He sat in the shelter of high rocks, overlooking the only logical landing site for an aircraft of sufficient size to land a dozen men and a crew. Natalia slept in his left arm, her head against his shoulder. Only Vladov, and two men, besides Rourke, were awake. Rourke had slept aboard the aircraft, as had Vladov and most of the men. Natalia had not been able to sleep and it had taken her some time after landing and coming into the rocks, their own aircraft camouflaged, until she had drifted off.
“The Comrade Major, she loves her uncle a great deal, I think,” Vladov whispered.
Rourke nodded slowly, so some sudden movement would not awaken her.
“And she loves you, too, I think, also a great deal. It is written in her eyes. Women—even if a woman is a major in the KGB—they write their emotions across their eyes. For you, that is what is written there.”
“I know,” Rourke answered, trying nottural microbes, which had been all but ignored by commercial enterprises. The unexpected advent of recombinant-DNA techniques from Rourke.
“What are they like?”
Rourke knew where the Soviet captain was looking—to his two sentries on the far side of the grassy plain which the rocks overlooked. “They’re like you, like me, very much like us both, I’d imagine. So far as I know, only one of the men is a man I know personally.”
“The Colonel Reed of whom you speak?”
“Yes, Colonel Reed.”
“What is he like? I have heard of him before. The chief intelligence officer for United States II.”
Rourke felt himself smile. “He is that. Strange guy—fluc-tuate from an occasionally bizarre sense of humor to a guy who wouldn’t laugh if his life depended on it. He’s a career man so to speak. Any Intelligence on active duty for a long time, then in the Reserves, then called up to active duty when all of this started—before the War.”
“He hates Russians then.” It was a statement Vladov made, not a question, shifting his position, moving the 5.45mm AKS-74 onto his lap from the ground beside him.
“Yeah, he hates Russians with a real passion.”
“It is something very strange,” Vladov said. “But before The Night of The War, I hated Americans very much. And I realized after our troops came in as part of the first invasion force I had never met an American. Not ever. I wondered how it could be that I could hate someone whom I had never come to know. I still wonder this.”
“You’ll turn into a pacifist if you’re not careful,” Rourke laughed softly.
“Yes, a pacifist. It would be most amusing for me to turn into a pacifist. I fought in Afghanistan. I served in a secu-rity contingent in Poland. It should be most amusing were I to become a pacifist, as you say.”
Rourke chewed down on the end of his cigar—it was clamped between his teeth in the right corner of his mouth. There was no need to be particularly watchful, Vladov’s men would do that. He closed his eyes. He said to Vladov, “I was pretty much the same way. I met Natalia, saved her life, and she saved mine—mine and my friend Paul Ruben-stein’s life—”
“This Rubenstein—it is Jewish, correct?”
“Yeah,” Rourke nodded, electing not to mention that Natalia was also half Jewish as her uncle had revealed in his letter.
“In Russia, we do not like Jews—”
“You ever think maybe all of that was just as smart as not liking Americans?”
The Soviet Special Forces captain didn’t answer for a mo-ment, then from the sudden darkness when a cloud blocked the moon, Rourke heard his voice. “You do not hate the Russians?”
“I don’t hate her, do I? And I can’t see any reason to hate you. Do you hate me?”
“No, of course not, there is—”
“Reason?”
“Yes—no reason.”
“Too bad,” Rourke smiled. “Too bad we couldn’t have all sat down like this before it all got blown up and destroyed, before this whole holocaust scenario came about—”
“Too bad, yes. This Eden Project—perhaps for them it will be different. If we can do what we have set out here to do.”
“Perhaps,” Rourke agreed. “But in a way, maybe it won’t be.”
“What do you mean?” Vladov asked, the flare of a match cupped in his hands making a rising and falling sound as the phosphorous burned, Rourke smelling the smoke of the cig-arette mingled with the phosphorous.
“It’d be nice if somehow they could know what we’re talk-ing of here tonight, and learn from our mistakes. It’d be nice if they could.”
“Yes.”
“But I don’t think they will—you got an extra cigarette? If I light a cigar, the smell’ll wake up Natalia.”
“I hope you like them,” Rourke heard Vladov laugh. “They are American cigarettes.”
“Any port in a storm.” Vladov fired the cigarette from his own already lit one, passing it to Rourke. “Camel?”
“Yes, I like them. I used to buy them on the black market and smoke them in Russia, and in Poland, too.”
“Don’t tell Natalia I bummed a cigarette,” Rourke smiled. “I’m always telling her to quit—that it’s bad for her health,” and he laughed, hearing Vladov laughing too.
“I had quit smoking cigarettes for two years, before The Night of The War. After this, I started again. It did not mat-ter.”
“Yes,” Rourke told the Soviet captain. “It didn’t matter.” In the distance, Rourke heard the drone of aircraft engines. He turned his body to see his wrist beyond Natalia’s shoul-ders, rolling back the cuff of the battered brown bomber jacket to read his watch. It was set still to Eastern time. In an hour or so, in the East, it would be sunrise. It was hard to think that in Europe, in what remained of Great Britain, perhaps the world had already ended.
John Rourke inhaled the cigarette smoke deeply into his lungs — wondering what it mattered.
But he felt Natalia’s breath against his skin as she moved in his arm. And Rourke realized that it still did matter.
Chapter Twenty-two
Vladov had aroused his men, the men going out onto the prairie and lighting the flares already set there after their arrival. For the second time in the darkness that night, Rourke watched an aircraft land. But there were no radio communications—to have agreed on a frequency would have been risking the security compromised.
The aircraft — an old civilian aircraft Rourke couldn’t im-mediately identify—slowed, turning, prepared for take-off, the fuselage door opening, men pouring from it, dropping flat in the high grass, the wind stiff now and the clouds moving briskly overhead, making the moonlight come and go with the nagging irregularity of a flickering strobe light, making the movements of Reed’s men as they assumed de-fensive postures surrounding the aircraft look jerky, like something from a silent film that had been shown once too often.
Rourke had awakened Natalia. Vladov on one side of him, now, Natalia on the other side, Rourke walked across the prairie, the grass high, something he could feel as it moved against his Levis, the grass nearly to his knees in spots. Natalia squeezed his left hand in her right. He squeezed hers back.
He kept walking, toward the aircraft, seeing Reed now in a flicker of moonlight standing beside the wing stem.
He heard Reed’s voice. “I should have figured you’d have her with you, Rourke.”
Natalia answered. “I too looked forward to seeing you again, Colonel Reed.”
“That’s not Rubenstein unless he’s grown a couple of inches—got yourself a new sidekick, have you?”
Rourke answered him. “I found Sarah and the children. Paul was injured. He’s recovering at the Retreat and look-ing after my family.”
“Good for you—spend these last few days with them— why the hell are you here?”