Read Online Survivalist - 24 - Blood Assassins by Jerry Ahern - Free Book Online Page A

for goodness’ sake! He’ll be expecting to be deceived. If Martin Zimmer were still alive and your father actually brought Martin Zimmer in trade for your mother’s life, Deitrich Zimmer would check Martin Zimmer just as carefully! From what you’ve told me this evening and from the scuttlebutt I’ve picked up, it seems clear that Deitrich Zimmer essentially built Martin Zimmer! He started with the raw clay of your brother, added surgically the genetic material from a descendant of Adolf Hitler, made Martin. Don’t you think he’d know every measurement it was possible to know, every minute scar, every blemish! You don’t even know if Martin Zimmer was circumcised. Were you?”
    Natalia felt her cheeks warming slightly. Michael was most definitely circumcised.
    Dr. Robinson smiled again as he looked at her, apparently recognizing the answer to his somewhat rhetorical question. “How are you going to check now with Martin’s body buried under a couple of tons of still molten lava on Kilauea? I don’t mean to be too blunt, Mr. Rourke, but you’d never get away with it. What would you do—pursuing the thing with the circumcision, for example—if before he did the trade he asked ‘Martin’ to drop—” And he looked at Natalia, didn’t finish what he was about to say.
    She finished it, “Pants?”
    “Yes.”
    Michael smiled. “I’d piss in his face, all right?”
    Natalia looked at the tip of her cigarette, stood up, ground it under the sole of her high heel. “Stop being macho and be smart. As long as he can examine you Michael, you cannot hope to succeed.”
    In the next instant, Natalia wished she’d never said what she had said. Because Michael started to laugh. And he kept laughing. Dr. Robinson looked at her,
    then back at Michael. Michael said, “That’s it!” “What is ‘it,’ Michael?”
    “What the hell are you laughing at Mr. Rourke?”
    Michael stopped laughing, only chuckling a bit, smiling as he said, “They put me into cryogenic sleep, but with two gases. My father has a remote. He lets off the finger pressure—like what they used to call a dead man’s switch—and the other gas flows into the chamber.”
    “What other gas?” Natalia almost whispered. “Cyanide?” Michael suggested, shrugging his shoulders, then laughing again.

Thirteen
    Annie’s nails dug into the flesh of his abdomen.
    They had gone to bed early, exhausted from the emotional low, then the emotional high. She slept behind him, her right hand and forearm resting across his body. When his wife’s nails pierced his skin, Paul Rubenstein awoke instantly. Gently, he pulled her hand away, holding her hand as he turned over onto his right side, looked at her in the darkness. He could not see her face, but he knew she was dreaming.
    Her mother?
    Was something happening to Sarah Rourke?
    Should he awaken Annie and find out?
    Paul Rubenstein lay on his back, still holding her hand. Annie mumbled something incoherent. Paul Rubenstein stared up into the darkness. Michael’s brave but stupid scheme for substituting himself for Martin Zimmer. Annie’s dreams.
    Paul shook his head.
    And, John’s despair.
    What had happened at Emma Shaw’s house in the
    mountains was obvious. And Paul Rubenstein applauded John for it. Sarah, wonderful woman that she had always been, even if she wasn’t dead, was the next best thing. Because of his love for Sarah and the entire Rourke family, his wife chief among them, Paul Rubenstein prayed that Sarah would return from her living death. On a rational basis, however, he knew that any chance of that was so remote as to be effectively impossible.
    And John had a right to live, too.
    The Rourkes were his family.
    He loved them all, but most of all his wife.
    And when Michael brought his lunacy to fruition, John helping him, Paul Rubenstein knew he would be there, too. His wife’s father and brother were like brothers to him.
    Annie snuggled more closely against him. Paul Rubenstein