Tsar

39

Hawke pressed his forehead against the icy window of his small train compartment. He cradled a mug of lukewarm tea in both hands, grateful for the small amount of heat it offered. The train was slowing, wheels screeching, the air beyond the frosted glass smoking with snow, clouds of frothy white whirling about outside, obscuring everything. From somewhere ahead, the plaintive cry of the train’s whistle, a hollow call that could have sprung from the bottom of his heart.

Were they finally arriving?

He was on the last leg of his journey to Anastasia. He’d been at his window for hours, staring out at the frozen tundra, mesmerized by the view and thoughts of the new woman in his life. Hours had passed since he’d awoken from a sleep as deep and dark as the grave itself. He’d climbed down from his warm bunk and sprung to the window, his heart hammering. Was it love he was feeling, or was it merely the thrill of the game? Perhaps both? He knew this grip of conflicting emotions was powerful enough to paralyze him if he weren’t careful.

So he sat by his window and forced himself to look at things he could actually see.

He saw Russia. He saw its fields, steppes, villages, and towns, all bleached white by the moon and bright stars. He sat for hours on end and watched as Russia flew past, wrapped in glittering clouds of snow and ice.

It had been nearly twenty-four hours since he’d received his orders and begun his onward journey. He’d said good-bye to Diana and Ambrose at the Bermuda airport and climbed aboard an RAF transport. He’d slept in the rear, freezing, on top of the mailbags, all the way to RAF Sedgwick, then caught a commercial flight into Russia, landing at St. Petersburg. He presented himself at immigration as Mr. A. Hawke, senior partner, Blue Water Logistics, Bermuda. He had a Bermuda passport that, even to his jaded eye, was a work of art. A four-color brochure inside his briefcase described the worldwide shipping capabilities of his new company. Just in case anyone was interested.

Since boarding the train at St. Petersburg’s Moskovsky Vokzal station, he’d had nothing to eat but Ukrainian sausage, which resembled a kilo of raw bacon coated in herbs, and some smoked cheese, which he found he simply couldn’t stomach. The kind of meal that you only want to see once but worry might resurface at any moment.

The Russian beer, however, was delicious. At the last big station, all of the passengers had jumped from the train and run for the buffet. He’d followed and had purchased a loaf of black bread and a bottle of Imperia vodka, primarily for warmth, he told himself. It was long gone.

Alone inside his compartment, despite its faint stench from the lavatories, not quite neutralized by the eau de cologne of some recently disembarked passenger and the smell of some fried chicken, pieces of which he’d finally found stuffed under the seat cushions, wrapped in dirty grease-stained paper, he was quite content.

He’d bought a ticket for a kupe class compartment. This entitled him to a set of bunks, a small table, storage space, and, most important, a lockable door. By Russian standards, this was relatively cushy train travel. The next class down was a bed in an open train carriage with about forty other passengers, mostly Russian or Mongolian traders with stacks of bags of their stock in trade. Not much sleeping went on back there, rather a lot of beer drinking and fighting over the use of the toilet. The lavatory attendant, a grumpy elderly babushka, kept the one clean toilet on the carriage locked for her personal use.

Hawke knew he was back in Russia.

He glanced at the green glow of his wristwatch. It was after two o’clock in the morning, but the night was lit up like day. The citizens of St. Petersburg called their midsummer evenings the White Nights.

That beautiful town, the northernmost city of any size on earth, is so far north that the sun never really quite dips below the horizon during midsummer. This, of course, was December, but still, it was the whitest night Alex Hawke had ever seen. He could easily be reading by his window, and beyond it, a full moon on snow, not the sun, created the white night flying by his window.

He found himself bewitched by the luminous, enchanting landscape. As time passed, the succession of huge views from his window aroused in him such a feeling of spaciousness that it made him think and dream of the future. One that might well include the beautiful Russian woman whose face he so longed to see.

But, he reminded himself again, he was in Russia on a mission. It was no time for lovesick dreaming. It was time to reimmerse himself in the hard reality of Russia and all that menacing old word Russia once more implied.

It was time, he knew, to rearm, to steel himself for whatever lay ahead. What the British secret services had long called the Great Game with the Russians was afoot once more, and he was headed deep into the thick of it. Harry Brock was already waiting for him in Moscow, meeting with Red Banner’s newly recruited case officers and speaking with potential targets Stefan had indentified within the KGB. Spies with a price were not hard to come by in the new Russia.

In Bermuda, Ambrose Congreve, much improved every day, was happily ensconced in Hawke’s office at Blue Water. Appointing the former chief inspector of Scotland Yard temporary chief of station for the fledgling MI-6 division had been C’s idea, and Hawke thought it an inspired one. Especially when he learned that Ambrose was always summoning Pippa Guinness to his office, asking her to have this or that typed, or, better yet, please bring him a fresh pot of tea, no lemon, thank you. He was still in a wheelchair, but had said his leg seemed to be healing nicely.

As the endless miles rolled by, Hawke remained at his window, trying to summon his old memories of Russia. His mind found an ugly landscape of crumbling factories and idle collective farms, back streets of towns crowded with prostitutes, beggars, hawkers, hustlers, and peasants, all humming with activity, a scant few worthless things for sale in clogged lanes of shops with mostly barren shelves, selling matches and salt, sweatshops making T-shirts and plastic shoes.

But for the occasional intrusion of police, life went on. Politics was merely a nuisance you tolerated, with mostly bemused indifference. And what looked at a distance like total anarchy and chaos? Close up, it was meticulous order.

He wondered how much country life had changed in the years since the collapse of the old Soviet ways. Out here, probably not at all. The New Russia you read about existed only in places like Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev. The New Russia was all about money and power, and there was precious little of either to be found out here, where field was followed by field only to be swallowed up by another black forest.

He could make out an occasional farm building, buried under a mantle of snow. Or now and then, at a desolate country crossing, he’d catch a glimpse of snowy lane, winding back up a hill, disappearing amid a copse of frosted trees. It wasn’t until you got beyond the great cities of Russia, he now realized, that you could sense the vastness of this ancient land. Its true size, its scope, its immensity, were literally unimaginable.

There was never any vehicular traffic at these infrequent crossings, ever. No trucks, no cars, no tractors. Were there simply no combustion engines outside the cities? None at all? A few hours earlier, they’d slowed for a crossing, and he’d seen a mule cart with an ancient driver on his box, bundled against the freezing north wind, the reins clenched in his frozen fingers. The man was so still on his perch that Hawke feared he might have simply frozen to death while waiting for the long train to pass.

The train slowed further, and he guessed by the hour that they might finally be approaching his destination, a tiny country station on the way to nowhere.

He stood and gathered his few belongings. He was already wearing his long black woolen greatcoat against the cold and his thick black cashmere scarf and his Russian fur cap, purchased from a kiosk at the St. Petersburg station. He reached up to the top shelf for his luggage.

He had with him his old leather Gladstone portmanteau, primarily because of its twin false bottoms. The two visible compartments were filled with clothing and shoes and his few books. Two secret compartments contained one pistol each, twin SIG Sauer 9mms, plus enough Parabellum ammunition to start a small war. Another, smaller compartment housed his powerful Iridium Globalstar satellite telephone. The guns and the phone had been waiting for him in a luggage storage locker at the St. Petersburg train station.

The train lurched to a stop, and he leaned over to peer out his window. The window framed what looked like a charcoal sketch. There was the tiny station house with its puffing chimney. Beside it were birch trees, laden with hoar frost. Their branches, like smoky streaks of candle wax, looked as if they wished to lay down their snowy burdens on the building’s steeply pitched roof.

The dimly lit sign over the doorway read “Tvas.” The stationmaster’s office was lit from within, and inside the yellow room, he saw the silhouette of a tall woman bundled in furs, pacing back and forth. His heart leaped at the sight of her, and he raced from his compartment, careened down the narrow corridor to the platform, where he jumped from the train.

Her face was at the stationmaster’s window, peering out at the arriving train, as he grasped the doorknob and pushed inside, instantly grateful for the warmth of the small stove glowing in the corner.

Anastasia turned from the window and smiled at him.

“You’ve come” was all she said.

She was covered head to toe in white sable, an abundant coat reaching the tops of her snowy boots. Her head was covered with a matching sable cowl, and her golden curls fell beside her cheeks, still rosy with the cold. Her hands were clasped inside a white fur muff, which she let drop as she moved quickly toward him across the scuffed wooden floor.

“Oh,” she said, suddenly remembering the stationmaster who stood beside his counter. He was a small fat man who wore a grey Tolstoyan shirt with a broad leather belt, felt boots, and trousers bagging at the knees. He looked a kindly enough fellow, but a tiny gold pincenez on a wide black ribbon quivered angrily on the end of his nose.

“Nikolai, this is my new friend whom I’ve been telling you about.”

The Russian bowed, saying something under his breath to Anastasia.

“He says you’re very handsome but that I shouldn’t have come all this way for you on such a night. He’s very protective. I’ve known him since I was no taller than a poppy.”

“Come here,” Hawke said to her, dropping his portmanteau to the floor and spreading his arms wide.

She ran to him, and he enfolded her in his arms, burying his face against hers inside the warmth of her furry cowl, inhaling the fresh outdoor scent of her, the perfume of her skin, finding her lips and kissing them, at first softly and then with a sudden urgency that surprised even him. He’d struggled mightily to banish her from his mind for all the long hours on the train, and now he was overwhelmed at the strength of the feelings suddenly welling up inside.

“You look so-beautiful,” he said, aware of the word’s ridiculous inadequacy, holding her away from him so he could look into her brightly shining green eyes, hardly able to believe anyone could ever be or look or seem so lovely.

“And you, handsome prince.” She laughed. “Come to Mother Russia at last, have you? Come along, now, we’ve got a long journey yet.”

“Are we walking?” Hawke said. “I saw no sign of a car. Or a road, for that matter.”

“A car?” She laughed again. “You think an automobile could travel two feet in snow this deep? Get your bag and follow me, bumpkin.”

She bent to retrieve her dropped white muff, then hurried to the still-opened station door, turned and said good-bye to the stationmaster, then rushed outside. Hawke grabbed his bag and followed her, catching up with her under the single lamp illuminating the snow-covered platform. It had begun to snow again, snowflakes coming down one by one. They spun slowly and hesitantly before finally settling like fluffy white dust on the sparkling blanket of already fallen snow.

“Kiss me again,” she said, and he did, standing under the lamppost, aware of old Nikolai peering out at them from a corner of the window. She saw him, too, and pushed Hawke away.

“Now, follow me, sire. Your carriage awaits.”

He followed her, matching her determined march through the deep snow stride for stride, their boots making a great crunching sound. They made their way around the side of the station house to the rear, their angular shadows preceding them across the new-fallen snow. There in the moonlight, three white stallions stood abreast of each other, harnessed to a magnificent gold and blue sleigh. A troika.

He hurried toward this apparition, having never seen a conveyance quite so marvelous in his life.

He ran his hand along the steaming, glistening flank of one the three enormous stallions. The restless horses were snorting great clouds of white steam from their flaring black nostrils and pawing the snow impatiently. As he approached the sleigh and ran his fingers over the bodywork, he could see that it was a dark blue decorated with shooting stars and comets, all the wonders of the heavens, carved into the wood and picked out in gold leaf.

“My God, Anastasia, what a lovely thing.”

“Isn’t it?” she said, climbing up into the sleigh. “It was a gift from Peter the Great to one of my more illustrious ancestors. Baron Sergei Korsakov gave Peter a billion rubles to help him defeat Louis XIV. Luckily for us, Peter won. As a reward, the Tsar also built for us the roof you’re going to be sleeping under tonight.”

Hawke laughed and slung his bag into the rear of the sleigh behind the leather-upholstered bench seat. The sleigh was smaller inside than he’d imagined, just room enough for two, filled with blankets of sable and mink. He climbed up and joined her inside, pulling a mink blanket over both of them.

“I’m fast,” she warned him, taking up the four reins.

“Fast is good,” Hawke said, watching her carefully and inspecting the unusual rig. He’d never seen a troika up close and was fascinated at the complicated arrangement of the horses. “Usually,” he added, striving for nonchalance.

“Shall we go?” she asked him, smiling, flicking the reins lightly.

“Ever onward.”

She spoke a few urgent words to her chargers, and they were off at breakneck speed, careening wildly through the trees and then racing down across the face of a broad, snow-covered meadow. At the bottom of the vast meadow, a narrow lane led off into the hills to the south. The tinkling sound of the many silver sleigh bells added to the magical quality of their journey, and Hawke was content to remain silent, sucking the cold air down into his lungs and watching the girl, the horses, and the white clouds scudding across the face of the fat yellow moon.

The center horse, between the wooden shafts, was clearly the lead. He was trotting. The two outside horses, with one rein apiece, were harnessed at slightly divergent angles so that all three animals were arranged like a fan. The horse on the far right was galloping furiously, while the one on the left was more coquettish. It was a style of coaching developed over many centuries, and it worked.

Hawke noticed she never used a whip but spoke to the three stallions, calling on each one continuously, urging them onward with a combination of flattery and invective.

“What are their names?” he asked her, leaning close so she could hear.

“Storm, Lightning, and Smoke. My favorite horses.”

“Which is which?”

“That’s my great galloping Storm on the right. Smoke does all the work in the center, and Lightning canters on the left. You! Storm! What are you looking at? Get on with you! Go!”

Presently, they came to a stop under a stand of birch trees at the top of a hill. Below them lay a small valley. There was a frozen lake, gleaming white, and standing along its banks was a magnificent palace, ablaze with light glowing from hundreds of windows. It was three stories of gold and grandeur, a mix of the best of Russian and European architecture, with galleries and flanking wings that stretched along the lakefront for at least 900 meters.

“My God, Anastasia,” Hawke said, gazing down at it, his eyes wide with delight.

“What is it, darling?”

“Don’t look now, but we’re living in some kind of bloody fairy tale.”

“I’ve been living in one since the afternoon I discovered a naked man sleeping on a beach. Might I tell you a great big secret?”

“Yes, you might.”

“I might be falling in love. Not with you, of course. But with my life again,” she said.

“Life’s lousy in bed, darling. You’ll need men for that.”

She laughed, kissed his cheek, and, snapping the reins, said, “Storm! Are you awake? Home! Fly away! Fly!”

40

All Beef Paddy liked to whistle while he worked. Now he was whistling one of his favorites, an oldie but goodie called “Be True to Your School.” Beach Boys. After he’d finished cleaning up over at the Bailey household, he’d gone back to the little riverside park the next morning, where he kept his truck hidden in the bushes, then hiked through the woods to his deserted motel and caught some Z’s. Must have slept six hours. He’d seen a couple of cruisers on the way, parked, uniforms having their morning coffee gabfest, and managed to avoid them.

Now he parked his white Happy Baker Shoppe truck, fitted with carefully counterfeited Kansas plates, in the Cottonwood Elementary School parking lot. He loaded up his dolly and hurried inside to make his delivery. Even though the entire school, like the parking lot, like the whole damn town, was completely empty by now, he had boxes and boxes of delicious doughnuts on his dolly.

Under the doughnuts, in the bottom of every box, was a little surprise. Just like Cracker Jacks, only much, much more surprising.

Paddy, still in his white Happy the Baker outfit, was not even slightly surprised to find one of the side doors to the school unlocked. Seemed like every door in town was open, half of the ones he’d tried, anyway. He was on his third elementary school and had only Central High School left to do before he, too, got out of town in a hurry. A busy baker is a happy baker. Busy, busy, busy.

Paddy had waited patiently all day, till the police had got everyone cleared out. Then he’d started driving around, making his doughnut deliveries. He’d been driving all night, all over town, lights out, of course. Office buildings, shopping malls, the town hall, the water works, you name it. It had been fun. He loved playing cat and mouse with the local cops. They were having a tough time, trying to do a murder investigation in the middle of an emergency evacuation. He’d counted on that, and he’d been right.

They had cruisers out patrolling the streets, mostly looking for stragglers, not coldblooded murderers, and Paddy had gotten really good at avoiding them. If he even saw headlights coming, he’d pull into a lot or just to the side of the road and slump down below the windows. He had his little snub-nose.38 handy in case anybody got nosy, but so far, nobody had.

Everybody had left town in pretty much of hurry when, twelve hours ago, the bodies had been found. And the cell he’d left on Monie’s body. Then the police had started cruising up and down the streets of Salina with loudspeakers blaring, giving the order to evacuate because of some unspecified threat to the town. He had his radio tuned to a local talk show. Rumors were flying. Some callers said it was a problem out at the fertilizer factory, some said it was a natural-gas problem, and a few even said it was bird flu. Everybody was busy packing up and getting the hell out of Dodge.

What nobody was saying was that it was terrorism. The police were mum on that subject. Besides, terrorism just didn’t seem to be on Salina’s radar, and you could see why. It was the most white-bread place Paddy had ever been to. Very few raisins in this batter. And the tallest building in town was, what, ten stories maybe, not exactly World Trade Center material. Who the hell would want to blow up Salina, take out a freaking Kmart? Puh-leeze, right?

These al-Qaeda creeps were crazy, you could tell the people of Salina thought, but they weren’t crazy enough to have Salina, Kansas, high on their priority target list.

By now, the police were busy looking into the Arm of God and Tehran connection, Paddy thought, laughing to himself as he drove his bakery truck west. He cruised under Interstate 135 on West Magnolia, headed for the deserted parking lot of the Salina Municipal Airport. It looked sad and empty, the airport did, like a spot that could use a few doughnuts.

I-135, the interstate that ran north and south, and I-70, the one that ran east and west, had immediately turned into parking lots as 40,000-plus people tried to blow out of town at once. Now the interstates, too, were empty. Highway Patrol had shut them down, ten miles outside the city limits. All roads leading into town had been closed when the evacuation warning went out.

As he wheeled his dolly down the school’s center hallway, rolling past all the empty classrooms, he liked the echo of his song off the linoleum tiles of the long, empty corridor. There were Christmas decorations everywhere, and he sort of got into the spirit. It was fun having an entire town all to yourself. Sort of like being invisible. He started whistling “Jingle Bell Rock,” getting into it.

He entered the principal’s office and saw that they’d all left their Wizard computers right on their desks, so no delivery there. He strolled next door to the science lab and saw that there were still a few computers at the workstations, but most of them seemed to have disappeared along with the kids. So, he placed a half-dozen doughnut boxes on the dissecting tables and moved on to the library, where he knew most of the computers would be-that is, if there were any left.

His deliveries complete, he headed back to the truck with an empty dolly. It was now just after five o’clock in the morning, and the sun was breaking over the little town of Salina. Paddy had been here, what, a week, staying at a Motel 6 on the outskirts of town, following the mayor around, scoping out her daily routine.

He’d also been watching the local news, keeping abreast of the situation so he could report in. Now that the country knew about what was going on, it was nonstop news on CNN and Fox. But they weren’t letting any new crews inside the barricades surrounding the town, so all you were left with was talking heads who didn’t know what the hell their heads were talking about.

He climbed up behind the wheel and cranked the engine. He was just pulling out of the lot, planning to hit the high school over on East Crawford Street, when the flashers lit up in his rearview, and he knew party time was over. He smiled, got the little snub-nose pistol out of the pocket in his baker’s jacket, and stamped on the go pedal. No way he could outrun the local PD’s Crown Vic, but he could get where he wanted to get to, at least. He didn’t speed, just kept going, acting like he didn’t know there was a squad car right on his ass, blinkers and sirens going.

“Pull over!” he heard from the loudspeaker. Pull over? Were they crazy? The whole town was going to go up in smoke in a nanosecond or so!

He hung a right on East Iron Street. It led all the way up a hill to a town park he’d staked out earlier. It was just some trees, a creek, and a baseball diamond, but it sat up high overlooking the little town, and he thought it would be a perfect place to bring his mission to an exciting conclusion. He slowed going up the hill, taking his time, watching the rosy dawn spread across the doomed village. The cops dropped back, content to follow him up the hill, see what the hell Happy the Baker was up to. They were probably running his plates, too. Which was good. They’d see the plates belonged on a 1973 Chevy truck, just like the one he was driving. The devil was in the details.

It was five-thirty A.M.

The deadline his guys in Iran had put in the cell phone he’d left at the mayor’s house was six A.M. Central Standard Time. Half an hour. Plenty of time to enjoy the moment.

He crested the hill and drove under the little arch that said “Hickory Hill Park,” his hideout. He wound around a little, cops right behind him, until he came to the spot he’d chosen that first evening, before he started stalking the mayor and her family. It was what they called a scenic overlook, and he parked right out at the edge of the little lot there. Then he killed the motor, slipped the snubbie into his pocket, and sat there waiting for the fuzz to come bust him.

Come to Papa, boys.

41

He watched the cops exit the cruiser in his rearview. They got out with their guns drawn, approaching him from the rear on either side of the truck. When the guy on his side was abreast of the driver’s window, he rolled it down, gave the young cop a big smile, and said, “Was I going too fast?”

“Sir, I’d like your driver’s license and registration, please.”

“Absolutely, officer,” Paddy said, handing him the fake license and registration papers.

“Your real name is Happy? That right?”

“Yessir. Named after my old man. He was Happy, too.”

“Sir,” the cop said, looking from his license photo to him and back again, “are you aware that this town is under an evacuation order?”

“I was wondering where the hell everyone went. Evacuation, huh? What’s going on?”

“How did you get this vehicle past the police barricades, sir?”

“Weren’t any barricades up when I arrived.”

“And when was that?”

“Few days ago.”

“And in the meantime?”

“You mean since I arrived?”

“Correct.”

“I’ve been asleep.”

“You’ve been asleep for three days?”

“Correct.”

“Where?”

“At the Motel 6. Real nice place.”

“Sir, no one sleeps for three whole days.”

“I do. I get these dang migraines. Once I get ’em, I just pop a bunch of Dalmane pills and nod on out. If I wake up, I take another handful. Wham, I’m out like a light. Hell, I just woke up a few hours ago.”

“And what exactly are you doing?”

“Delivering doughnuts.”

“To an empty town?”

“Well, see, here’s my thinking on that. Are you familiar with the franchise system?”

“Franchise system.”

“Yeah. My thought is this. I’m a baker. I bake the best damn doughnuts west of the Mississippi. And my business plan is to take my product direct to the consumer. I’ve delivered product in Junction City, Wichita, hell, all the way to Topeka. Don’t charge a nickel. I just deliver the boxes and let folks discover them for themselves. Now, I’ve got my Web-site address right on top of every box. People eat them, like them, and want more. That’s my strategy. Right now, I’m a one-man distribution system. But pretty soon, hell, folks are going to be knocking my door down. I’m going to open up a string of Happy Baker Doughnut Shoppes from here to Canada.”

“They do smell pretty darn good back there.”

“You see? That’s just what I’m saying! And you know what? They taste better than they smell. I’ve got some fresh glazed back there, you and your partner want to try a couple.”

“Hey, Gene, you want a warm doughnut?” the young cop said to his older, and much fatter, partner.

“Damn right I do, Andy,” Gene said. “You can smell them things a mile away.”

“There you go,” Paddy said with a smile. “Let me go around and open up the truck. We’ll have us a nice hot breakfast up here on the hill. I got a thermos of steaming black New Orleans French Quarter coffee back there, too.”

“Well, I guess we can do that. Not much else we can do. Andy, go back and get on the radio, will you? Tell them we’ve got a gentleman up here needs assistance, and we’ll be standing by in case, you know, anything happens.”

Happy climbed out and opened up the back. He slid the loading platform out and opened up a box of glazed, a box of cream-filled, and a box of jelly.

The two cops dug in, and while they did, he poured all three of them steaming cups of black coffee.

“Dang!” Andy said, polishing off a glazed in two bites. “That is one hell of a doughnut.”

“You feel happy, Andy?”

“I sure do.”

“Good. ’Cause that’s my new advertising slogan. ‘Eat Happy.’ You like it?”

“Love it. Can I have another one of the cream-filled?”

Ten minutes later, they were all sitting on the platform, talking football, whether or not the Chiefs would make the playoffs, and, of course, the war on terror. Andy said he thought the whole evacuation thing was a crock. Something dreamed up to scare ordinary Americans and make a laughingstock out of a whole town. That was the town consensus, he said.

“Yeah?” Paddy said. “Well, maybe you’re right. Will you excuse me a sec? I got to get my smokes. Call me crazy. I can’t drink my morning coffee without my smokes.”

“Go ahead. We’ll hold down the fort back here. See if the town blows up,” the young cop, Andy, said.

“Yeah,” Gene said. “I can hardly wait. What a damn deal we got here. If she blows, we’re screwed. If she doesn’t, we’re a national joke.”

It was five-fifty-five A.M. when Paddy unlocked the glove compartment and took out the rectangular black plastic box that had been sent from Moscow, through Iran, and delivered to him by courier in Miami a week ago today. It represented the very latest in remote-detonation technology. Every Zeta machine built had a GPS broadcast device built in, as well as the eight ounces of puttylike explosive called Hexagon. The machines also broadcast an ID number, much like the squawk system used by aircraft. So you always knew which machines were where before you decided to arm them or detonate them.

The box Paddy held in his hand contained dual microprocessors in addition to the radio-signal command that would cause the Zetas to explode. The system was currently preprogrammed to detonate only those devices now inside the city limits of Salina, Kansas.

“Hey, Happy,” Andy called, “c’mon back. You’re going to miss her if she goes.”

“Yeah, right,” Gene said, laughing, “Miss the whole shebang. The whole damn shooting match.”

It was five-fifty-nine A.M., coming up on six A.M.

“I won’t miss it, Andy. I can’t find my damn smokes, that’s all. You got any?”

“Hell, no. Cops can’t smoke for insurance reasons. Besides, my wife’d up and kill me she thought I was puffing on them cancer sticks. Why, she’d-”

Paddy was walking back toward the rear of the truck with his finger on the button, eyes glued to the red digital display that was spinning down to zero.

Now.

You could feel the ground shaking, even up here on Hickory Hill. The three men stood and stared down in wonder at the little town as it exploded. It was like watching a movie of a building coming down, only it was all of the buildings, all of the neighborhoods, and they were all coming down at once, sending a huge cloud of smoke rolling skyward as the noise and sheer force of the blast came rolling up the hill and rocked the truck, spilling the coffee from all three cups and sending the doughnut boxes flying off the back of the truck.

“Holy shit!” Andy screamed, walking out to the edge of the overlook. “They freakin’ did it! The goddamn A-rabs blew up our whole goddamn town!”

Fires broke out everywhere. Power lines sparked, ignited, and came down, writhing like angry snakes in the streets. Underground gas lines exploded up through asphalt intersections, the power station was sparking into yet another inferno, and every last filling station in town had turned into a brilliant fireball that climbed into the dawn sky and lit up what used to be Salina like the Fourth of July fireworks every summer up at Hickory Hill.

Paddy had his snubbie out, was looking down the barrel at the backs of the two Kansas policemen. He could easily put a bullet in each of them, shots to the back of the head, walk away. He raised the pistol, put a pound of pressure on the trigger…and then changed his mind.

Having admired his work from afar, Paddy climbed up into his truck and stuck the key into the ignition. He had a long way to go and a short time to get there. He was catching the next thing smoking out of Topeka to Miami. There was a lot to be done before Pushkin lifted off in a matter of hours.

He left Officers Andy and Gene standing there at the edge of the bluff, looking down at what was left of the town they’d both grown up in, tears already drying on their cheeks.

Happy had mixed emotions about sparing the lives of Officers Andy and Gene of Salina PD. But, but, but. He was a professional. He didn’t kill people for fun. Only for money. Or for a good reason. And he could see no good reason to off these two guys. If the two cops identified a crazy baker delivering doughnuts to a deserted town, so what? He’d be long gone before anyone could tie him to the multiple explosions that had flattened the place. And he seriously doubted anybody ever would.

Anyway, by the time anybody had a clue what had blown Salina to smithereens, the world would be an entirely different place. A lot of America might look like the blackened ruins smoldering at the bottom of the hill. And Happy? Hell, he’d be sailing the skies above the blue Atlantic, enjoying the many pleasures of the floating pussy palace on what promised to be a very interesting voyage to Stockholm.

The Happy Baker, his mission accomplished, silently rolled away, gone in a flash.

Taking care of business, baby.

TCB.

42

It was gone.

The whole damn town, just flat gone.

Standing beneath one of the giant monitors mounted on a granite lobby wall, Stokely and Fancha, along with everybody else, were watching CNN images of a small Kansas town that no longer existed. Rumors were flying.

The buzz inside the teeming Miami Herald lobby was this, it was that; it was al-Qaeda, it was Hezbollah, no, it was the Iranians, some kind of small nuke, a dirty bomb, hell, no, it was simply a main gas line under the town that had blown, a fertilizer factory, some even theorized a fertilizer bomb, set off by some home-grown disciples of Timothy McVeigh, antigovernment militia still simmering over Waco and Ruby Ridge.

The real truth was, nobody knew what the hell had happened to Salina, Kansas. Especially not the talking heads on CNN, in Stoke’s opinion, anyway. Anybody who did know, wasn’t talking to the media.

On the oversized monitors throughout the lobby, the all-too-familiar banner “Breaking News” was running beneath devastating live pictures of what used to be the little town of Salina, Kansas, population 42,000. Salina was now a charred, smoking ruin, with nothing standing but a few brick chimneys and a blackened water tower.

“What’s this all about, Stokely?” Fancha asked, a worried frown on her face. “Terrorists?”

