Survivalist - 12 - The Rebellion (10 page)

“I know,” Annie interrupted. “Don’t forget—Daddy taught me martial arts.”

“When Natalia gets back, you’ll have to get her to teach you a few things. She knows a lot and the techniques she uses are probably better for a woman.”

“All right, Paul. Will you be all right here?”

“Fine—if I need anything, I’ll shout for Madison.”

“Dr. Munchen told me you should stay in bed for at least twenty-four hours in case you got a slight concussion.”

She watched Paul as he started to laugh and the laugh turned into a wince against pain. “All I’ve got’s a big bump. And as soon as I’m up and around, I’m gonna find that Blackburn guy and give the Eden Project dentists something to do.”

She leaned over him and kissed his mouth lightly—she was very much afraid of moving about the encampment, and of leaving Paul alone. But if she didn’t find the murderer of Mona Stankiewicz, the murderer would find them. She felt that inside herself.

She stood up, pushing her hair back from her shoulders. She smiled at Paul. “Don’t get into trouble,” she whispered, laughing.

“Be careful,” she heard as she started through the tent flap.

Captain Dodd had been reluctant, but it was Jane Harwood, the commander of Eden Three, who had finally convinced him that Annie be allowed access to the onboard master computer of Eden One.

She had spent the first ten minutes in the cockpit just staring at the instruments. Very vaguely, from when she had been very little, she remembered seeing one of the space shuttles taking off—she had watched it’on television. And her father had videotapes of several of the space shuttle launches that she had watched at times over the years on his machines at The Retreat. She had seen every tape he had several times over.

And of course she had seen the landing of the Eden fleet.

But the fascination at actually sitting behind the controls of one of the shuttle craft awed her.

After what she judged as ten minutes or more, she began to attack the computer.

It was not as difficult a task as someone might suppose, she reflected, settling herself more comfortably in Craig Lerner’s chair. She was only recalling information, not programming, and the master computer was programmed to accept English.

She booted up the disc and started typing. “Recall Personnel File s Eden One.” She punched Return.

The display terminal printed, “Syntax error.”

She stared at it a moment, then activated the cursor. She eliminated the space between the “e” and the “s” in “Files,” then retyped “Eden One.” The display printed, “What system?”

She considered that. They would be listed alphabetically certainly, but also by job specialties.

She decided on alphabetical order but for the heck of it typed, “Catalogue Systems.”

A lengthy list appeared on the terminal—alphabetical, job specialty, sex, blood type, military experience, age— Annie let the catalogue run itself out, then selected the alphabetical listing. The first name was Abromowitz, Arthur A. Annie closed her eyes for a moment—it would be a long job… .

She walked through the camp, the sun setting toward the west, a breeze blowing which toyed with her hair and caught up under her skirt at times as she walked. She felt stupid that she had not seen it earlier. Because if the secret of Mona Stankiewicz’s death were to be found, it had certainly been with Mona.

And Annie had found it there. She had not found the killer yet.

But she had found the reason.

She stopped before the tent, looking behind her—no one lurked beside another of the tents, and no one watched furtively from the edge of the camp.

She pulled back the tent flap and went through, sitting down beside Paul on the small chair next to his bed.

Annie stared at him—and Paul opened his eyes.

She had learned she could make him do that, and it frightened her a little. “Annie?”

“Paul, are you awake?”

“Yeah. What—ahh—”

“It’s almost sunset. I found something in Mona Stankiewicz’s personnel file. I haven’t found a clue to who

the killer is, but I know why anyway.”

Paul started to sit up and she gently nudged him back. “You rest. You can lie down and hear this just as well.”

“Not even married yet.” He smiled—“and you’re telling me what to do.”

“You can tell me what to do all you want and I’ll do it— or I’ll make you think I am.” She perched on the edge of the chair, the hem of her skirt brushing at her ankles as she moved her feet. “All right. Mona Stankiewicz was first generation American. Her parents were born in Poland— that do anything for you?”

“Before The Night of The War—”

“The Russians invaded Poland—it was a good number of years before, wasn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.” Paul nodded. “Yeah. Polish trade unionism was the apparent rationale—but Poland was becoming too uncontrollable and the Russians cracked the whip.”

