispered, “This is really tacky. Realize what we sound like?”

Annie’s mother said, “You sound like a Rourke. Fm only that by marriage. It would stand to reason-and I love you very much and couldn’t ask for a finer daughter-but it only makes sense that if a male Rourke is a perfect man, then a female Rourke should be a perfect woman? I mean, right? Think about yourself, okay? You’re a better cook than I ever was. You design and sew well enough, you could have been the top name in Paris five centuries ago. Your hair is so beautiful-there were women who would have killed for hair as pretty as yours, you know that? You eat like a man, you always have. And you don’t put on a pound? Hasn’t it ever dawned on you that you’re as perfect as they are? You always dress like Annie Oakley on her way to the senior prom. I mean, Fm not criticizing you. Tm just saying, you can fight better than almost any man, you’re a crack shot, you can do everything. Hasn’t that hit you? You’re the perfect woman. Intuitive-you can even read people’s minds.”

“I never got to go to a prom,” Annie said to her lap, not looking at her mother. Her voice barely above a whisper, Annie added, “And I am not perfect.”

“But you are,” Sarah said. “Michael asserted his perfection earlier. But as a girl, it was more perfect for you to keep your perfection low key. And you didn’t even have to think about it. It was just the way to be. What can’t you do, Annie?”

“Shall we concede that exceptional parents make exceptional children, Sarah?” Natalia remarked, exhaling cigarette smoke, trying to turn die conversation from Annie who looked like she’d had enough the moment the conversation began before dinner and, despite her mothers remarks to the contrary, had barely eaten a thing.

“I wasn’t exceptional, Natalia,” Sarah said.

Natalia studied the tip of her cigarette, kicked out of her shoes and drew her legs up under the hem of her skirt.

“Your real father, I understand, was a firebrand, a genius,” Sarah went on. “Your mother was a ballerina with the Bolshoi,” Sarah said slowly. “A superior mind and a superior body. What are you but the result of your genes?”

Natalia flicked ashes into the ashtray. ‘That almost sounds like fascism, Sarah” Natalia smiled. “But what are Michael and Annie, but half the result-each of them-of your genes? Hmm? Fm not perfect. John’s perfect, but only because he doesn’t realize mat he is, would never presume to even think that he is. Thafs his true perfection. And Michael’s and Annie’s, too.

“Annie’s genius for design. Think about that,” Natalia pressed. “You’re so average, Sarah? Hmm? How many women begin a career as an artist after studying to be a nurse and never studying art at all and men become both artist and writer, critically acclaimed for bom? All the while raising a family and coping with a collapsing marriage-” That would have hurt and Natalia didn’t want it to but it had to be said.

“-and an absentee husband? How many women who had never camped out much if at all, never fired a gun, totally refused to prepare for any sort of violence at all, never had any military or survival training, could have done what you did on The Night of the War and afterward? You saved yourself, you protected your two young children, you managed to become quite the heroine. I’ve listened to a lot of stories your children have told me about you. Your trouble is that in your heart you feel you should still be the liberal you always were. You rose to the occasion out of your liberalism and you’re almost embarrassed by it, guilty for it and you want all of this to end-just like the rest of us do-but you want to go back to your comfortable ideals. You can’t ever go back, because you know what the real world is like. You see, I can say that because I was never a good Communist.”

Sarah just looked at her, Sarah’s fingers touching at her abdomen-the baby. Natalia exhaled smoke. “It took me a long time to realize that, but I never was. I was born into Communism, raised a Communist and because of that I never really considered the alternatives with any seriousness. All I thought was that I wanted to fight for the welfare of the people. And that hasn’t changed. But I realized that what I was doing was having direcdy die opposite effect. Ifs like you with your liberalism. You believed in peace, you believed that violence was an evil. Violence is only an evil when it’s practiced by the evil. When violence is used to counter evil, it is no longer an evil. It is only unfortunate.”