“I don’t know, baby. Could be terrorists. Maybe just a chemical plant or an underground natural-gas main. Could be anything. But we’ve got to be getting aboard, anyway. We’ll get more scoop soon as we’re settled in our stateroom.”

“A whole town? Just gone?” she said, staring at the monitor. “Unbelievable.”

“Yeah, but the town was completely evacuated before, right? So somebody knows something, and whatever it is, they ain’t saying yet.”

One thing Stokely Jones did know for sure: this might turn out to be very, very bad news. For America. For the whole damn world. Say it wasn’t a simple accident, gas main or whatever. Some terror group takes out an entire American town? That’s a message, no matter who sent it. But he’d cleared this trip with Brock, check out Tsar and besides, he’d promised Fancha he’d accompany her, and a promise was a promise.

He gave her waist a squeeze.

“Let’s go, baby, this is going to be fun.”

She was nervous as a cat about this trip, and she was counting on him, big time. Hell, he’d been smiling since the second he woke up that morning, making breakfast, making bad jokes, trying hard all day to keep things upbeat. He took her elbow and steered her toward the short lines waiting at the elevators to the rooftop. They were a little late, and most of the passengers were already onboard.

“You believe all the famous faces we’re rubbing elbows with?” he said.

“You don’t rub elbows with faces, Stokely.”

“You don’t?”

“Faces don’t have elbows. People have elbows.”

“True enough.”

Still, the lobby was celebrity-packed, filled to overflowing with the rich and famous and their entourages, all of the remaining people who would shortly be boarding the giant airship Pushkin for her maiden voyage to Stockholm and the Nobel awards ceremony four days from now.

“You excited, sugar?” he asked her, leaning down to whisper in her ear.

“Now that you’re coming, I am. I only feel safe when you’re next to me, Stoke. I need you by my side. That’s the Lord’s truth.”

“I’m there for you, baby, you know that.”

“What about you, Stoke? Aren’t you even a little excited?”

“Honey, you know me. I only got two emotions. Hungry and horny. You see me without an erection, quick, make me a sandwich. Hey, look. You see who I see coming through the door? The Marlboro Man himself.”

The vice president of the United States, a tall, rugged-looking rancher who hailed from the western slope of the Colorado Rockies, was entering the lobby. Tom McCloskey had come to see his wife, Bonnie, off. The veep was originally supposed to go on the voyage himself, but something had come up at the last minute. Stoke had been shaving early that morning when he’d heard on the radio that the vice president’s wife would now be traveling alone.

Now Stoke figured it was maybe this disaster in Kansas that was keeping McCloskey close to home. Washington probably knew more than they were saying? Security was tight, crew-cut guys talking into their sleeves everywhere. Hell, Stoke had never seen so many Secret Service personnel in one room in his life. “M &M is in the lobby, moving to the elevator bank,” he heard an agent say. M &M, Stoke knew, was the Secret Service call sign for McCloskey. It was based on a moniker the agents had given McCloskey when he first arrived at the White House, Marlboro Man.

Of course, any number of Washington types, senators and their wives, were on the trip. Congressmen, God knows who all, but players, mostly. He saw the governator of California and his pretty Kennedy wife, big-time business magnates like Michael Eisner and that Apple guy, Steve Jobs, people like that. And there were Hollywood people, of course, big-time producers and a few movie stars, a few he even recognized.

Plus, you had all the geeks and brainiacs. The Nobel Prize winners and nominees from around the world and their families. A lot of former Nobel laureates had been invited, too, according to the fancy formal invitation Fancha had received at her home on Low Key. Stoke had actually read it. This trip would be the biggest congregation of Nobel laureates ever assembled.

You could understand the excited buzz in the air. Hell, you had media everywhere, celebs mixing it up with geniuses, people thinking and acting as if they were part of history. And they were. The first ocean crossing of the world’s biggest airship, the largest vessel to ever cross the Atlantic. Kinda like the maiden voyage of the Titanic, back in the day, Stoke was thinking, but he quickly shoved that bad thought aside.

They’d finally made it to the front of the line, next ones to board the elevator. There were monitors on the walls here, too, some kind of a press conference going on. Stoke ignored the hubbub and listened carefully, but there still didn’t seem to be much new information.

Clearly, nobody, including the state trooper captain in Kansas, had a clue yet to what had happened. He was now holding forth at a podium on a hill overlooking the town.

“Stoke, did you remember to pack your-”

“Hush a second, baby, I want to hear this.”

“Sir, first question,” a young female reporter said. “How’s the mayor doing? We hear she’s suddenly gone into seclusion.”

“That’s correct. Mayor Bailey was taken violently ill sometime during the night. She’s at an undisclosed location with her family now, and they have asked that the media please respect their privacy.”

“Where are they, sir?”

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.”

“No truth to the rumor that there was foul play involved? That her disappearance is somehow tied to all this?”

“None at all.”

“Sir, moving on from the mayor, how long ago did you get the order to evacuate?” an NBC talking head asked.

“The first call came in at four o’clock this morning, Central time.”

“Who made that call, sir?” another reporter asked.

“That would be the governor. The second call came direct from FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.”

“And what did the FBI tell you?”

“To evacuate the town immediately.”

“Why?”

“There was a threat.”

“From whom?”

“Didn’t say. Unspecified. But credible, that’s what they said. Credible.”

“Al-Qaeda?”

“Like I say, unspecified.”

“And you were able to evacuate everyone in time?”

“Yessir, we were. Salina PD, working with my folks, did an outstanding job. I’ve got the Salina police chief arriving here in about twenty minutes, and a couple of his officers. They were the last ones patrolling inside the town before she blew. They’d be happy to answer-”

The elevator doors slid open, and Stoke and Fancha moved quickly to the rear. Stoke remembered that it opened at the back when it reached the roof. When it did, he and Fancha stepped out into the brilliant Miami sunshine and looked up at the moored airship, her gleaming hull strung with red, white, and blue bunting. Stoke didn’t say anything, but he thought the stars and stripes sort of clashed with the big red Russian stars painted on the ship’s tail sections.

There were velvet ropes on either side of the red carpet leading to the moving stairs at the stern of the ship, lots of cameras pointing and clicking as he and Fancha walked by. Not clicking at him, at Fancha.

TEN MINUTES LATER, a white-coated steward was showing them their stateroom on the promenade deck, portside. It was a beautiful room, paneled in walnut, with a king-size bed and a sofa, table, and chairs sitting under three big opening portholes flooded with light and blue sky. On the coffee table was a huge arrangement of white flowers with a little envelope on a plastic pitchfork. Also a silver bucket with a bottle of Roederer Cristal champagne on ice. Hollywood, Stoke thought. Had to be, right?

He handed the steward a twenty and asked where the TV was. The young fellow picked up a remote from the bedside table and hit a button, and an oil painting over the dresser slid up into the ceiling revealing a flat-screen Toshiba.

The steward bowed, said something in Russian, and left. Fancha, who seemed happy enough with their room and her flowers, began unpacking, and Stoke sat on the edge of the bed, figuring out the remote. Finally, he got Fox News, live from Salina, breaking news. News was always breaking, Stoke thought. Problem was, there was nobody left on the planet smart enough to fix it.

The state trooper had turned it over to the police chief, who seemed to be wrapping up his remarks. Stoke was sorry he’d missed the chief’s remarks. This was a big story, and he was about to be completely out of the loop for the next four days. He wanted to know what the hell was going on.

The chief was saying, “Thank you, and now I’d like to turn it over to two of my finest young officers. These two young fellas standing behind me were the last two on patrol inside the city. They’d be happy to take your questions. This is Officer Andy Sisko, and Patrolman Gene Southey. Officers?”

Stoke saw two uniformed patrolmen, clean-cut Midwest guys, step up to the podium, both looking a little nervous about all the cameras, being on national television.

“Officer Sisko, you were the last man to leave Salina?” a reporter called out.

“Yessir, I was. Me and Officer Southey were assigned to the last sweep.”

“You’re certain the town was completely evacuated? There were no remaining civilians?”

“Well, that’s right. Our fellow officers and the staties did a fine job. They made sure they got everybody out. Everybody.”

“Dogs and cats?”

“Very difficult. Most people took their pets, if they could find them. They left in pretty much of a hurry. So I’m sure some stray animals got left.”

“Officer Southey, even when a hurricane is bearing down on a town, we saw this in Key West last year, you still get a large number of people refusing to leave their homes. You didn’t see any of that in Salina?”

“No, sir, we did not. Folks here were real cooperative. Everybody just loaded up and vamoosed. We did run across one fella, though. He was still out there on the street, but we got him out in time, too.”

“Someone who’d refused to leave his home?”

“No, sir, he was making deliveries.”

“Deliveries? To a deserted town? What was he delivering?”

“Doughnuts. Bakery goods. He had a truck full.”

Stoke leaned forward on the edge of the bed, turning up the volume with the remote.

“You mean you had someone delivering doughnuts in an empty town? Under an emergency evacuation order?”

“Yessir. He’d slept through all the warnings is what he told us. Didn’t know anything at all about any warnings, any evacuation. Just going about his business.”

“Do you have his name?”

“Sure do. His name was Happy. Happy the Baker. Nice fella. Gave us breakfast on his truck right about here where I’m standing now. My partner and I had coffee and doughnuts with him right before she blew.”

Stoke’s jaw dropped, and, eyes riveted to the screen, he said to Fancha, “Happy the Baker, baby. That big guy who delivered the cake at the birthday blast here in Miami.”

But Fancha was already in the head with the door closed, changing her outfit. Didn’t hear him.

Stoke’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket.

“Hello?” he said, flicking it open.

It was Harry Brock. Calling from Moscow, where it had to be the middle of the night.

“Stokely, you watching this? Television? CNN?”

“Yeah, Harry, I’m watching. Happy the Baker.”

“Damn right, our old pal Happy the Baker from the birthday party in the Grove. Jesus Henry Christ. Happy the freaking bomb baker. He blew up that town, Stoke. That’s all there is to it. Why else would he be there?”

“Why the hell does he blow up a whole town?”

“Good question. How soon can you get out there?”

“To Salina?”

“Of course, Salina. You’re the only one on the planet who knows this guy on sight. Knows what he looks like, talks like. I need you out there now, Stoke. Is there a problem?”

“I’m onboard the Pushkin, about to take off. Check out this Tsar operation on the airship going to Stockholm. With Fancha. I told you about it. She wants me-”

“Stoke, listen carefully. Ever since the party, I’ve been looking hard at your boy Happy. He is a Russian-American. A made mafiya assassin from Brooklyn. His real name is Paddy Strelnikov. He’s undercover KGB, is what they’re saying at Langley. The bombing of Salina was intended to look like an Iranian operation. A group calling itself Arm of God. But it’s not Iranian, damn it, that doesn’t make any sense. The ayatollahs are scared shitless of the U.S. right now. So, maybe it really is a goddamn KGB operation. Fucking Russians, I wouldn’t put it past them these days. Anyway, look, I want you to get out there and find Happy’s fat ass or find out where he went. Find him, and bring him in. The Russians might be making some kind of move, Stoke, a big move. This might be part of it. That’s all I can tell you now, okay?”

“I’m on my way.”

“Get this guy, Stoke. He’s critical. One more thing. Before he blew up the town, he murdered the mayor and her family in their beds. Husband. Two little kids. Left a cell phone with a phony Arabic message on one of the corpses. That information has not been released to local law enforcement.”

“Christ,” Stoke said.

“You’re going?”

“I’m gone.”

The phone went dead in his hand just as Fancha opened the door to the head. She’d changed into a beautiful turquoise skirt and blouse. She’d never looked prettier. That smile, the one he loved, the one that meant she was happy. She spun around, and her skirt flared out like a ballerina’s.

“Hey, baby, why isn’t that champagne opened yet? This girl is thirsty.”

“Oh, yeah. I should have opened that. Sorry.”

“Stokely, honey, you don’t look so good. Is something wrong?”

“Yes, baby. Something is wrong.”

“How wrong?”

“Really wrong. Bad wrong.”

“You’re not going with me.”

“No, honey, I’m not. I can’t.”

She turned around and went back inside the bathroom and closed the door. Didn’t slam it. Just closed it. And locked it.

Stoke picked up his unpacked suitcase and rapped softly on the bathroom door.

“Fancha? I’m sorry, baby. Let me explain.”

No response. He pressed his forehead against the door and spoke softly.

“Baby? I’m so sorry. Let me just kiss you good-bye. Okay? Please.”

Nothing.

“It’s business, honey. National security. What am I supposed to do?”

He could hear her in there, sobbing.

He left the stateroom without another word, pulling the door closed behind him, seriously disgruntled.

War isn’t hell, he thought to himself, charging angrily down the corridor to the airship’s aft elevators.

Hell, no.

Sometimes it was much, much worse.

43

Korsakov’s winter palace was plainly visible now, countless lighted windows winking through the dark, snow-laden forests. The blisteringly fast troika flew across an arched wooden bridge spanning the frozen river. The sleigh went airborne for a long moment at the top, and Hawke found the speed, the fierce cold, the ringing sleigh bells, and the snow-spangled forests sparkling in the starlight exhilarating.

He glanced at Anastasia, sliding his cold hand under the fur throw and placing it on her warm thigh. She slid closer to him, never taking her eyes off the hindquarters of the three flying horses. She watched their every movement, like a pilot casting her eye over her instrument panel, and whispered corrections as they flew over the landscape at impossible speeds. Hawke was mesmerized by her art, her precise skills at something he’d never known existed.

“How much of this enchanted forest is Korsakov property?” Hawke asked. For the last half-hour or so, there had been endless miles of dry-stacked stone walls and small cottages in neatly fenced fields. Now a high yellow wall lined the left side of the snowy lane.

Asia laughed. “Alex, you were on Korsakov land two hours before your train arrived at Tvas station.”

“Ah. Sizable holdings.”

She cast a quick smile in reply and flicked the reins.

“Not really. We used to control all of Siberia-Storm! What’s gotten into you? Pay attention! Lightning, get along with you! Turn! Turn! We’re home at last!”

Nothing had prepared Hawke for the sheer grandeur of the Korsakov winter palace.

The troika suddenly careened off the snowbound country road and raced under a great arch of stone and wrought iron, the entrance a heavily filigreed black arch surmounted by golden two-headed eagles. The horses, now in sight of their stables, surged ahead beneath the snow-packed allée of trees leading to the palace.

The sense of power and opulence only grew as they got closer. It seemed too vast to be practicable as any kind of home. Hawke couldn’t even guess at how many rooms, but it dwarfed a European’s notion of parliaments and museums. And every window was ablaze with light.

“A party?” Hawke asked. “Just for me?”

“A dinner and concert,” Anastasia said. “Five hundred guests.”

“Only five hundred? Cozy.”

“Half of Moscow is here.”

“Really? Which half?”

“The half that counts. The half holding the reins of power. My father means something to this country, Alex. He stands for the New Russia. Strong, powerful, fearless. They revere him here, Alex. He’s like a-a god. Like a-”

“Tsar?”

“That’s not as far-fetched as you might think.”

Hawke looked at her a moment and decided to let that one pass. “Are you as hungry as I am? Near starvation?”

“We’re too late for the Christmas feast, but we can enjoy some of the concert, perhaps. And no, the party is definitely not for you. We’re celebrating Papa’s Nobel award and the coming debut of his new symphony.”

The sleigh careened into a large snowy courtyard, and Anastasia reigned in her three chargers. The trio swerved to a stop at the foot of a wide set of steps, the runners throwing up a great shower of glistening snow. A host of liveried footmen instantly surrounded them, helping both Anastasia and Hawke to step down from the ice-encrusted sleigh and whisking Hawke’s luggage away. Considering its contents, he would have preferred to carry it himself, but it was too late.

Hawke stood for a moment, stomping his boots on the hard-packed snow, trying to get some feeling back into his feet.

Anastasia stood stroking Storm’s mane as grooms covered the other two horses with blankets and led them away to the stables. She was quietly giving orders to a tall bearded fellow, obviously the man in charge. Once they were alone again, mounting the broad stone staircase to the main entrance, she whispered, “I instructed Anatoly to put you in the Delft Suite on the third floor. It adjoins my own rooms with a connecting door. I hope you don’t find that too forward of me.”

“Forward, certainly, but perhaps not too forward.”

She took his hand and hurried him up the steps. Crimson-uniformed servants with gold braid and bright brass buttons swung the double doors open wide. Hawke saw a massive illuminated Christmas tree standing at the center of the gilded and white-marbled entrance hall. The ceiling vaulted four stories above it, upheld by fluted columns the size of grain silos. Two curving marble staircases led to the second and third stories, where piano music tinkled, mixed with the muted laughter of hundreds of guests.

HAWKE ENTERED HIS own room and found it surprisingly and refreshingly small. The walls were entirely covered in blue and white Dutch tiles. Peter the Great, Hawke knew, had been a huge admirer of all things Dutch. Hawke’s room was, so Anastasia had informed him, the very room in which Tsar Peter slept whenever he was a guest of the Korsakovs. A cozy fire had been lit in the tiled Dutch oven in the corner. He removed his ice-coated black greatcoat and quickly shed all of his sour-smelling travel attire, washed himself with hot water from a bedside jug, and dressed.

He’d found a set of perfectly tailored evening clothes laid out on his four-poster bed, and to his amazement, the shirt, trousers, and waistcoat, everything, fit perfectly. Nestled at the foot of the bed was a pair of black velvet evening slippers with the Korsakov coat of arms embroidered in gold thread. Unsurprisingly, they fit.

He saw his Gladstone bag on a settee in a darkened corner. He crossed the room and checked to see that the combination locks were intact and that the bag containing his weapons had not been tampered with. It seemed that it had not; at least, the number combination he always left the two locks set at had not been altered: 222, February 22, his late parents’ anniversary date.

He was, he assumed, an honored guest of this great household. But then again, this was still Russia.

Suddenly bone tired, he kicked off the slippers and stretched out fully dressed on the vast down-filled bed. The flickering firelight cast cartoon shadows on the underside of the bed’s canopy. It had been a long, uncomfortable voyage from Bermuda, and he was overcome by an overpowering desire to sleep here, now, submerged in all this sumptuous featherbed comfort.

At some point, Anastasia rapped on his door loudly enough to wake him. She was wearing a deeply low-cut gown of midnight-blue silk, her hair in ribbons and her throat wreathed in sparkling diamonds. The deliciously warm scent of Dior wafting up from her pale white bosom was almost overpowering.

“I thought I’d lost you,” she said.

“Mmm,” he said, unable to think of a real word.

He thought perhaps he’d slept a few minutes. A glance at his watch showed he’d been out cold for more than an hour.

“Comfortable?” she asked, stepping inside and taking him into her arms.

“Mmm. Very.”

“White tie becomes you, Alexander. You should wear it more often.”

He kissed her upturned lips, surprised at their warmth and softness. He pulled her to him, crushing her half-exposed bosom against his chest, inhaling the sweetness of her hair, her skin.

“Comfortable except for the bed,” he said, whispering into her ear. “Mattress is a bit firm for my taste. I’d like to try yours.”

“Down, boy,” she said, feeling his erection hard against her thighs. “We have to put in an appearance. I want you to meet my father tonight. I think he’s expecting it. And my brothers are dying to meet you. Come along, now, Alex. Don’t tarry.”

He followed her down the grand gilded staircase and found himself moving in Anastasia’s wake from one glittering room and mirrored gallery to another. They were in search of her two younger brothers, Sergei and Maxim. The sounds of stringed and percussion instruments, clarinets, and French horns, Count Korsakov’s new symphony, could be heard throughout the rooms they passed through. The twins, she told Alex, were not fond of symphonic music. They liked hard Russian rock, a group called the Apples, on their iPods. Nashe, they called this music. It meant “ours.” Western rock was definitely over in the New Russia. Western everything was over.

“They could well be playing in here,” she said.

“Playing? How old are they?”

“Twelve. Twins, you see.”

“And their mother? Your mother?”

“She died in childbirth. The boys barely made it. We were lucky they survived.”

“I’m so sorry, Asia. I’d no idea.”

THEY ENTERED THE great Hall, where the ceremonial feast clearly had just taken place. Guests and servants had long since departed, but the enormous baroque room was still full of wonders. The barrel-vaulted hall was stunning in its abundance of mirrors and glittering gold. An unbounded sea of mirrors in gilded frames were reflected in other mirrors, creating a magical, endless space in which hundreds of wax candles still burning in the spaces between the windows and the mirrors gleamed.

“Perhaps they’ve escaped to the kitchens,” Anastasia said. “Wait here for a moment, and I’ll go and fetch them.”

Hawke paused at the table, picking up a spotless crystal goblet and deciding to fill it with blood-red wine from one of the many silver carafes. He sipped and found it delicious. So, too, was the leg of roast duck he removed from a half-eaten carcass and began to gnaw at ravenously.

The table, which stretched to shadowy infinity down the hall, had not been completely cleared. The white linen tablecloths were hung with ribbons of many colors and glorious rosettes. In the center of the table towered a massive construction resplendent with symbolic sculptures, monograms and crowns of various ancient courts of Europe.

The massive carved silver candelabras, which marched down the table into the shadows, were all still blazing with candles. Around the bases were woven Christmas holly and berries, artificial flowers made of red silk. Fresh flowers covered the branches of tiny potted trees or were woven into garlands that hung above miniature fountains, the waters still playing right there on the table.

Candlelight gleamed, reflected in the gold and silver tableware and on the great tureens, whose lids took the shapes of boars’ heads, stags, or pheasants. This magnificent table, Hawke decided, was itself a work of art. And perhaps a political statement as well. Such grandeur would surely reignite for Count Korsakov’s guests the dreams and glories of an ancient Russia that no longer existed but had once reigned triumphant.

This was the table, Hawke decided, not of a mere billionaire nor of a wizard, a genius of science, art, and music.

This was the table of a Tsar.

Did Count Korsakov dream of Tsardom? Is that what Anastasia had been trying to tell him in the sleigh? The restoration of the Tsars was not wildly implausible, Hawke knew. There was vast nostalgia in the country for the power and glory that the times of the Tsars represented.

The last of the Tsars, the Romanovs, were feeble, weak, and wholly incapable of ruling this huge country. But the Korsakovs, based on what he knew and had seen, were clearly powerful enough to do just about anything they damn well pleased.

C had been correct, he mused. He had needed to come here, needed to see all of this for himself. He could sense enormous changes coming in this country, a seismic shift in the balance of-

“Look out!” he heard Anastasia shout.

Something, some fat silver missile, was headed directly for his head.

He ducked and watched the thing go by. It was a flying model of an airship. About three feet long, it had Nazi swastikas emblazoned on the tail, and the red lights on the fuselage were blinking. You could even hear the faint whirr of its multiple propellers as it sailed away.

“What the hell?” Hawke said.

“It’s a race,” Anastasia said, suddenly at his side. “Watch out, Hawke, here comes the Hindenburg.”

Now a second radio-controlled miniature airship came weaving its way between two of the flaming candelabras, the ill-fated zeppelin in hot pursuit of ZR-1, the German airship that had caused such destruction in London.

“Sergei, Maxim, please land your craft and come down and introduce yourselves to Alexander Hawke. He’s our guest, so be polite.”

“Where the hell are they?” Hawke asked, peering into the gloom. He couldn’t see another soul in the cavernous candlelit room.

“Up there,” Anastasia said, pointing to a balcony high above them. It was clearly where the choir and the dinner musicians had entertained during dinner.

Two identical boys leaned over the railing and waved down at Hawke. They were both good-looking, and both had shoulder-length blond hair.

“How do you do, sir?” the twins said in unison and in very good English. “Sorry, we’re racing!” one added.

“Very well, indeed,” Hawke called up to them. “Don’t mind me. Keep racing. Who’s winning?”

“The Hindenburg,” one excited boy said. “She’s about to lap ZR-1! For the third time,” he added, laughing.

Hawke laughed, too, and said, “Come on, now, ZR-1, don’t humiliate yourself!”

Anastasia took his arm, saying, “I’ve located Father by telephone. He’s finished his concert, sadly, but is having brandy in his study. He’s most anxious to meet you.”

And off they went.

44

“Lord Alexander Hawke,” Count Ivan Korsakov said, striding across the Persian carpet, his smile as warm and radiant as the fire in the hearth. “I can’t tell you how delighted I am to meet you. My daughter has told me so much about you, I feel we’ve known each other for years.”

“Count Korsakov,” Hawke said, shaking the man’s hand. “The reverse is also true, sir. I’m honored. Most kind of you to invite me.”

“Has Anastasia shown you around? The two-ruble tour?”

“I haven’t had time, Papa,” she said, moving to her father and putting her arm around his waist. “We’re so sorry to have missed your concert.”

He glanced lovingly at her, and Hawke had a split second to appraise the man. Impossibly good-looking, mid-fifties, the light in his pale blue eyes otherworldly. In this man, the blood of the Golden Horde, the Tatar and the Boyar had mixed to good effect. He was broad-shouldered, tall, and lean, with shoulder-length snow-white hair. He was elegantly dressed for the evening in a nineteenth-century suit of dark blue velvet, with breeches and white stockings. His command of English was flawless, the Russian accent lightly applied.

“Were you brilliant at the keyboard, Papa? Incandescent?”

Korsakov kissed Anastasia’s brow. “I may have missed one or two complete passages, I suppose, but the audience feigned appreciation throughout. Brevity being the soul of after-dinner concertos, eh, Lord Hawke?”

“Alex will do, please, sir, if you don’t mind. I don’t use the title.”

“Those who stand on ceremony seldom deserve the platform.”

“Well said, Count Korsakov,” Hawke said, with a slight nod of the head.

“All right, Alex, what can I get you to drink?”

“Rum would be lovely. Gosling’s if you have it.”

“Gosling’s, of course. Spoken like a true Bermudian.”

He went to the drinks table, poured Hawke a beaker of black rum, and filled his own snifter with brandy from a heavy crystal decanter. “And you, my dear girl?” he asked his daughter.

“Just water, please. I’m not staying. I’ll let you two rivals for my affection battle it out in private. And may the best man win.” Hawke tried to smile at his lover’s father but could not catch his eye.

Hawke had spied a large painting over the mantel and wandered over to inspect it. It was similar to the one in Bermuda, same subject, but the setting was a fox hunt. Count Korsakov sat astride a splendid mount, dressed in a pink jacket, surrounded by his baying hounds. He squinted at the signature in the lower right corner and saw Anastasia’s distinctive swirling initials.

He thought of his own portrait, now apparently complete, which he’d not been allowed to set eyes on. No mystery there, he thought. He’d not be astride a great steed or dressed for the hunt or battle or anything else, for that matter. Bloody hell, what had he got himself into?

She came gliding up behind him, whispering, “Don’t stay up past my bedtime,” into his ear before turning to her father and saying, “Papa, I will see you at our usual breakfast. Perhaps we’ll go riding afterward and let Mr. Hawke sleep. He’s been on a tiresome journey, poor man.”

“Lovely. Sleep well, dear.”

She blew him a kiss, then pulled the ornate doors closed behind her.

Korsakov had taken one of the two leather armchairs on either side of the cavernous fireplace, and Hawke took the other, stretching his feet out toward the crackling logs.

The count raised his glass and said, “For your health, sir!”

“And yours, sir.”

They sipped in silence for a moment, and then Korsakov said, “I owe you an apology, Alex.”

“Really? What on earth for?”

“When I first learned you were seeing my daughter on Bermuda, I was deeply concerned. I’m very protective of her. She’s been badly hurt in the past, and I won’t let that happen again. I’m afraid I had you followed.”

“The Disciples of Judah are in your employ?” Hawke said mildly.

“For many years, yes. When I first came to Bermuda, many of the Jamaican immigrants worked on my banana plantation. Hardworking, loyal, very religious. Especially old Sam Coale, who was my tally man for decades. He, his children, and a few others eventually joined my private security force. Of late, they have become problematic. There were rumors of drug dealing, arrests, other scandalous misdeeds. You are no doubt aware of the sad fate of Hoodoo, a trusted employee and friend of long standing.”

“I am.”

“I’ve had Sam Coale and his two sons arrested for his murder and incarcerated in Casemates Prison. My friends in the local constabulary are building a strong case against them. The other inhabitants of Nonsuch Island, primarily rabble, have all been evicted. I consider the case closed. But again, I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused you in the past.”

“Inconvenience? Only if one counts kidnapping, torture, and the destruction of a beautiful old yawl belonging to a friend of mine an inconvenience.”

Dark anger flared in the count’s eyes, but he said only a quiet “I’m so sorry. I was foolish to trust these men.”

“I see.”

Hawke regarded the man in a silence that lengthened to the point of discomfort. He was thinking of bringing up the issue of the Russian arms Hoodoo had stowed aboard the launch. After a moment’s consideration, he said, “You say Anastasia has been badly hurt. I want you to know that I care very deeply for your daughter and would never allow any harm to come to her.”

“I believe you,” Count Korsakov said, his hard, bright eyes never leaving Hawke’s.

“Would you mind telling me what happened? To Anastasia? How was she hurt?”

“She’s strong-willed, as you’ve no doubt noticed. Sometimes, frequently, her heart leads her head. She married a man wholly unsuited for her. I was vehemently opposed. I even threatened to disinherit her. But of course, that old ploy never works when they think they’re in love.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“At any rate, she had a short, unhappy marriage that ended in tragedy, all as I had predicted.”

“How did it end?”

“The man was killed. In a hunting accident.”

“How awful.”

