Phantom

Forty-one

Portofino, Italy

The fisherman slipped his long oars into the black water as smoothly and silently as his long fillet knife sliced into the silver bellies of his livelihood. Then he heaved back on the oars’ rough wooden handles, and the small fishing boat’s prow slid forward, making barely a ripple. He wasn’t being paid two months’ wages in one night to make haste; he was being paid to make himself and his boat invisible, or at least go unnoticed.

The three men who were his passengers kept their heads below the gunnels. Two were stretched out full length, heads in the bow, one to port and the other to starboard. The third was the lookout, raising his head just enough to check their progress every five minutes or so. He didn’t know much Italian, but it was enough for Giancarlo Brunello to understand which way he wanted the boat pointed.

“Diretto, diretto,” the man whispered, just loud enough to be heard. “Straight ahead.”

“Si, comprendo, signore.”

It was a dark night. No moon, no stars. His boat, Maria, named for his wife, had very little freeboard. And she was painted a dark blue. It was just what they wanted, they’d told him at the dock late that afternoon: a dark boat with a low profile. He was to meet them on the docks at this exact location at midnight. For that much money, he said, he’d meet them anywhere, anytime. They were going scuba diving, they said, to dive on a wreck about three or four miles at sea, out beyond the mouth of Portofino’s famously picturesque harbor. They planned to do some nighttime marine photography, the guy told him, for some magazine in Milano that Giancarlo had never heard of.

And sure enough all three had arrived wearing black wet suits, carrying their fins, tanks, regulators, and black waterproof satchels with their equipment hung over their shoulders. Cameras and lights, the lead guy said, stepping carefully down into the boat.

Giancarlo thought it was strange that they had to do this photo shoot in such secrecy, but he kept those thoughts to himself. These guys were nothing like the typical fashion photographers from Rome who descended on Portofino to shoot the beautiful models from all over the world. He worked the shoots sometimes, renting Maria as a prop for five hundred lire per hour and sometimes even modeling himself, rowing these gorgeous babes in skimpy bathing suits around the harbor and getting paid for it!

But tonight paid even better, and he and Maria, with a baby on the way, could certainly use the extra money.

“Okay,” the lookout guy whispered, “we’re getting close. You see that big yacht anchored out there? The one farthest out? About half a mile.”

“Hard to miss it, signore. That’s Red Star. She belongs to the Russian oil billionaire, Khodorkovsky. All the tourists want to come out and see her, but the security is very discouraging about people getting too close.”

The thing was enormous. It practically blotted out the sky. It had to be over three hundred feet long and it dwarfed the other megayachts anchored nearby.

“We’re almost over the wreck. I think the best place for us to go down is behind that yacht there, the nearest one to our right. Duck in behind her and heave your anchor. We’ll be down on the wreck for about half an hour. If you want your money, you’ll be here when we return. If you manage not to attract any attention, I’ll pay you a bonus.”

“I’ll be here, signore, do not worry yourself.”

In a matter of minutes the three divers had slipped over the side and disappeared. Giancarlo had no idea what they were up to, but he was pretty damn sure it wasn’t fashion photography. There was something sinister about them, not that he gave a damn-money was money. He made himself comfortable, lit a cigarette, and pulled the cork on his wine bottle with his teeth. Giancarlo Brunello was a happy man.

T he three divers swam toward the huge megayacht at a depth of fifty feet. They were wearing German-made Drager rebreathers. The machines recirculated the spent oxygen so there were no telltale bubbles on the surface to mark their progress toward Red Star.

They operated using hand signals. When they were directly beneath the Russian behemoth’s keel, Dimitry Putov, their leader, raised a flat palm to halt them. He then pointed to himself and then the center of the keel. They would take the bow and the stern. They signaled that they understood, and all three began surfacing slowly beneath Prime Minister Putin’s toy.

Each man had a limpet mine in his black satchel. The mines were shaped like a discus, about thirty inches across and eight inches thick. They had powerful suction cup adhesion on one side, and on the other a det cord attached to a timer. Once the mines were attached to the hull, and the timers synchronized, the divers would simply swim back to rendezvous with the fisherman and make their way back to the harbor.

The three mines had been created especially for this special-ops mission. Based on the modern Italian VS-SS-22, which utilized the conventional explosive Semtex, they had been converted into what is commonly known as nuclear “dirty bombs.”

Each limpet mine now contained an enormously powerful combination of dynamite and the radioactive material cesium. The cesium had been secretly obtained by demolition operatives of the Tsarist Society posing as cancer patients. Cesium was the material used in radiation treatment for such patients. It was easy to obtain and a source that the Tsarists had ensured would be completely untraceable.

The explosion of the three dirty bombs would cause far more damage than the radiation, making it the ideal weapon for an assassination of this type. The bomb makers in Moscow had assured the team that there would be nothing left of Putin’s megayacht bigger than what could fit inside a teacup.

