Survivalist - 24 - Blood Assassins (7 page)

Generaloberst Wolfgang Mann’s hair was well past military length, and a healthy growth of beard adorned Mann’s traitorous countenance.

Deitrich Zimmer’s thoughts returned to Sarah Rourke. With her eyelids down, of course, it was impossible to see her eyes. But he remembered them as they had been in that instant more than a century ago when they had flashed up at him, defiantly, proudly. She was, of course, a remarkable woman, full of courage and strength and determination and not at all unattractive. She was the mother of his son.

Several courses of action lay open to him now, possessed of her body as he was. With her, he would assuredly be able to trade for the return of Martin. With her, he could control John Rourke, and hence at least to some degree control the Trans-Global Alliance’s attempts to interdict his actions.

Zimmer looked past the cryogenic chamber in which she lay, toward the wall which was covered by a mural-sized video screen, a map displayed on it, showing the constantly updated positions of forces of the Reich and of Eden, all but one in the same. The attack on Pearl Harbor would be critical, of course. And, with the good Herr Doctor Rourke out of the way, there would be a decided advantage.

He—Zimmer—would arrange the trade for young Martin in such a manner that John Rourke would have to accomplish the trade himself. And he—Zimmer— would not only have Martin back, but have John Rourke as his prisoner, or dead. But he hoped for the former, the latter—an eventuality—coming to pass all in due time.

And if the good Herr Doctor Rourke had any compunction about personally involving himself in the trade, that would fade away instantly.

In the event that he was unable to carry out his plan of preference, he had made arrangements to accomplish his intended scheme by other means. A video crew and specialists in laser holography would be his “ace in the hole,” as the Americanism went.

This promised not only to be challenging, but amusing as well.

The one problem with his ice-bound redoubt was that there were no windows, and he felt just slightly claustrophobic. The feelings passed with activity, of course, and there would be an adequate supply of that.

There was a secret, and he must know it, possess that secret himself. And the secret was the greatest prize, even greater than the death, final and complete and ultimate, of Doctor John Thomas Rourke. And only John Rourke could unlock that secret, retrieve this knowledge.

This ultimate knowledge posed the ultimate risk of course, but what knowledge was, after all, without risk to the knower?

Deitrich Zimmer licked his lips.

He could taste it.

Twelve

“It’s very simple to give you artificial fingerprints, Mr. Rourke, but that’s the least of your worries.” Natalia watched Michael’s eyes as they squinted slightly, the doctor from the police department forensics unit lighting a cigarette as he continued. “You can get anyone to alter your fingerprints, either temporarily or permanently. Corneal imprint is what’s most reliable. But, you have to remember that Deitrich Zimmer, when he isn’t being a Nazi dictator, is one of the finest medical minds ever. What’s known of Zimmer’s techniques—and that’s precious little—is studied in medical schools from New Germany to Lydveldid Island to the Chinese First City to Mid-Wake—hell, you name it. He’s going to be able to spot fingerprint changes unless they’re done perfectly, and he might even spot them then. And what will you do about cranial measurements? Dental records? No, you could pull off a deception that would last until he examined you. That’s it, Mr. Rourke.”

“I have to try,” Michael said in reply.

Natalia sat on a stool at the far end of the morgue, her legs crossed, a cigarette in her hand. She flicked ashes from it to the floor—Dr. Robinson had said she could, that the floors were swept every night—and a few specks of ash settled on her stocking. She brushed them away, rearranging herself on the stool, straightening her dress. Michael, the moment he heard about Deitrich Zimmer’s communique, was determined to go through with the charade he had planned before the— thank God—totally erroneous information concerning his mother’s death.

When Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna thought of Sarah Rourke, she thought of Mark Twain’s famous line, about reports of his death being premature.

All the toughness and courage and ability which Michael and Annie had in abundance weren’t solely inherited from their father. For the first time since the night one hundred and twenty-five years ago when Sarah was shot in the brain by Deitrich Zimmer, Natalia saw real hope of Sarah’s return to the living.

Dr. Robinson was saying, “Think of it this way. Dr. Zimmer may be evil incarnate—I don’t know—but I do know he’s not a fool. He knows you exist, and he knows you’ve impersonated Martin—successfully— once before. He will anticipate it, Mr. Rourke. I read somewhere that you once entertained plans for following in your father’s footsteps in medicine.”