“Yes. I actually saw it happen. We were in Scotland, shooting pheasant and partridge. I have a small shooting estate there, midway up the Spey Valley at the junction with the River Avon. Ballindalloch Castle? Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”

“No, sorry.”

“No matter. At any rate, Anastasia’s husband was accidentally shot by one of my other guests. Shot to the head, died in the field before help could be summoned.”

“Horrible. Still, accidents happen, do they not?” Hawke forced a smile, not at all sure this had been an accident.

“Yes. But come, let’s talk of more pleasant things, shall we? These are precious holidays, meant to be festive. I understand you’ve started a new company on Bermuda. Blue Water Logistics, I think it’s called?”

“Indeed. I’m most excited about it. I’ve two young colleagues in the venture, Benjamin Griswold and Fife Symington. We’ve great aspirations, at any rate.”

“But your primary interests remain in London. Your family interests?”

“Yes. A large, diversified holding company. I’m trying to ease my way out of those responsibilities and have hired some splendid managers to remove most of the day-to-day burden. Blue Water allows me to live as I please on Bermuda with a new business challenge to occupy my mind.”

“You’re ex-military, are you not?”

“You seem to know quite a bit about me.”

“Does that surprise you? Given the circumstances?”

“Not really, no.”

“You were a Royal Navy man. A pilot? Held the rank of commander, I believe.”

“Yes. I flew Harriers. Saw some action in the first Gulf War.”

“And now?”

“Now?”

“You’ve severed your military connections?”

“Yes.”

That little three-letter affirmative hung in the air for a seeming eternity. Hawke and Korsakov seemed content to stare into the fire in silence, sipping their drinks, thinking their separate thoughts. Suddenly, Korsakov slapped his right knee and spoke up.

“I may drop by Blue Water one day, when I return to Bermuda. If that suits you.”

“I’d be delighted.”

“You know about these computers of mine? The Zeta machines? Popularly known as Wizards these days?”

“I daresay the whole world knows of them. You’re rather the Henry Ford of the computer era, you know.”

“Well, you flatter me, of course. But TSAR, my company, does ship millions of these things all over the world from our factories here and in China. Perhaps the Zeta might be of interest to your new logistics firm?”

“It certainly would.”

“I wonder. Have you any written material on your new enterprise? Any brochures or things like that I could peruse?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. I’ll give them to you first thing in the morning.”

“Excellent. And now, I must confess, I’m a bit tired. It’s been a rather long evening. You could do with a bit of rest yourself after your travels.”

Count Korsakov got to his feet and raised his arms over his head, unable to stifle a surprisingly noisy yawn.

“I could sleep for a week,” Hawke said, rising as well, though in truth, his one-hour nap had completely refreshed him. Naps were the secret of life, as his hero Churchill had discovered during the war.

The count put his arm around Alex’s shoulder, and together they moved toward the door.

“One curious thing, Alex,” he said, pausing in midstride. “Speaking of shooting in Scotland. You’re a sportsman, obviously. I wonder. Do you ever visit the island of Scarp? Up in the Hebrides?”

“I do. I’ve an ancestral hunting lodge there. I do a bit of stalking now and then. Why do you ask?”

“My older brother Sergei, you see, was a great one for stalking. Tragically, he disappeared while on such a hunt. On Scarp, as a matter of fact.”

“On Scarp? Surely you must be mistaken. It is a very small island, mostly uninhabited. Only a few crofters and farmers. I’m sure I would have heard of his disappearance.”

“Oh, no, this was years ago, Alex. Back in the drear dark days of the Cold War.”

“How did he come to choose Scarp, of all places? Most forbidding place on earth.”

“Sergei was a Soviet intelligence officer, on leave from the military, and had sailed his small sloop to the island for a day’s stalking. We never saw him again.”

“Really? What year was this?”

“Oh, I hardly remember. Let’s see, October 1962 or thereabouts. We were impossibly close, my brother and I, and I miss him dreadfully. We were both away at a school in Switzerland, you see, just the two of us. Le Rosey, perhaps you’ve heard of it. The dormitory caught fire one night when I was about seven years old, Sergei was eleven. The old wooden building burned to the ground. Only the two of us boys survived. Sergei was badly burned saving my life. I owed him everything, and his loss haunts me to this day.”

“I’m terribly sorry.”

“Your father was a British naval intelligence officer, I believe, wasn’t he?”

“He was.”

“Probably did some stalking himself, I’d imagine, used the family lodge on Scarp from time to time?”

“He may well have. He was a great one for the outdoors. I was only seven when he died. I don’t recall hearing much about Scarp. There was a great stag he mentioned once or twice, a big red stag. That’s about all I remember.”

“Not called Redstick, was he? This red stag?”

“No. Monarch of Shalloch, he was called, I’m sure.”

“Hmm. Fascinating. Extraordinary to think that their paths might well have crossed at some point, isn’t it? Two Cold Warriors?”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

“Well, off you go, then. Sleep well.”

He pulled open the tall walnut doors. There was a man waiting in the hallway, looking as if someone should put him to bed. His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked a bit unsteady on his pins. Frowning, he looked Hawke up and down and said, in furry English, “You’re the Englishman.”

“One of them, at any rate, sir. There are millions of us, you know.”

“Hmpf,” the man muttered, unamused.

“Vladimir, my very good friend,” Korsakov said with a forced smile. “Come in and have a drink.”

“Aha! There you are,” the man said angrily to Korsakov. “I’ve been looking all over for you. I’ll have a word, if you don’t fucking mind.”

“What did you say to me?” the count said, the words seeming to come from another being.

Hawke looked at Korsakov, astounded at the raw animalism in the man’s face. For the tiniest instant, his hard blue eyes flashed with the glint of incalculable malice. He’d caught only the briefest glimpse of what lay hidden beneath the polished veneer, the genteel mask of the philosopher king. But he had seen a monster, sacred and profane, a strange, arrogant, terrifying glimpse of evil at full throttle. Hawke believed that had he made a sudden, threatening move at that moment, Korsakov, like a dog, would have bared his teeth in a furious snarl.

When he looked again, the count was once more the picture of beneficent charm, so convincing that Alex wondered if he only imagined what he’d seen.

“Yes, yes, of course,” the count said, “First, please say hello to Alex Hawke, Vladimir. Alex, this is my old comrade, Vladimir Rostov.”

“Good evening,” the Russian said, badly slurring his words and not offering his hand.

“Good evening,” Hawke said, standing aside so that the man might enter Korsakov’s study. He recognized him now, the current president of the Russian Federation.

Once President Rostov was safely inside, the count quickly closed the door, and Alex was left standing alone in the great vaulted hallway. There was a good deal of shouting in Russian, and he desperately wished Ambrose were at his side translating. He heard the word Amerikanski a number of times, from both men, and so at least the subject matter of their violent disagreement was known.

He decided to linger a moment, see if he could pick up anything interesting. A moment later, he heard the inebriated Russian president shout something in English. “The Americans will annihilate us for this insanity!”

For what insanity? Hawke wondered, but the shouting match had quickly reverted to Russian. What the hell had the Russians done now?

He looked down at his hand and saw a tumbler of good black rum. That’s a bloody waste, he said half aloud, quaffing it at one draught. The count and the president seemed to have moved deeper into the study, their voices no longer audible through the door. He looked left, then right. He realized he hadn’t the faintest notion how to get through this architectural wonderland to his bloody room.

To the right, he thought, lay the Great Hall, where he’d met the twins. He’d start there, if he could find it, and do a little exploring on his way to bed and Anastasia. Snooping, really, but then, he was a natural-born spy and couldn’t help himself. He had noticed a very large hangar out beyond the stables, a corrugated-aluminum structure that looked large enough to accommodate the real Hindenburg.

If this bloody snowstorm would just ease up a bit, and if he could find himself a warm fur coat and a pair of size-twelve Wellies in a mudroom somewhere, he thought he just might go out and poke around a bit.

He looked at his watch. No, he had more important things to do than snoop about the count’s hangar. With the time difference, he could still make a few calls via his sat phone. Yes, it was still early enough in London to catch C before he went to bed. He thought C would find the confrontation between Korsakov and an angry Rostov most interesting. He’d call Ambrose in Bermuda as well, bring him up to speed on recent developments.

Red Banner had a lot to talk about.

Harry Brock was waiting for him in Moscow, staying at the Hotel Metropol under an assumed name. Simon Weatherstone, as Harry’s passport now described him, was holding secret meetings around Moscow with the small cadre of newly recruited agents of Red Banner. Hawke decided he’d call Harry’s room at the Metropol first thing in the morning, rather than wake him in the middle of the night. Harry and his new Red Banner resources might come in handy in ferreting out the source of Rostov’s anger.

Insanity? American anger? What could that mean?

45

Count Ivan Korsakov stared in angry disbelief at the raving lunatic standing before his fireplace, pounding his fist on the wooden mantel, sending a few precious silver-framed family photographs crashing to the floor. He’d known Vladimir Rostov for many, many years and had never seen him so enraged. Such fury made his drunkenness almost incidental, comical, were it not so late in the evening and so much to be done by morning.

He glared at the Russian president, now stomping on broken glass.

“The Americans will annihilate us for this insanity!”

“Calm down, Volodya. Enough,” the count said, reverting to Russian. He listened in hostile silence to this calumny, his anger building.

“Enough? Have you lost your fucking mind?” Rostov bellowed, looking wildly around the room, as if answers to his shouted questions might be hiding in dark corners or floating up near the ceiling. His eyes were rolling around in his head like marbles.

“Now, you listen to me,” Korsakov said, as calmly as he could. “You are a guest in this house. I won’t be addressed in this manner. Sit down in that chair, and shut up until you can compose yourself.”

“Do you realize what you’ve done? Do you? Answer me! This leads to annihilation, I tell you! Annihilation!”

Korsakov, furious, came out of his chair, grabbed the irate man by his shoulders, shook him violently, and then wrestled him down onto a large leather sofa. He held him there, his hands around his throat, squeezing, until Rostov’s arms and legs stopped flailing.

The president lay back against the cushions, red-faced and breathing heavily, but he was no longer shouting at the top of his lungs.

“Are you quite finished with this outrageous behavior?” Korsakov snarled, removing his hands from the president’s reddened throat. He’d had countless men shot, poisoned, beheaded, and even impaled. But he had never killed a man with his bare hands before, and he could see the attraction.

“I asked you, are you finished?”

“Yes, yes. Just leave me alone for a moment.”

The count crossed the room and picked up the receiver of a telephone sitting on his desk. He whispered a few words into the mouthpiece and hung up. He looked angrily at the broken picture frames and shattered glass on the stone hearth floor, then collapsed into the same fireside chair where he’d been sitting earlier. After a few moments’ contemplation, he leaned forward with his hands on his knees and stared at the drunken president until he had his full attention.

“Now, in a slow, calm voice, I want you to tell me what in God’s name you are so incensed about. If you raise your voice, even slightly, I shall have the servants throw you out in the snow. Do we understand each other?”

“Damn it to hell,” Rostov said, sitting up and shakily pouring himself a drink from the decanter on the table. “Why wasn’t I informed of this decision? I’m still running this country, unless I missed a meeting.”

“I make a lot of decisions in a day. Which one are we speaking of?”

“What decision? Your decision to blow up an entire American town! Wipe it off the face of the fucking map! You know they will trace this back to us. Twenty-four hours. Maybe less. And then what? War? War with America? You know as well as I the number of American nuclear submarines even now prowling the Black Sea.”

“There will be no war with America, Volodya, I assure you.”

“No? You know the Americans have back-channeled the Syrians, the Iranians, and others. Told them that if any act of terror on American soil can be traced back to Damascus or Tehran, the capitals of those countries will cease to exist within twenty-four hours. You know that as well as I!”

“Syria and Iran are not Russia.”

“Thanks be to God. Jesus. We all want to go against the Americans. Every one of us. And we will. But, not now, Ivan. We’re not ready, damn it, we’re not even close!”

“I think we are ready. Destiny is an impatient mistress.”

“You don’t think repositioning our troops to the Baltic and East European borders is provocation enough? You don’t think we have already pushed the White House to the limit? Already they are making noises at the Security Council. You think the UN, pitiful and pathetic as it may be, will just look the other way? Or NATO? Really, it all defies belief. The Duma will have your head for this one, Ivan. That I can promise.”

“Or it may be that I will have the Duma’s heads, Volodya.”

Rostov stared at him in disbelief. This form of treachery far exceeded anything he’d thought possible. Even that lunatic Stalin had shown restraint when it came to-

They were interrupted by a knock at the door. A uniformed man strode through, shut the door, and locked it.

“Volodya, calm down. Look, here is your old friend General Kuragin, come to join our little party. Nikolai, bring my special carafe of vodka from the drinks table, and join us, won’t you?”

General Nikolai Kuragin, a longtime aide to Rostov, had for years been secretly the head of Korsakov’s own private army. He did as he was told and moved to the drinks table. A skeletal man who looked more Teutonic than Russian in his sharply tailored black uniform, he was utterly ruthless. There was a large black leather case in his right hand, attached to his wrist by a stainless-steel chain and bracelet.

Inside the general’s black case was an electronic device, one of only two in existence, which carried the codes to initiate detonation of every single Zeta bomb on the planet. The one he carried was to be used only as a backup to the primary, that one always in the possession of Korsakov himself. Kuragin knew the codes as well. They were permanently inscribed in the folds of his brain. He’d never even written them down.

“Good evening, Mr. President,” Kuragin said to Rostov, with a sharp nod of the head.

Rostov glared at him. “You’re part of this, aren’t you, Nikolai? You lying bastard. All these years, all I’ve done for you. You’ve pretended to be my friend and ally. And now you betray me for this perverted megalomaniac?”

“Watch your tongue,” Kuragin barked at him, and Rostov sank even deeper into the cushions. It was over now, he knew. All was lost. All.

Korsakov looked at Kuragin, a wry smile playing about his lips. “The president thinks we may have gone a bit over the line destroying the American city, Nikolai.”

“Really? Why does he think that?”

“He’s afraid of the American reaction. NATO. And the UN.”

“He’s afraid of shadows,” Nikolai said. “Always has been.”

“He needs courage, perhaps. Pour him another drink. From my carafe.”

Kuragin took Rostov’s glass from his hand and filled it from the silver carafe emblazoned with the Korsakov coat of arms. Handing him the glass, he said, “Drink.”

Rostov needed little encouragement at this point. He swallowed the contents in one gulp, then held out the crystal tumbler for a refill.

“Another?” Kuragin said, his eyes on Count Korsakov.

“Coals to Newcastle. Why not, Nikolai?”

His glass full once more, Rostov tilted it back, swallowed, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He glared at the two men who’d betrayed him.

“And tonight this fucking fox in the henhouse?” he managed to croak.

“Fox?” Korsakov asked the president. “Henhouse?”

“This Englishman you invite into your home! Who is he? Do you even know? He could well be a spy.”

“Oh, we know this fox quite well, do we not, Nikolai? We’ve had this particular fox in our sights for a very, very long time. Here. Have another drink, Volodya.”

President Rostov staggered to his feet, stood for a moment, then collapsed back into the deep leather cushions.

“You two want war with America, do you?” he said. “Ha! You know her submarines encircle us, like wolves underwater. With missiles aimed straight at our mothers’ hearts. You provoke whom you should appease, comrades. At least, until…until…”

He made a harsh choking sound and could not continue. His head fell back, and he stared at his two tormentors, glassy-eyed. The empty glass in his hand fell to the floor, smashing to bits on the stone.

“Are you all right?” Korsakov asked, looking at him carefully.

“Agh. A horrible headache. I feel…”

“Volodya. My dear old friend and comrade. I’m afraid it’s time you took your leave from this mortal coil,” Korsakov said, crossing his legs at the knee. “Your passing is premature, I’ll grant you. I was going to bid you farewell in the morning when the helicopter arrived to ferry you back to the Kremlin. But now-”

“Tomorrow?” the man croaked.

“Yes. A doomed flight. Tragic. A crash in the Urals. A state tragedy. A world tragedy. But my dear Volodya, such things happen. Life goes on.”

“Doomed?”

“You are dying, old friend. Poisoned. Not slowly and painfully like our erstwhile friend Litvinenko in London some years ago. This method shouldn’t take long. Perhaps, what do you think, Nikolai? Twenty minutes?”

“Cyanide prevents the body’s cells from using oxygen so death should arrive in short order.”

“Time enough, then, to show him the future?”

“The future belongs to us, sir. We have more than enough to share.” Kuragin smiled.

“Ivan?” the dying Rostov repeated, his eyelids fluttering. “Are you there?”

“Volodya, can you still hear me? You see the case General Kuragin carries? Do you wonder at it? Our very own nuclear football, as the Americans would have it. I call it the Beta machine, or simply the Black Box.”

“Yes, Ivan, I see it,” Rostov said weakly, peering at the case Kuragin carried.

“You’ve been drinking cyanide, Volodya. Call me old-fashioned, but sophisticated nuclear poisons like polonium I find unnecessarily messy. Unless one wants to send a message. There is no message here tonight, Volodya. Only the future burying the past.”

“The Americans, I tell you.” Rostov gasped. “Will annihilate us.”

“Let me assuage you in your final moments. Nikolai, open your case. Show it to our dying friend.”

“Yes, sir,” Nikolai Kuragin said. He detached the leather case from his wrist and placed it on the low table, where Rostov could see its contents. When he entered a code into the keypad, the case popped open, and then the lid rose automatically. Inside the lid was a vivid CRT screen displaying a real-time satellite map of the world in three dimensions. Pinpoints of light, hundreds of them, thousands, millions, flashed on every continent.

“These lights represent countless Zeta machines, each broadcasting its precise GPS location and a unique identification number,” Korsakov said. “As you can see, they are everywhere on earth. Numberless millions of them, in every city, town, village. And inside each of them is eight ounces of Hexagon, Volodya, a powerful bomb waiting for my detonation signal.”

“Bombs everywhere,” Rostov mumbled.

“Everywhere on the planet. Many are controlled by my agents in the field on a strictly limited, as-needed basis. But on a worldwide basis, the millions are controlled by this single unit. Here, let me zoom in on a city. Which one? Paris? Honolulu? Bombay? No. L.A.”

Korsakov manipulated the controls to bring the city of Los Angeles forward to full screen. It was a solid mass of tiny blinking lights.

“This number here in the corner of the screen represents the number of Zeta machines within the Los Angeles city limits. As you can see, there are exactly three-point-four million units in this one city alone. Should I choose to, now, I could detonate any one of them in an instant. Or, more dramatically, every one of them in the same instant.”

Nikolai Kuragin laughed. “We could, at this very moment, do exactly to L.A. what we did to Salina.”

“Or London, Honolulu, Buenos Aires, or Beijing,” Korsakov said, scrolling rapidly through those cities, their skyline images coming up on the screen.

“You’re insane,” Rostov whispered, and they would be the last words he would utter in this earthly realm.

“Do you want me to remove him?” Nikolai asked, staring blankly at the corpse.

“Later. But have him incinerated tonight. And his remains placed aboard the helicopter as soon as it arrives in the morning. Along with his luggage, where I have already packed a Zeta. They’ll find his ashes and tiny shards of bones in the mountains with the burned-out wreckage.”

“Yes, sire.”

“Sire. I like the sound of that. So, Rostov is finally no concern of ours. Good. Now, tell me about the mood at the Duma. I plan to go before them tomorrow evening, as you know.”

“I don’t anticipate any problems with your succession to president. In fact, I anticipate unanimous support. Rostov is now gone; it’s the obvious thing to do. You’re revered throughout the country. Most of the embittered Communists, members of the Other Russia, and other parties who would be opposed have already had their minds changed with offers of money, property, or positions in your new government. Those who refused, or balked, have already gone far away.”

“Never far enough. Dispose of them.”

“It will be done.”

“And how is our old friend Putin these days? Enjoying his forced retirement to Energetika Prison?”

“Glowing with enthusiasm, I should say.” Nikolai laughed. “Still, I wonder why you don’t simply introduce him to the tree with no limbs.”

“Impale him? No, too quick an exit. I want him to sit in that cell and rot slowly, lose his hair, his teeth, and finally, when he’s fried from within, then he can wither and die and never trouble us again.”

46

Stoke flew commercial from Miami to Topeka, connecting through Charlotte. There was a young FBI guy waiting at the end of the jetway when he landed at Topeka airport. Navy-blue suit, white shirt, dark tie, buzz-cut sandy-colored hair. Spit-shined black lace-up shoes. Stoke liked him on sight. He had a solid Midwestern smile, and even better, he looked as if he could have made the Olympic wrestling team if he hadn’t chosen law enforcement. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-four.

“Stokely Jones?” the kid said, extending his hand.

“Yep,” Stoke said, giving him five of the best.

“Special Agent John Henry Flood, sir,” he said, flashing his badge. “I’ve got a chopper waiting right here at the airport to take us up to what used to be Salina.”

“Let’s go get ’em, John Henry Flood,” Stoke said. All he had was a carry-on with one change of clothes, his shaving stuff, and his SIG Sauer nine with two extra mags of ammunition. Special Agent Flood was already moving like a running back through the crowded concourse, and Stoke had to hustle to catch up. Kid was on a mission. Good.

They came to an unmarked exit off the concourse, and Agent Flood hung a left. A uniformed airport security guy was watching the door, and he opened it for them, right out onto the tarmac. The jet-black whirlybird was sitting right there, all warmed up, rotors spinning at flat pitch.

“Only way to fly,” Stoke said, smiling at Agent Flood. “Unmarked black choppers.”

Stoke ducked under the whirling rotors and followed the special agent around behind the tail. They scrambled aboard through the starboard-side hatch. The pilot nodded at them, shaking hands with each man as he climbed aboard. John Henry folded himself into a rear seat, and Stoke sat up front on the right. Both men donned their headsets and quickly got strapped in.

“Morning, gentlemen,” they heard the pilot say in their headsets.

“Morning,” they replied.

“Short trip, here we go.”

The pilot smiled at the two men, gave them a thumbs-up, and increased the collective pitch. The little bird lifted off the tarmac, climbed quickly, and took a northerly course, fast and low, skimming over a group of hangars and climbing rapidly en route to Salina.

Stoke turned in his seat and smiled at the FBI kid.

“You go by John or John Henry?” he said into his mike.

“My mother named me John Henry, sir.”

“No need to ‘sir’ me, John Henry. Call me Stoke.”

“Deal. Glad to have you aboard here. You’re Langley, right, you’re CIA?”

“Nope. I got a small private security operation in Miami called Tactics International. Work with the Agency, Pentagon, on special assignments. Mostly for a guy named Harry Brock. Heard of him?”

“Oh, yeah, we’ve heard of him, all right. Kinda legendary. He’s the one asked the Bureau to bring you in.”

“What have we got up there, John Henry? How do you see this thing?”

“A mess, sir. A quadruple homicide, the town mayor and her family murdered in bed, and a town wiped off the map.”

“Any leads?”

“A cell phone left on one of the victims. Had a message in Arabic to vacate the town by six A.M. yesterday. We traced the call to a cell tower in Tehran. Group called Arm of God claiming responsibility.”

“Verified?”

“No, sir.”

“Any idea why the Iranians would want to provoke us? I mean, they’re already walking a fine line, building nukes and threatening Israel with extinction. The ayatollahs giving us a perfect excuse to take them out doesn’t make a whole lot of sense right now.”

“No, sir, it does not. We’re hoping you can shed some light on this. Harry Brock told my boss you might have a whole different angle on this Salina situation.”

Stoke nodded but didn’t reply. He wanted to see and hear what the FBI knew before he told them about the baker. He was thinking about the last time he’d seen Happy, when he was delivering his surprise birthday cake. The explosion had been huge. And Harry Brock had said the baker was a Russian-American assassin. Maybe KGB. What the hell was the KGB up to in Salina, Kansas?

SALINA AND HIROSHIMA had a lot in common. Stoke and Agent Flood drove silently through streets full of downed and blackened trees, block after block of houses and buildings burned to the foundations, piles of burned debris that filled entire intersections. The smell was unbelievable. A raw, choking cloud of smoke and rot hanging over everything. He saw charred corpses of dogs and other animals that had been left behind, now stacked in piles on what used to be street corners. A storm had moved through the night before, and the streets had a patina of grey mud and matted black dirt.

The day was cold and bright. When the sun peeked out from behind the clouds, there was an odd glittery quality to the surfaces of the black and desolate acres, as if it had rained glass an hour ago, or some giant had flung great handfuls of tiny silver coins over the town after it had been destroyed.

John Henry’s face was somber, and the conversation was minimal. He was staring straight ahead; he’d obviously seen enough of this wasted town to last a lifetime. Flocks of birds circled overhead, and it occurred to Stoke that they simply had no place to land.

“Where’s the first stop?” he finally asked John Henry.

“We’ve got a temporary HQ set up. A trailer up top of that hill over there. A state park called Hickory Hill. It’s a heavily wooded area, but it escaped the fire because of its height above the town. Also the Motel 6 where I’ve booked you a room. Not great, but it’s the only thing still standing.”

Stoke was gazing out his window, having a hard time dealing with such complete destruction. A fine old American town, with a lot of history he didn’t know and now never would. Gone.

“You know this is the heart of America, John Henry?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean this town is, was, exactly halfway between the East Coast and the West Coast. And halfway between the northern and southern borders. Smack dab in the middle of the country when you open up a map. Right in the crease.”

“You think that’s intentional?”

“Yeah, I do. They wanted this to hurt.”

“Well, they sure as hell succeeded.”

“You had kin here?”

“I grew up in a big yellow house with green shutters, used to stand right on that corner.”

“I’m sorry.”

They drove up a narrow winding road that led to the hilltop overlooking the town. Near the edge of the cliff was the big silver Winnebago doubling as FBI headquarters. Stoke grabbed his door handle and smiled at Agent Flood.

“John Henry, I want you to cheer up,” Stoke said. “We’re going to catch this slimeball and nail his balls to the wall, okay? Don’t you worry about it.”

“How are we going to do that, sir?”

“Well, for starters, I know exactly who he is.”

“That’ll help,” John Henry said, smiling for the first time since they’d landed at Salina.

47

“Mr. Jones, welcome, I’m Agent in Charge Hilary Spurling,” the attractive blonde FBI lady said as Stoke and John Henry entered the trailer. It was cold as hell outside, and it felt nice and warm inside. Spurling was in her thirties, all business, but still a babe. She introduced him to the rest of the group. It included Bruce Barnett, the Salina PD’s medical examiner, a guy from the FBI’s Explosive Unit Bomb Data Center in Washington named Peter Robb, and the two uniformed officers Stoke had seen on CNN.

“How’s everybody doing?” Stoke said with a smile. “This the team?”

“This is the team,” the ME said.

Spurling said, “Mr. Jones, let’s cut right to the chase. I understand from my director, Mike Reiter, and our colleagues at both Langley and Homeland, that you and Agent Brock may have some information that would help us in this investigation. Is that correct?”

“Yes, ma’am, it is. But if you don’t mind, before I share that information, it would be helpful to hear what you’ve got so far. Is that all right with you?”

“Certainly. Won’t take long, because we haven’t got much. Why don’t we start with you, Bruce? Dr. Barnett here is the state ME assigned to the multiple homicide by Salina PD.”

The medical examiner pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “Yes, well, there were no casualties from the explosion, as you know, Mr. Jones. So, I’ve spent the last twelve hours with the four murder victims at 1223 Roswell Road. The home of Mayor Bailey and her family.”

“Who found the bodies?” Stoke asked.

“The housekeeper when she arrived at work that morning,” Bruce Barnett said.

“Is she available? I might want to talk to her.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about the crime scene.”

“No forced entry. The killer was freely admitted into the home. So, he was known to the deceased or used some ruse to gain entry. Two of the victims, children, female, ages four and nine, were found in their beds. The husband died of a gunshot wound to the head. Mayor Bailey died the same way her children did. Poison gas.”

“Jesus,” Stoke said. “He gassed them?”

“Yeah,” Spurling said. “It gets worse. He had some fun with the mayor before he killed her.”

“Tell me,” Stoke said.

“Raped and sodomized.”

Stoke looked away for a second. “You guys anywhere near identifying the gas?”

“Some kind of incapacitating narcotic, administered at a lethal dosage level. Best early guess is a formula based on the drug fentanyl. We sent lung-tissue samples from the victims to the Bureau’s lab in D.C., see if we get any database matches with known material. So far, all I can tell you is it’s of foreign origin, nothing of ours. We’re waiting to hear.”

Stoke looked at the bomb-squad guy. “What the hell kind of nonnuclear explosives could cause the kind of destruction I just saw?”

Peter Robb said, “First of all, it wasn’t one bomb. It was hundreds.”

“Hundreds?” Stoke said.

“Maybe a thousand. Maybe more. EU-BDC’s primary responsibility is forensically examining bombing evidence to identify bomb components. Looking for a signature. So far, all we’ve got is this.” He handed Stoke a small, jagged piece of very thin metal. Silvery, glassy, almost like mirror. He tried to bend it and couldn’t.

“What is this stuff? I saw it everywhere.”

“Checking on that now. But it was found at every single scene.

The whole town is littered with it. My men are now doing materials analysis on it, looking for explosives residue, and performing accelerant examinations. So far, we’re coming up empty. It’s the craziest crime scene I’ve ever seen, Mr. Jones, and I’ve been doing this a long, long time. Whatever this bomber used, it’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before.”

“What do you mean by that, Mr. Robb?” Stoke asked.

“Multiple bombs strung like firecrackers. All connected by one fuse and all going off simultaneously. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but it’s the only way I can explain it.”

