Patriot

CHAPTER 80

The escapee, of course, was Uncle Joe.

Fat had him flat on his back on the ground, hands cuffed above his head, the muzzle of Fat’s semiauto two inches from Joe’s pale, sweaty forehead. The man’s eyes were bulging, sheer terror coming off him in waves. His fingers were tapping on the snow as if he were playing an invisible piano.

Hawke looked down at him and said, “Are you Joe Stalin?”

“Nyet.”

“You sure as hell look like him.”

“Da.”

“Seriously? You’re a direct descendant of the man who inspired fear in countless millions? You? Sent millions more to their deaths in the gulags? You have got to be kidding me. Who the hell are you, really?”

“He’s nuts, this guy,” Fat said. “He comes crawling out of his bedroom window over there, ass-backward and wearing those funky red pajamas… I mean, seriously, is this really somebody important?”

“Bring this prisoner inside, Gator. We’ll find someplace where we can find out just how important he really is. Come on, Fat.”

“Right behind you, Cap’n.”

“Gator,” Hawke added, “you place those charges around the HQ? Everything rigged?”

“Bet yo’ ass, sir. I can turn this place into a Siberian wasteland in about thirty-one seconds.”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. Fat, you hear all those damn sirens blaring in the distance?”

“Yeah. Three or four klicks away. Those are warning sirens. Coming from the direction of KGB I, I’ll bet. Somebody’s onto us, skipper. We’d better grill this gentleman, level this combat control center, and get ourselves out of here faster than a bug wink.”

Gator walked into the conference room with Uncle Joe, took one look at the tall man in khakis, already bound to a chair with his back to the wall, and stopped dead in his tracks.

“Colonel?” he said.

“Hell, yeah, it’s me. How you doin’, Gator? Long time no see. Hell you doing here, sweetie?”

“How about you shut up?” Stoke said to him.

“You’re the boss,” Beauregard said amiably. “I see you caught the big fish, Gator. My newest pal, Uncle Joe himself. Nice goin’. He tell you he’s a people person yet? He will.”

“I said, shut up,” Stoke said.

Gator cuffed Uncle Joe’s wrists behind him and sat him down in a hard chair, right next to the chair where Stoke had stowed the Colonel. Civilian worker, advisor, Hawke had thought, by the looks of him. But apparently not. This was the American who’d built the terror operations command in Isla de Pinos.

“Gator, you say you know this man?” Hawke said, walking up to the Texan.

“Yes, sir, yes I do. That there’s Colonel Beauregard himself. I told you about him earlier. Used to work for him at Vulcan. In Saudi.”

Hawke looked at the man. “So you are the infamous Colonel, are you? The man who blows women and children out of the sky and blames it on the Chinese.”

“Fuck you.”

“Your place or mine, you common bastard,” Hawke replied.

“Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“Hawke. Commander. British Royal Navy.”

“You’re Hawke?”

“Last time I checked. Why?”

“Well, hell, Commander, I’m honored to finally meet you, sir. I’ve been following your exploits for years. Even stole a few moves out of your playbooks.”

“I don’t kill civilians, Colonel.”

“Hell, neither do I. You want to meet the man who does, however? This little shit sitting right next to me. He’s the sonofabitch who gave me the orders to bring down that airplane. Told all of us we were taking down a Chinese military transport plane en route to Beijing. Ask him.”

“He’s lying!” Uncle Joe said, stamping his tiny feet.

“You speak English all of a sudden, Uncle Joe?” Hawke said.

“I spent some time at NYU, that’s all. What of it?”

“Did you order the Colonel here to shoot down that civilian airliner over the Chinese borderlands?”

“No. Technically, no. Did not do it,” Uncle Joe said.

“Who did? Technically.”

“Putin. Wanted to use it as a media diversion to cover his tracks along the borders of certain countries. That crash got a whole lot of airtime on CNN, the Communist News Network. And me? I conveyed the orders to Colonel Beauregard, that’s all. So, like they say, please don’t shoot the messenger, okay?”

Hawke and Congreve looked at each other in utter disbelief. Uncle Joe had all the earmarks of a visitor from another planet.

