Goddard had been right all along.
There could be no compromise. This was war. If the Aryan race did not win, then it would lose. It was that simple. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. You get your gang of killer apes, and we get ours, and we whango. Toughest tribe takes all the bananas.
The only loyalty is to the ethnos. Racial survival means personal survival. Weakness is failure, and failure is death.
How many times had Liese said these things? How many limes had he stupidly, blindly, ignorantly argued with her?
Liese! Oh, Liese…!
Ice-blue flickered again at the comer of his vision. He swore, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and made an effort to focus. He looked down.
Goddard’s eyes stared stonily up at him. He was dead.
Lessing sat in the companionable darkness beside the man who had never been his friend and communed, sometimes with himself, sometimes with Goddard, sometimes with Liese, and sometimes with another woman, who wore an ice-blue gown.
A figure loomed up at the far end of the hallway, in the smoke-haze by the silent elevators.
“Wrench?”
“Hello, Lessing. Or should I say ‘Ek?’ Long lime, what?”
“Who…?” A dream: a nightmare out of his past, a snowy landscape, a cold, frightening labyrinth, a dangerous task of some sort.
“Me, you bloody bastard, me! Hollister… your dear friend Teen.”
It was hard to think. “Marvelous Gap?”
“Jerkin’ right! Where else?” The man advanced, a big, clumsy weapon at the ready: a military laser rifle. “And how’ve you been?”
He knew that this bitter-faced man would kill him, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. What did he have to live for?
Ice-blue
Lessing sighed. Yes, there was that. He didn’t know what he had to do or why, but he couldn’t let it end here. Not yet.
“Christ, pay attention! ” The man swung the heavy weapon to and fro. “I’m going to blow your bleedin’ balls off, one at a time. Then I’m going to kneecap you, shoot you through each arm, and “
Lessing didn’t want to hear Hollister’s catalogue of horrors. He asked, “Why?”
“Eh? Ehl Why? Why what! Why am I about to unzip you? You stupid dongo, at Marvelous Gap 1 was supposed to, if you got off the bleedin’ siring. Then when you started thumbin’ us, one by one….”
“I never did.”
“Liar! Couldn’t find you then. When you did lum up, you were safe in India, surrounded by Nazis, the bastards I hate most. I’m a Jew, you know… Halperin’s the name I was born with, not Hollister… then you became irrelevant until you got your Ponape operation going. I missed you there, but Richmond found you. He knew a lot I didn’t… never discovered what. After Ponape you disappeared… seein’ the sights in Russia, I heard later. Then you popped up again like a bleedin’ bad penny in Mulder’s fortress and became a ‘colonel’ of your murderin’ Cadre. Then you became relevant all over again. Almost got you in Oregon, what?”
“You got a lot of other people, including some kids.”
“Casualties of war, Herr Ober-fucking-gruppenführer Lessing. You ought to agree with that. Your lads gassed enough of us.”
“Hmm… I disagree; not enough, I think. For whom are you working?”
“Like to know, wouldn’t you?” The other man jeered; “Ah, I don’t suppose it matters now. Me and Korinek, we both work for a coalition, y ‘might say: some Jews, some Gentiles, some business interests, some military, some religious. You could call us the status quo. The bloody Establishment!” He whinnied with laughter. “Too bad you’re about to get dis-established!”
“You… your coalition… used Pacov?”
“Too right! We had to.”
“My God!”
“Oh, don’t sound so poggin’ pious! You’d have done the same in our boots. We used Pacov to save Israel from the Russians. The Soviets were plannin’ a bit of surgery on the Middle East: conventional warfare under the pretense of ‘stopping Israeli atrocities against the Arabs. ‘ With the Americans busy elsewhere, it would’ve been easy for Moscow to push Israel back to its old boundaries… before Cairo and North Africa, before the Baalbek War, like it was in the 1990’s. So we were going to do the world a grand favor: pot off the Soviets, occupy Mother Russia, sweep up the pieces, give some spoils to Israel and some to our pals… and incidentally become the supreme power on earth. Amen, brother, amen!”
“But…? Starak?”
“Things went wrong-o. We didn’t realize the Russkies were so ready with Starak! They retaliated. We wanted things as they were, except with us leadin’ the band. We never meant to see the Western world destroyed, though it did work out better for us in the end… fewer enemies to fight. Our biggest regret is that Israel got thumbed!”
Lessing smiled. “Oh, the Russians didn’t thumb Israel. I did that… with the Pacov I stole at Marvelous Gap.”
It took a moment to sink in. The other man’s features went pale, then red, then purple with rage. “You? You what}”
“That’s right. Me. All by myself. I gave Richmond two vials of Pacov. Then I saw to it they got wet. In Jerusalem.”
That wasn’t strictly true, but it served the purpose: Hollister-Halperin’s hatred became almost palpable in the air between them. He might try to kill Lessing quickly. An angry opponent makes mistakes.
The laser rifle hissed, and Lessing rolled desperately to the side. The beam wasn’t aimed at him, though; it had cut off one of poor, dead Goddard’s legs at the knee. Both edges of the wound were cauterized, and the floor beneath the body smoked.
“That’s a sample! You’re next, you dinkin’ Nazi bastard! Maybe an ankle, maybe a wrist.” The weapon came up again, its recharger humming. Hollister was too experienced to make a really dumb mistake, but maybe he could be outwitted.
Lessing rolled and scrambled again. This time the beam ploughed a fiery furrow in the gold-flocked wallpaper behind his right ear.
“Did I miss? Oh, too bloody bad! Sorry! Here, let’s have another go!” Hollister fired again.
Lessing both felt and saw the beam this time. The sword of light opened a black hole the size of a pea in the underside of his left biceps near the armpit. The pain was excruciating; he expelled an unwilling hiss of agony from his lungs and felt consciousness starting to slip away. He skidded on the water-soaked carpet, fell, and tumbled against a sand-filled corridor ashtray.
“And now, ladeez ‘n’ gents, for the final encore…!” Hollister crooned. He hoisted his weapon. He was not a big man, and the laser rifle was awkward. Not that it would do Lessing any good: one hit almost any where, and he was unzipped! He cast about for something to throw.
The ashtray, a ceramic cylinder nearly three feet high, made a passable bowling ball. Lessing sent it rolling toward Hollister’s feet. The man danced aside, and the unbearably bright beam gouged a sizzling trough in the roof.
Lessing tensed his muscles to leap. It was his last and only chance.
Hollister gaped upward, over his head.
The ceiling groaned, creaked, and sagged. Plaster silted down, followed by a thin dribble of water from the long cut the laser had made.
The water quickly increased to a rivulet, then to a deluge.
Water is heavy. The run-off drains for the sprinklers on the floor above must have been blocked. A short laser burst could not sever the steel supporting girders, of course; the rocketing from the helicopters already had done that. But the laser did open a hole through wood and lath and plaster, which was all that was holding up that part of the ceiling.
A torrent poured down into Hollister’s amazed face, followed by a rushing flood of heavier debris.
Hollister vanished without a sound.