The bombs attached and the timers set, the three divers swam away from Red Star and headed directly to the rendezvous point.

The bedside telephone jangled. Hawke, suddenly wide awake, rolled over and squinted one eye at the illuminated clock. Three-bloody-thirty in the morning. He sat up, let his head clear for a second, reminding himself that this was his private line at the house in London. He picked up the receiver.

“This better be good.”

“It isn’t. Alex, it’s Concasseur, ringing from Moscow. I’ve just gotten a piece of information from my paid informant. Putin is to be assassinated.”

“When?”

“Within the hour. It’s possible he’s already dead. A great deal of planning has gone into this. He won’t survive the attempt. Nor will anyone else aboard the yacht.”

“Ian, tell me, is he aboard Red Star?”

“Yes. Anchored off Portofino. Along with President Medvedev and the American vice president, David Rosow. A top-secret powwow about getting the hell out of Afghanistan with as few casualties as possible.”

“Good God.”

“You have his private mobile number?”

“I do. I’ll call immediately.”

“According to my source inside the Tsarists, they all need to get off that boat as fast as humanly possible. And as far away from it as possible.”

“Thanks, Ian. Let’s hope we’re not too late.”

“Good luck, sir.”

The line went dead and Hawke punched in Putin’s cell number, reading from his bedside address book. He heard the man click on but remain silent. He never spoke until spoken to.

“Volodya?”

“Depends. Who is this?”

“It’s Hawke. Listen carefully. You have to get off the boat immediately. I have good human intel coming out of Moscow. An assassination attempt within the hour. No idea how long you’ve got left, but you need to get out of there now. Is your helicopter aboard?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I know you have important visitors. Get them into that chopper and into the air. Every second counts. Best of luck, Volodya.”

“Alex, I appreciate-”

“Don’t talk, run.”

Putin disconnected and rang the bridge.

“Captain Ramius, two things. There’s to be an attack on the vessel within the hour. Perhaps within the next five minutes. You need to give the order to abandon ship. First, you call my helo pilot and tell him to start the engines and be ready to take off in two minutes. I’m departing now. Have the stewards awaken President Medvedev and Vice President Rosow immediately and escort them immediately to the helo pad. Just tell them I’ve declared an emergency.”

“Affirmative, sir.”

“There’s no time to argue. I want you to meet me at the helicopter. You’re going with me. Get the entire crew off the boat and tell them to get as far away from it as quickly as they can. Use all the launches. Get moving, Captain Ramius; I’ll see you in a few moments.”

Putin pulled on a pair of trousers and a wool sweater and was out the door of the owner’s stateroom and racing up the aft stairs to the pad as fast as he could. He emerged on deck and was relieved to see the main rotor blades and tail rotor on his helicopter already spinning, the powerful engines spooling up. He raced up the staircase to the pad and sprinted to the aircraft, leaping inside. His pilot, though stunned, had been trained for moments like this and was surreally calm and collected.

“Three more passengers,” Putin said breathlessly. “We’ll give them sixty seconds.”

Medvedev appeared moments later followed by Vice President Rosow. Both men were in pajamas and robes. Putin looked at his watch. Thirty seconds. Twenty.

“Get Captain Ramius on the intercom,” he shouted at his pilot.

Ramius’s voice came over the speaker. “Sir, I have never disobeyed a direct order in my life. But I cannot leave my ship without making sure my crew has disembarked to the last man. I apologize, sir.”

“He’s gone,” the pilot said.

“So are we,” Putin said. “Go! Go! Go!”

The silver chopper nosed down a few degrees as the pilot grabbed the cyclic.

“Maximum lift force,” Putin shouted and it was a good thing because just as the chopper rose into the air his yacht began blowing up right under his feet. The explosion rocked the aircraft violently sideways but not out of the air.

The shock wave actually shoved the helo upward, so that it barely stayed above the rising mass of flame and debris. The pilot, realizing he had less than a second to act before flying metal destroyed his aircraft, turned steeply, then used every ounce of thrust the powerful engines had to send his aircraft flying just above the surface of the water, away from the disintegrating Red Star at full throttle. When they were over the coastline, they climbed to a few thousand feet and returned to the scene where the fiery skeleton of Putin’s beloved yacht lit up the night sky with great plumes of orange, red, and yellow.

Putin felt a hollow feeling somewhere between his lungs and his stomach. He pulled out his mobile and punched in a number.

“Hello?”

“It’s me. Red Star is no more. I owe you one.”

“Yes, Volodya; I’m glad you’re safe.”

Putin looked down at the sea below, ablaze with flaming oil and fuel. No one could have survived this. No one.

The force of the three simultaneous nuclear explosions, heard for miles, knocked out windows all through the little port town of Portofino, including those in a little late-night bar called Ruffino where the three Russians were in the act of toasting their success with sloshing glasses of vodka.