Patriot

CHAPTER 30

Putin, his wife, and Hawke had bid farewell to Congreve, walking with him up the wide path from the beach club to his car. A sleek steel-grey Bentley was waiting at the Hôtel du Cap’s entrance. The three of them, plus the security detail, then retraced their steps through the gardens to the docks, where they boarded the high-tech launch that would take them back to Tsar.

Once back aboard, Mrs. Putin, her makeup artist, and her hairdresser had retired to the owner’s stateroom to prepare for that evening’s cocktail reception up on the main deck. Alex and Volodya made their way to an upper deck where Putin maintained his offices and his private library.

It was beautifully wood-paneled room, soundproofed, and the place where Putin most liked to conduct meetings he considered too confidential for even the most private of everyday settings. He directed Hawke to one of the large leather armchairs beside the fireplace, and he took the second and more worn of the chairs. There were needlepoint footstools and worn Persian rugs underfoot and lovely eighteenth-century English and American furniture.

Hawke was admiring the famous equestrian portrait of Peter the Great hung over the fireplace when a steward knocked, then asked him if there was anything he would like. He was dismissed by the host, not rudely, but impatiently.

The man was in his strictly business mode.

Putin said, “I mentioned earlier today that, weather permitting, we might be going on a small undersea expedition this afternoon, did I not?”

“You did mention that, yes,” Hawke replied, crossing his long legs, enjoying the simple beauties of the room. These lovely objects, paintings, sculpture, and objets d’art comprised what one member of the very richest of the richest on earth believed to possess great beauty. And, to a large extent, Hawke believed he was right in that belief. A little heavy on the epic battle scenes, but other than that… yes.

“Well, weather is permitting and I think you’ll enjoy this, Alex. I’ve a brand-new three-man sub down on the aquatics deck. An SM300/3. This will be her shakedown cruise. I had her built by Lamor Subsea Ltd. to my specifications. I can be very specific, as you know.”

“Oh, yes. You specified torpedo tubes fore and aft, one only hopes?”

Putin cracked a smile. “No. No torpedoes, sadly. But she’s certified to a depth of three hundred meters seawater, is equipped with a fish feeder, digital video cameras, and a robotic hand manipulator. That thing takes a little getting used to, but I’ve been practicing as you’ll see. She can accommodate two plus a pilot, but I’ll be the pilot this afternoon. You’re comfortable with that, I assume?”

“You’ve got considerable hours at this stuff under your belt?”

“Of course.”

“Completely comfortable, then. Might I ask where we’re going?”

“You may. It’s a fascinating story. Some months ago, I was doing some deepwater archaeological exploration in the sub about a hundred miles offshore from Cannes. Late in the day, ready to turn for home, I came across a rather startling sight down there. A massive Russian cargo vessel, still mostly intact, sitting upright on her keel. Very deep, right at the edge of my sub’s depth parameters. A thrilling sight, I assure you, Alex. Both of her two enormous stacks intact. World War II vintage, very probably sunk by a German U-boat late in the war. I maneuvered around to her stern and photographed her name and hailing port. Peeling paint and oozing rust, of course, but still visible. She was Arkhangel out of Sevastopol… nearly a thousand feet long and capable, I later learned, of carrying sixty-eight thousand long tons of iron ore…

“I had the navy look into it. No trace of Arkhangel ever found, no reports of her sinking. She simply disappeared right near the end of the war. Took a couple of German Kriegsmarine fish low in the belly and sank with all hands, I suppose. I shot a lot of video of her recently, but I’ll spare you that. We’re going to see the real thing.”

“Sounds like fun. Truly.”

“Oh, it will be. But not for the reasons you may surmise.”

“What then?”

Putin rose and crossed the softly lit room to a large equestrian portrait of Peter the Great posed atop a storm-battered mountain. He touched the heavy gilt frame and it rose silently up on a hidden track to reveal a wall safe. Putin entered the code on the keypad and the door popped open. He pulled out a small red leather container about the size of a cigar box.

Returning to his chair, he balanced the box on his knees and opened the brass latch.

“All very mysterious,” Hawke said, amused at the man’s theatrics.

“Oh, you have no idea.”

“What the hell are those?”

Putin removed one of a dozen small glass vials that were kept stored in the green felt-lined box. Inside, a clear liquid could be seen. Putin shook it a few times and held it up to the light for closer inspection. Then he passed it to Hawke for examination. There wasn’t much to see. It looked like plain water.

