Phantom

Thirty-three

Moscow

The Hotel Metropol was the last surviving hotel in Moscow built before the Russian Revolution of 1917. A monumental edifice, adjacent to the Bolshoi Theatre and a five-minute walk from Red Square, the place seemed completely unchanged since the Soviet era when it was a KGB apparatchik hangout. Grim and grey, just the way you’d expect it to be. There was never anything lighthearted and colorful about the KGB, that’s what Stoke thought, anyway.

Spooky, too.

Yeah, the whole damn hotel was full of spooks and bad vibes. You could just feel that a lot of very unsavory KGB shit had gone down here. Stoke felt the ghosts of dead spies floating right alongside him as he walked down the endless dark and dreary corridors of the place. He didn’t know how to say “boo” in Russian, but if he did, he was pretty sure he’d hear one of them say it.

Something else about the hotel. It kept him thinking about that old movie The Shining. Elevator pops open and there’s old Joe Stalin with a shit-eating grin and a bloody axe raised above his head:

“I’m ba-a-a-ck!”

Stoke and Harry Brock had checked in late the previous night after connecting through Heathrow en route from Miami. A driver had been sent to pick them up at the airport. Stoke wasn’t expecting VIP treatment or a limo, but he also wasn’t expecting a hulking driver wearing bloodstained camo head to toe. Or driving a beat-up old Volkswagen minibus, either. When the guy opened the back to put their bags in, Stoke saw the space was filled with shotguns, ammo, and dead birds. The guy just tossed the luggage in on top, grunted, and slammed the door.

“Is it me, or is this whole limo deal pretty weird?” Stoke asked Harry as they pulled out of the airport. Harry had been here on business before. A lot.

“It would be weird anywhere else in the world. But here? Par for the course.”

Welcome to Russia, Comrade-o-vich.

Stoke was going to ask some tourist questions, but the driver hadn’t said word one and didn’t seem up for chatty conversation with the big black Amerikanski. Clearly, they’d interrupted his hunting trip and he wasn’t happy about it.

The first thing Stoke noticed upon arrival at the hotel was how smoky the hotel lobby was. It was huge, with high ceilings, and yet it was filled with smoke. You could barely see the bulbs in the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. While waiting with Harry for their luggage to appear, Stoke walked over to a group of people sitting in a circle drinking vodka and all smoking like paper factories.

“Any of y’all ever read the Surgeon General’s warning?” he asked. They all looked up at the giant black man with blank faces. “No? Well, you should. Seriously scary shit in there. I’m just sayin’.”

Even the people manning the reception desk were a little spooky. Grimmer than the grimmest flight attendants in the unfriendly skies over America. Not a smile to be seen. Like, so unfriendly it was almost as if this were some kind of Roach Motel. Which, Stoke thought, had probably been true. A whole lot of guests who’d checked in here had probably not checked out.

Emerging from the elevator on his floor, Stoke found all four walls hung with black-and-white photos of famous guests. Stoke made the circuit. Completely random. Hanging next to Stalin? Michael Jackson, who else? And there was Lenin rubbing shoulders with Walt Disney. Stoke had a hard time imagining Walt Disney staying in this hotel. One night, tops.

Harry assured Stoke his room would be bugged, and Stoke had no reason to doubt Russian spooks were eavesdropping on his every word. He’d asked Fancha once if he talked in his sleep and she’d said no. Didn’t hurt to check, though, so he swept the room. Usually the bugs were in the bedside lamps. But the lamps in Stoke’s room looked like busted umbrellas and had no bulbs-no bugs either, that he could find, anyway. Only bugs he found at the Metropol were in the bed.

Russia, Stoke decided pretty quickly, had a slightly nutty quality to it. And slightly scary in a weird, time-warp, ice-pick-in-the-side-of-your-neck way. And he didn’t scare easy. And he hadn’t even left his hotel room yet.

They went sightseeing the next morning. First stop was Red Square. Stoke was surprised at how beautiful it was. The trees, the flower beds, the amazing onion-domed churches. But the best was when Harry told him it wasn’t called Red Square because it had been home to the Commies in the Kremlin. It was called that because the word red, in Russian, meant “beautiful.” That kind of insider info could be worth a jackpot on Jeopardy! someday.

At five, they were sitting in Trotsky’s, a small, smoky bar just off Red Square, waiting for Hawke’s pal Concasseur to arrive from the British Embassy. There were two uniformed Moscow militia bully boys drinking at the bar, but they seemed stone drunk and didn’t even seem to notice when the two Americans walked past to their table.

“I gotta say this whole town sorta weirds me out, Harry,” Stoke said, staring back at all the people who were openly staring at him. Weren’t a whole lot of black folks in Moscow, he’d noticed. All the brothers who’d visited had decided once was more than enough. He hadn’t seen a single black man since he got here. And certainly none of them “the size of your average armoire,” as Hawke always said about Stoke.