“Thank you,” Stoke said, turning his attention to the two uniforms. “And you two men were the officers who located the straggler? The guy delivering doughnuts, right? You spoke with him. You were with him when the bomb went off.”

“Yessir,” Andy Sisko said. “Patrolmen Sisko and Southey.”

“And you got his name?”

“Happy,” Officer Gene Southey said. “Happy the Baker. Had it stitched on his shirt. Said he’d been in town a few days. Sleeping off a migraine and never left his motel.”

“What did he say when the town blew up? What was his reaction?”

The two cops looked at each other. “What did he say, Andy? You remember?”

“I don’t think he said a damn thing,” Sisko replied. “I think he just got in his truck and drove away.”

Stoke looked at him. “Big white truck? ‘Happy the Baker’ on the side?”

“Yessir, that’s it, all right.”

“And he just drove away. Leaving two witnesses behind.”

“Witnesses to what?” Southey asked.

“His crime. Happy the Baker blew up your town, officer. I don’t know how or with what, but he’s your guy.”

“Holy shit, I mean, damn! We were sitting right there with the guy!”

Agent Spurling said, “Mr. Jones, please tell us what-”

“Hold on a sec,” Stoke said whipping out his cell phone. He speed-dialed Sharkey’s number at his new Coconut Grove office in Miami. The phone rang four, five times. Stoke could see his office, the little pink stucco bungalow hidden by the banana trees, all the windows open, the bamboo chaise where he’d take a nap when things were slow. He could even see Luis there now, snoozing on those soft green and white cushions.

“Tactics,” Shark finally said, too cheery, trying to sound awake.

“You napping on the job, son?”

“No, sir, I was in back, you know, a pro’lem with the air conditioner and-”

“Time to jump and scatter, Shark. We’ve got something out here.”

“Tell me, and it’s done.”

“Luis, listen carefully. That tape we shot a week ago in the Grove. That night from the boat? Not all of it. But pull every scene that includes Paddy Strelnikov, a.k.a. Happy the Baker. It’s at the very end of the tape, coming out of the house with the cake. Edit. Burn a disc. I want you to email that footage to, hold on, what’s your e-mail address, Agent Spurling?”

She told him, and Stoke gave it to Sharkey. “We need this stuff now, okay? Keep the disc as backup. FBI’s got to get this guy’s face on the national wire right now. Call Barry Pick at Miami-Dade. Tell him cake boy did Salina. Tell him to watch the airport, Happy could be coming home or even there already. You cool?”

“Cool runnin’, mon.”

“Later, Shark.”

Spurling was looking at him.

“You’ve actually got tape on this guy?”

“Lots of it. We were surveilling Chechen Russian mob guys on another matter and picked him up accidentally. He’s involved with a guy we’re looking at for something else. Yurin.”

“Urine?” Agent Spurling said, a puzzled frown creasing her brow.

“I know, I know. It’s confusing, isn’t it? But it’s Yurin with a Y. All Beef Paddy, that’s Happy’s moniker, was delivering a bomb in the form of a birthday cake. This was at a party where this guy Yurin was running security. Did you put out an APB on the white truck?”

“Happening as we speak, Mr. Jones,” Spurling said, snapping her phone shut.

“You have to figure he dumped it nearby. Way too easy to spot. He hides the truck somewhere, steals an abandoned car, heads to an airport. I’d get everybody available working that truck. Five-mile radius.”

“Yeah. Sorry. We didn’t even begin to make this guy as a suspect. Just a nutjob. Who the hell is he?”

“His real name is Paddy Strelnikov. American-born Russian. Mafiya type from Brooklyn. We think he’s KGB. A sleeper assassin, possibly working directly for someone in the Kremlin. The last time I saw Paddy, he was in Miami. He killed a Chechen terrorist responsible for attacks against the Russian population and the threats against the Kremlin.”

“Holy shit,” Officer Southey said. “Russians in Salina?”

“Yeah, you two are lucky to be standing here. John Henry, I want to talk to the manager of the motel where Paddy was staying. See his room.”

“That’s easy. You’re staying there. Motel 6.”

“Let’s go.”

JOHN HENRY HAD parked the FBI car at the same overlook where Paddy and the two cops had watched the town blow up.

“This is where the three of them, the suspect and the two officers, observed the explosion. The bakery truck was parked right where you’re standing.”

Stoke walked to the edge of the cliff, looked down at the smoking, glittering remains of Salina. Then he turned around and stared at the dense woods behind him. He saw a couple of dirt roads, almost overgrown, leading into the park’s interior.

“Where’s the motel? Up here on the cliff somewhere, I’d guess?”

“Yessir. It’s just on the other side of those woods. Right on the state highway. Maybe a mile, mile and a half. Nothing up here on the bluff was touched. Only reason the motel and the park survived.”

“Can you drive a car through that stuff? Or do we have to drive around to get to the highway?”

“I don’t know that you could get a car through there, sir. Those are nature trails. Pretty thick.”

“Let’s take a walk, John Henry. I love nature.”

Five minutes later, glancing up as he walked, Stoke said, “Lots of broken branches back in here. Both sides of the trail. High up, too.”

“Yessir, I noticed that.”

“Looks almost like a damn truck came through here recently, doesn’t it, John Henry?”

“There it is. Down in that ravine.”

Stoke looked to his left. At the bottom of a very steep ravine, he could see the white bakery truck. It was on its side, the cab partially submerged in a swiftly running creek.

“Let’s go,” Stoke said, and ten minutes later, they’d managed to work their way down to the truck. It was banged up pretty bad, glass gone from the windshield, water running right through a portion of the cab. One of the two rear doors was hanging ajar.

“Accident?” John Henry asked.

“I think he ditched it. Long gone, I think, probably hiked through the woods to the motel, changed clothes in his room, and then stole one of the abandoned cars in the lot and boogied. But go through the cab, okay? Best you can. Check the glove compartment, and check under the seats. Might find something helpful, though I doubt it, many times as this bad boy’s been around the block. I’ll look in the back.”

He lifted the rear door and looked inside. Doughnut boxes, a lot of them, as if they’d been through a cement mixer. Most of them still sealed, but a lot had popped open, and there were hundreds of gooey cream, chocolate, glazed, and jelly doughnuts stuck to the ceiling, the walls, lying around. Stoke resigned himself to going through every last one of the damn boxes. After all, it was Happy’s MO, wasn’t it? The last time he had delivered a bomb, it had been inside a bakery box.

“John Henry,” he called out ten minutes later.

“Yessir,” came the reply from the cab.

“Come back here and take a look at this, will you?”

“Nothing in the cab, sir,” John Henry said a minute later, peering into the gloom inside the truck. He could see Stokely sitting in the midst of hundreds of opened doughnut boxes. Gooey stuff all over him.

“Gimme a hand in here, John Henry,” he said. “Help me get out of all this crap. Can’t even stand up, the floor’s so bad.”

“Disgusting.”

“That’s one point of view. Elvis would’ve thought he’d died and gone to heaven in here.”

Agent Flood took Stoke’s hand and helped the big black man scramble out of the upended truck. Stokely stood with one foot in the icy creek, his entire body covered in creamy caramel icing and sprinkles from head to toe.

“Check this out,” Stoke said, wiping icing from his eyes with his one free hand.

He held up a small, silvery object, like a desktop sculpture of a human brain, stem and all. But the thing about it that caught John Henry’s eye was that it was as shiny as a brand-new mirror. Like the little piece of metal he’d seen back at the trailer. And the stuff sprinkled all over his dead town.

“What the heck is it?” Flood asked.

“It’s a Zeta computer. Called the Wizard. Sell ’em all over the world for about fifty bucks apiece. Even cheaper in Third World countries.”

“Oh, yeah. I’ve seen those.”

“Damn right you have. Millions of them have been sold in the last few years. We’ve got to get back to the trailer and show this thing to that bomb-squad guy. What’s his name?”

“Robb. Peter Robb.”

“Yeah, Robb. Show it to him.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because, John Henry, I think this computer’s got a bomb inside it. Hell, more I think about it, maybe this isn’t the only one.”

“Bombs in computers.”

“That’d be my guess, yeah. I could be wrong.”

John Henry was turning the thing over in his hands, staring at it in disbelief. “My kid’s fifth-grade computer class uses these.”

“Scary thought, ain’t it?” Stoke said. “We’ve got to talk to Robb. Get the whole damn FBI on this. Find out how many of these damn computer bombs might be out there.”

Stoke’s cell hummed in his pocket. He whipped it out and flipped it open.

“You’re talking to him,” he said.

“Stoke, it’s Luis.”

“Shark. What’s up?”

“Miami Dade PD just called two minutes ago. Friend of mine there picked up on some info he thought we should know about. They tracked our baker boy, All Beef Paddy Strelnikov. He’s back in Miami, all right. One of the local officers who had seen the APB photo made him at the Miami Herald building. Dressed as an exterminator. Carrying two large canisters on his back, like oxygen tanks or something.”

“He’s back in Miami?”

“Not anymore. He gave them the slip. They searched the building top to bottom. Nada. They think he might have gotten aboard the airship, the Pushkin.”

“Listen to me. Did anyone actually see him board?”

“No. But he was in a stairwell to the roof minutes before that thing was getting ready to go.”

“Tell me it’s not gone yet, Shark.”

“Left for Stockholm hours ago. Man, I woulda called you sooner, you know, but I just found out myself.”

Stoke snapped his phone shut.

“Canisters?” he said, looking at Flood. “Oxygen tanks?”

“What?”

“Those tanks were full of gas, not oxygen. He was experimenting with poison gas on the mayor and her family. See how much it would take to put them to sleep before it was lethal. What the Russians did at that theater rescue in Moscow, pumped gas through the AC to put everyone to sleep. But they got the formula wrong, and most of the hostages died. Happy may have smuggled his goddamn poison gas aboard the airship.”

“I’m sorry, but what are you talking-”

“Fancha,” he said under his breath, and then he started scrambling up the steep ravine faster than John Henry Flood would have ever believed a man his size could move.

48

Early-morning bars of gold light streamed across the gilded furniture, the sumptuous bed, and the Persian carpets. Anastasia swept into the room and found Hawke alone in her big canopied bed. He had the quilted blue silk duvet pulled up under his neck, wearing nothing but a grin.

“Hawke, get up!”

“Are you quite sure I’m not up already, darling?”

He’d barely managed to reach down and slide his portable sat phone under the bed without her noticing. He’d just rung off with Harry Brock. It had been a most disturbing conversation. He’d told Brock about last night’s confrontation between Rostov and Korsakov. And thanks to Harry, he now knew what President Rostov had been so angry about the previous evening. What the “insanity” had been. An entire American town had been obliterated. Rostov’s rage could mean only one thing, however far-fetched it might seem. The Russians had been behind the bombing of an American city. Which meant they were clearly willing, ready, and able to risk all-out nuclear war with the United States.

Korsakov had clearly ordered this unprovoked attack without the Russian president’s knowledge. Last night, Hawke had witnessed a power struggle at the very pinnacle of Russian politics. Brock was now communicating this intelligence to his superiors at Langley and the Pentagon. The White House would soon be buzzing as well.

And Hawke? Korsakov’s gorgeous daughter was standing at his bedside, treating him like a naughty schoolboy, her dainty foot inches away from the sat phone hidden beneath the bed.

As a distraction, he flashed what he hoped was a winning smile.

“Alex! There’s no time for that. Seriously. Come along, now, go into your room and get yourself dressed. And packed. We’re leaving in one hour.”

“Leaving? We just got here.”

“Out!” Anastasia whipped back the duvet. The sight of her aroused lover, naked in the morning sunlight, was almost sufficiently diverting to advance Hawke’s cause.

“Look at you.”

“Hmm.”

“Nyet, nyet, nyet. Get up and go. I mean it. Papa will be furious if we’re not ready.” She grabbed his wrist and began to pull him from her bed.

“Okay, okay, I’ll get up,” Hawke said, laughing. “Beautiful morning, isn’t it? God’s in his heaven and all that?”

Hawke climbed down from the bed and slipped his arms into the silk robe she held open for him, surreptitiously kicking the phone further beneath the bed. He’d fetch it later. He then turned inside her embrace, kissed her on the mouth, and patted her lovely rounded bottom. She was still in her dressing gown, he noticed, and naked beneath it. Ah, well, time’s winged chariot, nothing to be done.

“Okay, I give up. Why on earth are we leaving, by the way? I was just getting accustomed to this palatial life you filthy-rich Russians seem to enjoy.”

“Papa just called me to his room. He needs to get back to Moscow. Political events there require his presence. He’s invited you and me to go with him, and I accepted. He’s offered to give us his box at the Bolshoi tonight. Swan Lake with Nasimova. Her opening night. It will be spectacular, I promise. Now, go.”

“How are we getting there, by the way? Troika, one hopes…”

“Even better. We’re taking his private airship.”

“How wonderful. I’ve been dying to climb aboard that thing and have a look. Do you think he’ll let me fly it?”

“The famous Royal Navy flyer? I should think so. Now, get moving.”

She rushed into the bathroom, and Hawke snatched his phone from beneath the bed before going to his own room to pack.

HAWKE WATCHED WITH open admiration as the ground crew slowly backed the gleaming silver zeppelin out of the massive hangar, each blue-uniformed man handling one of the many cables hanging down from the fuselage. She was extraordinary to look at, four hundred feet in length, he’d guess, with a gaping round opening at the front. Quite a radical design, he thought, but then, it had sprung from the mind of quite a radical guy.

Her name, appropriately enough, was emblazoned on her flanks. Tsar. At her tail section, from which a boarding staircase was now emerging, the bright red Russian stars adorned each fin. In the brilliant snow-reflected sunlight, she was a gleaming machine from another world.

“What do you think?” Anastasia asked, suddenly appearing at his side. She was wrapped in her white sable and matching hat and looked lovely.

“Stunning.”

“We can board now, if you’d like. Our luggage has already been taken aboard and stowed. Father is already aboard as well. He’s having a series of private meetings with his closest business associates. I’m afraid we won’t be seeing much of him until we arrive in Moscow.”

“Ah, well. I’m glad I had a bit of time with him last evening. Got the chance to get acquainted.”

“So is he.”

“How fast is Tsar? Remarkable-looking thing, I must say.”

“A hundred and fifty miles an hour is pretty much her top end. But the captain tells me we’ve got a good tailwind this morning. We should be in the capital for lunch.”

“I should make arrangements for a place to stay,” Hawke said. “Do I have time to make a call?”

“Already taken care of, darling. I booked you a suite at the Metropol. Just adjacent to Red Square and very close to the Bolshoi. Shall we go aboard? I think Father would like to get going as quickly as possible.”

“What’s going on in Moscow?” Hawke asked, taking her arm as they crunched through the snow toward the hangar.

“I never ask,” she said with a wry smile. “And he never tells.”

Once aboard and aloft, they went all the way forward to the Jules Verne Observation Lounge, a semicircular room below the nose of the ship. It was all glass and steel, comfortably furnished with leather club chairs. A steward took their breakfast order, and they sat back to enjoy the spectacular view. Speeding silently over the vast white landscape, flying in such comfort less than a hundred feet above the endless snowy forest, was hypnotic. Hawke, however, was most interested in seeing the inner workings of the airship, especially the pod containing the flight deck.

As soon as they’d finished breakfast, he left Anastasia alone with her American novel (he’d brought her a copy of Huckleberry Finn along as a present) and went exploring. He went from stem to stern, only avoiding those areas where security forces looked at him forbiddingly and shook their heads. But Anastasia had made a call to the bridge and arranged a visit with the captain.

The airship’s flight deck was a separate pod, hung beneath the central fuselage, an elongated crystal-clear egg in the embrace of perforated metal girders connected to the underside of the ship. A circular staircase led from the lowest deck down to the bridge deck. The single security man at the top smiled and said, “They are expecting you, Mr. Hawke.”

A minute later, Hawke saw they’d gained some altitude. He was standing behind the captain’s right shoulder, staring down between his feet at snow-covered mountains two hundred feet below. Off to the right, there was a deep gash in the snow, a partial fuselage and black pieces of wreckage scattered about. He saw a long black blade protruding from the snow like a huge runaway ski and put it together. A chopper had gone down. Recently. The charred main wreckage was still burning a bit, black smoke spiraling upward in the clear blue air.

“What happened down there?” Hawke asked the man at the helm.

“A crash,” the man replied, in a blinding glimpse of the obvious, his English softly laced with Russian. “We’ve just radioed it in. Looks as if it happened just a short time ago.”

“No sign of survivors?”

“None. But medevac rescue teams are already en route.”

“Captain Marlov, I’m Alex Hawke. I believe Anastasia Korsakova may have told you I might be stopping by the bridge for a quick look round this morning.”

“Yes, yes, of course!” the captain said. He was a slight fellow with a shock of blond hair under his cap. He wore a sky-blue uniform with four gold braids at his sleeves. “Welcome aboard, sir. Enjoying the voyage so far?”

“Indeed. Mind if I just hang about for a few minutes? Watch you fellows at work?”

“Not at all. As you can see on the digital readouts displayed above, we’ve got a lovely day for flying. A good stiff breeze on our tail, and we’re making nearly one hundred sixty over the ground.”

“How much gas does it take to keep this monster afloat?”

“We carry thirty million cubic feet of helium,” the captain said proudly. “Pushkin carries three times that.”

“Still use helium, do you? I thought it was explosive.”

“On the contrary, helium is a natural fire extinguisher. And while it was once rare, it is available worldwide as a byproduct of natural-gas production.”

“Fascinating.”

Hawke smiled and let his gaze drift over the controls and the instrument panel. Fairly straightforward and a fairly simple craft to fly, he decided after watching the crew at work for ten minutes. The deck he was standing on was made of thick, clear Lexan, shaped like an elongated egg. In the center was a large round metal hatch with a stainless-steel wheel for opening and closing. About a hundred feet of coiled nylon line encircled the hatch.

“Escape hatch?” Hawke asked the captain.

“Da, da, da. For the crew in an emergency. Also for the passengers on the decks above, should a fire break out somewhere aboard that blocked the normal exits.”

“Where do you head from Moscow, captain?”

“To Stockholm. For the Nobel ceremony. We are meeting our sister ship there. The great passenger liner Pushkin. Perhaps you’ve heard of her. She’s en route to Stockholm now, from Miami.”

“A magnificent vessel, from pictures I’ve seen. You should be very proud.”

“One day, the count hopes to see hundreds of these great airships crisscrossing the world’s oceans and continents. It’s a marvelous way to travel, as I’m sure you’ll agree.”

“It’s a very civilized mode of transportation. Captain, thank you. I’ll leave you to it, then. Pity about those chaps in the chopper, isn’t it?”

Hawke was still mulling over the downed helicopter when he returned to the observation deck, where Anastasia remained engrossed in her novel. He picked up an English edition of Pravda and scanned the headlines. Nothing hinted at the unrest inside the Kremlin walls. No surprise, since the government controlled all the media. He picked up an ancient copy of Sports Illustrated, pretending to read it, privately going over recent events.

He planned to call the White House as soon as he could. He needed to speak to the president himself, tell Jack McAtee what he thought was going on.

The rest of the short voyage was uneventful. Only the mooring inside the walls of the Kremlin brought Hawke out of his reverie. He went to the window and peered down at a snow-covered Red Square. “Red Square is such a surprisingly beautiful place,” Hawke said. “Pity it’s still saddled with that discredited old Commie name.”

“Red has nothing to do with Communism,” Anastasia said.

“No?”

“No. It’s been called that for centuries. Red, in Russian, means beautiful.”

“Beautiful Square. Well, that’s much better.”

The square was filled with throngs of people looking upward as the great airship descended slowly toward the mooring mast. They seemed to be cheering.

“What’s all that about?” Hawke asked Anastasia, who had joined him at the window.

“I’m not sure. There’s to be an emergency session of the Duma this evening. Papa was asked to appear. We’ll find out more after the ballet, I’m certain.”

“I’m sure we will,” Hawke said, gazing down at the cheering masses waving up at the airship. Near Lenin’s Tomb, on the periphery, a few protesters, mostly elderly Communists waving tattered red banners, were closely watched by OMON security forces in their trademark blue and black camo. Their armored personnel carriers were parked nearby. Tsar’s mooring lines had been heaved, and a ground crew had taken control of the ship as she neared the mooring mast. Hawke felt a shudder aft and assumed the boarding staircase was being lowered to the ground.

He was still thinking about the burning chopper in the mountains. It figured in this, but how?

“What time shall I pick you up for the Bolshoi?” he said, stroking Anastasia’s cheek.

“Oh. Are you off, darling?”

“Yes. I’ve got to meet a friend at the Metropol. Sorry, I should have told you earlier. Blue Water is doing a new business presentation tomorrow, and I need to make sure we’re ready.”

“Who is your friend?”

“Simon,” he said, hating the lie but unable to say Harry Brock’s name. “Simon Weatherstone. An American. He’s staying at the Metropol. I’m supposed to meet him in the bar.”

“Meet me in front of the theater a few minutes before seven. Since we’ve got Papa’s box, we don’t need to arrive early.”

He said good-bye, kissing her lips, hating himself for lying to a woman he might be falling in love with, knowing he had no other choice, still finding it an utterly distasteful part of his chosen career.

War was hell.

With a side order of heaven.

49

Inside the lower house of the Russian parliament, the state Duma, the mood of the emergency session was initially somber and tense, then increasingly restive. Rumors were rampant. Supporters of the late President Rostov were already claiming privately that he’d been assassinated. His helicopter having crashed mysteriously en route to Moscow from Korsakov’s winter palace in perfect weather, there were many eager to lay the blame at the count’s feet.

The siloviki, the ten most powerful men in the Kremlin, and many more, were more than ready to defend Korsakov, angrily denying such blasphemy and implying political or even physical threats should these blasphemers not immediately cease such sacrilege against the revered man’s name.

Naturally, in such a power vacuum, there was an enormous amount of jockeying going on inside the chamber. Some of the Nationalist Party lawmakers, given to near-hysterical rhetoric, were eventually shouted down. Others, mainly Communist diehards, who threatened to turn violent, had been forcibly removed by Gennady Seleznyov, speaker of the Duma. The Ten, of course, sat silently, stoic, holding their cards very close to the chest.

Rostov’s most likely and logical successor, Prime Minister Boris Zhirinovsky, had been at the podium for more than two hours, striving for a ringing rhetoric that had fallen woefully short of the mark. He needed three hundred votes to secure his position. He had perhaps half that. And those numbers were going down, not up. He droned on, and a sleepy stupor descended over the ornate, rococo-style room.

Now, a fresh rumor swept the great hall. The airship belonging to the reigning hero of all Russia, Count Ivan Korsakov, had arrived in Moscow. Reports said he was even at this hour en route to the Duma to make a plea for reason and calm in the wake of the morning’s tragedy. A prescient few guessed he had other, far more ambitious agendas to place before the legislature.

The prime minister, oblivious to all this, droned on.

Suddenly, the wide doors at the rear of the chamber were flung open, and a large cadre of heavily armed OMON security forces in full camo regalia marched inside, their heavy boots marking quick time on the marble floors, half of the men moving rapidly along the far left aisle of the room and the other half going right. They positioned themselves exactly one foot apart, backs to the wall, weapons down, eyes forward as if awaiting further orders.

Entering the room like a conquering hero was General Nikolai Kuragin, resplendent in his sharply tailored black uniform, a black leather briefcase attached to his wrist. He strode alone down the center aisle toward the podium, head high, jaw thrust forward, his eyes on the prime minister.

Upon seeing his approach, the prime minister stopped his speech in midsentence, struck mute, unable to continue. The room erupted in pandemonium. After a moment, the speaker ushered the prime minister away from the podium and returned to call for order. When the four hundred legislators in the hall had calmed to a dull roar, he invited General Kuragin to the podium and asked him to address the assembly.

The general cleared his throat and gazed out at the assembled legislators with the look of a man whose hour had come at last.

“My great good friends, patriots all, I’ve come here today in grief but also in hope,” the general began. The reaction was instantaneous and overwhelming. Applause, loud and sustained, greeted this declaration. Some already knew and many were beginning to guess at what was to follow.

“My good friend President Vladimir Vladimirovich Rostov served our nation with great distinction and honor. We, in turn, honor his memory and mourn his tragic passing. But at this historic-”

“Murderer! Liar! Murderers, all of you!” shouted a female voice somewhere in the audience. A small white-haired woman was on her feet, screaming at the general. He nodded his head, and two OMON soldiers quickly made their way toward her from either end of the row where she stood. They lifted Rostov’s widow off her feet, still screaming, and carried her quickly to the nearest exit.

When the ensuing hubbub had died down, the general continued his speech as if nothing had happened.

“We, in turn, honor his memory and mourn his tragic passing just a few short hours ago. But at this historic moment in our motherland’s heroic history, we cannot dwell on the past even for a short time. Events allow us no such luxury. Russia must look to the immediate future. And the future, my dear colleagues, is entering the room even as I speak. Please welcome Count Ivan Ivanovich Korsakov, who humbly begs permission to enter this chamber and address this august body.”

The eruption was predictable. Save for a few naysayers scattered here and there among the rows of chairs terraced up the rear, the four hundred members of the Duma rose to their feet to cheer and applaud, turning to watch the great man enter the chamber.

Korsakov, dressed in a formal grey suit and wearing a long grey cape that draped from his shoulders, paused in the doorway for a moment, acknowledging their welcome with a modest smile, then strode down the center aisle to the podium. Reaching it, he turned and bowed deeply to those assembled. The roar that greeted this gesture was deafening, and he used the moment to replace General Kuragin behind the podium. Korsakov raised his hands in a futile effort to quiet the assembly.

The general remained at his side throughout, his sharp eyes moving over the crowd like the trained security man he’d once been. If there was to be any assassination attempt, it would come now, and he and his troops were ready for it. Many of the security men surrounding the podium were more than ready to take a bullet for their leader if it came to that. Not so Nikolai Kuragin. He wouldn’t take a bullet for anybody.

“I am a proud Russian citizen,” Korsakov began as the room finally hushed. “I’ve been one all of my life. And I have never been more proud of my country than I am at this moment. We have accomplished much since the end of the Soviet era. President Rostov and his predecessor, President Putin, deserve the lion’s share of the credit for this progress. Now we stand together on the threshold of greatness such as we have never known.

“My friends, Russia is once more a great power in this world and gaining strength every day. It is my will that she will become even greater. Her time has come at last, comrades. I stand before you today, a humble patriot but also a man ready to lead you to where a great and luminous future beckons. And that is Russia’s historic place, is it not? At the very forefront of the world’s great nations! This is where I vow to take our beloved Mother Russia!

“Therefore, I am privileged and deeply honored to place my name before you as a candidate for the presidency of the Russian Federation.”

He bowed his head briefly and waved to the crowd, stepping aside to let Kuragin return to the podium.

“Count Ivan Ivanovich Korsakov has allowed his name to be put forth as a candidate for the presidency. All in favor, signify by saying aye. All opposed, please stand.”

A chorus of ayes rose in the room and reverberated throughout the chamber. Korsakov, delighted, smiled benevolently at his supporters. It was happening, all of it, just as he’d always dreamed it would.

Once the noise had died down, a strange silence fell over the room as, one by one, trembling men opposed to Count Ivan Korsakov’s presidency rose to their feet.

Only a few stood up, of course, the hardened opposition, consisting mainly of diehard Communists and members of Kasparov’s New Russia party. The men who rose were brave indeed. They stood erect, their faces grey and shining with sweat, but their eyes were staring at the podium as the OMON troopers made their way to the ends of the aisles, waiting for a signal to drag them away. There was no shouting, no resistance from them, even though they knew that by standing in defiance, they’d sentenced themselves to life in the gulag.

Or worse.

Korsakov, his eyes scanning the faces of the men who dared oppose him, made a slight hand gesture, and the OMON troops withdrew and resumed their positions along the walls.

A thunderous explosion of applause greeted this show of magnanimity and mercy. Here, then, at long last, was a ruler for all the people!

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Kuragin said, “it would appear that Russia has a new president! President Korsakov, would you say a few words?”

Then, from one of the last rows in the great hall, came a single voice, rising above the rest.

“Tsar!” the man shouted. “Tsar! Tsar! Tsar!”

The chanting of that word in the chamber was startling. It had remained unused in Russia since that terrible night in an Ekaterinberg basement in 1917, when the last Tsar and his family had been executed, their bodies dumped in a well deep in the forest.

But the men and women of the Duma remembered how to say that word, and the swelling of it grew until it filled the hall, every single one of them stamping their feet and shouting at the top of their lungs.

“Tsar! Tsar! Tsar!”

President Korsakov had moved away from the podium. He stood quietly, hands clasped behind his back, his head lifted high, his eyes shining. After a time, he thought the chant might go on for hours if he didn’t stop it, so he stepped back up to the podium and said nine historic words into the microphone.

“I accept with honor this ancient and noble title.”

Pandemonium, joy, and glee greeted his words.

Russia, after ninety-plus years, had a new Tsar.

HAWKE REMEMBERED ELEPHANTS onstage, but that was all he could recall of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, the first and last opera he’d ever attended. He’d been six years old at the time, seated between his parents in the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. Opera and ballet were not his bailiwick. He’d happily never seen a ballet in his life and was hardly looking forward to this one.

But nothing had prepared him for this moment.

