The End is Coming

Chapter Two

“Do you think, Paul—well—what do you think?” She looked at Rubenstein as they rode along the level grasslands to intersect the highway leading nearest to the Retreat. He didn’t answer her—and she started to raise her voice over the throb of the Harleys’ engines, to repeat her ques-tion. “Paul—I wanted to know—do you—”

She watched as he took his eyes from the path of the bikes, as his left hand moved slowly upward, pushing the wire-rimmed glasses off the bridge of his nose. “I heard you—I just didn’t know what to answer you. I didn’t know what to think—to say—I don’t know-“

“You think I’m crazy?” And she slowed the Har-ley under her, arcing it in a wide circle in the grass of the gently rolling field, a house distantly visible, but no sign of human habitation beyond that, and no sign of occupancy. Rubenstein’s bike slowed ahead of her, turning in a lazy circle back toward her, Natalia watching as the wind tossed his thin-ning hair, tossed the high, uncut grass as well, hearing the evenness of the Harley’s engine. Then the silence as the engine cut out, like her own had.

“What do you want me to say? That I think John should have two wives? Remember, Jews aren’t polygamous. And neither are Russians, I hear—so I can’t tell you anything more than you know yourself, Natalia.”

“But—” She looked down at the controls of her machine—they were unchanging. She rested her hands on the flap coverings of her belt holsters, feeling the weight of the two L-Frame Smith & Wessons in the gunbelt at her hips. “I just—ahh—I don’t—”

“John wants you to stay—and you want to stay. And for what it matters,” and she watched his eyes behind his glasses. “For what it matters—well—I want you to stay, too—I do—” The background silence broke, Paul Rubenstein’s Harley gunning to life. He just looked at her, Natalia hearing his voice above its throb. “Ready?”

She nodded to him—but it might have been a lie....

She had insisted on using the road—crossing the rougher country was difficult with Paul’s wound, difficult for him, pain etched more deeply across his face with each bump and twist. And the high-way was faster as well. And it was only a few miles to ride. She had given herself all of these argu-ments and then given them to Paul—and Paul Rubenstein had relented.

A peacefulness had come about her now—the peacefulness that she had sometimes felt in her life when destiny was beyond her control. John Rourke would find his Sarah, and Michael, and Annie. What would happen after that would hap-pen. Rourke had ordered her to stay—and she would. Two men in her life she had felt merited her obedience—her uncle, General Ishmael Varakov, supreme comman-der of Soviet Forces of the North American Army of Occupation, and Doc-tor John Thomas Rourke—she rolled the name on her tongue.

When she had met and married Vladmir Kara-matsov, she had thought she had fallen in love—but she had realized soon that she had been taken in. She was the niece of one of the Soviet Union’s most highly placed military commanders, the So-viet Union’s most respec-ted soldier of World War II—and he was the hero of World War III, she knew, but his praises would never be sung. Rather than a bath of blood, he had sought to handle his task with as much equanimity as possible, to treat the conquered American people—she smiled at that, for Americans truly seemed unconquerable on the most fundamental of levels—to treat them like people, with dignity. To get his job done—the job of supplying the Soviet war effort in Asia against the Chinese Communists, but to restrain the KGB from its intended purge—had brought her uncle into conflict with her husband, and it was this conflict that had led to her husband’s abuse of her body, of her soul—had led to her un-cle’s constructing events in such a way that John Rourke had no choice but to kill her husband.

Her Uncle Ishmael—she smiled at the thought. A humanist, a good humanist—and perhaps because of that, he was a better Communist than all of them.

And John Rourke—as dedicated an anti-Com-munist as she had ever known, as she had ever thought could exist, but capable of great tender-ness, of love, of understanding. And she loved both men—the Communist general and the anti-Communist doctor and survivalist. And both men loved her. It was a happiness that she felt—despite the aftermath of global thermonuclear war. And the idea of happiness was itself ridiculous.

But Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna, major, Committee for State Security of the Soviet, felt it—happiness—anyway.

She wanted to say something to Paul—that she loved him deeply like she would love a brother, or a close friend—she had had neither.

She turned her face, her hair caught in the slip-stream of the air around her and the Harley that throbbed between her legs. She looked at Rubenstein as she brushed hair back from her eyes. She felt stupid, shouting it to him. “I’m happy, Paul!”

They were starting into a curve as they passed beneath an outstretching roadside oak to their right, the angle of the road dropping steeply left, an abandoned roadside store on the left perhaps forty yards ahead. In the gravel parking lot be-tween the store and the road were more than a dozen men on motorcycles or standing beside them. Heavily armed, the men were Brigands. She swung her M-16 forward on its sling. She slowed her bike. She looked at Paul Rubenstein—his German MP-40 submachine gun was in his right fist. She felt a tear at the inside corner of her right eye. Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna, major, Committee for State Security of the Soviet, told herself the tear in her eye was only from the wind. It had been foolish—dangerous—to feel happy.