“Bullshit,” Beauregard said. “Uncle Joe is the one runs the whole damn show. Nothing happens without his signature. Nada. Who do you think is the mastermind behind the massive troop movements last weekend? Into Poland and Estonia? The tank battalions on the roll? You’re looking at him. His orders, every last one. General Krakov, head of KGB ops here at Tvas? He even admitted it to me. He told me, ‘Putin runs Russia, but Uncle Joe? Uncle Joe runs Putin.’”

Uncle Joe laughed out loud.

“Me? Wait, I’m the bad guy? The evil dictator? I’m gay, f’crissakes! I love Streisand! I’ve got a cat!”

“This is such a load of crap he’s feeding you, Commander Hawke. His office in the Kremlin? I’ve been there. Many times. It’s twice as big as Putin’s! Everybody’s scared to death of the little dwarf around there. Just last Christmas he had the three most powerful oligarchs in Russia shot in the head and dumped in the Volga River just before it froze over for the winter. Hell, he even—”

“Putin did that!” Joe said, stamping his tiny feet again. “Putin, Putin, Putin!”

The Colonel continued his tirade. “See? Can’t control himself. KGB, Politburo, even Putin himself, they’re all terrified of him. You should hear how this character talks to Putin on the phone. It’s insane.”

“That’s ridiculous! I run Putin? Me? I don’t run anything. Not even my cat.”

“What exactly is it that you do, Uncle Joe?” Hawke asked him. He was having a hard time not laughing.

“Me? I’m just a second-rate actor, that’s all. Trying to make a buck like anybody else.”

“A what? Actor?”

“Yeah, yeah, you heard right, actor. Left Moscow to go to NYU Drama School back in the eighties, had a fifth-floor walk-up in Hell’s Kitchen. Busboy at P.J. Clarke’s. The whole enchilada. Then came back to Moscow to do theater. Ended up starring in a comic opera about Stalin at the Bolshoi Theatre. Called Me and Uncle Joe. My biggest gig yet. My breakthrough role. Nominated for a Tony if they had fuckin’ Tonys over here. Putin and his wife were in the audience opening night, front row center. Vlad was laughing his ass off, I’ll tell you that. I was great, what can I say? Mr. and Mrs. Putin came backstage to my dressing room and he offered me a job on the spot. That’s it, I swear, the whole story. What can I say? The guy was crazy about me.”

“Exactly what kind of job did he offer you, Uncle Joe?” Stoke asked.

“Basically? Reprise my starring role in the play. Every day in an office in the Kremlin. ‘Just come to work and be Uncle Joe,’ he says to me. ‘I’ll feed you your lines, don’t worry,’ he says a lot. And just look at me. Perfect casting, right? But, work? God, the hours of footage I watched on that old Commie, the original. Getting his moves down. Looking for nuance. But the look? That I had. Even when I was a baby my aunt Sadie said I looked like Stalin. The kids in my neighborhood screamed and ran when they saw me coming.”

“But what the bloody hell did Putin actually want you to do, Uncle Joe?” Hawke said, the frustration taking its toll.

“Easy. So, Putin says to me, he says he needs me to divert some inconvenient things away from his office and over to mine. Messy things, you know. Certain unpleasant facts or, you know, iffy events. Like that horrible jetliner thing in China. Messy. And can you blame him? Didn’t want to get his lily-white hands dirty on that one, I guess. Never got ’em clean, I’d say, but what do I know? I’m just an actor.”

“You sound like a bloody politician,” Hawke said.

“Oh, but I am! Now. But I’m also a people person.”

“Now, after all the crap he’s done, suddenly he’s a people person? What’d I tell you? He’s a people person like I’m a lazy babysitter,” Colonel Beauregard sputtered, barely able to control himself.

Hawke just stood there staring at both of them in amazement and bewilderment. Finally, he looked over at the most trustworthy man he knew.

“You believe this guy, Stoke? Uncle Joe?”

“You know what? Crazy-ass as it sounds, I do. I think he’s telling the truth here, boss. I really do. How could anyone even begin to make all that stuff up?”

