She brought her right foot over, waiting again.

She was a third of the way across the room.

She took a broad step to the right, losing her balance momentarily, her left foot almost touching the carpet in the wrong spot. She sucked in her breath hard, regaining her balance, waiting, settling her left foot beside the right.

Natalia took another step, then another and another.

She remembered how foolish Vladimir had looked, sitting on his desk, swinging his feet around to avoid the plates flanking his desk on both sides.

Now, she shifted her weight forward, onto her fingertips, then (hrew her pack onto the desk top. The Kel-Lite was in the black belt around her waist on which she carried a borrowed pistol. Had she lost one of her own guns, the ones given her by President Chambers, it would have meant instant recognition and arrest.

With the flashlight beam zigzagging at a bizarre angle with the rising and falling of her chest, she leaned toward the desk, throwing her weight forward and pushing herself up, jumping, tucking her knees up.

Natalia was on the desk top.

The safe was behind the desk and a little to the right of it. As she turned, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror-all made up for the American Halloween, she thought.

She had to move like a spider now, her pack once more on her back, jumping to avoid the pressure-sensitive plates.

She stood on the desk, judging the distance, inhaled deeply, then jumped.

Her feet landed on the top of the small safe, and for a moment, her balance faltered and she started to fall back. But she caught herself, lurching her body forward, then rising to her full height.

Natalia breathed again.

Dropping to her knees, the flashlight in her right hand, she bent over the safe door, upside down, shining the light on the combination lock.

Shifting the light into her left hand, she tried the combination.

The combination, as she had suspected, had been changed, "d.a.m.n it," she muttered in English.

She reached into her pack, extracting the specially sensitive stethoscope there.

Untwisting the tubing, she touched the flat diaphragm chest piece to the safe's escutcheon plate, beside the dial.

The door was slightly recessed into the body wall of the safe. She leaned over slightly more, working the combination to the dial's right, then left, then right again, listening. She heard a minuscule clicking in the locking bolt linkage, then stopped. Her gloved fingers worked the dial left, stopping when through the stethoscope's binaural ear tips she could hear another click.

Now right-listening for the click might be more faint. She heard it, but had pa.s.sed it.

"d.a.m.n," she muttered again. She cleared the dial, then reworked the combination she had already memor- ized, this time without the earpieces to aid her; she had the numbers now.

She worked the handle, heard the bolt-activating gear rings click; the safe opened under her hand.

Natalia reached inside the safe, to the lower shelf.

The six crates of doc.u.ments were in the cryptoa.n.a.lysis room, but Rozhdestvenskiy would have the abstract or a copy of it.

Natalia found more than she had antic.i.p.ated.

Squatting like an Indian on the top of the opened safe, she fished info her pack for the camera. Shining the Kel-Lite on the doc.u.ments' faces, working the shutter, she caught bits and pieces of words.

"Eden Project ... in the event of ma.s.sive nuclear exchanges between our country and the Soviet Union . . . the ultimate statement of the Western democracies . . . this utilization of the s.p.a.ce Shuttle Fleet . . .

manufacturing processes . . ." She flipped the page for the next shot.

tfIn the face of the near total destruction of life on the planet . . ."

She felt her heart skip a beat, then realized that it hadn't; she was being emotional. ". . . Bevington, Kentucky, and an as yet undesignated site . . . precursed by bizarre atmospheric changes . . ." The third page of the abstract was merely a list of names-she a.s.sumed those who had compiled (he reports.

She photographed the next doc.u.ment, a simple-road map, (he kind once sold in American gasoline stations, of the state of Kentucky, with a small town in the mountains, Bevington, circled in red with an arrow pointed toward it coming from the southeast.

Natalia began photographing the last set of doc.u.ments; it was Rozhdestvenskiy's report. ". . . findings of Soviet scientists have been verified and coincided with those of Western scientists . . . raid on Bevington, Kentucky, in the south-central United States . . ." Natalia would have called it more southeastern.

She glanced at her Rolex; she had to hurry. Rozhdest-venskiy might be back at any moment. She photographed the second page without taking note of anything written there, then the third and last page. He was admirably concise in his writing she noted subconsciously. ". . . the construction at the site called the Womb, and the bringing together of strategic materials (here, is ihe only hope for the survival of the Soviet."

She shuddered. Survival of the Soviet?

Was survival of the Soviet equivalent with the survival of mankind? she asked herself, closing her eyes from the glare of the flashlight. A doomsday device?

She prayed not; then felt the corners of her mouth raise in a smile-to whom did a good Communist pray?

Carefully, Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna replaced the doc.u.ments exactly as they had been in the safe, then she closed the combination, resetting the dial to the number it had been set to before she had touched it.

