4

Surely one of history's great ironies: The same day Roosevelt heeded Einstein's admonition to scrap the atomic bomb proposal as "the beginning of the end of humanity," Hitler directed Heisenberg to "proceed with all dispatch on Prometheus.''

—Harrison, ibid., p. 38

 

It was very hot in the small, white interrogation room. Stinking of sweat, eyes burning, John dropped his head, trying to avoid the burning track lights and the water carafe, just beyond reach on the table.

They'd searched him on the plaza. Taking his ID, a graying captain had put him aboard a helicopter, escorted by two senior NCOs. "You'll have to see the colonel," he said.

As the chopper lifted, John saw them zipping Wenschel into an olive drab body bag.

A silent lieutenant had escorted him from the heliport to Interrogation, deep within the Hospital. Shackling arms and legs to the metal chair, he'd mumbled "SOP" and left. A moment later, the lights had blazed high.

He waited a long time, counting slowly to five thousand and thirty-eight before Aldridge came, squinting through his bifocals in the blazing light. "Erich," he called. "Dim those lights, please."

In the subdued glow, Aldridge took out a key, unfastening the fetters. As John stretched and rubbed his limbs, the colonel poured him a glass of tepid water. He tossed it down. "Thank you, sir," he said hoarsely.

"Send you into town and you kill one of my men, Major." The colonel's voice was mild as he pulled up the other chair and sat facing John. "Why?"

"Because he disobeyed my direct order, sir."

"Not because he brutalized and killed a desperate, beautiful young woman, Major?" His tone was all gentle rebuke.

"She was a beautiful killer, sir. She murdered a whole lot . . ."

"Eleven."

"Eleven innocent people. She certainly wasn't deserving of mercy."

Aldridge nodded, smiling his wistful scholar's smile. "True. And I've found that summary execution has a soothing effect on the genteel classes, far beyond the value of the intelligence we usually extract-—it's policy for such incidents."

He rose, pacing for a moment, then turned, big hands gripping the back of his chair. "Your action was ill-advised, Harrison, but I'll support it. Sergeant Hallam disobeyed a direct order. You were within your rights, especially not knowing my policies." He wagged a bony, admonitory finger. "Don't do it again."

"No, sir. Sorry for the trouble. Who was the terrorist, Colonel?"

"Some nameless ganger on courier run. They have friends among our technoaristocracy, Major. Revolution may be fueled by peasant hatred, but it's always directed by middle-class malcontents. Mao, Lenin, Trotsky, Marx, Engels, General Giap, all come to mind.

"Did you know that Giap was briefly a busboy here in Boston, at the old Parker House?"

"No, Colonel, I didn't," said John dully.

"Yes. Trained at Carlton House, London, as a chef de cuisine. Imagine eating a five-star French dinner prepared by the scourge of French colonialism."

He stood.

"I'm assigning you as patrol officer for the next week— good way to learn procedure. You'll be working with Erich's special troops. Better get some rest."

John rose, limping painfully as the blood surged back into his feet.

Aldridge helped him to the door, where a barrel-chested sergeant major waited impassively. "Erich's first-rate, Harrison. Watch him and learn."

John and the NCO gone, Aldridge spoke. "What do you think?"

"Maybe," replied zur Linde, voice hollow over the monitor. "Certainly he bears watching.

"His retina scan came back during your chat, sir."

"Positive, of course," said Aldridge. "Of course."

"Keep on him, Erich, keep on him. If he's Opposition, we'll want to know everything before he's killed. Klar'V "Klar, Hen Oberst."

Turning the field jacket collar against the biting wind, John adjusted his starhelm and stepped cautiously into what had been a street.

This part of the city was utterly destroyed, worked by howitzer fire into story-high mounds of masonry that choked the once broad avenues, ruins the starhelm showed in green-white-red phosphors.

Alone with the night and the northeast wind, John moved through the desolation like a wraith. Overhead, the stars shone cold and hard, undimmed by urban albedo. Here and there the rotting vestiges of shattered elms jutted through.

The gargoyle was an impish green through John's starhelm, grinning viciously atop a great tumble of hand-dressed granite. Further back, a mountain of broken stone towered—marble angels, gargoyles, saintly visages poking out of the wreckage. He halted by a half-buried brass cross and waited.