From the very instant Nasimova appeared as a beautiful white swan gliding serenely across the frozen wintry pond, he’d been mesmerized. Perhaps it was simply Tchaikovsky’s genius at work, the full orchestra dipping and soaring with his inspiration. Perhaps it was the corps of ballerinas, each a white swan lovelier than the next. But whatever it was, Hawke felt a deep stirring inside, something moved within him that he’d not imagined even existed.

Rhapsodic, that was the word for how he felt, reaching for Anastasia’s warm hand in the dark. And a new sense of wonder at the mysteries of the schizophrenic Russian soul. It produced unholy monsters like Stalin, capable of murdering millions of his own people. And it produced men capable of imagining this loveliest of dreamlike fantasies.

Alone in the dark of the private Korsakov box with Anastasia at his side, he was entranced. He was actually leaning forward from his plush velvet seat, his elbows on the curved balustrade, his chin resting in the cup of his palms, his eyes sweeping the stage, not wanting to miss a single movement, a single note of the glorious music.

“Do you like it?” he heard Anastasia whisper softly, leaning into him.

He tore his eyes away from the stage, from Nasimova flying above Swan Lake, to look at his lover’s beautiful face. She was especially radiant tonight, a glittering diamond tiara in her golden hair and tiny waterfalls of diamonds suspended from each earlobe. She wore a dark blue silk gown with a plunging neckline, the silk contrasting with her full pale bosom, her whole being luminous in the soft blue artificial moonlight streaming from the stage.

“I can never thank you enough for this, Asia,” he said, kissing her lips. “I didn’t know there could be anything so beautiful.”

“My love,” she said, her eyes shining with a depth of feeling he had never seen.

“What is it?” he asked, falling into her eyes. All day, he’d felt she had something to tell him and that she’d been waiting for this moment.

“There is…something else I must tell you. But I am-afraid. I know I love you. I must have loved you from the moment I saw you. And I think you have feelings for me, too. But now, something has happened. Something that may make you run from me. The timing, you know, it’s just too soon for you, and now I am so afraid you will go away, and all this joy will end for me.”

“How beautiful you are…what is it, darling? Don’t be afraid. Tell me.”

“Something more beautiful than one woman could ever be.”

“Tell me.”

“We are making a baby, darling Alex. I am pregnant with your child.”

Hawke looked at her, saw the tears well up and begin to roll down her cheeks and all the questions and hope in her eyes. He wiped her tears away and kissed her mouth, mixed emotions racing through his mind so rapidly that he had no time to think, and so he just said what was in his heart.

“How wonderful, darling. How absolutely marvelous.”

“You are happy? You won’t run?”

“Deliriously happy,” he said, kissing her eyes, her cheeks, her lips.

“We made our baby during that storm over Bermuda, darling. I know it. That magnificent storm. He will be magnificent, too. Thunder in his heart and lightning in his veins. Just as you are.”

“Are you sure it’s a boy?”

“As sure as I can ever be. I know in my heart.”

TWO HOURS LATER, they emerged from the theater, both of them still glowing with the ballet’s lingering beauty and the bright promise of her news. Hawke had his arm around Anastasia, holding her close to him, protecting her and his child as they made their way through the bustling crowd streaming down the staircase toward the exit.

It had begun snowing, heavily. A warm front from the Mediterranean had brought high winds, colliding with a cold front from Siberia. A serious storm, exhilarating.

Storms and babies, he thought, smiling down at her, and he felt as happy as perhaps he had ever been. That a life marred by so much tragedy as his could have moments like this one made it all seem worthwhile. The whole night lay before them, and their lives would be forever entwined and filled with limitless wonder and possibility. He realized at that very moment that he truly loved this woman. And that his badly broken heart had at long last healed enough to take her inside.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” he said, looking out at the frosted city.

Moscow looked its best under a blanket of white. The city was made for snowy nights like this one, and he was eager to make his way to the Pushkin Café, just five or six blocks from the Bolshoi, where he had booked a cozy table in the Library on the second floor. There they would drink champagne and plan their future together.

He was halfway down the steps when he felt the sharp pain in his ribs. He looked down and saw that a short, squat man in a black overcoat had thrust his hand inside Hawke’s own coat. It was the muzzle of a gun, he could feel it now, pushing between two ribs.

“You’re under arrest,” the man said, not even looking up, just jamming the gun harder into his ribcage.

Hawke made two moves at once. With his right hand, he gently pushed Anastasia out of harm’s way. His left hand he brought down hard, palm flat, on the back of the man’s thick neck, driving his head down, only to meet Hawke’s right knee coming up under his chin, breaking his jaw. The move sent the little fellow flying.

“Alex!” Asia cried. “What is-”

Hawke never had time to reply.

Instantly, he was surrounded by five more men similarly dressed in black overcoats, but these were big men, burly types. They were all armed, and they pressed in close, letting him see the pistols they carried.

“Come with us,” one of them hissed in his ear.

“Where?”

“You’ll know soon enough.”

They had his arms now and were moving him quickly out into the snowy street. He didn’t have to wonder where the KGB thugs were taking him. He knew.

Lubyanka Prison.

Hawke twisted his head around, looking for Anastasia. She was standing where he’d left her on the steps, looking down at him, both hands to her face, terror in her eyes.

“Find the American!” Hawke cried out to her. “The one I told you about at the Metropol!”

He felt a blow to the back of his head and then nothing more. His last thought before he went out was that on the airship, he’d managed to give Anastasia the assumed name Harry Brock had registered under at his hotel.

Harry would find him. Help him.

Maybe.

50

Fancha was singing when the lights went out. She was singing “A Minha Vida,” her biggest hit from the Green Island Girl album, which had just gone platinum. The dinner crowd was really with her, she could feel it, and so she went ahead with the beautiful song, singing in the dark, thinking this lighting thing was just some kind of a dramatic flourish by the very flamboyant Russian stage director named Igor. She’d seen him backstage before the show started, sipping vodka from a flask with one of the musicians.

Or maybe it was just a temporary power outage aboard the giant airship?

They were sailing far out over the Atlantic now, just north of Bermuda, she thought. Past the point of no return, like in her favorite John Wayne movie, The High and the Mighty. She’d been afraid of flying ever since she’d seen it, but she still loved it, still found herself whistling the haunting theme song now and then.

When she ended the song, there was a lot of applause and even shouts of “Brava! Brava!” from some of the French and Italian people onboard. Had to be the smartest audience she’d ever performed for, most of them Nobel Prize winners, after all. And Vice President McCloskey’s wife, Bonnie, was sitting right up front by the little stage, clapping louder than anybody.

She took a deep bow, even though nobody could see her.

The sudden darkness was startling and complete. It was a moonless night, and even though there were big windows in the ship’s ballroom, she couldn’t see much other than the silhouettes of the three hundred or so people in the audience. They were mostly all seated at tables of four or more, but a large number of couples were still circling the dance floor, the small band onstage behind her going into an unfamiliar riff.

Dancing in the dark?

People just kept clapping, probably thinking, lights go on, lights go off. Happens all the time on shipboard, right? A lot of liquor had been consumed at the cocktail reception and a lot of wine at dinner. She didn’t drink herself, but later, she’d remember that she still wasn’t scared at that point, thinking it was all sort of fun.

“If someone will light a candle, I’ll sing another song,” she said to a ripple of nervous laughter.

Someone called out, “‘Ave Maria’!”

She began to sing the beautiful aria, feeling the power of her instrument, waiting for the violinist to catch up.

Then the lights came back on.

And someone screamed.

The terrorists, for that’s what they were, had entered under the cover of darkness, but many were still pouring into the room from every doorway. They were all dressed in heavy boots and black combat fatigues, but it was the guns everybody was looking at. They all carried big, complicated-looking assault rifles, cradled in their arms like babies, but they had multiple layers of weapons, sashes of bullets, flashy knives, all kinds of smaller guns holstered to thighs or sticking up from belts.

The thing that really spooked her was the gas masks. They all wore black insectlike gas masks pushed back on top of their heads.

Gas? Then she saw the fat man come in with the two canisters on his back. The baker. The one from the birthday party. The one who’d brought the bomb inside the cake. The baker stood beside the muscular blond guy, another face she thought she recognized from the party, the security guy. He seemed to be the leader. He was shouting orders and threats at the frightened, terrified passengers. People were too shocked to panic yet, but husbands were searching for wives, people were speaking rapidly to each other, considering what to do and abandoning strategies instantly, paralyzed with fear, realizing the utter uselessness of their plans.

“Attention!” the blond man yelled, raising his rifle above his head and waving it about. “You are now all hostages of the Chechen Liberation Front. Do exactly as you’re told, and no one will die. Disobey my orders, and you all will be killed. We are now flying at five thousand feet. For any one person who disobeys orders or causes trouble, five passengers, chosen at random, will be thrown out of the airship.”

Oh, Stokely, she thought, feeling her whole body tremble. Oh, baby, where are you now?

The blond guy, the leader, kept shouting orders, making threats. She remembered his name suddenly. Yuri.

There was a commotion on the dance floor, where people were moving and sliding against each other, everybody knowing that at worst they were dead, at best they were at the beginning of a long ordeal. A husband and wife were arguing now in the middle of the crowd, and she heard the woman scream at her husband, “Do something, God damn you! Do something!”

Fancha heard herself saying into the microphone, “Everybody try to stay calm. Do what they say, and we’ll be okay.”

But the woman who wanted action slapped her husband hard across the face and turned from him, pushing through the panic-stricken crowd on the dance floor, shoving people, trying to move toward the leader. People were slipping and falling, scrambling to get out of her way.

“Stop right there,” Yuri said, seeing that she was headed for him. He pulled a large.45 automatic and aimed it at her head.

“Kill me!” she said, shouting at the top of her lungs. “Go ahead and kill me, you fucking bastard!”

“Stop now, I warn you!”

“Remember United Flight Ninety-three, asshole? That’s me! That’s who I am!” She looked around at the crowd behind her, her eyes wild, and said, “Let’s roll!”

She kept pushing forward, ignoring the gun pointed directly at her. When she broke through the perimeter of the crowd and was maybe six feet from the blond guy, one of the nearby terrorists, who couldn’t have been more than twenty, stepped forward with his knife and slashed her throat, almost severing her head, the blood gushing out onto her white evening gown.

She collapsed to the floor in a heap. The crowd was stunned for a moment but then started screaming in renewed panic, pushing one another out of the way, thinking there had to be some kind of escape, still some way out of this nightmare.

As Fancha desperately looked around for a way out, shots were fired. She didn’t see who was shot, because right then the lights went out again.

The leader was screaming at them to get on the floor, now, or they would all be killed. This time, people listened, and she could sense them diving to the floor. In the darkness and pandemonium, her eyes began to adjust. And Fancha saw her escape.

There was a small backstage area behind the velvet curtains. A door back there led to the kitchen, and from the kitchen she knew she could find her way to the main staircase and down one deck to her cabin. She silently stepped around the musicians, who seemed rooted to their chairs, and slipped through the tiny gap in the heavy velvet curtains. It was totally dark and deserted backstage, but she could see a thin strip of light beneath the door to the kitchen.

The kitchen, too, was deserted. Maybe the staff had all been gotten rid of, or maybe they’d just fled in panic. She raced down the center aisle, sidestepping pots and pans on the floor where people had dropped them, and came to the swinging door to the corridor. She pushed through it, bracing herself for more armed men beyond, but the hallway was empty, too. Right, left? Which way? She was breathing hard, and her heart was pounding. Disoriented now, she took a deep breath and placed one hand on the wall, willing herself to calm down.

Think, Fancha.

Left. The stairs were to her left, at the very end.

She ran all the way, took the steps three at a time down to the promenade deck. Her cabin was number 22, five or six doors down on the left. Her luck was holding. The corridor to her room was empty. Usually, there were one or two of the beautiful Slavic housekeepers pushing their trolleys up and down the hall.

Key, where’s the key? It was a card key, and it was still where she put it, in the inside pocket of her black velvet bolero jacket. She pulled it out and slipped it into the slot, praying for green, because sometimes the damn thing flashed red and she’d have to go looking for the steward or a housekeeper to let her in.

Green.

She pushed inside, just the sight of her turned-down bed and the lamp glowing softly on the bedside table doing wonders for her. She turned and double-locked the door, falling against it, her forehead against the cool wood, and then just let the tears come. She didn’t make any noise; she couldn’t allow herself that satisfaction, someone might be passing outside, so she just stood there crying silently, her shoulders shaking involuntarily.

Sweet baby Jesus, she whispered to herself, wiping her eyes, finally done with the tears.

She sat on the edge of the bed, looking at herself in the mirror over the dresser. And that’s when she remembered the phone, the sat phone Stoke had unpacked and placed on the dresser. He’d left without it, and she’d put it in the top drawer. He’d shown her how to work it once. It was pretty easy.

She pulled the drawer open, grabbed it, and lay down on the bed, her head propped up on two pillows.

She could hear it ringing in Miami, once, twice, three times.

Pick it up! Pick it up!

“Hello?” It was Stokely.

“Baby, it’s me,” she said, her voice breaking.

“Honey? You okay? Talk to me, baby…”

“Not so okay, Stoke. Not okay at all.”

“What is it? Tell me what’s happening.”

“I was singing, you know, and the lights went out. When th-they, when they came back on, the room was full of terrorists. Guns, knives, wearing g-gas masks and-shooting.”

“Who are they? They identify themselves?”

“Chechen Liberation, some damn thing like that.”

“Where are you? I mean now? How are you calling?”

“I’m in our stateroom. On the sat phone you left.”

“Oh, God, baby. I’m so sorry.”

“What do I do? I don’t know what to do, Stokely!”

“You got the door locked?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And nobody knows you’re in there?”

“I don’t think so…”

“Listen, baby. In the closet. On the top shelf. My canvas carry-on bag is up there. I forgot it.”

“Yeah.”

“My gun is in the bag, baby. The one we took out to the range together. The Heckler and Koch nine-millimeter. The one I showed you how to shoot at the range, remember?”

“I do.”

“I want you to get it down. It’s loaded. All you have to do is chamber a round, just like I showed you. There are two extra clips in the bag with fourteen rounds each. You get a chair facing the door, and you don’t let anyone inside, okay? Somebody comes through that door, you shoot, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Tell me what happened, best you can.”

She gave him the short answer. Her heart was pounding again.

“They already killed one hostage?”

“One that I saw. With a knife. But I heard shots just as I was leaving the stage. Maybe more are dead now…”

“Tell me about the leader again.”

“Blond. Big muscles. He looks familiar.”

“Yurin? The security guy at the party?”

“I don’t know for sure, but yeah, I think so. Chechen Liberation Front, that’s what he said.”

“Chechen? Or Russian?”

“He said Chechen, but he’s Russian, right?”

“Right.”

“Baby, I’m so scared.”

“You’re going to be okay. Now, what about the baker? Happy? The fat man who brought the cake to the party. You see him?”

“Yeah, he’s with them. He had two-two, uh, tanks strapped on his back. He had his mask down over his face. For the gas, I guess.”

“Gas? What about gas?”

“They’re all wearing gas masks, Stoke. They’re going to gas us? Is that it?”

“Baby, they ain’t going to do a damn thing. We are working on this right now. I just found out the baker might be aboard. I already told the CIA, the FBI, and the Pentagon. So right now, everybody in Washington is figuring out the best way to save you. The vice president himself is forming a rescue task force. Is his wife okay? I need to tell him.”

“I think so. She was when I left.”

“So, all you have to do is stay out of sight until the rescue, baby. And shoot anybody tries to come through that door. Can you do that?”

“Rescue how? They said if a plane or boat came within a radius of fifty miles, they’d start throwing people out the door, one at a time.”

“When we come, they won’t know what hit them, honey. Trust me. I am going to get you out of this.”

“Are you coming?”

“You damn right I’m coming. You hold on, okay? I’ll be there before you know it.”

“I told you I didn’t want to come on this damn trip without you.”

“I know you did. You were right. I’m sorry.”

“I need you, Stokely. We all do. You never saw such a scared bunch of people in your life.”

“I’m coming.”

“I’m going to hang up now, Stoke. Get the gun. But you answer the second you see this phone ring. You’re all I’ve got to hold on to.”

“I love you.”

“I love you more.”

“No way.”

“’Bye, baby. Be strong.”

“’Bye.”

51

President Jack McAtee said good-bye to the British ambassador, hung up the phone, shook his head wearily, and looked at the crisis team he’d assembled in the Oval Office. Those present included the vice president, Tom McCloskey; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Charlie Moore; the secretary of state, Consuelo de los Reyes; the new director of the National Security Council, Lewis Crampton; FBI Director Mike Reiter; and the director of the CIA, Patrick Brickhouse Kelly, better known as Brick.

His team.

The mood was tense. They had an American city in ruins, and the evidence pointed to a Russian terrorist as culpable. If that were true, and McAtee found out the Kremlin was even remotely involved, military confrontation with Russia was back on the table for the first time since Kennedy had stared down Khrushchev over Cuba fifty years earlier, sitting at this same desk.

And now there was news coming out of the Salina investigation that an airship carrying hundreds of VIPs and Nobel laureates, not to mention the vice president’s wife, might be a target for the same terrorists who had murdered Salina’s mayor and her family and destroyed the town. A key suspect had been seen in Miami just before the airship departed.

“You guys ready for this one?” the president asked, trying to smile.

McAtee was tired and looked it. He saw events spiraling out of control and knew he was powerless to stop them. All he could do now was try to learn as much as he possibly could about exactly what the hell was going on and make the very best possible decisions he could under the circumstances.

The only good news was that his White House team had been in crisis situations before, maybe not as bad as this one, but they’d weathered the storms, come through well enough. It they were all smart, kept their heads and wits about them, they might get through this one, too. But it was a bitch, no doubt about that. The Russians seemed out of control-and they still had thousands of nuclear warheads aimed at America.

“What is it, Mr. President?” Brick Kelly said.

McAtee said, “That was the British ambassador. He says he just got a WTFIGO cable from London. Anybody know what that stands for?”

“What the fuck is going on?” Lew Crampton said.

“Bingo, Lew. He says the MI-6 intel currently coming out of Moscow is going from weird to completely insane. One, the president, Rostov, just died in a helicopter crash. Clear weather, military chopper, very suspicious. Two, the Duma is in emergency session, locked down, no media, rumors flying. Three, one of the British service’s top operatives, an old friend of Brick’s and this office, was just arrested coming out of the Bolshoi ballet.”

“Not Alex Hawke?” Brick Kelly said.

“I’m afraid so, Brick.”

“Jesus. The KGB’s got him? Not good.”

Brick Kelly said, “As you well know, he’s gone undercover, sir. A new division of MI-6 called Red Banner. Designed to counter the resurgence of Russian intelligence. Hawke is in Moscow because-”

“He’s in Moscow because I sent him there, Brick.” The testiness in his voice bore witness to the tension in the room. “I was fully briefed on Red Banner by Sir David Trulove when he last visited the White House.”

“Sorry, Mr. President, I should have assumed that. At any rate, one of my agents is liaising with Hawke and Red Banner. He’s in Moscow now. Harry Brock. I’m sure he can help.”

“Ah, yes, Harry Brock. Well, that’s reassuring, Brick, knowing you have a man of that caliber inside the enemy camp.” The president’s sarcasm was not lost on anyone.

“He’s different, I’ll admit, sir. But he’s damn good in the field. I’ll contact him and the American ambassador when this meeting’s over. See if we can’t get Hawke released as quickly as possible.”

“Good. Thank you, Brick,” McAtee said.

The president rose from his desk, walked to his favorite armchair to the right of the fireplace, and sank down into it.

“Anybody got any ideas?” he said.

As usual, no one in his government agreed with anyone else about what the hell they should be doing at the moment. That’s why he’d assembled his team this morning, to try to make some wise collaborative decisions about how best to proceed through the current minefield.

“The primary card the Russians hold right now is energy,” the secretary of state said, shifting her weight around on the sofa. “One, the petro-rubles make them immune from certain threats. And two, if pushed, they can throw the switches at Gazprom and Rozneft and turn out the lights in all of Europe.”

“Not to mention the Baltics, East Ukraine, et cetera,” the vice president added. “Bastards. They think they’ve got us in a corner. Rule one: Never corner a rat or the American military.”

Tom McCloskey, the former Colorado rancher, was smart and tough, and he could focus. That’s why McAtee had put him on the ticket, a decision he’d never regretted once.

The president looked at Kelly. “You’ve got human assets inside both Gazprom and Rozneft, isn’t that right, Brick? Deep cover?”

“Yes, sir, we do. Three Russian engineers manning the on/off switches are on our payroll. Unnumbered accounts in Geneva.”

“Could these guys actually stop this thing? If the Kremlin tried shutting everything down in Europe? Or the former Soviet republics?”

“Stop, no. Delay, yes. At least, they could buy us valuable time in a crunch. That’s why they’re there.”

McAtee smiled. “Well, good news at last. We’re on a roll. Anybody else?”

General Moore leaned forward, looking at his boss. “I ordered our overhead capability rerouted this morning. All sixteen of our low-level birds are now operating over the Russian mainland, Mr. President. Total satellite coverage.”

“Good work. We’ll need-”

“Mr. President?” Betsey Hall said, interrupting. McAtee’s secretary had cracked the door and stuck her head inside.

“Yes, Betsey?”

“An urgent call for you. From Moscow.”

“Who is it?” McAtee asked, looking at the blinking light.

“Someone named Korsakov. I believe he’s the late President Rostov’s successor.”

“Turn on the tape, Betsey,” McAtee said, returning to his desk, punching a button, and picking up the receiver.

“This is President McAtee,” he said.

“President McAtee, I am Ivan Korsakov. I’ve just been selected by the Russian Duma as the new leader of our government. You are the first person I’ve called.”

“Well, I’m glad you called. Congratulations, President Korsakov.”

“Actually, I’ve been proclaimed Tsar.”

“Tsar, is it? Well, that is interesting. Historic, one might say.”

McAtee covered the phone and said to his team, “They’ve got a Tsar now. Holy Christ.”

“Mr. President, I’m delighted we have this chance to speak,” Korsakov said. “And I look forward to working with you. Striving to build a better world.”

“I’m so glad to hear you say that, given recent troubling events.”

“Mr. President, the people of my great country are relying on me to restore Russian pride and honor. All Russian people, whether they are in the Baltics, in Estonia, Lithuania, East Ukraine, wherever, they are all relying on me to restore the cohesion of the Russian nation.”

Restore cohesion?

McAtee paused a moment to gather his wits and then said, “I’m sure over time, we will be able to work through your issues and still develop a plan that will retain the current integrity of Europe.”

“Mr. President, I am not entirely sure of your meaning, but let me tell you what we feel we must do to reunite our citizens in the Baltics and East Ukraine.”

“This sounds an awful lot like irredentism, and I don’t think you-”

“If by that word you mean someone who advocates the restoration to their country of any territory properly belonging to it, then yes, that is exactly what I am saying to you. I am only speaking now of the territories mentioned. We can discuss Moldova and the ‘Stans’ at a later date.”

“I must be misunderstanding you. Surely you’re not proposing to alter the national boundaries of the European Community?”

McAtee looked up, surprised. His entire team had gotten up and gathered around his desk, lending him support. He smiled at them, grateful. He needed it.

He continued, “What you’re suggesting would cast us back into the confrontation we put behind us at the end of the Cold War.”

Secretary de los Reyes nodded her head, vigorously approving the tack the president was taking.

Korsakov said, “Now, now, Mr. President, please. There is no need for confrontations. Let’s not even speak in those terms.”

“Frankly, Mr. Korsakov, we don’t know each other. But let me assure you that you cannot expect me to remain silent and inactive while you prepare to cast aside all precedent and all the legal instruments that have given this world the stability it enjoys today. You are talking about illegally absorbing millions of citizens now happily part of other nations.”

“Mr. President, this is not a negotiation. I had hoped to avoid just this sort of overheated rhetoric. But then, perhaps you haven’t considered the security dimensions of the moment we seem to have arrived at?”

“Security dimensions? Is that a threat?”

“You are aware of the terrible incident at Salina, Kansas.”

“Of course, I’m aware of Salina. An unfortunate development. We’re sure it’s not likely to happen again.”

“On the contrary, that is exactly what is likely to happen again. But this time to a major population center and without benefit of advance warning.”

“Mr. Korsakov, think extremely hard about what I am about to say. You yourself are not nearly so immune to certain actions as you seem to think. Reprisals could be swift and overwhelming.”

“You are in no position to threaten me, I assure you.”

“I’m not?”

“No. Trust me, as you will soon learn, you are not.”

McAtee searched the faces of his team before replying. Each one of them made a slashing motion across the neck.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Korsakov. I am unable to continue this conversation any longer. Our ambassador will be in touch.”

He hung up.

“Play that back on speaker, will you, Betsey?” he said after a moment.

The team stood around the desk and listened as both sides of the conversation were played. Jaws dropped, eyes rolled, but no one spoke when it was over. The implications of what they’d just heard were too profound to be assimilated in an instant. The world had just shifted on its axis, and the floor beneath their feet felt as if it might give way at any moment.

“Well?” the president said. “Welcome to the parallel universe. We’ve fallen through a wormhole. I always wondered if things could get any crazier. Now I know.”

“Good Lord,” the vice president said, managing a grim smile. “We’re back to October 1962. Maybe worse.”

“Definitely worse. This man is insane. A genius, perhaps, but a raving megalomaniac. Khrushchev was merely a Commie thug with a grade-school education,” Mike Reiter said. The good-looking young director had only been on the job a few years. But he was a major history buff and had taught Russian studies at Georgetown before joining the FBI.

Consuelo de los Reyes felt her cell phone vibrate and stepped a few paces toward the Rose Garden windows to take the call. She listened for a few moments, then turned back to face the group, shaking her head, her face drained of all color.

“And the vice president’s wife? Is she all right?” they heard her say. She listened and then looked at McCloskey, nodding, giving him a brief smile that said she was okay.

“Tell us what’s happened, Conch,” the president said when she’d ended the call.

“The airship Pushkin, en route from Miami to Stockholm for the Nobel ceremony, has just been taken over by Russian terrorists. One of the hostages managed to get to a satellite phone and call her fiancé in Miami. A man named Stokely Jones who does contract work for the Pentagon.”

“Friend of Hawke’s,” Brick Kelly said. “Ex-Navy SEAL. Hostage-rescue specialist.”

“My God, poor Bonnie,” the vice president said, wandering dazedly over to a sofa and collapsing into it. “She’s okay?”

“Yes. That’s what the hostage told Mr. Jones. She had seen her, and she was okay.”

The president stood up, staring at Charlie Moore.

“Everyone, listen carefully. I want you and your teams to initiate the following measures immediately. Lock down all Russian assets in this country. Everything. Seize all bank and real estate assets, detain and arrest the crews of every Russian ship in every U.S. harbor. Euro Command in Germany needs to crank up, now, General Moore. I need you to ascertain our offensive strike capability as of right this minute. Have the chief of naval operations send a flash message to the fleets, putting them all on high alert worldwide. Tell the CNO we need to know where all of our subs are, in the North Sea, around Kiel and St. Petersburg, also on the other side, Vladivostok. Tell him to get our carriers out of harm’s way immediately. With me so far?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Next. A flash message to the Air Force. We need to know exactly what our immediate bomber and fighter capabilities are and where. And we need to activate the capacity to jam the Russians’ low-level combat satellites, and do it now. Yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, that’s all I can think of at the moment. I’m sure you people will have more ideas as the situation develops. Let’s get moving.”

Moore, already headed for the door, paused and said, “One more thing, Mr. President. I’m going to get the SEAL hostage-rescue team working on this hijacking immediately. They’ll come up with something if anyone can.”

“Good idea. Now, Brick, you and Mike listen up,” the president said. “SEAL HRT needs every bit of information you guys can get on that airship hostage situation. How the hell do you deal with something like that? It’s not like a plane. Something that runs out of fuel and has to land sometime. Something SWAT hostage-rescue teams can board and overwhelm. A damn zeppelin can stay aloft indefinitely. So, what the hell do we do?”

Mike Reiter said, “I’ve just been thinking about that, Mr. President. And I don’t have a goddamn clue.”

52

Hawke awoke to a scream. A terrible, masculine scream that stretched on forever. It started high and went low, as if the dying author had jumped off a cliff. It was a death scream. Whoever he was, the poor bastard was now among the departed. And he’d gone out the hard way. The man hadn’t been far away, somewhere to Hawke’s right, maybe only fifty yards or so. What had happened to him?

The windows of the darkened machine Hawke found himself in were coated with a thick rime of frost. It was bloody freezing inside the military helicopter. He could see his breath in pale blue lights that shone down as if from high walls looming up beside the chopper. Groggy, he tried to raise his hand to wipe clear a porthole on the glass beside his head and found he could not lift it. His wrists were bound with plastic flex cuffs and lay helplessly in his lap.

He looked down. His wrists were connected by a thin steel chain to cuffs around his ankles. How long had he been out? He could feel the drugs still coursing through his veins, but the effects seemed to be wearing off. He observed himself to be all alone, abandoned by his captors. This was his fate? To freeze to death in the back of a Russian helicopter? It hardly seemed fitting or even fair.

Where was he?

On the ground. Certainly not Lubyanka. He had no sense of being in Moscow or any city, for that matter. Outside, the wind was howling, and he could smell the sea nearby, hear waves crashing against rock. He’d been drugged and flown here in a helicopter. But where the hell was here? He leaned his injured head, now bandaged, back against the metal bulkhead behind him and tried to get his brain rebooted.

