The Savage Horde

Chapter 52

Two reports troubled him. He stuffed his feet awkwardly into his shoes, standing as he pushed away from his desk. Both reports were related, really.

General Ishmael Varakov—he read the sign on the front of his desk in his office without walls in what had been the Natural History Museum in Chicago. "Supreme Commander, Soviet North American Army of Occupation."

"Supreme commander," he muttered. If he were as "supreme" as the sign indicated, the two reports would not have concerned him as greatly.

He started to walk across the great hall and toward the nearer of the two staircases which led to the small mezzanine, so he could better overlook the main hail.

The first report concerned additional data on the American Eden Project and the related post-holocaust scenario which had necessitated the creation of the Eden Project from the very beginning. Had he been a man given to profanity, he realized he would have used it. Where was Natalia? He had sent her with the Jew, Paul Rubenstein, to get the American Rourke, to give him the note.

He started up the stairs toward the mezzanine, his feet hurting. He scratched his belly once under his unbuttoned uniform tunic. Natalia and the young Jew had been dropped by plane near "The Retreat," the place the American Rourke had.

Perhaps Rourke would not come. The obsession—a laudable one as obsessions went—with finding his wife and children. But, surely he thought, a man such as Rourke

could not ignore the letter.

Perhaps—it was a possibility—the ghost-like Rourke, the man neither brigand killers nor Soviet Armies had been able to capture or murder, was somehow dead.

What would Natalia do?

She would return—as Rourke would have done—to learn the rest of the information, what she could do. The young American Jew—he would come with her.

As Varakov stopped at the mezzanine railing, slightly out of breath, weary, he wondered if perhaps all of them had been killed. Rourke, Rubenstein, his niece Natalia.

"What will I do then?" he murmured.

"Comrade general?"

The voice was soft, uncertain. He turned. "Yes, Catherine."

"Comrade general," the girl began. "These papers— they require your signature."

"Hmmph," he said, turning away, studying the figures of the mastodons which dominated the center of the great hall. "Soon, Catherine—we shall be like them."

"Comrade general," she began again, a long silence ending. "Comrade general—what is it—might I ask, Comrade general—what is it which seems to—to trouble you?"

He did not look at her—she was pretty, however plain she made herself appear intentionally.

"Catherine. More scientific data which greatly disturbs me, which shall profoundly influence us all. That is one report. And a second report. The KGB, which is stockpiling raw materials, equipment—everything you might imagine and many things, child, which you could not—one of their convoys was attacked by the American resistance near some city called Nashville. There is a resistance stronghold which Rozhdestvenskiy has committed Army forces to destroying —against my policies because there are women and children there. And without even asking my permission. He does not need it anymore, child."

He looked away from the mastodons, studying her face—the gentleness of her eyes.

"Catherine—I have never before stared death so closely in the face. Go and prepare for me coffee, child."

He started away from the railing, listening to the clicking of her heels, noting her skirt was still too long. He tried no! to look at the mastodons—there would be little but bones to look at soon enough.