Sensing a presence, John whirled, finger curling around the minimac's trigger.

A boy stood there. A small, thin boy in worn corduroys, ragwool sweater, sneakers and a pair of nitespecs. John's weapon didn't waver. "You have something for me?" he asked softly.

The boy extended a torn piece of cloth. Fishing in his jacket pocket with his free hand, John withdrew an equally torn patch. Together they formed a compass rose with bayonet-fixed rifles, rampant. "OK," John nodded as each repocketed his half. "What's your name?" he asked, lowering the minimac.

Turning noiselessly, the boy disappeared behind the gargoyle-topped mound. Following, John saw the hole yawning amid the rubble, a great slab of stone looming to one side of it. Monkey-agile, the boy scuttled down metal rungs set in the shaft's concrete. With a wary glance at the thick slab, John followed.

The shaft dropped a hundred yards, opening onto a large tunnel. The rungs ended in a tiled wall, just above one of a set of railway tracks. The only illumination was in infrared.

The boy did something to one of the cracked wall tiles. High above, the slab swung silently down, sealing the shaft with a faint hiss. Without a backward glance, John's guide set off down the tunnel.

They walked a long time, the crunch of their feet in the gravel sending the big sewer rats scampering, squealing in protest. Once they forded a rushing stream where it'd washed out the railbed, collapsing a section of wall. A graceful, frail gazelle, the boy leaped nimbly along a row of eroded, half-submerged cinder blocks, gaining the opposite bank with dry feet. Burdened by uniform, starhelm, equipment belt and weapon, John plowed through the cold, tugging water.

His guide led on through a final series of cross tunnels, then up a ladder identical to the first, emerging from behind a false bookcase into a library: deep burgundy carpet, mahogany paneling that reached up to the high ceiling, ornate kerosene lamps, red-leather sofa with matching armchairs and a crackling fire in the fieldstone hearth. A balcony with more books girdled the room, breached by a spiral metal staircase.

The ganger came from the other side of the fireplace, silken red hair cascading over the shoulders of her black UC battlejacket, a chunky, stainless-steel magnum holstered at her slender waist. Extending John a crisp, dry hand, she sized him up with cool, green eyes. "Welcome to Viper Command, Major Harrison. I'm Heather MacKenzie, lan's sister."

The Heather MacKenzie in his briefing should have been in a physics lab on the West Coast.

"Heather," he smiled, taking her hand. His eyes flicked to her coiled-rattler shoulder badge. "Where's Ian?"

Ignoring his questions, she turned to the boy. "Jorge, Tomas left your supper upstairs." She pointed to the balcony. "We got some chocolate bars in today."

Face brightening, Jorge bounded up the stairs.

Heather watched him go, then turned back to John. "He hasn't spoken since his mother was killed in a skirmish, three years ago," she said quietly, shaking her head. "If we only had somewhere decent to send him.

"Sit down, John, please," she said, indicating one of the chesterfield chairs flanking the hearth. They sat.

"Any trouble getting to St. Mark's?"

"No," he said. "I found your note and half a CIB shoulderbadge yesterday, in my boot." The note, disintegrating after he'd read it, gave only a time and place. "I checked out a recon chopper, landed it near St. Mark's and met Jorge."

"And how are you going to explain all that to Aldridge?"

He shrugged. "A G2 has to have some autonomy. Engine trouble forced me down near turf. I repaired it and returned. I've arranged for engine trouble if they look."

"They'll look," she said.

"Where is Ian, Heather? And why aren't you back at Berkeley?"

"My brother's dead," she said. John shook his head. "How?"

"We were scouting Maximus, as requested. We landed in a small valley about a mile from its outer perimeter ..."

They'd left their machines—salvaged UC choppers—and moved out on foot: Ian, Heather and a few Vipers. The gangers were in their late teens, early twenties, a mixed group of blacks, Hispanics, Orientals and white ethnics. All were platoon leaders, picked and trained by Ian over the past two years, bloodied in skirmishes with Aldridge's troopers. They were the nucleus of the guerrilla army Ian had molded from a thousand turf-seasoned gangers, part of the "dusky horde" troubling zur Linde's sleep.

