“I’m listening,” Rourke told him.
“All right. Let me explain what we’re doing.”
“I don’t care what you’re doing, Reed. No offense, but I don’t give a damn.”
“Yeah, but I can help you find your woman and kids.”
“How?” Rourke asked.
“We’ve got an intelligence network getting together, all sorts of places, use couriers, low-frequency radio—lots of ways of keeping in touch. If I put out the word that’s dozens more pairs of eyes looking for them. How fast is one man going to find them? Huh?” “What do you want?” Rourke almost whispered.
“Some cooperation—maybe an extra hand with a gun if it comes to that. You in?”
“Just how good,” Rourke rasped, “is that organization of yours, Reed, good enough, big enough to find Sarah?” “We won’t know unless we try. This’ll maybe cost you a few days, maybe save you weeks or months, maybe make the difference for you in finding them or not.” “I’ll find them,” Rourke stated. “Tell me what you’re here for.”
“All right,” Reed said, stomping out his cigarette butt on the ground.
“That’s got a filter,” Rourke said. “They take years to disintegrate; some kinds can take decades. Dead giveaway someone’s been here, too.” Reed looked at Rourke, then bent over, and picked up the cigarette butt, stripped away the paper and tobacco and pocketed the filter in the breast pocket of his camouflaged fatigue blouse. “Satisfied?” Reed snapped.
Rourke nodded.
“Okay, then,” Reed began again. “We’re here for two reasons; We want a low down on the Soviet posture in Georgia—Karamatsov just got transferred in here on assignment—you should be interested in that.” “Natalia,” Rourke murmured.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Rourke said, trying to mean it.
“All right, but the main reason we’re here, and probably Karamatsov too, is we’re looking for a guy—you might even know him—he has a place somewhere around here, vacation home. Name is Jim Colfax. He’s an ex-astronaut, big shot in NASA public relations before the war.” “Why would anyone want him?”
“Ever hear of something called the Eden Project when you were with the company?”
Rourke thought for a moment. There were so many coded files, so many top-secret projects. But the Eden Project wasn’t one he recalled.
“I haven’t heard of it,” Rourke told Reed.
“Well, neither had anybody else. We were sifting through the ruins of the Houston space center— found a charred file folder, and inside all we could make out was Eden Project, but nobody’s left from NASA that we can find, except Colfax if he’s still alive that is—and he should be right here in Georgia.” “Why, just because he had a vacation home here?”
“And he was speaking at the University in Athens the night before the bombing. It was the last engagement on a speaking tour, then he had a few weeks off.” “Hell of a way to spend a vacation—with a nuclear war,” Rourke observed.
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Reed said.
“So you want to find him to find out what the Eden Project was.”
“We think it has to do with some launches at Cape Canaveral, just before the place got a direct hit—and we think the Russians are interested in it too.” Rourke looked up at the darkening sky. Was there someone up there, he wondered, or something that was a new horror. “I’ll give you a description of my wife, my son, my daughter, the horses they were probably riding—then some poop on the Jenkins couple they might have been with—get it out as fast as you can. Got a radio?” “Yeah, if I only use it a few minutes at a time so they can’t peg us.”
“You want my help,” Rourke said, “then you get the description out—now. I’ll write the details for you, and I’ll listen while you send.” Rourke fished a zippered notebook from his backpack on the back of the Harley, then began to write. He stopped. Was beautiful a valid description for Sarah, and how about Michael and Annie—handsome for him, cute for her? He decided on something more exact in nature.
An hour later, the message was sent and Rourke had committed to meet Reed and the others outside Athens at noon the following day. Two hours from the retreat, Rourke rode hard through the night.
Chapter 19
Rourke sat on the sofa, his hair still wet from the shower, a glass of whiskey in his right hand, a cigar burning in the ashtray beside him. Rubenstein had already eaten by the time Rourke returned, and nearly jumped out his skin, as Rourke had thought, when he’d seen Rourke walk in—three days early and with news of an American Intelligence team insertion in the area.
“Did Captain Reed ask about me?”
“No, sorry,” Rourke told the younger man.
Rourke had fixed himself a can of stew and poured the beef, vegetables, and gravy over bread, then eaten it quickly. He sat in the great room, wanting to think. Finally, sipping at the top of his second drink, he shouted to Rubenstein, who was sitting on the far side of the room, reading. “Paul! What do you think— the Eden Project, something to do with Cape Canaveral—what does it suggest?” Rubenstein seemed lost in thought for several moments, then looked up, and said, “Well, the Eden reference seems to mean some sort of beginning— maybe beginning again.” “Yeah,” Rourke said.
“So, maybe it’s some sort of manned flight that would have been too risky, unless there wasn’t anything to lose—a lot of people thought the world would just get flattened after a full nuclear exchange—maybe it was some sort of space colonization effort or something.” “Or maybe just the opposite—a doomsday device. You’ve got to remember one thing, Paul, intelligence-operations names rarely have anything to do with the actual operation—just