Natalia stood up, on the top of the safe, shouldering the pack, her gear secured inside it.

In the darkness, her eyes accustomed enough toil with the flashlight packed away, she jumped to the floor, intentionally landing on one of the pressure-sensitive plates. She ran toward the inner office door, knowing the silent alarm was sounding.

She threw open the door, then ran across the outer office, throwing open the door, turning into the corridor and running toward the panic-locked emergency door.

"Halt!" The guard's voice came in clumsy English.

Gunfire ripped into the wall bebide her as she hit the panic lock, the door opening outward into a corridor She slammed the steel fire door, hearing slugs impacting against it from the inside.

She reached up, clipping the wires for the alarm there into a bypa.s.s with alligator-clipped strands of wire of thinner proportion to suck off the electrical charge Then, with a wire cutter from the left hip pocket of her jump suit, she clipped the alarm wire She replaced the wire cutter after scratching the outside locking panel with it-to make it appear she had used a pick after neutralizing the alarm in order to originally gain access More gunfire-the door bulged in the center She released her weight against the door and ran up a small flight of stairs, hearing the door thrown open behind her, more gunfire, louder now, another command in English "Half"

She turned out of the stairwell into a darkened hall- the Egyptian exhibit She remembered strolling through it with her uncle. Now she ran its length-more running feet and shouts behind her, the gunfire ceased There was a row of sarcophagi and past it an exhibit depicting the dressing of a pyramid block "Appropriate," she thought, making an English pun on the word "dressing" in her mind She slipped behind the exhibit case, into a service closet, closing the door behind her.

In total darkness, she slipped the pack from her back, then began to unzip the jump suit with her right hand, her left hand working free the pistol belt She tugged the zipper down the rest of the way, then with both hands ripped away the scarves that had covered her face and hair. She kicked off the crepe-soled shoes she had worn, reaching down for them in the dark-she thought she heard the skittering of a mouse or rat across the floor. She pulled the Bali-Song knife from the pocket of her jump suit, holding it closed in her teeth while she smoothed the white slip she had worn under the jumpsuit trousers, smoothed it down from where it had bunched around her hips.

She reached into the pack, pulling out her skirt.

She put it around her waist, b.u.t.toning it once, then again at the waistline in the front. From the pack, she extracted a pair of black high heels, stepped into them, and stuffed everything into the pack, closing it. She released the straps on the pack, hooking them together to form a single strap. She ran her left hand through her hair, then listened at the door-no sound. She opened it a crack, saw no one in the hali and stepped out of the closet. She realized she had forgotten the gloves, then quickly pulled them off, stuffing them into the backpack converted now into a large black shoulder bag.

She could hear running feet in the hall as she looked down at herself, smoothing the skirt, then reaching up to retie the bow on the collar of the white blouse she'd worn under the jump suit.

She turned, she hoped at the dramatically correct moment, and confronted the guard before he could confront her.

"What is going on, Corporal?"

"Comrade Major Tiemerovna, a man-someone from ihe Resistance apparently.

There was an attempt to break into Comrade Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy's office."

"An attempt?"

"Yes, Comrade Major. The alarm system sounded before anything could be disturbed-Comrade Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy has himself said this. He was just returning when the intruder was discovered."

"Thank goodness." She smiled. Then she let her smile fade, saying to the guard corporal, "You have your rifle but I am unarmed. Give me your pistol and I will search with you, Comrade."

"Thank you, Comrade Major!" The young man's face beamed.

"Sleeping," Rourke murmured. That he could think, that he had awakened told him it was nearly time for another dose. He knew now just what that was-a muscle relaxant to keep him immobile and morphine to keep him high, drunk. The combination could kill him. If he could convince her of that .

. . His mind worked again, but he felt himself moving like a drunkard as he tried to edge over on the cot. If she stopped administering one or the other, he would have a chance to fight the freshly administered drug and the drugs in his system. She would have an antidote, a muscle-relaxer block of some kind, and probably Narcan or something like it to counteract the morphine build-up.

"Respiratory distress,' he murmured.

He felt a smile cross his lips, laughed with it. Alcohol had never made him feel so drunk. Rubenstein hadn't been this drunk that time . . . Where was it? he asked himself mentally.

Natalia had been pretty drunk ... or had she been? Sarah had never drunk to excess in her life; when she drank even a little, it simply made her sleepy.

'Sarah." He smiled, then remembered. They had gone-and here." He watched as she raised a hypodermic and squirted out a good third of the contents. "A milder dose this time and you'll just rest."

Rourke closed his eyes-not able to help it. He knew he was drunk. He felt like singing because he was so happy she had bought his act. He twitched once in his sleep, feeling the needle go into his arm again. . . .

