"Go and tell these things to your president, convince him of my sincerity and my earnest wish for peace. Do not trouble yourself to return here with the formal note. Your assistants can handle that. My formal reply shall be ready for return to your president by then. Now go." Stromberg started to stand up, but then the premier said, "A bit of advice to you. I like to think that as well as possible we have become something of friends over these three years since your posting here. Stay in the Soviet Union-you will be safe. At least, if you cannot, keep your wife and daughter safe here. I will guard them as if they were my family. Moscow is impervious to attack. It will be-in that eventuality-the safest place on earth for them."
Stromberg looked into the darkness as he stood before the premier's desk. "I used to have nightmares about something like this."
The premier whispered, so softly that the American ambassador could barely make out the words: "I still do."
Chapter Five
Sarah Rourke rolled over and opened her eyes, leaned toward the bedside lamp, and squinted as she pulled the chain for the light. Looking away from the glare as much as she could, she studied the digital alarm clock beside the bed-Michael would be late for kindergarten. She felt behind the clock. The alarm had been pushed off.
She sat bolt upright in bed, pushing her shoulder-length brown hair back from her face. She had watched the network news the previous evening, then had a hard time getting to sleep afterward. As she pulled away the covers and edged her feet out of the bed, she wondered if John had made it out of Pakistan before the Russians had entered the country. Gingerly, she tested the rug with her toes until she found her slippers, then slipped her feet into them and stood up.
Her pale blue nightgown brushed at her ankles as she reached for the robe on the chair beside the bed and slipped it on.
"Michael"' she called from her door, "get up for school. Mommy overslept. Come on. You too, Ann," she called to their four-year-old daughter.
"I'll get Ann, Mom," Michael shouted back.
"All right. I'll make breakfast. You can eat at school today. No time for me to make your lunch."
She glanced into Michael's room first. His was across the hall from her own. And then into Ann's room before she started toward the head of the stairs.
She stopped. She'd thought she smelled cigar smoke, but supposed it was only her imagination-despite herself she'd been thinking of John all night. But as she stood there at the head of the stairs, she could smell it now quite distinctly. She rubbed her eyes and peered over the banister into the living room below. Someone was in the easy chair by the fireplace-and there was a fire going.
Over the mantel, the brass brackets for the shotgun which John had insisted she keep there were empty. "My God," she started to say, her hazel eyes staring straight at the back of the head that was half visible above the chair's headrest.
"You can relax, Sarah."
He stood and looked up at her, the shotgun and an old rag in his hands. It was John, and for an instant she wasn't sure she was glad. If it had been a prowler, she would have known how to react. But with her husband, she no longer did.
"Daddy!" It was Michael screaming and running past her, taking the steps down two at a time; then Ann was racing past her too, "Daddy! Daddy!"
Sarah Rourke turned and walked back down the hallway. He'd been cleaning the shotgun. His obsession, she realized, with guns and death and violence hadn't gone away. Her stomach was churning. She stumbled into the bathroom. Obsession. She looked into the mirror, studied her face a moment, touched her right hand to her hair, realizing that she was like him-obsessed.
John Rourke pulled his wife's '78 Ford wagon to a halt on the gravel driveway in front of the house. He could see Sarah waiting for him in the doorway-blue jeans with a few smears of paint on them, a T-shirt with one of his own plaid flannel shirts over it. Her hair was loose at her shoulders, a cup of coffee steamed in her hands, and her hazel eyes stared over it at him.
"Well," he began, across the driveway from her, "I got the kids to school-they weren't too late."
"Have to kill anybody along the way, John?" Without waiting for an answer, she turned and walked back inside the house.
As Rourke pulled his leather jacket shut against the cold, he felt the stainless Detonics .45 in his hip pocket. He'd left its mate and double shoulder rig in the house, and realized that she'd seen it.
"Shit," he muttered to himself, then walked across the gravel and up the three steps and onto the long riverboat front porch, then into the high-ceilinged old house. "Where are you?" he half-shouted.
"In the kitchen-making your breakfast," Sarah called back. He tossed his jacket on the coat tree and walked the length of the hallway to the end, then turned into the kitchen.
"You finished stripping the wainscoting? It looks good that way," Rourke said, sitting down in front of the steaming mug of coffee that waited for him on the trestle table.
"It was a lot of work," she said, still facing away from him, standing by the electric stove. "The woodwork, I mean," she added, her voice low.
"How are the kids?" he said.
"Didn't you ask them?" She turned toward him and put a plate before him-a small steak, two eggs, hash brown potatoes and toast.
"I didn't expect this," he said.
"Didn't you ask them-the children?" she repeated.
"Yeah," he said, a forkful of egg and potato poised in front of his mouth. "I asked them-all they said was they missed me. Said you missed me too," he added.
"Well-they do. I do, but that doesn't change anything." Sipping at her coffee, she said, "I was worried you hadn't gotten out of Pakistan in time. The Russians and everything. I thought you were supposed to be in Canada for that seminar on-what is it?"
"Hyperthermia," Rourke said. "Field recognition and treatment of hyperthermia-a lot of interest in that these days."
"Why didn't you become a doctor after medical school? You're crazy."
"Dammit, Sarah," Rourke said.
"Well, why didn't you? You went to college, took Pre-Med, went to medical school, then you quit and went into the CIA. You're an idiot."
Rourke threw his fork down on the plate, then stood and walked to the window looking out onto the enclosed back porch. "What? You want the same argument we had last time?"
"No," she said quietly. "I just want different answers."
"I like what I'm doing."
"Killing people?"
Rourke turned and glared at her, realizing he still had the gun in his pocket. Weighing it in his hand a moment, he set it on top of the refrigerator and sat down again.
"Answer me. Do you really enjoy violence?"
Biting down hard on a piece of toast, he said quietly, "I'll tell you one more time. I enjoy working with police and military people. Training them how to stay alive. If staying alive entails killing someone else, then, okay-it does. I didn't make the world. Somebody has to teach people how to stay alive in it. I know all there is to know about terrorism, brushfire wars-but it's more than that. Just the day-to-day business of staying alive would kill most people if they found themselves in the wilderness, the desert...if they lost their modern technology in a flood or a quake. Most people-"
"Like me?" she said defensively.
"Yes. Yes, like you or anybody else. Do you know anything about edible plants? Ever skin down a snake then worry about whether you'd gotten all the poison out because if you didn't eat it you'd starve to death? No. But I have."
"What do you want, a medal? I don't mind that part of it-but why is it always tied to death? I bet you're hoping the Russians go straight on through Pakistan and we go to war with them. Then everybody'd have to tell you you were right." Then, deepening her voice and frowning, she shouted, "Plan now for death and destruction-read the collected works of J.T. Rourke, noted survivalist and weapons expert. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, he can tell you how to survive war, famine, death-and, if you act now, he'll even throw in pestilence at no extra charge."