As the fog inside his head gradually lifted, he dimly recalled the last conscious moments outside the Bolshoi. He’d been arrested. Dragged away from Anastasia. Before he’d blacked out, he’d been sure they were taking him to Moscow’s most notorious prison, the KGB’s private gateway to hell. But no, he was sitting all alone in the back of a helicopter freezing to death. And outside, not too far away, a man had just died in agony.

There came the sound of heavy boots crunching on snow outside. And wavering fuzzy discs of lights, flashlights in the hands of four or five men, laughing drunkenly as they neared the chopper. One of them, the pilot, yanked the forward left door open and clambered up into his seat. Frigid wind blew through the cockpit. Instantly, Hawke heard the whine of the turbo engine spooling up. The pilot yelled something in slurry Russian to the men outside.

The right rear door was pulled open, and a flashlight was shoved into his face, a foot from his nose. This was cause for further hysteria among the men outside.

A red-faced man leaned inside and shouted something incomprehensible in Russian. Hawke ignored him, finally interrupting his tirade to say, “Get somebody who speaks English, for God’s sake.”

There was more shouting, and now someone else was yelling at him.

“Out!” a younger guard shouted in English.

“Sod off,” Hawke replied. He was sleepy. His head hurt. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Hands reached inside for him and yanked him bodily out onto the frozen ground. He stayed on his feet but felt faint, as if he might collapse. Then someone shouted more Russian and jabbed him with a rifle muzzle. He managed to stagger forward a few feet and remain upright.

He looked around. The helo, now lifting off with a roar and a great rotor downdraft, had landed inside some kind of courtyard. There were high stone walls surrounding it, punctuated every fifty yards or so by towering black Gothic spires. Lights showed at the very tops, men moving around inside. Guard towers. He was in some kind of prison. On an island, he thought, for he had no sense of any mainland, and he heard the sea all around him now that the chopper had tilted its nose down and disappeared into the black night.

“Go!” the English-speaking guard said, prodding him in the direction of a large four-story building that looked as if Charles Addams had been the principal architect. It was all spires and gargoyles, black with soot. Because his ankles were bound, he could only take small, painful steps through the black and crusty snow. The result was more prodding and shouted insults in Russian.

He saw human wraiths wandering around inside the yard, barely clothed; they were all wall-eyed, hairless men and women who seemed lost and demented. One of them, a female perhaps, loomed up in front of him, ghostlike, and opened her toothless mouth in a silent scream. A guard slammed her to the ground and kicked her out of their path.

He was passing through what appeared to be a forest of thick round stakes. He squinted his eyes in the blowing snow, trying to believe he was only imagining what he saw. The bodies of both men and women straddled the tops of the stakes. The stakes disappeared inside their groins. Some of them were still writhing and moaning in agony. Some of them, with the sharp points of the stakes protruding from their chests or necks, were mercifully dead.

Impaled.

He knew enough history to know that impaling had once been the favorite method of execution in this part of the world. A sharpened stake, penetrating the rectum, would kill you slowly, maybe in two or three days, before finding and piercing a vital organ. A dull stake, slowly inching upward as the weight of the victim did gravity’s work, could take a week or more. Ivan the Terrible earned his moniker by impaling thousands. Peter the Great had impaled his share as well. Not to mention Vlad the Impaler, more popularly known in legend as Dracula.

But Hawke, as he staggered through this gruesome forest, had had no idea this barbaric method of execution was still in use.

Just when he thought it could get no worse, a guard lurched drunkenly toward the nearest stake, jumped up, and grabbed some wretched woman by the ankles, yanking her down a foot or more further onto the bloody stake. She screamed in agony, and the guard let go, collapsing to the ground in hysterics. Hawke, unable to control his rising gorge, wrenched himself free of the guards, bent forward from the waist, and retched, his vomit spattering his shoes, staining the freshly fallen snow.

He now knew the probable fate of the poor bastard whose cries had woken him up from his drug-induced sleep. He closed his eyes and remained still, swaying on his feet until he was prodded forward toward a set of steps that led up to a massive wooden door, blackened as if by fire but still intact.

And so he entered the vile prison known as Energetika. It seemed as if the fires of hell must be raging below. Those blackened walls outside. And inside, the floors, windows, walls, even the heavy old furniture were covered with layers of black soot. Yet there was no industry anywhere near this island. If Energetika wasn’t hell on earth, surely it was close enough.

The jailer, a man with a stupid face beneath his green eyeshade and grimy, sooty clothes, sat behind a great carved desk littered with papers. He barely looked up when Hawke was presented to him. He took a swig of vodka from an open bottle on the desk, scrawled a notation on a random piece of paper, and pointed to a dark corridor leading off to the left.

“Why am I here?” Hawke shouted at the man as they tried to drag him away. He planted his feet and twisted free of their clutching hands.

“Why? Because you’re under arrest, of course,” the jailer replied.

“You speak English?”

“Obviously. We have schools in Russia, believe it or not. Even universities. Very civilized.”

“On what charge?”

“Espionage against the Russian state. Our new Tsar, he doesn’t tolerate spies. He executes them. I’ll see you at dawn, Englishman. They’re cutting a fresh stake for you now.”

“New Tsar?” Hawke cried as they grabbed him again. “Who is he? What’s his name?”

“His imperial majesty, Tsar Ivan Korsakov, that’s who.”

“I know him! We’re friends! I must talk to him.”

“Talk to the Tsar, he says?” the man said, and he and his comrades exploded with laughter. “Take him away,” the jailer said, wiping tears of mirth from his rheumy eyes.

Hawke’s new home was underground, three endless sets of steep stone steps that led downward into deeper gloom. A steel door was opened, and he was shoved inside, the door slammed shut behind him. He was alone inside a small, barrel-shaped cell whose bare, oozing walls seemed to be impregnated with tears. A flickering lamp stood on a stool in the corner, its wick swimming in fetid oil, illuminating his quarters.

He stood a moment and took inventory. A bucket for waste. A slab of metal secured to the wall on which lay a thin mattress blackened with age and God knew what else. He went to it and sat down, determined not to go mad before morning, determined to survive, whatever it took.

He had a son, after all. He was going to be a father. He held that moment in his mind, Anastasia whispering the joyous news in the dark, and used it build his fortress, thick walls and ramparts high and mighty. Against the world.

At some time during the night, he must have fallen off, slept. He felt rough hands pulling at him and shouting. A dream? No, it was just the moon-faced jailer and two other foul-smelling lackeys, come to fetch him. Somewhere, a red dawn must have been breaking.

It was time.

“Where are you taking me?” he demanded. Terror was rising in him now, unabated. He knew from previous experience that only through sheer force of will would he be able to subdue it and face whatever was coming like a man.

They pulled him to his feet.

“Just tell me where you’re taking me,” he said again, hearing the pathetic weakness of his pleas, but he couldn’t stop himself.

He had this irrational need to know. Was this it? The end? Yes or no, which was it?

If the end is near and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it, old sport, he thought to himself, buck the hell up. Stiff upper. And yet-

“Tell me, God damn you all!”

“Silence!” the jailer shouted, shoving him roughly toward the door. Hawke struggled with the plastic cuffs, knowing in his heart it was useless. There were three of them, two of them armed. What could he do? He had to think of something. But what? He deliberately dragged his feet, stumbled, fell forward with his bound hands outstretched to break his fall.

He rolled onto his back, and as a guard bent to lift him, he brought his knees up and caught him smartly under the chin. For his trouble, he got the butt end of the rifle across his jaw and was hauled to his feet again.

Hawke knew where they were taking him, of course. It must be dawn by now. Had to be.

And he was headed straight for a stake in the impaling yard.

53

But at the end of the corridor, instead of turning to the right and climbing upward to the yard, the guards steered him left and began descending another steep stone staircase leading down. And then down another, the steps progressively harder to see in the guttering light of lanterns hung from the walls. His escorts seemed in an inordinate hurry for Hawke’s taste, and he could but wonder where they were going now.

“What fresh hell lies this way?” Hawke asked, not expecting a reply but feeling an overwhelming sense of relief that any new hell could hardly be worse than the one he’d believed most assuredly he was headed for.

“The dungeon,” the moon-faced jailer said simply.

“The dungeon? And what, pray, do you call where I slept all night? With wee beasties scratching their way across my floor? The bridal suite?”

His attempt at gallows humor elicited no reply, but it lightened his own heavy spirits as he descended into whatever subterranean inferno they had planned for him. The oubliette, most likely, a traditional feature of ancient forts, a deep well where a man was thrown and simply forgotten.

What the hell, he thought. He had to get off the bloody ride at some point. If this was his stop, so be it.

They passed along a few very grim corridors indeed, arches along both sides, each enclosing heavy wooden doors with small barred windows.

“This is us,” the jailer said, pulling out a huge key ring and inserting one of them into the lock. It clicked, and the door squeaked open. Hawke followed the jailer inside, still in the grip of the guards. They lowered him to the stone floor, first to his knees and then letting him fall over on to his side.

“I am back in one hour,” the jailer said, and with that, he and the two guards left, a great thud and a metallic clang as they pulled the heavy door closed behind them.

“Hello?” Hawke said, knowing he was not alone.

It was pitch black, but to his right, he saw the orange glow of a cigarette glow brighter and then dim as the smoker inhaled and exhaled.

“Good evening,” a disembodied voice said pleasantly. Heavily accented English. “If you can manage to crawl over here, you’d be better off sitting up here next to me on the cot.”

Hawke managed to sit upright on the damp floor, facing the strangely familiar voice.

“And why is that?” he asked, straining his eyes in the dark to see whom he was addressing.

“I’ve got a lead-lined mattress.”

“Sounds comfy, but no thanks.”

“Suit yourself. This prison was built on top of the deadliest radioactive dump in Russia. The Navy’s been dumping poisonous nuclear waste here for fifty years. Eat a fish caught anywhere in these waters, and you’ll glow in the dark for weeks.”

“Surely you’re not serious? A prison built atop a radioactive-waste site?”

“Fiendish, isn’t it?”

“Helps me understand our cultural divide.”

“You Brits lack Mongol blood. It’s your great weakness.”

“Perhaps I’ll join you up there after all. A bit chilly down here on the floor.”

“Deceptively chilly. Quite hot, in fact. One of the secrets of survival here is staying off the floor as much as possible This lowest level of Energetika is as close to hell as you can get.”

“Survival is possible? But how?”

“Sorry. I should have said postponing the inevitable.”

Hawke immediately clambered to his feet. “I’ve definitely decided to accept your offer.”

“Here, I’ll move over. Plenty of room.”

“Where are we?” Hawke asked his fellow prisoner, taking a seat next to the man on the lead-shielded cot.

“A small island off St. Petersburg. Energetika was originally a fortress built by Peter the Great to guard the approach to Kronstadt Naval Yard.”

“Might I have a cigarette?” Hawke asked, getting as comfortable as he could, his back against the cold stone wall, his shackled legs dangling over the edge of the thin mattress.

“Hmm, of course. How rude of me. I should have offered you one.”

The man leaned forward with the pack, the cigarette still in his mouth, and in the red glow, Hawke finally realized whom he was speaking to.

“Thanks,” Hawke said, raising his manacled wrists and pulling a smoke from the pack. He stuck it between his lips, opened the matchbook, and lit up, puffing hungrily.

“Not at all,” Vladimir Putin replied. “I’ve got an endless supply. That jailer’s on my payroll. As are a majority of the guards. Vodka?”

“Good God, yes.”

The former president of the Russian Federation produced two small tin cups and a bottle of Stolichnaya. He filled both cups to the brim and passed one to Hawke. He took a small, burning sip despite his urge to down it all at once. Nothing had ever tasted so good, so pure, so absolutely necessary before. Nothing.

Hawke said, “I’d heard you were in residence here. Never expected to pay you a visit, of course. I’m Alex Hawke, by the way.”

“Oh, I know who you are, Lord Hawke, believe me. I’ve been expecting you.”

“Call me Alex, won’t you?”

“Doesn’t care for titles,” Vladimir Putin said, and extended his hand. “I recall that now, from your file. Alex, I am called Volodya.” Hawke shook it with both of his. The man’s grip was firm and dry and somehow reassuring.

“You’ve been here for some time, yet you’ve still got your hair and teeth, Volodya,” Hawke said. “Unlike most of the poor wretches I saw wandering around up in the yard.”

“My lead-lined mattress, you see. Miserably uncomfortable, but it serves its purpose. And I’ve got lead liners in my shoes as well. I can’t stay here forever, but I’m all right for the time being.”

“If you call this all right.”

“Better than the forest of limbless trees up in the yard, believe me. I’m sure you saw it? Our orchard of death.”

“The orchard of death. Good God, impaling. Who’s responsible for that barbarism?”

“Your new friend, of course. Count Korsakov. Or Tsar Ivan, I should say. An old-fashioned Russian, he quite enjoys the spectacle of impaling. I’m sure he plans to attend your introduction to the stake, whenever that should happen.”

“They really made him Tsar?”

“Hmm. It’s been his plan all along. Now that he’s eliminated every obstacle and hint of opposition, it’s reality.”

“He put you here?”

“He did. Or rather, he had Kuragin do it. Korsakov prefers to stay in the background while others achieve his ends. Fancies himself the wizard behind the curtain. Never dirtied his hands once in all the years I’ve known him.”

“What was your crime? The world never knew why you disappeared. Even Auntie Beeb was stumped on that one.”

“Auntie Beeb?”

“Sorry. Slang for the BBC.”

“Success was my greatest failing in Korsakov’s eyes. I brought Russia back from the brink of absolute chaos. And naturally, he loathed the fact that I was a democrat.”

“You? A democrat? That’s hardly our perception of you, sir.”

“You in the West never understood me. I was in the process of building democracy, but doing it at my own speed. At a pace suitable to a country with a centuries-old tradition of autocracy. You saw what happened when we rushed headlong into democracy. Utter disaster and chaos. The greatest political disaster of the twentieth century. Anyway, that’s ancient history. The simple truth is, I was far too popular and thus too powerful for a man who dreamed only of autocracy, of Tsardom.”

“Sounds like he’s come out swinging now.”

“He has, certainly. He’ll rule the world, you know. It’s only a matter of time.”

“We’ve heard that before. I believe Stalin and Lenin had similar notions. The great workers’ revolution it was called back then.”

“Korsakov is different. He’s a legitimate genius. Nobody can stop him now. Even the Americans blasting satellites out of the sky with all their secret Star Wars weaponry can’t touch him. More vodka?”

“Yes, please. Perfect. Thank you.”

“I’ve got to say, under the circumstances, you’re the cheery one, aren’t you, Lord Hawke? Sorry. I mean Alex.”

“Cheerfulness in the face of adversity. You’ve heard that one, I’m sure.”

“No.”

“Comes from our Royal Marines ethos. The four elements of the commando spirit: courage, determination, unselfishness, and my all-time favorite, cheerfulness in the face of adversity. My father taught me all four when I was six years old. I’ve tried to take them to heart all my life.”

“Your father was an admirable man,” Putin said, raising his cup.

Hawke clinked it with his own and said, “Well. A bit of dirty weather ahead, that’s all. Nothing for it but to batten down various hatches, right? We all cross the bar sooner or later.”

“There’s an oil lamp hanging above my head, Alex. If you’ll return my matches, I’ll provide a bit of light for you.”

Hawke handed him the matches, and Putin lit the wick, throwing shadowy silhouettes of the two men against the farther wall. Putin looked at him carefully in the flickering lamplight, as if he were coming to some kind of decision.

“Do you know why you’re here, Alex? Here at Energetika, I mean.”

“No idea. I’m a simple English businessman on a business trip. Like everyone else in prison, I’m completely innocent of any and all crimes.”

“He put you in this poisonous hole, you know.”

“He?”

“Korsakov, of course. Have you met him?”

“I have. Very charming but with the eyes of a fanatic.”

“He wants you dead.”

“Why? What have I ever done to him? I’m madly in love with his daughter, for God’s sake. I plan to marry her.”

“And she’s in love with you, I’m told. Part of the problem.”

“What problem?”

“You are a highly unsuitable match for Anastasia, princess of Russia. Your background is wholly unacceptable.”

“Unacceptable? I’m descended from some rather scandalous pirates, I’ll grant you, but that shouldn’t be held against me. On what grounds?”

“Your father, to begin with.”

Hawke almost choked on his vodka. “My father? He died when I was a boy of seven. After a long and distinguished naval career, I might add. What on earth has he to do with any of this?”

“I can answer in one word,” Putin said as he emptied his cup. “Scarp.”

“Scarp,” Hawke said, and leaned back against the wall, savoring his cigarette and his vodka.

“Scarp,” Putin repeated. He liked saying the word, liked the harsh sound of the single syllable.

“Funny, that,” Hawke said. “That’s the second time in three days that benighted rock has come up in conversation. Korsakov was going on about it, too, at his winter palace. Something about stalking on the island during the Cold War. I had no earthly idea what he was talking about. Sounded a bit daft on the subject.”

“Korsakov keeps a list. People he wants to kill. Naturally, I’m on it. That’s why I’m here. Doing the slow burn, they call it. But you, well, you’ve been on the list since the day you were born.”

“Have I, indeed? I understand you being on it. Politics. But what the hell’s he got against me?”

“In October 1962, your father killed the only man Ivan Korsakov ever loved. His older brother, Sergei.”

“My father killed a man on Scarp? Ridiculous. How? It’s not possible. My family has had a shooting lodge there for generations. I’ve been going myself for years. It’s a tiny island. Any kind of foul play or disappearance would have been reported. I’ve never heard a thing. My father, by the way, killed any number of people in the line of duty. But he was no murderer.”

“Who said anything about murder? Ivan’s brother was KGB, like all of us. During the height of the Cuban missile crisis, it was learned that your father figured in a British plan to infiltrate a secret Soviet facility up near the Arctic Circle. Operation Redstick. This was at a very critical moment in the standoff. Khrushchev couldn’t allow our operations to be penetrated. Colonel Sergei Korsakov was dispatched by KGB to Scarp to eliminate your father.”

“And?”

“Obviously, your father eliminated Colonel Korsakov.”

“And the body?”

“Your father buried him, I suppose. Kept his mouth shut about it. That’s what I’d have done.”

“And so I’m tossed into the dungeon, like some latter-day Count of Monte Cristo, thrown into the bloody Château d’If for a crime I did not commit?”

“Yes. A great irony, isn’t it, that it was the Tsar’s own daughter who discovered you on that deserted beach and delivered you up to her father’s sacrificial altar.”

“I suppose it is rather ironic. Revenge, is it, then?”

“Exactly. Revenge of the very best kind. Keenly anticipated and long awaited.”

“I’m surprised he hasn’t done away with me sooner.”

“Ah, but our Tsar likes to savor his revenge. Anticipate it. In any case, there were hundreds of political enemies who needed exterminating at the stake, all ahead of you on the list. You he sees as mere fun. He wants to toy with you, a cat-and-mouse game.”

“How much time for fun have I got left?”

“Until your execution? You’re scheduled for a dawn exit. If not this one, the next. But relax, Alex. I’d give you at least forty-eight hours. Our new Tsar is tied up with celebratory receptions and meetings in Moscow and then this Nobel ceremony in Stockholm. Then he’ll show up here in his great airship, and you will be shown to the stake, I’m afraid.”

Hawke shuddered.

He’d never been afraid of dying. In his dirty line of work, he’d always known a quick and brutal death might come his way at any time.

But not this way.

Not the bloody stake.

The orchard of death struck something akin to pure terror in his heart.

54

Hawke sipped his vodka and said, “How have you managed to avoid it so long? The stake, I mean.”

“Now you have asked a good question,” Putin said, putting a match to a fresh cigarette. “Despite Korsakov’s abiding desire to see me slowly turn to soot and ash in here, I’m protected, you see.”

“By whom?”

“Powerful people who think Ivan Korsakov is a madman who will see Russia a smoldering ruin after a ruinous world war with the West. I, of course, share that opinion.” He took a puff. “Insanity.”

“These people would like to see you return to power?”

“Obviously.”

“Why don’t they get you out of this bloody hole, then?”

“I wouldn’t live twelve hours on the outside. An army of Korsakov’s assassins lies beyond those black walls. The Third Department, he calls them. So long as the Tsar lives, the safest place on earth for me, oddly enough, is right here at hell’s gate. And so I’m content to bide my time, knowing it will come.”

“Bit difficult to bide one’s time contentedly when, like me, one only has forty-eight hours to live. Or less.”

“Yes. That’s why I sent for you tonight.”

“You mean it’s not dawn yet? I assumed the sun was up.”

“No.” Putin pushed a button, and his watch glowed. “It’s only two in the morning.”

“Why did you send for me? Not that I’m not extraordinarily grateful.”

“I wanted to meet you. You’re a legend.”

“A legend? Hardly.”

“When one’s life comes down to facts versus legend, go with legend every time, Alex, trust me. In any event, you have a first-rate reputation inside the KGB. You are an extraordinarily well-respected intelligence officer. I’ve followed your career closely for years. When I was head of KGB, I tried to recruit you over to our side. You will remember a certain statuesque blonde in a café in Budapest, what, six years ago now? You two adjourned to the Hotel Mercure in Buda for the evening. Room 777.”

“Katerina Obolensky. I will never forget her.”

“Of that I made certain. But alas, you had some stubborn sense of loyalty to your mother country. Later on, at the Kremlin, I continued to follow your exploits. Cuba, China, the Middle East, et cetera. One of the reasons I was so looking forward to this encounter. ‘Talk shop’ is the expression in English?”

“Yes. There were other reasons?”

“It is very much in my interest to help you escape from here. Now that we’ve spoken, I’m convinced my preconceived notions about you were correct. I think you’re one of the few men alive who stands even a ghost of a chance against Korsakov. And now that you know how and why you were consigned to a horrible death in this hellhole, you have a very good incentive to kill him before he kills you. Should we be able to get you out of here, of course.”

Hawke took a deep breath, trying to accept the very pleasing notion that an agonizing death was not inevitable and that somehow salvation might actually be possible.

“Let’s go down that road, shall we? I was wondering, you know, how the guards come and go. Clearly, they can’t all stay out here for extended periods, I mean, if they are to survive the radiation.”

“They rotate frequently, Alex. Four-hour shifts three times a week. Twelve hours a week isn’t lethal. Two ferries are running continuously back and forth to St. Petersburg. Like shuttles, I believe that is the English word. One ferry arrives as the other is departing.”

“That could work.”

“No. These boats are not under the control of my ‘friends’ here. Very tight inspections going and coming. You’d never make it.”

“I could go out in a laundry basket. It’s been done.”

“In films. Not here. No one has ever gotten out of here alive. Some have tried to swim it, believe it or not. Three attempts since I’ve been here. Eight miles to the mainland. They prefer hypothermia and drowning to prolonged radiation sickness. Or, certainly, the stake.”

“Good information.”

A lengthy silence ensued.

“Are you thinking?” Hawke asked Putin.

“I’m always thinking.”

“Anything interesting come to mind?”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

The two men sat side by side in silence, puffing and sipping and thinking. It occurred to Hawke that he and Comrade Putin were getting just the slightest bit pissed. It was quite pleasant, actually.

Suddenly, Putin sat forward on the cot.

“I’m going to show you something I’ve never shown to another guest down here. Take it as a measure of my trust and respect.”

“What is it?”

“The other room.”

“The other room?”

“Watch and grow wise,” Putin said, and pulled a slender remote-control device from beneath his fried mattress. He pressed a button, and a razor-thin rectangle of light appeared in the wall opposite the bunk where the two men sat. There was a pneumatic hiss, and a large section of stone swung out from the wall, revealing a small, lighted room beyond.

“Wonders will never cease,” Hawke said, becoming convinced that they would not. He was still alive, for one thing. He was sitting in a dungeon sharing a bottle of vodka with the former prime minister of the Russian Federation. And the new princess of all Russia was pregnant with his child. Wondrous.

“What’s in there?” Hawke asked.

“My lead-lined room. Constructed in total secrecy and at vast expense with the help of my jailer. The man who brought you down here is on my payroll. Former KGB assassin who worked for me in East Germany. Looks like a common thug, dumb as a post, but he’s actually quite brilliant.”

“What’s in it, your secret lead vault?”

“Hmm. A real bed. Music and DVDs. My books and a few mementos. And a small refrigerator full of good vodka and a quantity of golden Sterlet caviar.”

“And your plan for my salvation is?”

“There’s also a satellite telephone. So I might maintain communication with my underground commanders, even now planning my triumphant return to power.”

“And might I use this telephone? Call in the cavalry?”

“You are such a clever fellow, Hawke. Yes, you may use it. It’s in the top drawer beside my bed. One call. You’d better make it a good one.”

Hawke got to his feet. “I might actually get out of here,” he said, smiling at Putin.

“Vastly preferable to a sharp stake up the sphincter, I assure you, Lord Hawke.”

THREE HOURS LATER, Hawke was shivering in the yard, crouched in a darkened alcove beneath one of the watchtowers, freezing his butt off. The sky above was shot pink with the approaching dawn. No sound could be heard from the poor devils in the orchard of death. Frozen stiff during the night, if they were lucky. He looked at his watch. He should have heard something twenty minutes ago. Where the hell was the cavalry?

He heard the approaching chopper before he saw it, the deep thrump-thrump-thrump announcing some helo’s imminent arrival. Harry? Let it be Harry. Please.

Guards emerged from stations on the wall, machine guns slung from their shoulders. One raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes, tracked the approaching chopper for a few moments, and then signaled okay to his comrades. They immediately retreated back inside the warmth of their tower stations. Okay? Why would they signal that? This was a bloody rescue attempt, wasn’t it?

No.

Damn it to hell!

The helicopter, Hawke saw as it flared up over the yard, did not look remotely like anything Harry Brock would be flying. No, it was a Russian Army Kamov Ka-50 Black Shark, bristling with antitank missiles and 30mm machine guns hung from small mid-mounted wings amidships. A damn Russian military chopper! Where the bloody hell was Harry?

When the pilot was six feet from touchdown, a typhoon of snow in his downdraft, someone flung open the starboard-side passenger door.

And inside, beckoning to him, was a wildly grinning Harry Brock.

Hawke stayed low and bolted through the shadows across the yard, head down, sprinting beneath the spinning rotors. A second door on the right side popped open, and Hawke dove inside, not even waiting for the jet-black combat chopper to land. He caught a glimpse of the guards on the walls, peering out the windows. One or two raced outside and along the parapet, shouting something inaudible, lost in the wind and roar of the chopper’s powerful engines spooling up.

The helo pilot immediately lifted off, banked hard, and roared out over the wind-whipped Gulf of Finland, heading toward mainland Europe.

“Harry, you crazy sonofabitch, how did you pull this one off? A Russian Army combat helicopter? These are pretty tough to come by for American civilians.”

“You think those guards back there would have let me land a Bell Jet Ranger with the stars and stripes on the tail?”

“No, but I mean, how the hell, Harry? Seriously.”

Brock hooked his thumb toward the rear of the chopper. “Ask her royal highness back there, boss. Daddy’s little princess gets what she wants.”

Anastasia, dressed in a fleece-lined Army jumpsuit, was waiting in the rear. Hawke scrambled aft and almost landed in her outstretched arms. She pulled him to her. He was shaking with the cold, and he embraced her, letting her warmth and fragrance begin to wash away the ugly images of the last twelve hours.

“My poor darling,” she said, holding him at arm’s length. “I was so terrified. I couldn’t reach Papa to tell him about your ridiculous arrest until a few hours ago. He was outraged. Whoever did this to you will be severely punished, Papa will see to it.”

Hawke was considering how best to respond to this bit of awkwardness when he heard Harry say, “I gotta ask one question. They allowed you an effing phone call from inside that burned-out freak-house?”

“Not really allowed. It’s a long story.”

Brock said, “Anastasia was with me when you called my cell phone. We were having a drink at the Metropol bar, figuring out who to invite to your funeral. Short list, you’ll be sad to learn.”

“Funeral postponed indefinitely,” Hawke said, reaching forward to squeeze Harry’s shoulder. “Thanks, old buddy, I definitely owe you one. Where are we headed?”

“No rest for the weary,” Harry said, turning around in his seat. “We’re going direct to Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Two FA-18 Super Hornets are gassing up right now to take us to Bermuda. We hook up with Stokely on the ground there.”

“Why on earth are we going to Bermuda?”

“Hostage-rescue mission, boss, all I can say. It’s too noisy to talk in here,” he said, casting a meaningful glance at the Russian Army pilot. “I’ll fill you in when we get on the ground at Ramstein.”

“And what about you, darling girl? Are you coming to Bermuda?” Hawke asked Anastasia, taking her hand and holding it to his cheek. The Gulf of Finland, garlanded with wind-blown whitecaps, was disappearing beneath the chopper at an amazing rate.

“No, darling, I can’t. I’m returning to Moscow. A gala reception for my father tonight at the Facets Palace inside the Kremlin, and then we board the airship in a day or two for the short flight to Stockholm. For the Nobel ceremony, you know?”

“I hear he’s the new Tsar,” Hawke said, with a heartiness that rang with terrible falsity in his ears. “You must be very proud.”

“It’s so wonderful, Alex. Not for him but for my country. Russia will be a great nation once more,” she said, beaming at him. “The first Tsar to receive a Nobel. I am so very proud of him. Promise me you’ll come that night, Alex! Come to Stockholm for the Nobel dinner? I’ll save a seat for you.”

“Of course I’ll come, Anastasia. If you want me there, I will be there.”