Lamazed for both children, Sarah having used the natural childbirth technique, which was really only erroneously called that. It was controlled childbirth- you controlled it with breathing. But you had to learn the breathing techniques well. His mind was wandering and he couldn't organize his thoughts. "Breathing," he mur mured, squinting against the overhead bas.e.m.e.nt light. He could make himself appear to be in respiratory distress by hyperventilating.

He started breathing, panting, blowing, panting- building up the oxygen level in his bloodstream. The oxygen would also serve to fight off the drugs by burning them off, out of his system as he respirated.

Floaters appeared in front of his eyes, a cold wash of nausea swept through him, and again he leaned over the side of the cot and vomited, his head barely able to move. "John! Are you ill?"

"Breathe," he gasped, panting now more than before despite the fact it was actually starting to make him hyperventilate.

"John-my G.o.d. I was afraid of this. You aren't supposed to- Here." She began ma.s.saging his chest, then started to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He felt her lips against his, felt the rush of air making him choke. He coughed and felt her rolling his head to the side. He vomited again, but nothing came out.

"I'm going to give you this." She reached into a small black leather case and extracted a hypodermic. "This will block the effect of the muscle relaxant I gave you. It'll take effect almost immediately."

He felt the needle, closing his eyes against it and the pain in his already sore arm. "I'll wait with you beforel give you more morphine-once the muscle relaxant is Sarah Rourke shivered, despite the warmth from the truck's heater, despite the fact the children, wrapped in their blankets, were warm now.

She had found an M- under the seat; it said M-on the side. It looked identical to the rifle she had lost so she now adopted it as her own.

She shivered because of what she was doing. She drove the main roads, pa.s.sing into Tennessee now, and the main roads could mean Soviet troops or Brigands. She knew.that Chattanooga had been neutron-bombed; by now it would be safe to drive near or through.

The ground dropped sharply as she saw Chattanooga for the first time-no smoke from its chimneys, no cars. The road angled sharply left and she cut her speed slightly as she made the curve; the pickup's steering was not the world's best, she had decided.

As she started out of the curve, she glanced across at Michael and Annie.

They slept in each other's arms.

She looked back at the road. She sucked in her breaib, almost screaming.

A hundred yards ahead, perhaps-judging distance accurately had never been her strong point, she knew- and the road was flanked on the right by the end of a long-reaching column of trucks and other vehicles, motorcycles parked near them. The men standing near the trucks and motorcycles were Soviet troops.

She glanced at the children. They were asleep and she'd let them stay that way.

She slipped the M- under the seat, then pulled her . and c.o.c.ked the hammer, locking up the thumb safety catch, then sliding it under her right thigh. She kept driving, not speeding her pace, not slowing. She noticed the quizzical expressions on the faces of some of the Soviet soldiers who turned toward her as she pa.s.sed.

One young man waved and she waved back, suddenly glancing in the mirror at her hair. It was greasy-looking from being wet so long. She ran her right hand through it. She kept driving.

She made a mental count of the vehicles-in case she reached the Mulliner farm. She could tell Mary's son and he could pa.s.s the information Jo U.S.

Intelligence through the Resistance group he worked with.

"Eighty-one, eight-two, eight-three-" She stomped on the brake pedal, almost forgetting the clutch, not knowing what else to do when six soldiers with rifles stepped in front of her truck. The one who seemed the oldest raised his right hand in a gesture for her to stop.

Her blood froze.

Glancing into the rear-view, she saw, through the bullet-holed window, men closing ranks behind her.

The older man approached her truck on the driver's side.

She rolled down the window.

His English was heavily accented but perfectly understandable to her.

Your papers-travel permits."

"They are lovely children there. I must see your papers, madam."

She glanced at Michael and Annie, still sleeping. "Thank you-rny son and daughter."

"Your papers, madam." He smiled, his right hand outstretched.

She could shoot him, she thought-but then, Michael and Annie would be killed when all the others with their rifles and handguns would shoot back.

"I-I don't-"

"What is the problem, Sergeant?"

She looked away from the sergeant's face, in the same direction the sergeant, the older man with the smile, turned and looked.

A tall officer, perhaps in his late thirties. Good-looking. She knew the face.

"Major-" she gasped, feeling like a fool-and feeling trapped.

"Comrade Major Borozeni, I stopped this truck to request papers of this woman. She apparently has no travel permit."

"I, ah-" She started to lie, but saw the look of recognition in the major's eyes-and the eyes, the face, they were all familiar. She had last seen him, hatless, wei, swearing after her in the rain outside of Savannah, after she had held him at gunpoint and forced him to help her effect the release of the Resistance fighters.