“You get used to it,” Harry said, drinking his coffee with a shot of vodka on the side.

“You spend a lot of time here?”

“Yeah,” Brock said, and then dropped his eyes and shut up. Whatever career paths he’d gone down in Russia in the old days, he didn’t want to talk about. He changed the subject.

“So, newlywed, how’s it going with Fancha? Good?”

“I dunno, Harry. Woman complains a lot. Just the other night she told me I give her the wrong kind of orgasms.”

“The wrong kind? What did you say?”

“The truth. I said I wouldn’t know, I’d never had the wrong kind. That even the absolute positively baddest worst orgasm I ever had was smack-dab on the money.”

“Hell, yeah,” Harry said, and laughed. “Good thing they’re all split-tails or there’d be a bounty on ’em.”

“Careful, Harry. Saying shit like that can ruin your reputation.”

“I don’t have a reputation.”

“That’s got to be our boy,” Stoke whispered, as a tall, well-dressed Englishman came through the door. “Doesn’t look like a badass, but the boss says he is.”

Concasseur made straight for their table, Stoke being fairly recognizable in this crowd.

“Ian Concasseur. Mind if I join you?” he said, pulling up a chair. They had a banquette in the corner and the bar was very noisy. Concasseur, the guy now running Red Banner in Moscow for Alex Hawke, had picked it, so Stoke figured it to be a safe place for a private chat.

The big Brit had a leather briefcase and he put it on the floor and nudged it over to Harry under the table. Weapons, Russian currency, and maybe even a photograph of the cat they were looking for, Stoke figured.

“How is my old friend Alex?” the guy said, smiling.

“Been better,” Stoke said. “That’s why we’re here.”

“Yes, it’s a very nasty situation. Mr. Jones and Mr. Brock, I’m pleased to meet you. Alex speaks very highly of you both.”

“Big fan of yours, too,” Harry said, looking into his coffee cup. Harry had a problem with guys who were taller, better built, and better looking than he was. Couldn’t help himself. Harry looked a little like Bruce Willis, Concasseur looked like Daniel Craig. What are you going to do?

“Bit of good news. I was able to learn the name of the troublemaker,” Concasseur said. “Chap who’s actually ordering these hits on Hawke and his son. One of my men got a photograph of him leaving his apartment. There are also photographs of the exterior of the Tsarist Society. And some interior shots I grabbed secretly when I stopped by there for a cocktail. You’ll find all the other relevant information in the satchel. Pair of SIGs and some rubles as well.”

“We need to have a serious conversation with this dude,” Stoke said. “Does he speak English?”

“Yes.”

“How’d you get his name?” Harry asked.

“One of his colleagues is a friend from London days. Vaz values money more than his life. It was expensive information. Sometimes the deeply ingrained Russian culture of corruption works against them.”

“Tell me about it,” Harry said. “What’s our guy like?”

“Your man is an extremely successful automobile salesman named Viktor Gurov. Ex-Mafyia hit man. Now owns half the Mercedes dealerships in town, meaning he had half the competing dealers murdered. Not a high-ranking Tsarist, however, more middle management. He doesn’t get his hands all that dirty anymore, but his nickname at the club is ‘the Executioner.’ I’ve had a tail on him for the last few days. You’ll find his typical schedule in the envelope with the photos.”

“Why’s he picking on our mutual friend?”

“He’s the bastard son of the chap Hawke killed. Korsakov, the late Tsar. This fellow worshipped his father, as do most members of the bloody Tsarists. But with Viktor, it’s personal, too. His mother, a woman named Gurov, was simply one of Korsakov’s legion of mistresses and courtesans. She, like many such women, turned up dead in the snow in Gorky Park.”

“All that makes our job a lot easier,” Stoke said to him, smiling. “Thanks.”

“Not at all. I would do anything for Alex Hawke. His courage got me through some extraordinarily tough times once. I am forever in his debt.”

Stoke said, “Buy you a drink?”

“Thanks, no. I think the less time we’re seen together, the better. But I am always available to you, of course. I gave you a number. My private mobile. Call it twenty-four hours a day. Cheers, then. Cheerio.”

The man stood up, nodded a friendly good-bye, and left the bar.

“Now what?” Harry said, downing his vodka.

“I got an idea.”

“Just now?”

“No, dude. Stayed awake all night flying across the ocean while you were sleeping like a baby. Thinking it up. Working it out. Fine-tuning all the details.”

“Yeah? Is it any good?”

“Nah, it sucks.”

“Seriously.”

“Unless you got a better one, I guess we’ll have to wait and find out, won’t we, Harry?”