Read Online Survivalist - 21 - To End All War by Jerry Ahern - Free Book Online Page B

pictured himself if, somehow, Madison had died after the birth of their child. What would he have told his son or daughter about its mother?
    He would have told the child, he knew, that she had been incredibly lovely, incredibly gende, incredibly loving, and that she had returned to the place of her origin, with the angels, where she waited, watching over them.
    Tears filled Michael Rourke’s eyes, and he sat down on the edge of the bed in his room and whispered her name. But “Madison” didn’t sound quite right, because his throat was so tight, so choked.

Chapter Thirteen
    The two women pausing before the shop window looked more or less like all the other women on the streets of the city, except perhaps that they were prettier than most. One of them —the tall one with the almost black, just-past-shoulder-length hair, wearing a white blouse and nearly ankle-length khaki skirt, and carrying an enormous black cloth shoulder bag—was exquisite. She was Major Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna, Committee for State Security of the Soviet. The other one had dark honey-colored hair that was much longer, cascading to her trim waist. She reminded him of photos he’d seen in history books of the decadent twentieth-century hippies of postwar Germany and America. Her dress, as long as the major’s skirt, was an explosion of autumnal colors. And peeking out from beneath its hem were boots. A long, wide scarf was draped over one of her shoulders, in a red so deep it was almost the color of blood. She carried a purse but somehow looked awkward with it. Otherwise, she was as beautiful as the darker-haired major, just more litde girl-like, less sophisticated-seeming.
    Perhaps there was, in fact, a means of accounting for this Annie person’s marriage to the Jew, Rubenstein. Did the blood of an equally inferior race flow through her veins … that of gypsies? He had thought gypsies extinct, but supposedly they had such wild looks and wild ways about them. The Annie person was laughing.
    He nodded to Carl, who watched from the other side of the street. Carl removed his hat, ran his fingers back through his thinning hair—the signal —and moved off.
    He watched the two women for a moment longer. With the shoulder bags they carried, they might well be armed.
    That would make no difference. Carl was not a pleasant fellow, but he was very efficient at killing. It was Carl who had assassinated the wife of the traitorous Wolfgang Mann, not far from here really, killing two of the traitorous Dieter Bern’s soldiers in the course of his escape.
    Carl, indeed, had a knack for his work … enjoyed it.
    The two women had moved on and now paused before another shop window, talking, both laughing, it seemed. And then the one who fornicated with the Jew, Rubenstein, did something with her clothes, turning around a full three hundred sixty degrees. Then both women laughed again. They hugged each other briefly as they laughed. Lesbians? That thought amused him.
    Then the two women went inside the shop.
    He watched the shop for a moment longer, then walked away… .
    “Ohh, I like this—for you, I mean,” Annie enthused. She looked at Natalia’s pretty blue eyes, her face. But Natalia was looking at the dress rather oddly. “Don’t you like it?”
    “Annie, I just don’t think it’s me, that’s all.”
    “You’d look sensational in green.”
    “The beadwork … I mean, I just don’t think so.”
    Annie nodded. “You want to look more like a princess than a party girl,” Annie said. “Fine. Well both look like princesses.” And she took an off-white formal from the rack, swept it in front of her dramatically, and threw her left arm up and back. “Ohh, my dear, aren’t we just too divine!”
    Natalia laughed, saying, “Be serious a litde or well never find anything in time to wear tonight.”
    “Right,” Annie told her, suppressing a giggle. Her eyes caught a movement just beyond the window there on the walkway. Why was a man