Ahern, Jerry - The Quest

She asked in the good enough English, “I am instructed to ask you for a yes or no answer.”

“Why me?”

“I know nothing about the letter. The General speaks excellent English and wrote it personally.” “Yes,” Rourke said slowly.

“Here,” she said, handing Rourke a small envelope. He opened it: it was an agenda for the next day, detailing Karamatsov’s movements.

“All right,” Rourke said. He folded the paper again, and placed it in the breast pocket of his shirt. “Anything else?” “The General said if you said ‘yes’ I was to say, ‘good luck’.”

Rourke looked at her a moment. “You’re wearing your skirt too long. And thanks for the good wishes.”

Chapter 36

Vladmir Karamatsov opened his eyes and looked through the motel balcony door—the motel was now the transient and bachelor officers quarters. It was light, but rising from the bed and going toward the floor to ceiling glass, he opened the curtains wider and saw the fog. He slipped the window open to his left and smelled at it: the fog seemed rank and foul and was cool—cold almost.

He closed the window, leaving the top-floor drapes open, staring in the gray light at the woman on the bed. She was moving slightly, turning into the covers, cold apparently.

He stared at her, walking across the room. He didn’t exactly know why, but he had slapped her several times; there was a bruise on her left cheek as she rolled toward the window, then back away from it. Unlike Natalia, she had liked the brutality. It was a side of himself to which he was yet unaccustomed; he liked the brutality almost more than the sex afterward.

Karamatsov walked into the bathroom, urinated, then looked at his face in the mirror. There were still bruises from where Natalia had struck him when she had so suddenly decided to defend herself. He walked back into the bedroom and looked at the blond-haired woman sleeping there. He wondered, almost absently, what it would be like to kill Natalia. He shook his head to clear the thought away.

Returning to the bathroom, he lathered his face and began to shave. He had picked up the Hoffritz razor at an exclusive shop in Rio. His face hurt where the bruises were as he grimaced in order to smooth the skin to shave closer. He made a mental note to inquire about the noise of explosions that previous morning. He had been out of the city, interrogating some of the former university personnel at the detention center, trying to learn the whereabouts of the former astronaut, Jim Colfax. He had thought, too, that faintly in the distance the previous night he had heard gunfire. There was a time he would have run to the sound, he thought. But he had been busy, playing the games with the woman on the bed, making her feel pain, which she seemed so to delight in.

He brushed his teeth, carefully visually inspecting them in the bathroom mirror, the four stainless-steel teeth that made a permanent bridge in the lower right side of his mouth. They were new and still uncomfortable. Before the war, when his primary duties had been to pose as anyone but a Russian, he would never have allowed the stainless-steel teeth—only Soviet dentists used them. Buttons stitched in a cross shape showed you had a European tailor, keeping your fork in your left hand when you ate showed you were not American. There had been so many little things under which to submerge one’s own personality, Karamatsov thought.

He started the water in the shower; he liked American plumbing. He washed his body, washed his hair, then rinsed under cold water for several minutes, thinking. After stepping out of the water and toweling himself dry, he began to dress. Civilian clothes again today, he thought: American blue jeans and a knit shirt, dark blue. He slipped on the shoulder holster for the Smith & Wesson Model 59. Since Natalia had taken his little revolver he had found a replacement, slipping that into its belt holster and sliding the holster in place. He liked the revolver best, but the double-column 9mm Model 59 had firepower, and that was sometimes needed.

He pulled a lined windbreaker from the closet and slipped it over the shirt and shoulder holster, then a baseball cap that read “Cat” on the front and advertised some sort of tractor. There was still the desire to look like the enemy, he thought, smiling at his American image in the mirror.

He looked at the woman on the bed, decided not to wake her; she would likely come back again tonight. After it became known she had slept with one of the Russian conquerors, she would likely have no place else to go.

He walked downstairs to the restaurant, now run by orderlies from the officers’ mess. American food was served because it was easier to obtain—he ordered steak and eggs with hash browned potatoes. They served grits; he didn’t like grits because they stuck sometimes in the new stainless-steel bridgework. Americans were forced to work in the kitchen, too, and grits would be too easy in which to disguise ground glass.

He had his third cup of coffee, determined mentally his order of work and pulled the baseball cap back in place. The fog had not dissipated; he had watched through the window. A few cars moved slowly on the street, those with travel and gasoline permits. Several people, shoulders hunched, eyes down, walked along the sidewalks. There was no work, no food, nowhere to go for these Americans. He decided to recommend to Varakov that the unproductive persons—those over age, those infirm, etc.—be liquidated in order that they be less of a burden for the new order. He doubted though that the soft-hearted Varakov would go along with the idea.

Varakov, he thought. He stopped on the steps and lit a cigarette, looking across the street. That was his next project: eliminate Varakov and assume his command. He—Karamatsov—would show the Politburo, the Premier, all of them, how a conquered, nation could be subdued, whipped into line, then made productive once again. The very next project, he thought, after arranging something nice for Natalia. Perhaps, he thought, reconsidering, he could use Natalia to destroy her uncle—eliminate them both. He had no use for a wife who had no use for him. There were many women like the blonde, ones who didn’t think they were angels or precious flowers—ones who would make a man feel like a god.

He started toward the sidewalk, walking each morning since he had arrived to military headquarters. Exercise was good for a man.

Chapter 37

Rourke had driven through the night, returned to the retreat by the most circuitous route to determine he wasn’t followed. He had showered, changed, eaten, had a drink and discussed what he had to do with Paul Rubenstein. While Rourke had cleaned and checked his weapons, they had discussed the letter from Varakov and Rourke’s promise to Natalia not to kill her husband. He disliked being cast in the role of an assassin.

Yet, if Karamatsov didn’t die, and if Karamatsov found out about the plan, he would most assuredly blame his wife and try to get his revenge. Perhaps, too, Rourke had thought out loud, Karamatsov would kill her anyway. He had gotten the impression when they had met in Texas that, aside from total ruthlessness, Karamatsov was also more than slightly insane.

And now, having ridden through the fog through the early-morning hours, a fresh bandage in place on his cheek where he had skinned it, his guns freshly cleaned and checked and loaded, his knives touched up on the whetstone, he knew what he would do.

He dismounted the bike, seeing Karamatsov coming down the steps and onto the sidewalk and starting his way. Rourke stripped off his leather jacket and the pistol belt with the Government .45.

He had already cocked and locked the twin Detonics stainless pistols, and they rode now in their shoulder holsters under his armpits. The harness made in a rough figure eight across his shoulders and back over the light-blue shirt, he stepped from the alley into the foggy street, rolling his sleeves up as he walked. Karamatsov had not seen him yet. He trusted to Varakov that Soviet patrols would be conspicuously absent.