Seen through binoculars from the brush, Maximus conveyed a seedy air of neglect: a weathered chain-link fence and a gate, the fence sagging away into the forest, rusty chain and padlock securing the gate. There was no guard, just a peeling sign: "U.S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY-KEEP OUT." Rising from behind the gate, a narrow dirt road snaked up the mountain, twisting from sight around a bend. Weeds flourished between the road's shallow ruts.

Ian passed the big Zweiss 12x50s to his sister. She looked, shook her head and handed them back. "You're thinking of attacking that? Why not just wait for a storm to blow it over?"

Ian laughed, looking back at Maximus. He was a big, lantern-jawed man, with his sister's red hair and their mother's green eyes. "Watch," he said, pointing to a sparrow alighting on the fence. Zap! Heather gasped as the bird vanished in a blue flash. Gray smoke rose from a misshapen lump beneath the wire.

"Can't that be shorted?" she asked uncertainly.

"Sure," he nodded. "Once you get through the mines. Then there's the minefield on the other side. And the road's mined too, probably rigged for command detonation. Surviving all that—and we could, 'cause the Outfit's provided maps—at the top there's a battalion of rent-a-Brits: Scots Guards under a brigadier. They're in a heavily fortified position with light artillery. Only after getting past them would we reach the research facility, a brutish agglomeration of concrete and glass—all sharp edges— with staff quarters, labs, power plant, barracks, admin building."

"I see," she said. "But you still haven't told me the reason for all this. Or why you dragged me all the way across the country to be here."

"Two reasons. The people I work for asked for my evaluation of Maximus's defenses. As these same people also provide the Vipers with weapons, materials and training," he pointed to himself, "I agreed." Leaning closer, he dropped his voice. "I've never heard Angel, my controller, sound scared. But he's scared about Maximus. Something up there's frightened the bejesus out of him."

"As for the other reason . . . Julio!"

The young platoon leader scampered over. "Tell my sister what you told me, please."

During the War, the government had brought levies of cane workers from Puerto Rico to man the vital mainland factories. With thousands of Americans dying every week on the Russian steppes, the draft had stripped the cities of all but the youngest, the oldest and the sickest. It was hoped that the Hispanics would prove docile, tolerating the substandard wages and deteriorating living conditions, the 108-hour work weeks. Many had. But their children, those who survived '68, hadn't.

"Until last year," said Julio in careful, faintly accented English, "Maximus used laborers and cooks from fringe burbs near turf, rotating them every three months. My cousin Raoul was part of a construction crew. At least, that's what they told him when he was hired." The dead UC trooper's field jacket was too large for Julio's small frame. Rocking slightly on his heels, he hugged himself for warmth. "He came home a month overdue. He was old. Old." He shook his head, awed by the memory. "My age, but he looked eighty. Shaking, gnarled hands, wrinkled face. And his mind ..."

"Senile?" prompted Heather.

"He could barely sign the monthly disability check."

"Disability check?" Social insurance in America had died young. Social security had been converted to war tax in the dark months of '48 and never restored after the fighting died in '53.

Julio nodded. "Two hundred a month. We moved to West Roxbury, bought a trailer." Cleared of rubble, West Roxbury had no gangers and enjoyed nominal social services. Trees and playgrounds dotted the miles of trailer "parks" -—refurbished war surplus units sold and financed for a handsome profit by government licensed brokers to the minorities and ethnics working the industrialized inner burbs.

"How is Raoul?" asked Heather.

"Dead," he said flatly. "Heart failure, arteriosclerosis."

"If we could access UC's data base, we'd know what they're doing up there," said Ian.

"Angel told you nothing?" asked Heather.

"Indirectly he did," Ian smiled wryly. "He asked me if I thought the Berkeley physics department could spare you for a few months. I suggested someone from the Outfit. He said that was 'very tenuous ground,' and changed the subject."

"What sort of physics are they doing up there?" she wondered.

"If we go in, maybe you can tell us." He and Julio rose, giving her a hand up. "But Angel was very firm about wanting a theoretical physicist, .not a bomb guy from Livermore."

"Odd," she said, half to herself. "Now what?"

"Julio and I are going to make a photorecon in the Bell. We did it two months ago, but Angel wants fresh pics." The Bell was the fastest of their choppers, the only one with cameras. "Coming up under their radar, we'll be gone before they can react. But the rest of you get clear first, just in case."

Hiking back to the valley, all but Ian and Julio headed southeast in the big Hueys. After ten minutes, the two took the Bell over the fence at full throttle, following the road up the hill.