“Ambrose? If anyone can spot a phony alibi, it’s you. What do you think?”

“I agree with Stokely. He’s telling the truth, Alex. I believe him. Now, I’d like to ask Uncle Joe a question of considerable importance to me, if I may?”

“He’s all yours, Constable.”

“Recently, a colleague of mine from Cambridge University was here at Tvas on Kremlin business. His name is Stefan Halter. Stef fell ill during a meeting in this very room. You were there. Heart attack, I believe. I’d like to know exactly, and truthfully, what happened to him.”

“He was your friend, am I right on that?”

“Perhaps my best friend, yes.”

“Listen, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr. Congreve. Very, very sorry. Your friend passed. But it was no heart attack.”

“What are you saying? He was murdered? I hope not because I can assure that if he was, I will not stop until I—”

“Hey — hey, no way! No, sir. Sorry, please. You completely misunderstand what I’m saying here. Fact one, we have a trained medical staff here in the building. Upstairs. Fact two, I had them called as soon as your buddy collapsed there on the floor. We, me included, told the doctors the poor guy had suffered a coronary event of some kind. What kind, I had no fuckin’ clue, right? But when they checked him out upstairs, they found out that the heart attack thing… was not a factor—”

“Then what happened to him?”

“He had bitten down on a cyanide capsule, see, while the doctors tried to revive him. But here’s the thing, and you should know this. Your friend? That guy was the lucky one, I’m telling you. Think about it. That lucky, lucky man, he avoided death at the hands of Putin’s KGB interrogators. Whole lot worse than cyanide, and that’s the honest truth, so help me, God, if I’m lying.”

Ambrose was staring at the floor, straining to rein in his emotions.

After a very long time, he looked up and spoke, barely above a whisper. “He didn’t do it for himself. He did it for me.”

“Then he’s a great hero.”

“Yes. He always was.”

Congreve, overcome with grief, walked toward the door. He needed to breathe the fresh night air.

“I’m so sorry, Ambrose,” Hawke said as he walked by.

“Thank you. I shall miss him very deeply.”

The room fell silent for a long moment, out of respect. Everyone felt Congreve’s loss, even Uncle Joe.

“So, Uncle Joe, tell us all about Feuerwasser. The Kremlin’s miracle explosive,” Stoke said.

“It’s all bullshit, that garbage. It’s no more explosive than a strawberry Frostee. It’s fuckin’ vodka, f’crissakes. Putin asked me to sell the explosive idea around town, so I sold it. I’m a very good salesman. Sell ice to an Eskimo. What else can I tell you? I was making a good buck there in the Kremlin. Gave me a lot of confidence. As an actor I mean, not a real person. Confidence. I got that in spades. And I’m due for a comeback. Next stop for me? Hollywood, baby. Count on it.”

Hawke laughed. “My God” was all he could say.

Joe said to him, “You ought to take a run at it yourself. Good-looking hunk of horseflesh like you? Hell. You’re the one who oughta be up on the silver screen, not me.”

“Highly unlikely, Uncle Joe,” Hawke said. “Colonel? What about it, then? You didn’t know about any of this? This so-called acting career of Uncle Joe’s?”

“Hell, no. Not an inkling. I feel like I’m in the middle of some bizarre reality show whenever I’m around this guy.”

“You still think he’s lying?” Hawke said.

“Maybe, I dunno. If he is, he’s the greatest damn liar since P. T. Barnum met Bernie Madoff. Or greatest actor. But I think he’s telling the truth, Commander. Putin’s been putting the pieces in place for this global real estate aggression for a long, long time. Uncle Joe? He was one of those pieces all right. He and Putin were a marriage made in heaven. Both of ’em totally batshit.”

“Where is Putin right now, Uncle Joe? If you don’t know, just say so. But it’ll save us all a lot of trouble if you do.”

The Colonel spoke up. “I know exactly where he is, Commander, I’ve been there. Hell, I’ll even take you to him.”

“Where?”