“Might be a lot of empty seats at that Nobel ceremony,” Harry Brock said, looking meaningfully at Hawke, but neither Alex nor Anastasia had any idea what he was talking about. Hawke let it go. Clearly, Harry had a great deal to tell him. He’d just have to wait and find out what when they landed at Ramstein.

Alex Hawke spent the rest of the trip staring down at the sea, all the way to the frozen white fields of Germany. He was oddly troubled for a man who’d just escaped a horrible death. Something was stuck in his craw, and for the life of him, he could not figure out what the hell it was. Half an hour later, he had it. An offhand remark Putin had made last night, a simple sentence that had seemed innocuous enough at the time.

It’s a great irony, isn’t it, that it was his daughter who found you and delivered you to the sacrificial altar?

Alone on a deserted beach? One of hundreds just like it? No. How could he doubt her love? She’d just saved his life. This marvelous woman who was carrying his child. She was truly beautiful. And true beauty, as she’d told him one afternoon at Half Moon House, came from deep inside.

He reached over, took her hand, and gently squeezed it.

“I may not have mentioned this,” Hawke said, whispering into her ear, “but I want to thank you for saving my life.”

“I had nothing to save until I found you. Now I have you, I have everything.”

55

It was snowing.

A beautiful winter’s night. Anastasia rushed through Cathedral Square to the Grand Kremlin Palace, her long white sable coat trailing behind her in the powdery snow. She was late, breathless, and completely happy for perhaps the first time in her life. Her heart, she knew, was full at last. Every palace window was aglow. Nothing had never looked so dazzling.

Lofty and majestic, the Moscow residence of the Tsars dominated the southern part of the Kremlin. The windows of the main wing faced the dark Moskva River, brimming with ice floes in mid-December. There were great throngs of people lining the quay and the bridges despite the heavy snow, all eyes gazing up at the glittering palace. All of Moscow seemed aware that this was a truly historic night not to be missed. The city seemed frozen in place; even the traffic had come to a complete stop.

For the first time in more than ninety years, Russia had a Tsar. Bells were ringing loudly from every church tower, and in some places, crowds had gathered and were singing ancient Russian folk songs, passing bottles of vodka to stave off the chilly night air.

The Grand Kremlin Palace overshadows all other Western European palaces of the period in terms of sheer size and ornateness. It was only fitting, she thought, that her father’s greatest triumph should be celebrated in such a glorious setting. She hurried up the white marble staircase leading to the State Parade Chambers on the second floor. This entrance was closed to the public tonight but, tonight, Anastasia was not the public.

She was the princess.

Two guards in their most festive regalia stood at attention on either side of the ancient wooden door in the huge east wing of the palace. The door was fifteen feet high, a masterpiece of nineteenth-century Russian carpentry, made from the wood of nut trees without using a single nail or any glue.

A chain of halls named for the old Russian orders lay behind this door: the St. George, St. Vladimir, St. Catherine, St. Andrew, and St. Alexander Halls. Anastasia paused at a cloak room just inside the entrance and gave the attendant her sable coat, hat, and muff. Also her furry boots, which she exchanged for the pair of heels in her bag.

Then she hurried through the vast octagon of St. Vladimir Hall, her heels clicking on the parquet floors. One of the arches opened onto a passage leading directly to the largest and most festive hall in the palace, St. George Hall. The dimensions of the lovely cloister vault were gigantic, nearly two hundred feet long and sixty feet wide. At the far end was the orchestra, and she noted with pleasure that they were playing, not Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff, but her father’s new symphony, Light of Dawn.

She pushed through the sea of beautiful gowns and splendid uniforms toward her father. Above the crowd, six massive gilt chandeliers lit with more than ten thousand electric candles cast a lovely glow. She saw him! He was standing with a small group on a raised podium just in front of the orchestra, in one of his most splendid white uniforms.

She hurried toward the new Tsar, her eyes shining.

“Father,” she said, embracing him. “I’m so sorry I’m late. You look wonderful.”

“My dear girl. I’ve just asked for a waltz. Will you join me out on the floor?”

“I should be honored, Papa.”

He took her outstretched hand and stepped down from the podium. As they made their way to the center of the floor, a lovely Strauss waltz began, and the crowd parted magically, every eye on the new Tsar and his beautiful daughter in her shocking crimson gown. She looked at her father, dazzling in his uniform, and remembered something Alex had said to her that night in the troika.

Don’t look now, but we’re living in some kind of bloody fairy tale.

It was true, she was. As she’d made her way through the palace’s many halls, she’d heard the words whispered over and over as she passed. “The princess! Do you see her? How beautiful she is!”

And then her father was waltzing her around the suddenly empty dance floor, the crowd having moved to the sides of the hall, leaving the Tsar and his daughter alone to bathe in the adulation of all of Moscow. And no one in the ballroom that night would ever forget how heartbreakingly beautiful the new Princess of Russia had looked, waltzing with the Tsar.

“Oh, Papa, isn’t it magical?”

He pulled her close and whispered softly into her ear. But his words were a cruel shock.

“How dare you?” he hissed. “How dare you?”

“What?” she cried, pushing away so that she could look up into his face. “How dare I what, Papa?”

She had never seen such anger as flashed in those eyes, and she tried to shrink back, but he held her tightly around the waist with one hand, the other hand cruelly squeezing her fingers. And so they danced on, the enraptured crowd blissfully unaware of the drama unfolding before their eyes.

“Betray me, of course,” he said, his voice low but full of menace.

“I? Betray you? Never!”

“Ah, and now you lie. You little bitch.”

“Tell me, then! Tell me what I have done.”

“This fucking Englishman. The one you invited into our home. You think he loves you? Ha! He is only using you to spy on me. He is an agent of MI-6! I had him arrested and sent to Energetika, where he so richly deserved to be. Only to find out that he has been rescued! And not by his comrades, no! By my very own daughter!”

“Papa, what are you saying? It was you who had Alex arrested? Because earlier, when I told you he’d been taken, you said it was all a mistake. That you would have him freed!”

“This was a matter of state security. It is not incumbent upon me to confide to you in matters of state.”

“Papa, Alex is not a spy. He’s much too gentle a soul for that kind of work. Besides, I would never betray you. I thought you wanted his freedom. So I took it into my own hands. He’s the man I love, Father. The man I want to marry. I wanted him to meet you because I love you, too. And I am so proud of you both that I wanted to-”

“Silence! You don’t know what you are talking about, you silly little fool. Listen to me carefully. I never want you to see him again. Ever. ‘Smert Shpionam,’ Anastasia. Remember that. ‘Death to spies.’ And anyone who conspires with them. Understand me?”

“And now you threaten me? Your only daughter?”

“I care only for the state.”

“Father, please, I beg of you. Can we not discuss this later? At some quiet place and not here in front of all Moscow?”

“There is nothing more to discuss. You are the daughter of the Tsar. You are the Princess Anastasia. One day, you will be Tsarina and sit upon the throne. I will find you a suitable husband, don’t worry. But I will have an heir worthy of my legacy. Do you understand me?”

“Papa, I am already carrying his baby. I am pregnant.” Her voice broke, and the tears came.

“You’ll just have to get rid of the little bastard.”

“Oh, Papa.”

“Stop this blubbering! What will people think?”

“I’m sorry, Papa, I cannot help it. I-I don’t know what to do now. What am I to do? I love him with all my heart. And he loves me. I want to have his baby, Papa. You must let me have his baby.”

“Never!”

“Oh, God. Oh, God,” she sobbed, and her father quickly saw that she was nearing hysteria. He held her tightly to his chest and whirled her about, whispering feverishly into her ear.

“Listen, my darling. Perhaps you are right. We should talk about this later when there is not so much attention focused on me. After the ceremony in Stockholm, we will go away somewhere for a few days. Like we used to do. A father-and-daughter vacation. Perhaps on the fjord in Sweden. Our old summer place at Morto. There we will try to resolve this unfortunate affair in a way that is acceptable to both of us. How does that sound?”

“Oh, Papa, you must believe me. I would never do anything to hurt you. Yes. Thank you for trying to understand. We will talk later when we are both not under so much pressure. I understand what you are saying. I will try to make you happy with me again.”

“That’s my girl.”

“I love you, Papa. I know you will make a wonderful Tsar. Wise and kind. The father of our country.”

He released her then and bowed to her, deeply, from the waist. The crowd burst into long and sustained applause.

“Her imperial majesty, the Princess Anastasia!” the Tsar cried out, and then the crowd went simply mad. She smiled, turning so that she might gaze into the gathered faces, waving at them all, saying “Thank you, thank you” in a small voice that no one could hear but everyone understood.

“Thank you for the dance,” her father said coldly as they walked back to the podium.

Russia’s new princess couldn’t stop her tears. But she kept her smile.

56

Alex Hawke had the best seat in the house. He was just aft of the pilot. Under normal circumstances, his was the Weapon System Officer’s seat. Hawke’s WSO position, the Yank flyboys called it wizzo, was slightly elevated above and behind the pilot, so he had a good view ahead over the pilot’s helmet. The WSO who normally resided here was the air navigator, involved in all air operations and the weapon systems of the aircraft. The plane was an American Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet, the two-seat F model that flew its first combat missions in 2002.

But these were not normal circumstances. There was no need for any wizzo on this flight. This F model had been heavily modified and was one of a small number of twin-canopied fighters built by the Navy for black ops missions like this one.

Two Super Hornets were streaking wingtip-to-wingtip just above the wave tops at 1,360 miles per hour, flying beneath any possible enemy radar, the heaving blue Atlantic a blur fifty feet below the aircraft. Off Hawke’s starboard wingtip was an identical, heavily modified fighter aircraft. Harry Brock was riding wizzo in that one. The two fighter jets, having arrived on station, were operating approximately fifty miles due north of Bermuda. Suddenly, in tandem, both aircraft hit the afterburners and, pulling serious g’s, went into a steep climb.

Ascending rapidly to a new altitude of 5,000 feet, the fighters immediately leveled off and hit the air brakes. Hawke checked his gear, deliberately slowing his breathing. Since they were maintaining radio silence, he looked over at Harry and gave him the okay hand signal. It was returned. It was almost time.

There was a bit of static in Hawke’s headphones, and then he heard the slow West Texas drawl of the pilot, Captain Leroy McMakin.

“Howdy, folks, this is your captain speakin’, up here in the front of the airplane. Certainly has been my pleasure having you onboard today for our short flight from Germany to the middle of nowhere. Like to thank y’all for choosing Black Aces Air today. We do know you have a choice of air carriers, and we sure do appreciate your business.”

Hawke laughed. American Navy pilots, always a breed apart.

“Thanks for the ride, Cap,” Hawke said, craning his head around to look at the surface of the sea below.

“Well, we want to wish you a pleasant stay here in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean or wherever your travel plans may take you, and if your future plans should call for air travel, I sure do hope you’ll think of the Black Aces.”

Captain McMakin craned his head around and smiled a big Yankee grin at his passenger. Hawke gave him a thumbs-up in return.

Hawke reached down for one of the two oh-shit handles built into the sides of his padded seat bucket. He pulled one of them up into firing position. He waited a beat. Then he pulled the trigger. For one long second, nothing happened. Then the canopy ejection initiator fired, causing the single aft canopy to jettison. Next, the rocket catapult under the seat fired with a roar of flame, ejecting a strapped-in Hawke and his seat out of the aircraft, 300 feet, straight up, pulling three g’s.

He was now riding a Zero-Zero ejection seat, capable of saving his life even if deployed at zero velocity and zero altitude.

Two-tenths of a second after the catapult fired, the seat stabilization gyros canceled asymmetric forces producing seat tumbling and rotation. Six-tenths of a second after the seat left the floor of the aircraft, his seat-separator system activated. Hawke’s lap belt released, and he was forced away from the seat, into thin air. His chute popped and began his descent toward the sea under a normal canopy. At the same time, a survival kit and a small raft had deployed.

Hawke had never ejected before.

It was a unique experience, having the wind blast whip the air out of your nose sideways. In the old days, when he’d first learned to jump out of airplanes, it was a bit less exciting. You were supposed to be facing the ground with your head a little lower than your feet when you pulled the chute, so that when the lines paid out and your chute opened, the risers would swing you under, and you wouldn’t get that terrific grab up through the crotch that could be so unpleasant in so many ways.

Hanging in his straps, he saw Harry’s chute deploy. He checked his watch.

So far, so good.

Ten minutes later, he was paddling his raft toward Harry. Harry was in his raft but seemed to be having a few problems separating from his chute.

“Harry!” Hawke called out when he was twenty feet away. “You all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I could get rid of this damn harness.”

Hawke nudged his raft up next to Brock’s. Harry had a vicious-looking knife out and was sawing away at one of the straps.

“Some thrill ride, eh, Harry?”

Harry finally got rid of his harness and shoved the tangled mess over the side. He looked up at Hawke.

“It was all right, I guess. Hell, I been kicked in the ass harder than that.”

The two men drifted around each other for a few minutes, bobbing along with the rollers, staring at the vast blue sea and sky.

“Well, this is fun,” Brock said finally.

“Yep,” Hawke replied, trailing his fingers through the water. “Beats the hell out of Energetika, trust me.”

“Got any ideas?”

“Afraid not. You?”

“Know any games?”

“What kind of games?” Hawke asked.

“You know. We could play Twenty Questions.”

“I’d kill you,” Hawke said.

“How about I Spy?” Harry asked. “Ever play that? I spy with my little eye-”

Hawke laughed. “You’re funny, Harry. Really. It’s the only reason I put up with you.”

At that moment, a few hundred yards away, the deep blue sea began to boil. It heaved upward in a frothing white mushroom, as if deep below the surface, some underwater volcano had just blown its top.

“This us?” Harry asked.

“Better be. If it’s not, we’re in deep shit.”

The sleek black prow of a giant nuclear submarine broke the surface at a forty-five-degree angle, water sheeting off its flanks. It was a magnificent sight, Hawke thought, one you never tired of seeing.

It was the old SSBN-640, all right. The USS Benjamin Franklin, commissioned in 1965, Captain Donald Miller commanding. Formerly a fleet ballistic missile sub, she’d been extensively modified to support Navy special operations missions. Her entire ballistic missile section had been removed and turned into living quarters, a space where embarked special operations personnel could rest, train, and plan operations in relative comfort.

Now registered as Kamehameha, she was based at the Royal Dockyard, Bermuda, and permanently attached to the joint U.S.-U.K. intel group known as Red Banner.

57

“Like to begin by welcoming Commander Hawke and Mr. Brock aboard the Kamehameha,” Stokely Jones said. They were in the sub’s SPECWAR wardroom. Stoke stood in front of a blackboard. On the wall beside him were blown-up pictures of the hijacked airship from every possible angle. The men around the table included Hawke and Brock plus two fourteen-man platoons of SEAL counterterrorist commandos.

The hand-picked members of the U.S. Navy’s elite counterterrorist group and hostage-rescue team, SEAL Team Six, had begun training for this mission ten minutes after the president had learned of the hijacking. Training normally consisted of lessons learned from experience. But no one had ever assaulted an airship before.

No one. Ever.

The sub had been steaming submerged for more than an hour since they’d picked up Hawke and Brock. They were positioned directly beneath the airship now, at a depth of two thousand feet, immobile. A tiny video camera mounted on an invisible needle-thin antenna from the sub’s conning tower provided a continuous live feed of the airship. The ship was dark for the most part, very few lights aboard as the sun set and darkness fell.

“The situation is this,” Stoke said, offering a quick summary for the two new arrivals. “We’ve got four hundred terrified passengers aboard this damn zeppelin. We think they’re still being held here, in a large ballroom on the promenade deck. Guarding the hostages are approximately twenty heavily armed terrorists, highly trained members of OMON, the Russian special forces. There is also the possibility that a Russian-American assassin named Strelnikov has brought poison gas aboard the Pushkin, an incapacitating narcotic based on the drug fentanyl, administered accidentally at a lethal dosage level in the Moscow theater siege. Any questions so far?”

“What the hell do they want?” Hawke asked. “The Russians?”

“They want the U.S. and its European allies to butt out of their business, basically. While the new Tsar reclaims all the territory they lost when the Soviet Union dissolved.”

“Have troops crossed any sovereign borders yet?” Hawke wanted to know. Obviously, he hadn’t seen any news in days. No CNN in Energetika.

“Not yet. But the Russian Army’s got ninety divisions massed on the various borders, from the Baltics to East Ukraine. Washington thinks Estonia is where they’ll move first. Close the border bridge over the Narva River to anything but military traffic. Jam the whole country’s Internet there like they did a while back, fake a Russian citizens’ protest and then shoot a few Russian citizens to create a false crisis for the ethnic Russian population living there, start moving tanks and troops across the bridge to ‘rescue’ them.”

“And if the West responds?”

“They start to kill all the airship hostages. Throw them out. One by one, including the wife of the U.S. vice president, until the West backs off. Any more questions?”

“Just one,” Brock said. “How the hell do you guys plan to get those people out of there safely?”

Stoke smiled. He’d known Harry Brock for years. Harry liked to cut to the chase.

“These OMON guys have ordered a no-fly zone, fifty-mile radius around the airship. Any aircraft violates it, they start tossing hostages out the door. Same thing with surface vessels.”

“What altitude is the damn thing?” Hawke asked.

“Hovering at five hundred feet.”

“Stationary?”

“Last time we looked.”

“Look, I’ve been aboard an identical but smaller version of this thing called Tsar. From that underside picture there, it seems there’s an identical circular hatch in the floor of the control pod. Looks like no exterior handle, no access from outside. So, what’s our point of entry?”

“We’ve got a couple of options, including that hatch,” Stoke said, moving his laser pointer. “Here, here, and maybe here.”

“They all look bad,” Brock observed.

There was a lot of eyeball rolling from the SEALs around the table. One of them piped up and said, “I’m sure you have a better idea, sir.”

“Damn right,” Brock said. “And I’ll tell you what it is as soon as I think of it.”

Stokely frowned. “Look. Enough of this shit. We all know this isn’t going to be easy. But we got two things working for us here. One, surprise. They don’t know we’re down here. Not a fucking clue. Two, we got someone inside the ship. We got a hostage aboard with a sat phone.”

“Really?” Hawke said, seeing the first ray of hope. “Someone inside? How’d you pull that off?”

“She was invited,” Stoke said evenly, looking straight at Hawke. “Friend of mine.”

“Oh,” Hawke said, instantly realizing the world of hurt Stokely had to be in. Fancha, his fiancée, that’s who was on the inside. For Stoke, the already incredibly high stakes of this rescue operation were right through the sub’s roof.

It was personal for Stoke, and that was not good.

Hawke checked his watch. The commando team would commence rescue operations in six hours. At midnight. There was no moon, few stars. At least some of the hostages would be asleep. Maybe only a skeleton OMON crew standing guard, if they were really lucky.

Luck? Luck was for losers. They were six hours out, and they didn’t have a goddamn plan.

Hawke needed to talk to Stoke alone, and fast.

58

“Doesn’t feel good, Stoke, none of this,” Hawke said from his perch on the upper bunk, his legs dangling near Stokely stretched out on the bunk directly below.

“No shit, boss.”

They were in Stoke’s tiny cabin, just aft of the forward torpedo room, the only place on the sub where they could find any privacy. Putin had given Hawke a pack of smokes, and he shook one out and lit it now.

“Oh, great. Now you’re smoking,” Stoke said. “Good thinking.”

“I might well be dead in a few hours. Perfect time to start smoking.”

“Now, that’s what I call inspirational leadership. Shit, I’m feeling better about this whole mess already. I’m psyched. Happy, you and Urine better watch your asses up there. Man coming after you got himself a death wish.”

“Urine?” Hawke said, puzzled like everybody else about that confusing Russian name.

“With a Y. Yurin. He’s the one I told you about who was training these OMON guys down in Miami. Big blond muscle-boy type. Badass, though. Probably killed a couple thousand Chechen children when he was there.”

“You think he’s running the show up there?”

“I know he’s running the show. Total professional killer. They’ve been training for this for months, out there in the Everglades. One of the many reasons I’m feeling down on my luck.”

Hawke nodded and took a deep drag on his smoke. He couldn’t remember a time in his career when he’d felt such apprehension over an impending operation. SEAL Team Six, now officially known by the less harmonious DEVGRU, was about as good as it got. One of their first deployments had been the hijacked cruise ship Achille Lauro. Boats and oil rigs were common fare for Six. But they’d never mounted a maritime combat boarding operation with situational parameters remotely like this one.

A bloody airship!

Enough to make any rational man start smoking, he thought, taking another puff and blowing it at the ceiling. He’d been thinking about this rescue attempt until his head hurt, the whole flight from Ramstein. The Russian ploy was brilliant. A dirigible presented huge logistical problems, insurmountable problems, maybe, to any hostage-rescue operation. There had to be a way, though. There always was. But damned if he could think of one.

“Damn right it doesn’t feel good,” Stoke said after a long silence. “Hell! I never should have let the girl go on the damn zeppelin in the first place. She didn’t want to go, you know. I made her go. Anything happens to her now, hell, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“Stoke, I’m just as worried about Fancha as you are. But I mean this operation doesn’t feel good.”

“You think I don’t know that, boss? It sucks, is what it does. SEAL Team Six? The best HRT on the planet. You get a hostage situation on a goddamn cruise ship or a 747 sitting out on a runway? Team in, team out, in a heartbeat, tangos dead, freed hostages not even scratched. But this shit? A fucking zeppelin suspended in midair? Nobody on the planet is trained for that.”

“Exactly why he chose it,” Hawke said.

“Why who chose it?”

“Korsakov. The new Russian Tsar. He built the goddamn airship, maybe with this eventuality in mind. No, make that probably with this in mind.”

“Smart man. So, how the hell are we going to do this without getting our asses kicked and taking a couple hundred hostages down with us?”

“I have a thought on that. You’re not going to like it.”

“Yeah? Try me. I’d like anything better than what we’ve got.

We’ve been sitting out here submerged in this old boat going crazy with this for two days. We could use some fresh ideas. SEALs don’t get discouraged easily. That team in there? They are discouraged.”

“You’ve got to call Fancha, Stoke. I hate to say it. She’s our only chance.”

“I’m listening.”

“That hatch in the floor of the control pod. It’s the only good way for us to insert. The rear staircase doesn’t work. The fore, aft, and midships emergency egress doors in the fuselage don’t work. All bad. Right?”

“Right. You’d have to use choppers and fast-roping down to the airship from above, and you do that, invade their no-fly zone, they start heaving elderly geniuses out the door from five hundred feet. Water’s like concrete from that height.”

“So we go up through the control-pod hatch. But it’s locked from the inside. How do you plan to get in?”

“Blow it. Charges on the hinges only way.”

“Might as well ring the doorbell, Stoke. Hey, Yurin, you got company! Start heaving hostages out the door.”

“Think I don’t know that?”

“Hostages will be tossed out, shot, or gassed before we get even three guys through that hatch.”

“Yeah. So tell me your idea before I kill myself.”

“Fancha has to open the hatch.”

“What? How the hell is she going to do that without getting herself killed? Her cabin is two decks up and half the damn ship away from the bridge. I think you forgot the part about the twenty-some-odd armed killers wandering around that ship looking for trouble.”

“I don’t know how she does it yet. I wish I did. But she’s got to try, Stoke, she’s got to. It’s the only way to do this. Believe me, if I had a better idea, I wouldn’t even suggest this.”

There was a long silence from the bunk below.

“She’s got a gun,” Stoke said softly.

“She does? Well, hell, man, that’s great. What kind of gun?”

“My H & K nine. Two extra mags of hollow-point meatpackers.”

“Silencer?”

“Yeah.”

“Perfect. How’d that happen?”

“I left my gun bag in the stateroom closet by mistake. Thank God I did.”

“Can she shoot?”

“A little. Took her out to Gator Guns a few times. Just range shit. But she knows the gun.”

“So, bloody hell, she’s got a chance, Stoke. The ship is mostly dark. With any luck at all, she’ll make it down to the control pod without even being seen. There’ll be someone down in the pod, but maybe not. The ship’s not moving, so you don’t need a pilot. Not much to do down there, just monitor the radar looking for bogies inside the no-fly, check the airship’s elevation, and adjust for windage, right? Maybe one guy down there? Two max?”

“Yeah. Maybe two. Certainly not expecting anybody currently aboard to make a move on the damn bridge. Hell, most of the passengers are in their seventies. All of them with IQs in the thousands. The whole bunch way too smart to do anything as stupid as what we’re talking about.”

“Listen. I’ve been down in an identical pod. She’ll have a clear shot from the circular hatch at the top of the ladder. So she takes them out before she even goes down. Then she opens the hatch for us. That’s it. Done. We’re in. The best HRT team in the world with the element of total surprise. A walk in the bloody park, Stoke.”

“Sounds so easy a child could do it, doesn’t it? I don’t even know what I’m so worried about.”

“Stoke, look. I know you love this woman. I know it’s dangerous as hell, what I’m asking her to do. But it’s the only chance we’ve got, man. Not only to save four hundred people’s lives but to counter Russian aggression that could trigger a world war. You know that, don’t you?”

“Fancha saves the world. Man, shit I get myself into hanging around with you.”

Stoke got up and picked up the sat phone lying on the tiny grey desk, punched in a number, sat down on a corner of the desk, a look of pained concern in his big brown eyes.

“Hey, baby. How you doing? I know, I know. But we’re coming to get you, okay? Soon, that’s when. That’s what I’m calling about. Now, calm down and listen. I’ve got a way maybe you can help us out…”

Hawke dropped lightly to the floor and slipped out of the cabin, quietly pulling Stoke’s door shut. He didn’t want to hear this conversation. If things upstairs went badly, as they frequently did, there’d be only one person to blame, and he didn’t have time to think about that right now. He sprinted aft along the narrow companionway. It led to where Brock and Captain Jack Stiglmeier, XO of SEAL Team Six, were meeting in the sub’s NAVPSPECWAR wardroom, where all the missiles used to be.

He had to get to Brock and the SEAL Team Six exec officer, work out some kind of operation that had even a minute chance of actually working. Before any SEAL mission, the assault force plans routes that will be used to gain control of the target. On surface vessels where hostages are held, the bridge is usually the assault-and-rescue team’s first objective, since it’s the nerve center of the vessel. Movements are conducted in a “bounding overwatch” mode, where one part of the team is always covering the other. Any enemy sighted can be taken under immediate fire without others having to move and shoot at the same time.

Having an armed hostage aboard willing and capable of neutralizing the bridge and give the boarding team a viable insertion point was critical to the plan the three men now worked out. The success of this assault, Hawke knew, would be immeasurably more problematic should Fancha fail to reach the bridge alive.

A long, sweat-soaked hour later, Hawke shoved his chair back, put his feet up on the table, lit another of Putin’s cigarettes, and smiled at Brock and Stiglmeier.

“Yeah, okay,” Hawke said. “God help us, I think we’re finally good to go. You guys good? Everyone ready?”

“Good,” Harry said, looking down at a diagram of the pod he’d drawn on a legal pad, outlining the two teams’ plans of action. Harry would be going up with Stoke’s squad, acting as his second in command.

Stiglmeier said, “I’m good. And ready.”

“Let’s go to work,” Hawke said, looking at his watch. “You want to call a time, Jack?”

“I still like midnight.”

“Then we ride at midnight,” Hawke said, smiling at the team.

59

Fancha was ready, too. She had exactly fifteen minutes to make her way aft, down two decks to the bridge deck, get away from anyone who tried to stop her, find the control pod, and open the hatch for Stoke and his men at the stroke of midnight. She checked her watch again. If she was lucky, she’d reach the bridge a few minutes early. If she was unlucky, well, nobody blames you for being late if you’re dead.

She had Stoke’s gun and the sat phone both stuck uncomfortably in the small of her back, inside the belt holding up her black jeans. She wore her dark red blouse untucked so it would cover the two items. She had no idea what to expect once she stepped outside her cabin, but she thought having the gun and a phone in her hands was probably a bad idea when and if she encountered one of the terrorists.

She looked at herself in the mirror one last time.

“You can do this, girl, you can do this,” she said to herself, and she almost believed she could. God knew she’d said it enough times since she’d hung up from talking to Stoke.

She’d not cracked the door in almost three days, living in constant fear the terrorists would conduct a room-to-room search for her. Luckily, they’d either forgotten about her, or decided she wasn’t worth the effort. She’d had nothing to eat but snacks, sodas, and beer from the minibar. But she understood what Stokely wanted from her, how important it was, and she was determined to succeed or die trying.

She unlocked the double locks on the door, grabbed the knob, and turned it. Slowly, as quietly as she could, she pulled the door open, an inch, two inches. Someone was coming! She pulled the door shut and leaned against the wall, her heart pounding.

There had been a sound from the corridor, coming toward her from the left. Someone whistling. A woman. It sounded like one of the housekeepers. Could they really have the staff continue to clean the damn ship while people were being held hostage? Maybe even being killed? She supposed they could. This was, as Stoke had told her when they were boarding, a “tight ship.”

And these “housekeepers,” as they called themselves, didn’t look much like housekeepers. The majority of them were young, mid-twenties, blonde, and all uniformly beautiful. Ukrainians, mostly, the ones she’d talked to, but there were pretty girls of every race, creed, and color aboard. All trained to walk and talk the same, pretty much indistinguishable. The Stepford Maids, she called them.

It was some high-class form of white slavery, she supposed. Dirt-poor girls from small towns, desperate to get out. Horrible but not nearly as bad as what happened to thousands of other girls like them around the world. These women were the lucky ones; the unlucky ones got sold.