Their first pass held no surprises: the same cold architecture as before, no discernible movement anywhere. It was after their second pass, just turning for home, that the Messerschmitt dropped on them from the clouds. Ian tried for the treeline, but the ME's missiles were faster.

Heather didn't see the Bell go down—they were too far away. The orange blip disappearing from her radar told all. Tears streaming unnoticed down her face, she sent the Huey even lower, almost brushing the treetops. Winding out of the Green Mountains and into New Hampshire, she took them home.

It was a setup, John saw. A setup engineered by Guan-Sharick to attract attention to Shalan-Actal's base—to Maximus.

"When did this happen?"

"Yesterday. I sent you the note as soon as we got back."

"That year in CIB, we must have saved each other's lives a dozen times down in that green hell. We were closer than most brothers. He was very proud of you—his sister the scientist."

All true, in its way, thought John. Harrison and MacKenzie had been close.

"You'll have to assume they took either Ian or Julio alive and are interrogating them," he said, collecting his thoughts. "You'd better evacuate."

"We're finishing that up now," she said, matching his brisk tone. "I gave the order last night. The final group leaves within the hour."

"You're staying with the Vipers?"

"Someone has to be in charge, till the Outfit sends another officer. None of the kids are ready. I think I've earned their respect. I'm not as good as Ian, but I put in my four years as a Ranger captain."

"I see," he said, upping his estimate of her age.

"Why are you here?"

This is it, he thought. Fail now, you might as well have stayed home.

"It's been decided to take Maximus," he said. "I'm to extract the Maximus data base from UC's computer—it may be of use. And I'm to help in the attack."

"I see," she said, noncommittal. "Did you know Hochmeister's in the area?"

Hochmeister, Hochmeister. Grand master in German. There was something in the briefing book. He groped desperately for it. Gray. Feldgrau. Wehrmacht. Abwehr. Of course.

"The Gray Admiral? The former Abwehr head?"

"The same," she said, nodding. "Called in by Alliance Intelligence—Kassel's crew. Something to do with Maximus. Nothing firm—just something Ian heard from an old CIB buddy on the last weapons run."

"No one knows what he looks like, do they?"

"No. He's the man without a face. The last photo of him was taken in the forties. The day after Wolfsschanze, he somehow got past a brigade of Waffen SS and calmly put a bullet through Himmler's head."

"Thus ending effective resistance to the Putsch," he nodded. "He must be in his sixties."

"Easily. God!" She jumped up. "I almost forgot, and it sounds like you'll need it." Going to the big Governor Winthrop, she pulled open a drawer. Extracting an oblong black plastic case, she handed it to John. "Nixdorf-IBM 7000 series authenticator. Insert it into the authorizer port of UC's computer, and the machine will answer its own challenge."

"You're sure?" he asked dubiously, turning the small device over in his hands.

"No." She smiled for the first time. Thin, but still a smile. "Don't worry, though. They'll give the next poor bastard something better."

"Comforting." He pocketed the device. "OK, if you'll have someone lead me back to St. Mark's from here . . . Where, by the way, is here?"

"Can't do any harm now. This is the Barcroft Estate in Brookline, abandoned in '68, carefully unbooby-trapped and restored by the Vipers. You arrived via the old Green Line subway tunnel, which in turn accesses part of the Underground Railroad, circa 1855. We built the entrances and connectors."

"One more thing." He related the story of Cinzano Bay. "One of yours?"

She nodded, grim-faced. "Lotte. She was to meet someone with information on Maximus. Maybe she was set up, maybe she was just unlucky. We'll probably never know."

"But why the grenade?" John asked. "A lot of innocent people died." Neither saw the bookcase swing wide.

"Innocent?" she snapped, eyes blazing. "The technos get tax-free income, hazard pay, cheap servants and subsidized housing to live here as colonialists. They know the risks. The grenade's our answer to Aldridge's summary justice." Their eyes locked. "We don't go gentle into that good night, Major Harrison."

"But go you shall," came a low voice from behind. "Don't even think of it, Major," zur Linde said as Harrison's eyes went to the distant sofa and his weapon. Stepping into the library, minimac leveled, the German spoke into his starhelm. "Septime to Crispin.

