Ahern, Jerry - The Quest

Rourke looked up from his watch. “Let’s cut the small talk—time’s wasting.”

“I’ll make it short then,” Ball said, his whiskey voice almost hiding a laugh. “We got a raid planned tonight—a biggee. I can’t go, but Rourke—if you go and bring some of these fellas along, well—I’ll make certain the whole Resistance network has the poop on Sarah and the kids—and on Colfax.” Ball, edging painfully it appeared on his false leg, glanced at Reed.

“Where?” Rourke said, cutting off Reed before the Army Intelligence man could speak.

“Nine o’clock or so at the old drive-in down the highway. You know the place?”

“Yeah,” Rourke sighed. “.Check your watch against mine.”

Ball pulled from his jeans pocket a wristwatch with a broken band. Comparing their times, Rourke was about ten minutes fast.

“I’ll go by your time,” Rourke rasped.

“Hey, John?” Ball said as Rourke turned to move back toward the Harley.

Rourke looked at him, saying, “I forgot to say thanks for the fireworks—bailed me out, Darren.”

“You cost us, John. Full dress tonight. There’s gonna be a lot of killin’.”

Rourke looked at Ball, watched the gray eyes, smiled, and just shook his head and started for the Harley. “A lot of killing,” he muttered under his breath. He would have thought there’d been enough of that despite the fact that it was a likely consequence it would have at least ceased to be a preoccupation.

Killing. Some people never changed, Rourke thought.

Chapter 23

Natalia sat on the couch. Her face was still tender where it was bruised. She moved her body slowly to get a more comfortable position; the welts on her back made it awkward to sit. She rearranged the long robe around her as she tucked her legs up onto the sofa, and hugged her knees to her. Karamatsov, she thought, Vladmir.

She sipped at the vodka, feeling the ice against her even white teeth. Would her uncle try to get revenge against Vladmir? The thought chilled her more than the ice. She brushed a strand of black hair away off her forehead and wrapped the blue terrycloth robe around her more tightly. She glanced at the digital clock on the table beside the sofa. Her uncle, General Ishmael Varakov, had called twenty-five minutes before to tell her he was coming to see her. Why?

There was a knock at the door, the one repaired only a few hours earlier. It was the sound of a fist, rather than the metallic click-click-click of the brass doorknocker.

She stood up, tightened the belt around the robe, and reached into the small drawer of the end table. She had put away the gun she’d taken from Vladmir and had the little four-barreled stainless steel COP pistol. She broke the pistol, verified all four barrels were loaded, and dropped the double action only derringer-like gun in the right pocket of her robe. Her hand remained there. It was likely her uncle, she thought, but chances were something only fools took. She stopped, the thought momentarily amusing her. Hadn’t it been a chance to marry the most handsome and most ruthless young officer in the KGB? Some chances didn’t prove out, she thought, staring at the unopened door at the end of the small hallway, hearing the knocking again.

She walked to the door, decided against peering through the peephole, and stood beside the doorframe in the narrow part by the wall. She asked through the door, in Russian, “Yes, who is at the door?” “It is cold out here, and I’m an old man too lazy to button his coat. Hurry, girl!”

She smiled. Natalia loved her uncle like a second father, perhaps more than the father she had lost as a little girl. She verified it was him by glancing through the magnifying lens in the peephole, then released the chain and the deadbolt, and swung the door inward.

The old man stood there, his greatcoat open as he’d told her, rubbing his gloved hands together. He took a step inside, and she let him smother her in his arms as he had always done since she was a child.

“Uncle,” she murmured.

“Child,” he whispered, then, one arm still around her, he started into the hall. “It is cold here—like Moscow—only somehow more damp.” With his free hand he swung the door shut behind them.

They stopped at the end of the hall beside the steps leading down into the living room. She helped him out of his coat, took his hat and gloves, and watched him as he walked into the living room. Hugging the coat to her, she walked back into the hall and hung it on the coat tree and set the hat on the small table, then, taking a deep breath because she was afraid of what her uncle would say, she walked back toward the living room, and down the steps. Natalia sat beside him on the couch, tucking her knees up and her ankles under her again, looking at his deep, almost canine-sad, eyes.

“Natalia, I need information and I will not tell you why. You doubtless already suspect why at any event, child. You may keep your suspicions. I want information.” “Uncle?”

“Fix me vodka, then I will tell you.” He picked up her glass, sniffed at it and smiled, then looked at the ice, his face downturning at the corners of the mouth. “None of this American ice-cube mixing—a ruination of good vodka.” She smiled and leaned across the couch, still on her knees, and kissed his cheek, then got up, walked into the kitchen.

She could hear him humming. Hey! Andrushka, the song itself about drinking vodka. She poured a tumbler about two-thirds full and brought the bottle out with it, and returned to the living room.

He abruptly stopped humming as she re-entered the room. She handed him the glass, and he drank it down neat, exhaled hard and rasped, his voice odd-sounding and breathless.

“It is not like the vodka we made when I was a boy—you used pepper or sand or whatever you could get to make the oil float to the bottom, so it would not go into your mouth with the vodka—ughh. Lovely thing it was!” She laughed, and poured him another glass. He looked at it for a while, not drinking it. She sat beside him and took her own glass. The ice was nearly melted.

“What do you want to know, Uncle?”

“I want to know the name of the man Vladmir had in Samuel Chambers’s inner circle—the traitor to the new President. I want the man’s name, his title or official duties, and how he may be contacted. I want this all now.” And Varakov tossed down the vodka.

Natalia watched his hands. She wondered what they were truly capable of.

Chapter 24

Sarah Rourke sat on the steps of the front porch, listening to the kitchen sounds Mary made, watching the reddish orb of sun in the low, thin clouds at the end of what was a peaceful universe for her—or perhaps, she thought, an island, an island of normalcy in the fear and hatred and terror of the world since the war.

She stood up, her feet in borrowed shoes, smoothed the borrowed dress against her as she walked into the house through the screen door and through the perfectly normal living room or parlor, past the long dining-room table, already set, and through the narrow hall past the pantry into the kitchen. She liked older houses, despite the sometimes awkward room arrangements.

Mary—Millie’s aunt—was standing by the kitchen sink, rinsing vegetables.

“Can I help with dinner, Mary?” Sarah asked.

“No need, Sarah, but you can if you like. I need those potatoes peeled, knife over in the top drawer, and there’s an apron on the hook other side of the door.” “Okay,” Sarah said, finding the apron and tying it around her waist. She found the knife and sat at the small table and opened the cloth sack of potatoes. “What do I put the peelings in?” Mary turned around from the sink, the water still running. She didn’t say anything for a minute, then, “I’d say open a newspaper. We used to open an old newspaper. But there ain’t none. We used to use a grocery sack. Old Mr. Harland ran the grocery, but he died of a heart attack when they busted into the grocery—drove their trucks and motorcycles right through the glass windows they did—killed some of the clerks who were trying to help old Mr. Harland.” Mary rubbed her hands on the front of her apron, turned around absently, and shut off the water.