The sleet had begun to stream down from thegray-blue skies more than two hours earlier. Sarah had quickly led the horses—the children mounted on her husband's horse, Sam—up and away from the low valley now below her.
For she had seen the Brigands already, heard their vehicles, their laughter and shouts, felt the fear they always made her feel. She had tethered Sam and Tildie, then wrapped the children in their blankets and in hersas well. Now she sat, huddled in an incongruously feminine woolen jacket, on two saddle blankets spread over the bare rock. She was freezing with the cold.
She looked away from the Brigand camp below. There were perhaps a dozen of them, a small force by comparison to some she had seen, almost encountered. She looked instead at the faces of Michael and Annie, trying to remember the last time she had seen either child really play. Not on the offshore island where they had hidden from the Soviet troops in Savannah. But at the Mulliner farm. The children had played there. Mary Mulliner had ...
Sarah looked down at herself, the rifle across her blue-jeaned thighs. She had worn a dress at the Mulliner farm much of the time, slept in a warm bed at night, worn a nightgown. The children—they had run with the dog Mary kept, forgetting the times they'd run from wild dogs.
There was Mary's son; he fought with the Resistance against the Soviet Army. And the Resistance would have ways of reaching Army Intelligence. If John had gone to Texas near the Louisiana border, as the intelligence man in Savannah had told her, then Mary's son would have a way of contacting John, of letting him know. . . .
She hugged her knees close to her chin, watching the faces of her children; there was little happines in them. But there would be happiness again.
Suddenly, desperately, she wanted to be rid oi her rifle, rid of her war of nerves with every strange sound in the night, rid of the worry.
Her eyes closed, she imagined herself, in her borrowed dress, living at the Mulliner farm, living like a person again.
She opened her eyes, gazing down at the valley. The Brigands—they would rob, kill, rape her if they guessed her presence. But they would leave eventually. If she
turned north, despite the storm, she could reach Mt, Eagle, Tennessee in a matter of days. Texas was farther away than that—farther away. Sarah Rourke closed her eyes again, trying to forget the Brigands and see the faces of her children, playing.
But instead, in her mind all she could see was the face of her husband, John Thomas Rourke.
"These are all the reports, Catherine; there is nothing fresh from the radio room?"
"There is nothing fresh from the communications center, Comrade General,"
the young woman answered him.
Varakov looked up from the sheaves of open file folders littering his desk, into Catherine's young eyes. "I love the way, girl, that you correct me—communications center it is, then." He slammed his fist—heavily and slowly—down on the last of the file folders he'd opened, then stared at the desk. Nothing concretely showed that Natalia, his niece, was safe.
"Comrade General?"
Ishmael Varakov looked up at the young secretary again. "Yes, I worry over Major Tiemerovna. I would worry over you, too, I think because I tend to feel like everyone's father. When one reaches my age, girl, he feels that way. You may, too, someday. Now leave me. You have,"—he looked at the watch on his tree limb-sized wrist—"you have gone with little sleep for three days, I think. Each time that I call you, you are here— and that is impossible if you go off duty to sleep. You will
be of no use as my secretary in the hospital. You are off duty for twenty-four hours. Go and sleep, Catherine." Varakov felt mildly proud of himself for remembering her name.
"But, Com—"
She didn't finish what she started to say, and as he looked at her, she averted her eyes downward, her long-fingered hands with the plain nails clutching the steno pad in front of her at the waistline of her skirt.
"You mean well—to help me. It is more than you do your duty; you are a friend, Catherine. And that is too valuable a commodity to waste. Sleep—I order you that. You will obey me."
She stood very straightly—too straight to be comfortable, Varakov thought—then answered him. "Yes, Comrade General."
"You are a good person—go." He looked down at his desk, hearing her too-low heels clicking across the museum floor. He looked up after her once; her skirt was still too long. He would mention it again to Natalia to tell the girl. It would be better for a woman to mention such a thing.
"Natalia," he whispered.
Was she alive?
As best he could piece together from the fragmentary reports of the Florida evacuation, Natalia had been with Rourke, working to save the last of the refugees near Miami. The last Soviet report had indicated seeing Natalia and Rourke on the field with a group of older American men and women. Minutes after that, according to high-altitude observation planes, the final shock wave had apparently taken place, the Florida peninsula had broken up and—Varakov hammered his fist down on the desk, stood
up, awkwardly leaned across the desk in his office-without-walls, and stuffed his white-stockinged feet into his shoes.
His uniform blouse still open, he walked toward the main hall of the museum, his feet hurting as they always did when he walked. "The soldier's curse," he murmured, stopping not quite halfway across the main hall to look at the figures of the mastodons, fighting. He watched them.
How huge they were, how powerful—all once, long ago.
He snorted, shaking his head, still standing there, not walking. She should be safe—she had been with—"Comrade General!"
Varakov turned, staring. A man was standing on the mezzanine balcony, staring down either at him or at the figures of the mastodons. "Comrade General!"
The man was already starting down the gently winding staircase to Varakov's left, starting toward him, moving with the grace of an athlete, taking the stairs effortlessly in his comparative youth.
Varakov heard his own lips murmur, "Colonel Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy—aagh—"
"I was looking for you, Comrade General!"
Varakov did not answer; the man was still halfway across the length of the natural history museum's great hall and Varakov would not shout.
Rozhdestvenskiy slowed his easy jog, stopping and standing at attention, a boyish smile across his lips, his blond hair tousled, a lock of it falling across his forehead. Varakov thought the man looked as though he had himself sewed into his uniform each morning.
"You did not think, perhaps, to search for me in my
office? Or is that not covered in the KGB training school?"
Rozhdestvenskiy smiled, still standing more or less at attention, saying, "Comrade General—you are as noted for your wit as you are for your brilliant stratagems."
"That was not an answer to my question," Varakov said flatly, then turned to study the figures of the mastodons. "You have come to replace Karamatsov as head of the American branch of KGB. Arid you have come to tell me where the military and the KGB will draw the proverbial line.
That is correct?"
He heard the voice behind him. "Yes, Comrade General—that is correct. The Politburo has decided—"
"I know what the Politburo has decided," Varakov told him evenly. "That the KGB should have greater authority here, and that you, as Karamatsov's best friend in life should be his successor in death. That KGB will have the final word—not the military."
'That is correct, Comrade General."
Varakov turned around, slowly, facing the vastly younger and slightly taller man.
Rozhdestvenskiy continued speaking. "In matters that strictly involve the military, of course, yours will be the final word, Comrade General. But in matters where the KGB-"
"In any matters," Varakov interrupted, "I am sure there will be KGB