“What if Mona Stankiewicz had relatives living in Poland and the KGB threatened to harm them? And the only way she could prevent that was to sell out? I talked to Jane Harwood for a while after Captain Dodd gave me permission to use the onboard computer. And I found out something very interesting. The primary and back-up flight crews had been given special briefings and special training sessions that were with classified material. All of the primary and back-up flight crew personnel were Americans except for the flight officer on Eden Six—an Englishman. Jane Harwood insisted they had no inkling that the Eden Project was a doomsday contingency, but some of the special training included use of radiation monitoring equipment, landings with various types of aircraft on various types of runway surfaces, stuff like that. So Mona would have had all the’ special training and the secret information. This is the juicy part—”

“Women.” Paul Rubenstein laughed.

“All right, smarty. But anyway—the flight crews and the backup flight crews were the only ones that got any detailed information at all about the criogenic process, hmm? And the serum. The way you and Daddy and Natalia talked about it—well, Karamatsov had a lot of information he shouldn’t have.”

“So, someone in the flight crews was a KGB agent and threatened Mona Stankiewicz’s relatives and forced her to give information.”

“That’s what I just said.” Annie heard Madison stirring behind her and turned and smiled at the girl as she sat up. She had been sleeping curled up in a ball near the foot of Michael’s cot. Michael’s breathing seemed even and Annie dismissed checking him. “Hi—you slept for a long time, Madison.”

“I—I didn’t know I was so very tired, Annie.”

“Pull up a chair. We’re solving a murder mystery.”

“The poor Mona Stankiewicz?”

“That’s the one.” Annie nodded, smiling still.

Madison stood up, stretching like a house cat—Annie had seen house cats in videotapes and read about them in her father’s Britannica. Madison straightened her clothes, walking across to their side of the tent, then turning around and taking the second chair. Annie watched her—Madison still looked half asleep as she sat down in the chair placed near the foot of Paul’s cot, then began adjusting her clothing. The skirt was impossibly wrinkled.

“Annie found out,” Paul began, “that Mona Stankiewicz had relatives in Poland—”

“What is Poland?”

“It was a country before The Night of The War which the Russians occupied,” Paul supplied.

“The Russians are the bad people—yes. Except for Natalia who is very good.”

“Not all the Russians were bad people—just some of

them. And the worst ones were in the KGB,” Paul told her.

“But this cagey-bee—was not Natalia a member of it? “

“But she was the exception,” Paul told her.

Annie interrupted. “Anyway, we found out that the Russians were blackmailing Mona Stankiewicz into giving them special information about the Eden Project.”

“Black-male? Some of the men aboard the Eden Project are black, like Doctor Halverson is black.”

“No, not black male—blackmail,” Annie tried to explain. “They threatened her relatives to get her to give them information. But when she woke up—” and Annie looked at Paul and smiled— “and The Night of The War had come and gone, she realized the KGB had no hold over her. And whoever murdered her realized that too and that’s why he killed her.”

“The black male did this?”

“No, the man who worked for the KGB—or it could have been a woman—and the person could have been black or white or yellow.”

“Ohh, yellow male?”

“Aagh,” Annie groaned. She needed to spend time with Madison—lots of time. Michael taught her driving, shooting and lovemaking, spending his greatest efforts on the latter pursuit.

“Whoever,” Paul began again, “did kill her is gonna figure you’ll get onto him with that computer. You’d better wait until I’m up and around. Dr. Munchen stopped in— he says tomorrow afternoon I can spend a little time on my feet if I take it slow.”

“We don’t have ‘til tomorrow afternoon,” Annie announced. “I’m going back to that computer right now and check for whoever seems too perfect.”

“Before you do that,” Paul cautioned, “check with this Jane Harwood. She’s in the clear or close to it. Get her to put you in touch with a few people she feels certain can be

trusted. What if the killer turns out to be someone Dodd just won’t buy?”

“You’re right,” Annie agreed. “Then Daddy and Momma and Natalia might not be the only ones with a revolution on their hands.”