"I couldn't, Colonel," he said to the voice complaining in his ear. "I was in a tunnel. Please respond the alert company on this vector, sir. I'm in a nest of Vipers."

Not for the first time, it struck Harrison how dehumanizing UC battledress was: black uniform, black gloves, black boots, black starhelm. Even the machinepistol was black. Hard to believe anything human existed within that darkness—certainly not a man with a weakness for Oriental women who'd invited him sailing. "May we put our hands down, Herr Hauptmann?" he asked.

"Red scum. Keep them up."

"Is that what you think we are, Erich?" John lowered his hands. "How can I convince you ..."

"Hands back up, Major," said the German coldly, "or you lose a kneecap." John complied.

"Don't be a silly bitch," said zur Linde, centering the muzzle on Heather. Her hands went back up, away from the magnum.

"Put the cannon on the sofa, please. Thumb and forefinger." The big pistol bounced onto a cushion. "Thank you."

He turned his back to John. "We're of an age, Harrison, you and I. Your biography says your father died at Second Stalingrad. True?"

Captain Tristram Malory Harrison had been killed at Chosen Reservoir. "Not Stalingrad," said John. "A different battle."

"My father died at Second Stalingrad," said zur Linde, "when Das Reich's Division saved your Third Armored. How could you betray what both died for?" It bothered him, you could tell from his voice.

"I'm here to save, not to betray, Erich. You're counterintelligence, aren't you? Abwehr?"

Zur Linde nodded curtly. "The best."

The great unabridged dictionary, largest made by the Merriam poeple, dropped like a stone from the balcony, its binding cracking as it struck zur Linde's starhelm, toppling him. Rolling to his feet in a blur of motion, his hand streaked for his pistol, only to freeze when he saw the minimac's unwavering muzzle.

"You know the drill, Erich," said Harrison. "Toss the PPK." Heather scooped up both weapons. "Now sit." Zur Linde sat.

"Well done, Jorge," Heather called, looking up at the small brown face bearing over the bannister. He bounded down the stairs to a warm hug from Heather.

Walking to the door she called, "Chin Lee! We have a prisoner!"

A squad of Vipers came at the run, led by a big, tough-looking Chinese with an old knife scar puckering the length of his right cheek.

"Starhelm, Erich," demanded Harrison, hand outstretched. When the Abwehr officer didn't move, Heather said, "Chin Lee."

Drawing a long-bladed ranger knife, the platoon leader stepped purposefully toward zur Linde. Fingers flying, the German unfastened the helmet and handed it to Harrison, scowling.

"Nice to see your pretty face again," said John. Chin Lee sighed and put the knife away.

Touching the starhelm's bottom rim, Harrison flipped the commswitch off.

"Think they had time to vector in?" asked Heather.

Harrison nodded.

"Chin, get everyone together," ordered Heather. "There's a strike force on the way." He ran from the room, shouting orders.

Walking to a bookcase, Heather removed a leather-bound copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's Infernal Machine, then threw a small, red switch behind it. She carefully returned the book to its niche. "In forty minutes, the house will blow up," she said. Pulling a big backpack from under the desk, she shrugged her way into it. "Five minutes later, land mines in the lawn will detonate—take out their second wave."

In a few minutes, Vipers laden with packs and weapons were filing through the library and into the tunnel.

"I'll show you to the cathedral, John." Heather picked up zur Linde's starhelm as Chin Lee took the German away.

"You're not going to . . ." Harrison said, staring after the Abwehr officer.

"No." She strapped on the starhelm. "Not that he doesn't deserve it. We'll give him a dose of memscrub— this day will vanish from his life.

"The trick," she added, voice muffled by the helmet, "is to defeat the enemy without becoming him."

"You can believe that, yet hit that reaction force?"

"It's not excessive," she said as he fastened on his own starhelm. "There's too much here we haven't had time to destroy. Also, the carnage will slow them, buy us time. We're going to be exposed for about two hours, relatively defenseless. This'H pull in every chopper UC has."

"Where are you going?" he asked as they stepped into the passageway.

"Warren's Island, in the inner harbor. There's an old fort there." She swung the bookcase shut. "Not quite what we've become used to, but habitable."

They looked up at the roar of choppers coming in low and fast. "UC's about to find out just how hot a hot LZ can be," said Heather coldly. "Let's go."