“A dacha northwest of Moscow. Top secret KGB hideout. Deep forest. Not on any maps. No marked roads. Ridiculous security. Called Rus. But that’s where he makes the plans to run this war. And that’s where he is right this minute.”

“Gator, cut these two gentlemen loose. We’ve got what we came for here. Let’s get the hell out of here and blow this place off the—”

“Commander Hawke, you’ve got problems,” the Colonel said, rubbing his chafed wrists. “I’ve been counting the frequency of those alarm sirens in the distance. Every twenty seconds now. Coming from the direction of the other camp. KGB I. About four klicks from here. A lot of those troops have already shipped out for Poland and the Estonia invasions. But there are at least ten thousand more under arms and headed this way. They will overrun this base and kill everyone in this room if you don’t do something about it. They don’t like me and they certainly don’t like my men. And frankly, my men hate their goddamn guts. And all of these damn Russians”

“What the hell can we do?” Hawke said, looking to Stokely for help.

“Set us loose on them, that’s what,” the Colonel said. “I got five thousand of the finest fighting men on the planet right here, living right inside this fence. Every one of them is loyal to me, not Putin. I give the word, and they’re weaponed up and marching up that road to meet those Russian bastards halfway here. Man, my guys will roll right over them and won’t stop till they get to Moscow. And I’ll be right there alongside those boys, too.”

Hawke stared at him.

“That sounds a lot like old-fashioned American patriotism, Colonel. Knowing what little I know, I wouldn’t think that would be something you were capable of.”

“My heart’s always been with the farm boys who fought at Lexington and Concord and, finally, Yorktown in 1781, Commander. I stand with the Patriots. Always the Patriots.”

“Do it, then,” Hawke said. “Call your troops to arms. Have you got enough time to mobilize them?”

“My guys? More than enough.”

“You got tanks, armored carriers?”

“Six special-order Chinese T-99 battle tanks, loaded with ammo and ready to roll. The best.”

“Good. But you’re not marching in front of your boys, Colonel, however much you’d like to be there. You’re coming with me. You and I are going to that dacha you told me about. We are going to have a nice little chat with Emperor Putin about changing his plans.”

“It’d be an honor to serve alongside you, Commander. Now I’d like to ask you a favor.”

“Go ahead.”

“My second-in-command is Russian. Good fighter, but I don’t trust him worth a shit. So, I’m thinking that I’d like to ask my new friend Gator over there if he’d consider a battlefield commission. I’d like him to step in as commander in charge of all our forces. And lead them into battle against the KGB troopers. Man’s got leadership written all over him.”

“Gator?” Hawke said. “What do you say?”

Gator had a million-watt smile on his face. “Hell, yeah. Hell, yeah! In a heartbeat.”

“Stoke? He’s your guy… yay or nay?”

“Absolutely, boss. Give Gator half a chance, he and his infantry will have those Commie troops for breakfast.”

“They’re not Communists anymore, Stoke,” Brock said.

“Don’t be so sure about that, Harry,” he replied. “A lot of those dudes would just love to put on those old Soviet uniforms. Including Vladimir Putin.”

“Get moving then, Gator,” Hawke said. “Show the enemy what you’re made of, son.”

“Sir, yessir!” Gator said, snapping to attention.

Hawke turned his attention back to the actor.

“Uncle Joe, can you come up with a helicopter at this hour? If you do, I’ll give you a seat on it. Out of here.”

“For that, you get two helicopters. As many as you need. What else can I do to help?”

“You can spend the entire time we’re on that chopper en route to Moscow giving me every single ounce of dirt you’ve collected on Putin. Everything you’ve picked up, in all the years you’ve worked for him. Which buttons to push. Where his weak spots are. How much vodka he drinks. All of that.”

“Deal. I love this stuff. You don’t happen to know anybody out in Hollywood, do you, Commander Hawke? Agents? I’m just asking.”

Congreve stifled a chuckle; Stoke wisely remained stone-faced; Harry Brock laughed out loud and said: “I love this guy!”

Hawke, who was about to spend a few hours locked inside a noisy helicopter in deep conversation with Uncle Joe, just looked off into the middle distance. He said, “Okay, that’s it, let’s go.”