John Rourke pulled at the canteen—the water had a sweet taste to it, different from the water in northeastern Georgia somehow, but good to drink. Several hours of daylight still remained. Wolfgang Mann walked from where he had been talking with a haupsturmfuehrer beside one of the helicopters, lighting a cigarette as he came, saying through a cloud of smoke, “You should have brought an American cowboy hat, Herr Doctor.”

Rourke looked past Mann toward where two of Mann’s men were saddling the horses. “I never thought I’d see one of them again. The Eden Project has horse embryos in criogenic freeze, along with other animals. But still.”

“With customary German efficiency, we had the foresight to assume that some domestic animals might indeed be worth saving. What if a synthetic fuel had not been discovered? But a small portion of The Complex was set aside for the nurturing of livestock. Breeding pairs. And when it finally came time to return to the land, one of the first tasks was the breeding of the animals to increase then-numbers. Unfortunately, no dogs, no cats—I understand from materials I have read that such animals were very amusing and actually kept as pets.”

“Yes,” Rourke said. He thought of the dog he’d had as a boy. He hadn’t thought of the animal who had somehow been his best friend for longer than he could remember.

“But we did of course keep beef cattle growing throughout our enforced entombment as a source of protein. Chickens as well. Horses were the only other ones. Certain types of fish, of course.”

“If secrecy is so important,” Rourke asked Mann, “how were you able to arrange that the animals be here?”

“Since horses had a potential military value, they were naturally assigned to the armed forces. The commander of the unit which is in charge of their breeding and their training is one of us—one of those who oppose the leader and work for the freedom of Deiter Bern. Hence, the horses which await us.”

Rourke found himself watching Natalia—she was slowly approaching one of the animals, a massive bay with white stockings all around and a white blaze on the head, the animal pawing at the ground with apparent nervous energy.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Rourke told Mann. “If this all works out successfully, after we’ve dealt with the Russians, if I can find a way of getting them from here to Georgia, we’ll—”

“Horses?Of course. They are the best, I have read—a crossbreed of Arabian and American quarter horses. Stamina, intelligence, speed. They have been bred for nothing else.”

Rourke had already seen the animal he wanted for himself—it reminded him of his own horse, Sam, which he had not seen since before The Night of The War, Sam who had so well served Sarah and his children in the earlier stages of their flight. It was darker—more gray than white, the forehead broad, the Arabian in it showing strongly, with black stockings, flowing black mane and tail.

“Are any of these animals owned privately—or a man’s special mount?”

“You see a special one—which?”

“The gray—is he—”

“He is yours, Doctor Rourke, You have made a fine choice, I think. And as to the other mounts, all that you request which we can supply—for your entire family, if you like.”

There was a saddle at The Retreat. A very special saddle that had been given to him years before The Night of The War when an assignment he had had caused him to work with DEA and the Mexican authorities in breaking up a ring of terrorists. The Mexican he had worked most closely with had shipped the saddle to him. With the big Mexican horn and the high cantle, the leather intricately tooled.

It was black—completely. With the big gray, it would go well.

“All right—thank you.” Rourke nodded, leaving Mann, walking toward the animal. He would not call the horse Sam after his own mount from so long ago. A name5 was an individual thing. And he struck on the perfect name for the horse—he would call it Wolf, after the man who had given it to him. But he would not say the name aloud—not just now.

They had landed some considerable distance from The Complex, Mann proclaiming that the electronically enhanced scan of the radar system above the complex was too sensitive to be risked.

Natalia rode ahead, beside Elaine Halverson—both women rode well. Kurirnami, in the lead just ahead of them and beside Mann’s haupsturmfuehrer, looked somehow strange, his baseball cap, his white coveralls.

And just ahead of Rourke, Rourke and Mann bringing up the rear, rode Sarah, beside one of Mann’s men who was practicing his English. Rourke watched his wife—the loving way she touched at the bay mare. It was almost identical to her horse, Tildie, lost at the same time

Rourke’s horse Sam was lost after a narrow escape from the swollen lake and the bursting of a dam.