“I still do, maybe.”

Dr. Robinson’s teeth looked like ivory against his chocolate brown skin as his face beamed with a broad grin. “Well, then put yourself in Zimmer’s place, for goodness’ sake! He’ll be expecting to be deceived. If Martin Zimmer were still alive and your father actually brought Martin Zimmer in trade for your mother’s life, Deitrich Zimmer would check Martin Zimmer just as carefully! From what you’ve told me this evening and from the scuttlebutt I’ve picked up, it seems clear that Deitrich Zimmer essentially built Martin Zimmer! He started with the raw clay of your brother, added surgically the genetic material from a descendant of Adolf Hitler, made Martin. Don’t you think he’d know every measurement it was possible to know, every minute scar, every blemish! You don’t even know if Martin Zimmer was circumcised. Were you?”

Natalia felt her cheeks warming slightly. Michael was most definitely circumcised.

Dr. Robinson smiled again as he looked at her, apparently recognizing the answer to his somewhat rhetorical question. “How are you going to check now with Martin’s body buried under a couple of tons of still molten lava on Kilauea? I don’t mean to be too blunt, Mr. Rourke, but you’d never get away with it. What would you do—pursuing the thing with the circumcision, for example—if before he did the trade he asked ‘Martin’ to drop—” And he looked at Natalia, didn’t finish what he was about to say.

She finished it, “Pants?”

“Yes.”

Michael smiled. “I’d piss in his face, all right?”

Natalia looked at the tip of her cigarette, stood up, ground it under the sole of her high heel. “Stop being macho and be smart. As long as he can examine you Michael, you cannot hope to succeed.”

In the next instant, Natalia wished she’d never said what she had said. Because Michael started to laugh. And he kept laughing. Dr. Robinson looked at her,

then back at Michael. Michael said, “That’s it!” “What is ‘it,’ Michael?”

“What the hell are you laughing at Mr. Rourke?”

Michael stopped laughing, only chuckling a bit, smiling as he said, “They put me into cryogenic sleep, but with two gases. My father has a remote. He lets off the finger pressure—like what they used to call a dead man’s switch—and the other gas flows into the chamber.”

“What other gas?” Natalia almost whispered. “Cyanide?” Michael suggested, shrugging his shoulders, then laughing again.

Thirteen

Annie’s nails dug into the flesh of his abdomen.

They had gone to bed early, exhausted from the emotional low, then the emotional high. She slept behind him, her right hand and forearm resting across his body. When his wife’s nails pierced his skin, Paul Rubenstein awoke instantly. Gently, he pulled her hand away, holding her hand as he turned over onto his right side, looked at her in the darkness. He could not see her face, but he knew she was dreaming.

Her mother?

Was something happening to Sarah Rourke?

Should he awaken Annie and find out?

Paul Rubenstein lay on his back, still holding her hand. Annie mumbled something incoherent. Paul Rubenstein stared up into the darkness. Michael’s brave but stupid scheme for substituting himself for Martin Zimmer. Annie’s dreams.

Paul shook his head.

And, John’s despair.

What had happened at Emma Shaw’s house in the

mountains was obvious. And Paul Rubenstein applauded John for it. Sarah, wonderful woman that she had always been, even if she wasn’t dead, was the next best thing. Because of his love for Sarah and the entire Rourke family, his wife chief among them, Paul Rubenstein prayed that Sarah would return from her living death. On a rational basis, however, he knew that any chance of that was so remote as to be effectively impossible.

And John had a right to live, too.

The Rourkes were his family.

He loved them all, but most of all his wife.

And when Michael brought his lunacy to fruition, John helping him, Paul Rubenstein knew he would be there, too. His wife’s father and brother were like brothers to him.

Annie snuggled more closely against him. Paul Rubenstein smiled. “Most fortunate of sidekicks,” he whispered to the darkness.

That was him.

Fourteen

John Rourke poured a glass of his German-made Seagram’s Seven into the small tumbler, sipped at it. Never a regular drinker Before the Night of the War or since, he had always had his preferences. Seagram’s was his favorite hard liquor. When the Germans had offered to duplicate for him whatever he might require from the Retreat supplies, he had suggested the whiskey. One hundred and twenty-five years ago, it was made in small quantities only for him. Nowdays, as he understood it, the whiskey had become one of the favorite alcoholic beverages of New Germany, and Mid-Wake and Hawaii as well.