“What do you think?”

“Don’t tell me. Some ridiculously rare vodka distilled beneath the polar ice cap for your private reserve.”

Putin smiled briefly and shook his head.

“You can imagine I am a man of many secrets, Alex.”

“Oh, indeed I can imagine that, Volodya.”

“It is a measure of my trust and respect for you that I am about to reveal one of my most closely held.”

“I’m honored.”

“All right, Alex, I’ll get right to the point. About ten years ago, I went in utter secrecy one snowy night to meet with a gathering of the top scientists at our defense research institutes. The ten most brilliant minds I could find at that time. I told them that it was my wish that they start from scratch and develop the most perfect explosive the world has ever known. And the most powerful. Work was to begin immediately. I gave them no deadline. No budget. They would work together in utmost secrecy. Something like the Manhattan Project, if you will. Share nothing with the outside world. I provided a small building inside the Kremlin walls. An old redbrick counting house, called Moskva House, disused for centuries.”

“Fascinating, go on.”

“‘What should it look like, this substance?’ they asked me. ‘What form should it take?’

“‘If you have to ask me that,’ I told them, ‘You have already failed.’

“‘But… at least give us some place to start,’ they said.

“‘It should be perfect,’ I said, trying not to give them too much direction. For how should I know what it would ultimately be? I had no idea. I didn’t want to give them any direction. Whatever I said would ruin the project before it got under way. ‘Do it,’ I said. ‘I’ll know.’”

“So, they began to work?” Hawke said.

“Yes. They were demons, slaving round the clock like Alan Turing’s codebreakers at Bletchley Park. But the early efforts were not worthy of the objective. I rejected everything I saw. Came very close to abandoning the whole idea a few years into it. I realized they were like men driving in the dark with no headlamps. And finally, I don’t know why, it all became clear to me. I saw that my very first words had shown the way. But none of us had realized it at the time, of course.”

“What words did you use?”

“Just one. I had said it should be… perfect.”

“And somehow they knew what you meant?”

“Didn’t know, perhaps, but were able to intuit. It should be like light, I had said. It should be like air. It should be like… water.”

“Something perfect.”

“Yes. Look at it. What do you see?”

“It looks like water.”

“So far, so good. Now. Unscrew the cap. What do you smell?”

“Nothing.”

“Odorless. Even better. Taste it.”

Hawke began to raise the vial to his lips but paused with his hand in midair.

“No.”

“No?”

“It occurs to me that should I drink this and die here at your feet, I should go down in history as the most stupendously stupid agent in the history of British Intelligence.”

“Why?”

“Why? A sane man who is ever so generously offered a cup of high explosive by his erstwhile enemy? And gladly gulps it down without so much as a second thought?”

“You don’t trust me.”

“Frankly? No. And, believe me, Volodya, you should take that personally.”

“How sad. Here, hand it to me.”

Hawke reached across with the opened vial.

Putin took it, said, “Cheers!” and downed half the contents in one swallow, without hesitation. Then he turned and smiled at his companion.

“Well? Look at me. Are my eyes bulging out of my skull? Am I gagging? Am I retching or turning blue? Writhing on the floor? No. It’s an explosive, Alex, not poison, for God’s sake.”

“Is this all some overly elaborate joke?”

“Hardly. Taste it.”

Hawke took the empty vial and sipped at it.

“What does it taste like?”

“Water.”

“Water, of course. That’s its genius. Now, taste this vial.” He handed him another vial.

Hawke sipped. “Vodka,” he said. “Bad vodka, but still vodka.”

“Yes! Yes! I got the idea to flavor the explosive. A clever deception when the situation calls for it, no? Send cases of it to one’s closest enemies at Christmastime. Give the gift that keeps on exploding.”

“Brilliant. May I have another? I sometimes have uses for such stuff myself, as you might imagine.”

Putin smiled. Pulling a single full vial from the case, he gave it to Hawke, who promptly slipped it inside the breast pocket of his dark grey blazer and forgot about it.

“Do me a favor, Lord Hawke. Don’t drink that stuff if there are ever any frayed electrical cords or thunderstorms with lightning striking nearby. Lethal combination!”

Hawke laughed.

“Perhaps you should call it ‘White Lightning’ in that case,” he said.