Ahern, Jerry - The Quest

“All right, but the main reason we’re here, and probably Karamatsov too, is we’re looking for a guy—you might even know him—he has a place somewhere around here, vacation home. Name is Jim Colfax. He’s an ex-astronaut, big shot in NASA public relations before the war.” “Why would anyone want him?”

“Ever hear of something called the Eden Project when you were with the company?”

Rourke thought for a moment. There were so many coded files, so many top-secret projects. But the Eden Project wasn’t one he recalled.

“I haven’t heard of it,” Rourke told Reed.

“Well, neither had anybody else. We were sifting through the ruins of the Houston space center— found a charred file folder, and inside all we could make out was Eden Project, but nobody’s left from NASA that we can find, except Colfax if he’s still alive that is—and he should be right here in Georgia.” “Why, just because he had a vacation home here?”

“And he was speaking at the University in Athens the night before the bombing. It was the last engagement on a speaking tour, then he had a few weeks off.” “Hell of a way to spend a vacation—with a nuclear war,” Rourke observed.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Reed said.

“So you want to find him to find out what the Eden Project was.”

“We think it has to do with some launches at Cape Canaveral, just before the place got a direct hit—and we think the Russians are interested in it too.” Rourke looked up at the darkening sky. Was there someone up there, he wondered, or something that was a new horror. “I’ll give you a description of my wife, my son, my daughter, the horses they were probably riding—then some poop on the Jenkins couple they might have been with—get it out as fast as you can. Got a radio?” “Yeah, if I only use it a few minutes at a time so they can’t peg us.”

“You want my help,” Rourke said, “then you get the description out—now. I’ll write the details for you, and I’ll listen while you send.” Rourke fished a zippered notebook from his backpack on the back of the Harley, then began to write. He stopped. Was beautiful a valid description for Sarah, and how about Michael and Annie—handsome for him, cute for her? He decided on something more exact in nature.

An hour later, the message was sent and Rourke had committed to meet Reed and the others outside Athens at noon the following day. Two hours from the retreat, Rourke rode hard through the night.

Chapter 19

Rourke sat on the sofa, his hair still wet from the shower, a glass of whiskey in his right hand, a cigar burning in the ashtray beside him. Rubenstein had already eaten by the time Rourke returned, and nearly jumped out his skin, as Rourke had thought, when he’d seen Rourke walk in—three days early and with news of an American Intelligence team insertion in the area.

“Did Captain Reed ask about me?”

“No, sorry,” Rourke told the younger man.

Rourke had fixed himself a can of stew and poured the beef, vegetables, and gravy over bread, then eaten it quickly. He sat in the great room, wanting to think. Finally, sipping at the top of his second drink, he shouted to Rubenstein, who was sitting on the far side of the room, reading. “Paul! What do you think— the Eden Project, something to do with Cape Canaveral—what does it suggest?” Rubenstein seemed lost in thought for several moments, then looked up, and said, “Well, the Eden reference seems to mean some sort of beginning— maybe beginning again.” “Yeah,” Rourke said.

“So, maybe it’s some sort of manned flight that would have been too risky, unless there wasn’t anything to lose—a lot of people thought the world would just get flattened after a full nuclear exchange—maybe it was some sort of space colonization effort or something.” “Or maybe just the opposite—a doomsday device. You’ve got to remember one thing, Paul, intelligence-operations names rarely have anything to do with the actual operation—just the opposite—so maybe a new beginning simply means a surprise ending.” “You mean some kind of superbomb orbiting the earth and timed to blow up soon?”

“Maybe not soon,” Rourke said soberly. “Maybe not for five years, or ten years, or maybe the next five minutes. And maybe it’s nothing we’ve thought of. I’ll tell you what Reed wants me to do,” Rourke said then, recounting his conversation with the Army captain and their scheduled meeting the next day. Rourke looked at his watch. It was already the next day—fifteen minutes into it.

The two men talked for a while longer. Afterward Rourke went to bed before Rubenstein. More to keep out the light than for privacy, Rourke drew the curtains separating the master bedroom from the rest of the cavern and stripped away his clothes, then lay down on the double bed, his left hand reaching out to the empty side of the bed, his mind filled with thoughts of Sarah.

Chapter 20

Rourke, Reed and three of the five Army men walked past the university, turned left, and walked to the downtown area of the city. Rourke’s skin crawled. He was weaponless, not by choice, but necessity. To be caught with firearms or even a knife in the Soviet-occupied city would certainly mean discovery and most likely death. Rourke had decided on the course of action as the only means of contacting the Resistance. There was a man he knew in Athens and, if there were a Resistance forming, this man would be in it—Darren Ball, ex-Special Forces, ex-mercenary—tough, hard, experienced, and as anti-Communist as any man Rourke had ever met. Ball, before the war, had taken to running a bookstore specializing in militaria, weapons books, and related items. He had lost a leg in Rhodesia, which had effectively ended his military career.

Rourke, wearing a beat-up straw cowboy hat and dark sunglasses, scanned the street. The sight of the Kalashnikov-armed Soviet troops strolling casually in the cold sunlight through an American city disgusted him. Twice Reed had had to restrain one of his men, Bradley, a young black sergeant, who was fiercely anti-Soviet.

With Reed and the three soldiers, all disguised as civilians and, like Rourke, weaponless, Rourke stopped on the corner. Without moving his lips, Rourke muttered, “Hope nobody stops us for papers or anything, hmm? Bradley, you come with Reed and me. You two drift around and act cool. We’ll meet you back here. Try and assess the composition of the Russian units here; how many, what equipment—listen and learn—go,” and without waiting for acquiescence, Rourke, Reed, and the headstrong Sgt. Bradley started toward where Rourke hoped to find Darren Ball, the Liberty Book Store and B.S. Emporium.

Almost brushing shoulders with a half-dozen Russian soldiers, Rourke, Reed, and Bradley reached the far corner, and Rourke stopped. The bookstore windows were boarded over and the wooden sign hanging over the storefront had been spray-painted black, lining out the name.

“What do we do now?” Reed asked.

“We keep our shirts on,” Rourke said almost disgustedly, then slowly walked around the corner. A knot of young people was standing there, Rourke guessed in violation of some Russian rule against public assembly. Settling the straw cowboy hat low over his eyes, squinting in the sunlight despite the glasses he wore, Rourke walked over toward them, the two military men behind him. Rourke fished a small cigar out of the pocket of his snap-front cowboy shirt, and stopped beside the young men and women, bending his head low toward the flame of the Zippo held cupped in his hands, talking without looking at them, “Any of you people know what happened to the guy who used to run this place—the B.S. Emporium? Fella named Darren Ball, missing a leg.” One of the younger men looked squarely at Rourke, saying, “What—you want information? Go to hell.” A girl, about eighteen, grabbed the young man’s arm as Rourke looked at him, the girl saying, “Cliff, don’t. If he’s one of them he’ll only—” “Relax,” Rourke rasped, turning away and looking back into the street. “I’m an old friend of Darren Ball’s. What are you so afraid of—if I’m one of who?” He looked past the young man to the girl. She brushed her hair nervously from her face with the back of her left hand, her eyes shifting uneasily from side to side—they were pansy blue. “I didn’t mean anything, Mister. Neither did he.” “I can take care of myself, Patty,” the young man snapped, stepped toward Rourke, shaking the girl’s restraining hand from his arm.