He was watching the white-foamed surf breaking over the slick blackness of the rocks. This was his second small glass of whiskey in two hours. He had no intention of getting drunk, nor had he ever been so by design or otherwise.

But, John Rourke could not sleep.

Too much had happened for him to be able properly to deal with it. Less than twenty-four hours ago, he had

precipitated the death of his third child, Martin Zimmer. Then he was informed that his wife was dead, and along with her his old friend and comrade Wolfgang Mann. Then, out of despair and loneliness, in seeking the comfort of a woman, he had betrayed his wife, cheated on her, albeit unknowingly and incompletely—but not for lack of trying on his part. Fate intervened in the form of the eleven men sent to kill Emma Shaw in her home. In the aftermath of this episode, he was informed that, in fact, his wife was not dead (nor was Wolfgang Mann).

The news that Sarah lived filled his heart with happiness, but even in that very moment his joy was muted by the fact that her life still hung in the balance in two ways. He was not certain of just how yet, but in some way he had to force Deitrich Zimmer to perform a life-saving operation to remove from Sarah’s brain the bullet which Deitrich Zimmer himself had put there. And, he had to get Sarah away from Zimmer. Even in this modern age of highly advanced medical technology and speeded-up healing, there would be a reasonable limit to how far and how fast someone recovering from brain surgery of the most delicate nature could be moved.

And there was the matter of the trade itself, in order to be in a position to accomplish all or any of this. Martin, the person for whom Deitrich Zimmer wished to trade, was dead. Michael clung stubbornly to the idea of impersonating Martin, indeed their only viable option, but one which would not get them very far at all and, in the end, might result in Michael’s death as well.

And if, through some miraculous combination of luck on their part and ineptitude on the part of their adversaries, Sarah was saved, once she was well enough, John Rourke would have to tell her that Martin was dead, killed by his father’s hand.

Regardless of the circumstances—Martin had been attempting to destroy the aircraft which Emma piloted, endeavoring to force it down into the volcanic lava flows below, killing them all—Martin’s death was a fact. Sarah would never forgive him—John Rourke— for that. And their marriage would end.

And, there was the matter of Wolfgang Mann, whose life John Rourke wished to save as well. And Mann, it was clear, had taken the cryogenic sleep for one reason only—Sarah.

John Rourke lit a cigar, inhaled, held the smoke in his lungs, exhaled, watched the smoke as the wind caught it, danced with it, dissipated it into nothingness, like a dream in the light of morning. He sipped at his whiskey.

This had all started very simply six hundred and twenty-five years ago in the declining years of the twentieth century. Now it was the dawn of the twenty-seventh century A.D. His only intention was that if the unthinkable became reality, his wife and son and daughter would be able to survive that with him. He had built the Retreat, stocked and provisioned it. Now, his children were, in terms of physical age, merely a few years his junior. His daughter was married, his son had been married, then widowed, losing an unborn child in the process. John Rourke’s wife, their mother, bore a third child and, effectively, had been murdered in the moments following giving birth.

And, without the hands, procedures and appliances of the man who nearly killed her, she was doomed to

cryogenic sleep for God only knew how long, perhaps forever.

Simplicity into complexity.

He took another sip of his drink.

And he thought of two women, neither one of them his wife. He had been in love with Natalia, and she with him, but because of his marriage they had never consummated that love. And now Natalia belonged to Michael, and he to her, what John Rourke had planned on what, for all he knew, might be humanity’s last morning.

And then there was Emma Shaw.

It seemed to John Rourke that he could not have feelings for a woman without bringing her pain.

He finished his drink, then sat there for a time longer, smoking his cigar.

In the morning, he would embark upon the most desperate gamble of his life.

Tonight, he would be alone with his thoughts …

friendship would be lost to her, that he would somehow blame her for the terrors of the day, terrors which would have destroyed a lesser man. Although she admired many things about John Rourke, Emma Shaw realized that the man’s resiliency was perhaps his finest and most unique quality. After the talk with her father, after being informed that the earlier reports that Sarah Rourke was dead were erroneous, that she was, instead, held prisoner by the leader of the Nazis, he had come over to her where she’d sat on the porch railing, sat down beside her. “Emma, I’m very sorry.”