She put her ear to the door. The whistling woman was just passing by. Fancha pulled the gun from her waistband, opened the door silently, and stepped out into the hall.

“Excuse me?” she said, approaching the woman from behind. The housekeeper stopped, but before she could turn around, Fancha had brought the butt of the gun down on top of the woman’s head, swinging it just as hard as she could. She crumpled to the floor, out like a light.

Fancha bent and grabbed her under the armpits, quickly dragging her back inside her stateroom. She shut the door and locked it. She stared down at the unconscious woman, breathing hard, unable to believe she’d done this to her. She grabbed her wrist and felt for a pulse. Strong. But wait just a minute. This woman was wearing a uniform. Black satin, with a frilly white apron and a frilly white cap. The size wasn’t perfect, but it was close enough.

She bent down and started unbuttoning the woman’s blouse.

It took all of two minutes to disrobe the maid and herself and put on the housekeeping uniform. She looked at herself. She’d tucked her dark hair up under the cap as best she could. Stuck the gun and the phone inside the apron strings, where they were tied tightly in the back. Found a long black cardigan sweater in her closet and put that on. It was just long enough to cover up everything back there. She’d pass for one of the housekeepers, she thought, if nobody looked too closely, remembered her face.

There were two terry robes hanging in the bathroom. She took the sashes from both and used them to bind the unconscious woman’s wrists and ankles. She used a hand towel as a gag, tying it tightly, knotting it at the back of the girl’s head, praying it was enough to keep her quiet when she came to.

She cracked the door, saw that the dimly lit passage was empty, and headed for the stairs at the far end. She didn’t run, because housekeepers didn’t run. She tried to take her time. And tried to whistle, as they all seemed to whistle. The maid encounter had cost her precious time. But the uniform also might save her life, she thought, hurrying up the steps to the deck two floors above. Her first job was to determine if the hostages were still being kept in the ballroom. Stoke guessed they were. The terrorists would want them contained, where they could keep a close watch over every move they made.

She’d had an idea, and maybe it was a good one. First, go back through the kitchen, which she managed without seeing a soul. Next, go backstage, look for the small door that opened onto a tiny staircase leading up to the projection room. The ballroom was also where they showed movies every night. She had a hunch there’d be no movie tonight, and the projection room would be empty, and she was right.

Peering down through the tiny window next to the projector, she saw the hostages. They were mostly crowded on the floor, sleeping on blankets, although some were seated at the tables. They looked as bad as you would expect. Little food, little water, little sleep. And there were ten armed terrorists stationed around the perimeter of the room, just in case anybody got any ideas. She headed back to the kitchen and quickly made her way down to B Deck.

Stokely had told her where to find the bridge deck pod. It was the clear plastic egg she’d seen suspended from the bottom of the airship’s hull. Stoke said to go to the very center of A Deck, and there she’d find the entrance ladder down to the control pod.

B Deck aft where she was now, was mostly crew quarters. Zero décor. Pretty grim compared with the luxurious spaces above. Two jumpsuited crewmen were headed her way. Laughing, arms around each other, drunk. She took a deep breath, kept whistling, smiled at them as they approached her. The one nearest her reached out, leering, and grabbed her arm. She hissed at him, something low and threatening, and wrenched her arm away. “Asshole!” she said, giving it her native Cape Verde accent. She was clearly more trouble than she was worth. They kept moving.

She kept moving. All the way to the end of the corridor, down a set of service steps to the A Deck. Then she started back toward the middle of the ship. It was steerage down here, crew quarters even less appealing than the deck above.

“Hey! Stop!” someone called out in English as she passed an open door. She’d caught a glimpse inside and speeded up a little bit. There had been at least a couple of men in there, playing cards, it had looked like, a huge cloud of smoke over their heads, noisy, drunken laughter from inside.

“Hey! You deaf? I said stop.”

She did, her heart pounding. If she ran, he’d catch her. It would be over. She turned around.

The guy was at the door, leaning out into the hall, a half-empty bottle of vodka in his hand. He looked vaguely familiar. Oh, yeah. Happy the Baker, God help her.

“Come back here.”

“Okay,” she said, using a universal word and trying to give it a bit of an island accent. She turned around, walking toward him, head down with her hands clasped behind her back. A perfectly obedient little Stepford Maid but one with her finger on the trigger.

“Haven’t seen you before. What’s your name, honey, you look familiar.”

“Tatiana.”

“Whatever. Come on in, baby. Join the party,” the big fat man said, slapping her rump as she stepped through the door and into the smoke-filled room. He turned and locked the door.

Not a good sign.

TWO FOURTEEN-MAN TEAMS of commandos huddled at the base of the steel ladder inside the conning tower. They’d been exhaustively briefed over the last hour. The mood was good. They had a workable mission plan now, and they had confidence in the two men who’d lead the assault. One was American, Stokely Jones, a legendary SEAL in his day.

The other was a Brit named Alex Hawke, and it was obvious he’d been there, done that, and, besides, they liked what they saw in his eyes.

The absolute animal willingness to kill.

Each man was clad in black rip-stop Nomex with lightweight Kevlar and ceramic body armor. Their faces were smeared with black camo face paint. They carried a lot of gear, including the new M8 assault rifle, maybe the deadliest such weapon in the world. The SIG Sauer P228 pistol, carried in a low-slung tactical holster just below the hip, would act as backup. Pistol magazines hung precariously from gun belts, M8 mags rode in thigh pads for quick access. Some members carried the M4-90, a magazine-fed tactical shotgun. A street sweeper if ever there was one.

In addition to the knives and ammo hung from their web belts, they were equipped with flashbang stun grenades. These nonlethal explosives could incapacitate targets through blinding light and an excruciating 180-decibel noise. And they had smoke grenades to screen movement or disorient targets when necessary.

Each man wore a Kevlar helmet headset with an earpiece that fitted snugly inside the left ear and a filament microphone that lay just below the lower lip. They had their Motorola wireless sets turned off now, most of them practicing how to say “Drop the gun!” and “On the floor!” and “Shut the fuck up!” in phonetic Russian.

Hawke, Stoke, Brock, and Hynson stood to one side of the group, going over last-minute instructions with the skipper of the submarine. Timing was going to be absolutely everything now, and they couldn’t afford even the slightest error on anybody’s part.

Hawke checked his watch. Ten minutes out.

They were ready. Now all they had to do was wait and pray for Fancha’s call.

HAPPY THE BAKER. That’s who the guy was, all right. The one at the birthday party in Coconut Grove, whom Stoke said the FBI called the Omnibomber. A guy who went around the world blowing up people the Russians at the Kremlin didn’t like.

Happy and two other guys were sitting around a card table littered with overflowing ashtrays, empty bottles, and dirty glasses. Russian engine-room crewmen, by the looks of them. They were wearing oil-stained “wife-beater” undershirts, the ones with shoulder straps. By the sweat and stink rolling off them, there wasn’t a lot of bathing going around here.

One of them looked her up and down, picked up an ashtray, and upended the contents onto the rug.

“Oops,” he said, laughing, the other two finding the whole thing hilarious. They looked at her through lowered lids, their hands moving down to the crotches of their greasy work pants.

Happy the fat boy, his little pig eyes narrow, nuzzled her ear, his hand on her ass, mercifully too drunk to recognize her from the party in Miami.

“Clean it up, bitch,” Happy said, his voice thick with alcohol and lust. He was standing close behind her, his foul breath on her neck, his rough hands kneading her buttocks, reaching up under her arms to squeeze her breasts hard enough to make her wince. He wasn’t close enough to feel the gun yet, but he was getting there.

She had to get him, get all of them, out in front of her.

Now.

“Okay,” she said, moving quickly away from Happy.

She dropped to one knee and swept the butts and ashes back into the ashtray with her hand. Then she rose and carried it over to the table between the two unmade beds. She placed it on the table and sat down on the bed farthest from the door. She saw the ugly black gas masks hanging on the backs of their chairs. And in the corner behind the card table were the tanks she’d seen on Happy’s back when the terrorists seized the ship. She might not live through this ordeal, but at least there was one threat she could eliminate right now.

“What are you sitting on your pretty little ass for, honey?” Happy said in his Brooklyn accent. “Boys want to see you dance.”

“Dance?” she said, smiling sweetly.

She stood up and reached behind her, fussing with her apron strings. “Shouldn’t I take all this off first?”

“Yeah, baby. That’s a great idea,” Happy said. “That’s it. Take it off. All of it. Real slow.”

“Real slow,” she repeated, smiling as she brought the 9mm automatic pistol around where they could all get a good, long look at it.

“Fuck,” Paddy said.

“You said it, not me,” Fancha said.

She raised the gun, squeezed the trigger, and shot Happy the Baker in the crotch. Giving him just a second to look down at the spreading bloodstain and realize what had just happened to him, she then raised the gun and put one in the middle of his face. A cherry-and-black blemish instantly bloomed on the bridge of his nose, and a piece of his skull about the size of a quarter hit the wall behind him in a spray of red mist.

The other two, terrified, were diving for the floor. She took a step forward so she’d have a clear shot at each of them. She took her time, gripping the pistol out front with two hands the way Stoke had taught her at Gator Guns, aiming carefully, squeezing the trigger gently. She shot each one of the men in the head.

Once, then twice.

She collapsed back onto the bed and pulled out the sat phone. Thank God for speed dial. Her hand was shaking so badly she couldn’t have punched more than one button.

“Stoke?”

“Fancha, you okay?”

“Baby, I just killed three people. They were going to…rape me, and I just-”

“Aw, honey, I’m so-”

“No, no. Shh. I’m okay. Happy is dead. I shot him. Those gas canisters I told you about are here in his room. I think they’re just small enough to go out through the portholes if I can get them open.”

“Do it now, okay? I would love to know there is no gas in play when we come aboard.”

“Hold on.”

She was back on the line a minute later. “Canisters just went overboard,” she said. “Gas is gone.”

“Great. Now, hostages? Still in one place?”

“Yeah. All in the ballroom, most of them trying to sleep on the floor. Some huddled around the tables. Ten armed guys standing around the perimeter.”

“So, ten standing watch over the hostages, ten off duty, maybe sleeping. That’s a big help.”

“Thanks.”

“How long till you get down to the bridge, baby?”

“Ten minutes, if I’m lucky.”

“Don’t be lucky, be careful. I love you. See you soon.”

60

The submarine lay at a depth of 600 feet below the surface, maintaining neutral buoyancy.

In the middle of her control room were two periscopes on a raised platform. One of the periscopes had a surface video camera that sent pictures to monitors throughout the control room and to the captain’s quarters. Each monitor now displayed an image of the giant zeppelin hovering five hundred feet above the ocean’s surface. Except for the flashing red running lights along her hull and a few lit windows along the center of the fuselage, she was mostly dark, darker even than the black sky behind her.

Directly in front of the two periscopes was the duty station-or the “con”-which is the watch station of the officer of the deck. Tonight, Lieutenant Commander Lawrence Robins had the con. To his right was the fire-control station. Forward, the three bucket seats of the control station, now manned by two enlisted men who operated the diving planes and the rudder, the planesman and the helmsman. In the middle sat the diving officer. To the left of the planesman was the ballast-control panel with two emergency blow handles.

Robins looked aft at the assault party waiting impatiently at the base of the conning tower. He caught the eye of Commander Hawke, who nodded his head once and gave Robins a thumbs-up. The SEAL teams were more than ready. It was go time.

“Blow emergency main ballast tanks,” Robins said quietly.

The diving officer reached over and pushed in the two valves simultaneously, then pulled up, triggering the sub’s emergency surfacing maneuver. The two valves sent high-pressure air from the air banks flooding into the EMBT, the emergency main ballast tank.

The submarine instantly rocketed straight to the surface like a 6,000-ton torpedo.

Her bow came out, flew out of the water, almost vertically, the hull rising at an impossible angle, before falling back into the dark sea and settling directly beneath the hovering airship.

Two enlisted men, Ensigns Blair and Mansfield, raced up the ladder first. It was their job to open the main hatch in the sub’s “sail” or conning tower. As the SEALs crowded forward to begin their rapid ascent up the ladder, the two crewmen up top now mounted a compressed CO₂ gas-powered harpoon gun atop a swivel base. The base contained an enormously powerful high-speed electric winch. The harpoon gun, used normally in emergency rescue operations, was capable of firing a rubber-coated grapnel hook trailing a thousand feet of steel mesh cable with astounding accuracy.

“Only get one shot at this,” Blair said to Mansfield.

“Yeah, I know. I need a frozen rope.”

That’s what you needed when a foundering vessel was sinking fast in twenty-foot seas, a frozen rope. You needed to put one right on the money, hook a steel bulkhead or something solid, before she slipped under the icy waves with all hands.

Mansfield put his eye to the high-powered scope and looked up the barrel of the harpoon gun. He got the center of the pod’s superstructure in his crosshairs. Twin steel beams ran fore and aft on either side of an emergency hatch in the belly of the pod. These perforated steel brackets secured the bridge pod to the fuselage above. He’d be firing directly at the one nearer the hatch. If they were lucky, the thick rubber coating on the grapnel hook would be sufficiently noise-deadening so as not to alert anyone inside the pod.

That was the theory come up with by the genius brigade in the wardroom, anyway. The two ensigns had their doubts, but it wasn’t their job to offer suggestions. It was their job to hook up to the airship and start winching this big four-hundred-foot-long mother right down to the sub.

The terrorists were threatening to throw live hostages out the door if anyone messed with them. Mansfield’s mission was to get the airship down to sea level fast enough to take that option off the table.

“Okay,” Mansfield said, peering through the scope crosshairs at his target. “Fire!”

Blair yanked the lanyard that fired the harpoon. There was a whoosh of expelled gas, and the grapnel hook shot upward toward the underside of the zeppelin, a trail of steel cable beneath. Mansfield kept his right eye glued to the scope.

“Oh, baby,” he said, raising his head and smiling at Blair.

“Frozen rope?”

“Fuckin’ A, podnuh. Nailed it. Hooked the damn cross beam a foot from the hatch.”

Blair pushed the red lever that operated the big winch inside the base of the harpoon. The cable snapped taut as the slack disappeared in a heartbeat, and slowly but surely, the winch began to reel the massive airship down toward the sub’s conning tower.

“Outta the way!” one of the first SEALs to emerge through the hatch yelled. The big black guy, a veteran named Stokely Jones who’d come aboard at Bermuda, was on that steel cable and climbing hand over hand up toward the ship faster than either Blair or Mansfield had ever seen a human being move before. Especially one his size and carrying forty pounds of weapons, equipment, and ammunition on his back.

“SOMETHING’S VERY WRONG here,” Pushkin’s first officer said to his captain, Dimitri Boroskov. He was staring in disbelief at the instruments arrayed on the ship’s master control panel.

“What is it?”

“We’re losing altitude, sir.”

“Don’t be absurd. That’s impossible,” the captain said, his eyes rapidly scanning the console, looking primarily at the internal gas-pressure gauges. The Vortex I had been designed with twin hulls. An outer hull of thin, rip-stop material and a rigid inner hull of microthin titanium, this lightweight metal hull strong enough to survive all but the most catastrophic disasters. Sandwiched between the two hulls was ninety million cubic feet of helium.

The only things that could possibly cause a loss of altitude would be wind shear from a thunderhead or a loss of gas from inside the outer hull. There was no storm activity within fifty miles. And every one of his gauges showed no signs of leakage. The exterior hull pressure readings in all compartments were pegged safely inside the normal range, just where they were supposed to be. No leaks. No wind. It made no sense at all.

“All pressure readings normal,” Boroskov said. “Slight wind out of the northeast, two knots gusting to five.”

“That may well be, Captain. But look at the altimeter, will you? And the variometer. We are definitely descending.”

“I don’t believe it. Must be something wrong with the altimeter gauge. It’s giving a false reading.”

The captain leaned forward and stared out at the black sky and the few stars scattered near the horizon. “We certainly appear to be stationary, at any rate.”

“Only because the descent rate is minimal, sir. Look! Four hundred ninety feet above sea level and dropping. We’ve lost ten feet according to the altimeter! And the rate seems to be increasing!”

“Impossible.”

“Should I notify Commander Yurin? He demands to be kept abreast of anything unusual, sir.”

“Not yet. We don’t want to look foolish, and there might still be a simple explanation. Call engineering first. There must be a leak somewhere. Perhaps the computer systems monitoring the internal pressure gauges are malfunctioning. This could be the problem. Still, we take no chances. Get engineering teams to go over every square inch of this ship’s interior. Find that leak, if it exists, and fix it!”

“Aye-aye, sir!” the first officer said, and ran for the ladder, while the captain nervously eyed the outward-looking radar, looking for any enemy incursion into their no-fly zone.

“Sir?” his first officer said a moment later, pausing at the bottom of the ladder and looking up toward the open hatchway.

“What is it now?” said the captain, frantically scanning the altimeter, elevator position indicator, and inclinometer. At eye level was his variometer, which he used to measure the ship’s rate of rise or fall. With his left hand, he spun the elevator wheel, trying to detect and correct changes in trim. He was intent on moving the airship forward now, attempting to gain altitude, but he couldn’t seem to do either.

He had the oddest sensation of his entire career.

He felt that his ship was stuck in midair.

“I believe there is now another problem, Captain,” he heard his first officer say behind him. Boroskov looked quickly over his shoulder. What he saw, at first glance, did not appear to be a problem.

He saw a beautiful pair of legs descending the ladder, shapely calves, knees, thighs. At first, he thought the woman might be naked, and then he saw the short black satin skirt, the apron. Finally, the beautiful woman with the dark red hair stepped down from the bottom rung. She was wearing the uniform of the housekeeping staff, but she was not anyone he recognized. She had a gun in her hand. Things were getting so strange. The captain shook his head as if he could clear away this craziness.

“You two speak English?” the dark-skinned woman asked.

“Da, da, da,” the captain replied. “Yes, yes, yes, of course.”

“Good. I want both of you to remain very quiet. Keep your hands up in the air where I can see them. Good. Now, move toward the hatch.”

The two officers did as they were told.

“Now, open the hatch.”

“Open it?”

“You heard what I said. Open it!”

The captain made for the hatch, but the first officer had other ideas. He turned, screamed something in Russian at the captain, and lunged for Fancha with both hands outstretched, going for the gun.

There was no time to hesitate. She fired one round, caught him in the knee, and he buckled to the floor, writhing in pain.

The Russian captain, very shaken now, cranked the big stainless-steel wheel around a few times. There was a pop, a hiss of air, and then the hatch cover was shoved upward violently by someone below. The steel edge of the round door caught the captain under the chin, and he, too, went sprawling, bleeding from a deep gash.

Fancha looked down and saw Stokely’s smiling face beaming up at her.

“Hey,” he said. “Look who’s here.”

“Oh, baby, oh, baby, oh, baby,” she said, reaching down to touch his face.

“Honey, you got to get out of the way. I got about thirty pumped-up killer angels climbing up my tail crazy to come aboard as quickly as possible.”

Fancha moved to the rear of the control-room pod and watched an endless stream of heavily armed men in black, who had climbed hand over hand up the steel cable, now come pouring up through the hatch. Stoke had the captain and the first officer off to the side, grilling them aggressively at the point of a gun about the current whereabouts of all of the terrorists, especially the ones who were not to be found in the ballroom.

She saw Alex Hawke poke his handsome head through the hatch and smile at her.

She’d never seen a man look so happy in her life.

“Fancha,” he said, grinning at her. “You did it.”

61

SEALs don’t train with regulation human-silhouette targets. They use small three-by-five index cards taped strategically over the silhouette. To qualify, you had to be able to hit the card with a double tap, two shots in rapid succession, whether you were popping up from below the water or bursting into a hijacked airliner packed with terrified passengers. SEAL instructors don’t care how you shoot, one-handed, two-handed, right- or left-handed, doesn’t matter, as long as you hit tight, man-killing groups every single time.

The heavy loads the two SEAL platoons were using tonight would knock the terrorists aboard the airship down no matter where they hit them. Head, chest, arm, leg, didn’t matter. The terrorists who had hijacked this airship didn’t know it yet, but their life expectancies had just dropped to zero.

The assault-and-hostage-rescue group quickly divided itself into two platoons, one on either side of the pod’s ladder up to A Deck. Stoke and Harry Brock would take the Alpha Platoon, Stoke commanding. They would search the ship from stem to stern. They’d be looking for any tangos currently off duty, sleeping, or simply hiding and capture or eliminate them. Basically, a door-to-door sweep of the entire airship.

Meanwhile, Hawke and the fourteen men of Bravo Platoon would go directly to the ballroom, take out the Russian tangos guarding the hostages, and secure any other hostages in sickbay or otherwise not found with the main group.

“Listen up,” Hawke said, addressing the whole squad. “This, as you gentlemen all damn well know, is a game for thinkers, not shooters. That’s always been true, but it is especially true tonight. When we go in with our flashbangs and smoke grenades, we’re going to enter a room full of screaming, shell-shocked hostages, many of them elderly and infirm, and perhaps a dozen highly trained Russian terrorists. As you know from the briefing, these guys are very bad news, formerly the death-squad commandos in Chechnya.”

“OMON, skipper?”

“Exactly. So, the trick will be not shooting. Every round we fire in there will be accounted for. I don’t need to tell you we probably have the American vice president’s wife in there on the floor. Also her White House security detail. When bullets fly and the fit hits the shan, as it surely will do, these U.S. Secret Service men will immediately cover her body with their own. These men are not, I repeat, not attacking the vice president’s wife.”

“Thanks for the heads-up, skipper,” one of the younger SEALs said, laughing.

“Little humor,” Hawke smiled.

It was easy as hell to get too tight at the run-up, too tightly wound, and that was the last thing he wanted his squad to be feeling at the moment.

There were a more few chuckles, and Stoke said, “This is serious shit, guys. Any monkey can shoot people. You men know better than anyone what counts right now is the split second when you know to back the hell off. Okay? Listen to the man!”

Hawke, all trace of humor gone, said, “Once the spoon pops on the first smoke and flashbang grenades, you have two-point-seven seconds before the blast. Fingers off the triggers until you aim to kill. Look all the way into the danger zones before turning into the room. When you get inside, key your focus on weapons, not movement. Maintain fields of fire, and for God’s sake, don’t fuck this up. All right? Everybody ready? You all know where to go, so go, dammit, go!”

He and Stoke stood back and let the teams race up the ladder to reform in the lounge area at the top.

Stoke had made sure a crewman from the sub would fast-rope up the cable with a bosun’s chair and help Fancha back down to the sub, get her to sickbay if necessary. The captain and the first officer were likewise to be removed from the pod and hauled down to the sub for intense interrogation.

At the top of the grand staircase, the hostage-rescue team split into two parties. Stoke took Alpha left down the ship’s central corridor, where they would begin a room-by-room search of the entire vessel, every deck, every nook, every cranny.

Hawke and Bravo went right.

Every member of the team had memorized the ship’s layout. They knew every crack, turn, and stair, including the ballroom’s location and layout on the diagrams. Just two minutes later, Hawke and his assault team were silently checking weapons and gear one last time outside the ballroom’s main entrance, just beyond the line of sight of anyone inside.

Hawke looked at the digital timer ticking down on his watch and stepped forward, stopping just short of the door. He had affixed a noise suppressor to his M8 and now held it at eye level, the selector set for a three-round burst. Should an unfriendly step outside the room now, he was dead. He reached into his bag of tricks and pulled out a flashbang. He slowed his breathing. Adrenaline was coursing through his system, just enough to maintain the right edge. In his earpiece, he could hear Stoke breathing.

“Bravo,” Hawke said into his tiny lip mike.

“Copy, Bravo,” Stoke replied. “Alpha is at yellow. Request compromise authority and permission to move to green.” Yellow meant Stoke’s squad was at its last position of cover and concealment. That no-man’s-land between safe and totally rat-fucked. His team had orders not to engage any enemy until Hawke’s primary force had initiated its assault on the ballroom.

“Bravo at green,” Hawke told Stoke, cupping a grenade loosely in his left hand. “Stand by, Alpha…ten seconds…”

He looked at his team, making final eye contact with as many of them as he could. “Remember,” he told them one last time, “key on weapons, shoot surgically, think four steps ahead.”

The team nodded. Hawke saw they were ready. It was finally time for everybody to get real busy, hop and pop.

“Alpha, you now have compromise authority to move to green…”

He paused a beat. He knew Stoke was moving.

“Five,” Hawke said to his team, “four…three…two…one…”

Hawke heaved the first of many stun grenades through the ballroom door. Next, the smoke grenades were tossed inside.

Craaack!

A hundred and eighty decibels of distraction preceded Hawke, who leaned into the smoke and noise and violence as his team stormed into the ballroom behind him.

Bullets from the OMON troops ringing the room full of hostages instantly zipped over their heads with loud, supersonic retorts. Huge sonic explosions rocked the ballroom as the team charged through the hot zone. They were sidestepping wailing hostages as they lobbed more flashbangs and smokes ahead of them and expertly executing terrorists as they encountered them, head shots, torsos, whatever shots they could take. Surgical, like the man said.

The return enemy fire was wild and sporadic as panic and confusion spread. But not all of it. The Russian OMON forces had clearly been training for an attempted hostage rescue, just as Yurin had told Stokely under duress.

Hawke had seen two or three of his guys go down, wounded or dead. A lot of lead was still flying. He was shocked to see a few hostages struggling to their feet, two old men reaching down to help their wives get off the floor. They all held hands and, stumbling blindly through the smoke, tried to make their way toward a door with a lighted exit sign.

They hadn’t gone six feet when all four of them were brutally executed by two OMON guys guarding the exit door. Hawke saw the wanton murder, dropped to a knee, sighted his M8, and unloaded on one of the two Russians, rounds to his head that would sever the connection between brain and spinal cord. He looked for the other one, but he’d disappeared into the smoke toward the stage.

Hawke decided to follow. Murder got you the death penalty in this room. But suddenly, he was taking fire from above. Where? He whirled around. There were two tiny window openings in the wall above the stage, and he saw the glint of a muzzle protruding from one of them. It looked like a projection booth. Fire from above was lethal. He grabbed a stun grenade from his bag and pitched it through the second window. The resulting explosion of sound and the smoke pouring out had neutralized the shooter, at least temporarily.

62

“Locked door, skipper,” Harry Brock said to Stoke. Harry put his ear to the door. “Noise inside. Sounds like TV.”

Alpha Platoon had already cleared one entire deck, killing two tango sentries and three more sleeping inside some kind of dorm room. They had just mounted the stairs to the promenade deck. Pricey real estate from the looks of it. Suites and shit like that. Lots of gold fixtures and silk-covered sofas out in the hallway.

“Blow it, Harry,” Stoke said.

“Breacher up!” Brock said, and a lanky young Iowan named Harry Beecher stepped past them to the door. Beecher the Breacher, he was called. He was carrying a sawed-off, pistol-gripped 12-gauge Remington shotgun loaded with two specially designed Hatton rounds. He also had a.45 in a cross-draw holster strapped across his chest and a bagful of flashbangs.

Stoke signaled for the rest of the squad to proceed ahead, clear the rest of the corridor. He calculated the three of them had enough firepower for this one room. The rest of his team moved on, clearing room after room, as sporadic automatic-weapons fire echoed all through the corridor.

Stoke called it, and Beecher put the gun to the lock.

Boom-boom!

Beecher had chipped out the dead bolt, and Stoke kicked the door open, went in low, half a step, and turned to his left.

“Hostage left!” he yelled as Beecher and Brock moved inside.

He instantly recognized Vice President Tom McCloskey’s wife from her pictures in the papers and on TV. Bonnie McCloskey sat in a chair, her hands cuffed in her lap as two wild-eyed OMON bully boys on either side held guns to her head. She looked exhausted and beat to hell, but she smiled angelically at Stoke, sweetly, as if he’d just dropped in for tea. For a terrified hostage, few sights are more welcome than a beautiful Old Glory patch on somebody’s shoulder, coming through the door.

To the right, two more Russkie tangos were just coming up off the couch where they’d been watching Black Sunday on a plasma. Harry Brock, still moving forward at a crouch, dropped the one on the right with a three-round burst to the chest. Beecher had pulled his pistol and took out the guy on the left with one round to the forehead, a big.45mm ouchie that would never ever get all better.

“Drop your guns!” Stoke shouted at the two men still holding guns to the vice president’s wife’s head. Catching his mistake, he screamed it again in phonetic Russian, swinging the barrel of his M8 rapidly back and forth from one bad guy to the other as he moved forward, just aching to pull the trigger.

“Get the fuck down!” he yelled, advancing with his M8 at head level. “Get the fuck away from that hostage! Now!”

Brock was now edging his way along the wall behind the bound hostage and her two captors. The Russians were wide-eyed with indecision and fear, knowing that if they shot their captive, they were dead men standing, also knowing that if they turned their guns on the huge black man…Stoke’s concentration was so intense at that moment that he could actually see their fingers squeezing the triggers as Brock stepped silently forward and shot each man from one foot behind, two split-second double taps that literally took the tops of their heads off.

Stoke launched himself forward, grabbed the hostage under the arms, and got her out of that room in a hurry. Nobody needed to see and smell the kind of carnage that filled that room any longer than they had to. He carried her straight across the hall to an open room they’d previously cleared, sat her gently down on the bed, and quickly sliced the plastic cuffs off with his knife.

“You okay? You need a doctor? We got a medical corpsman with us.”

She looked at him blankly, her eyes welling with tears.

He turned and shouted toward the open door, “Harry! Get the corpsman up here, pronto!”

“Happening as we speak, boss!” Brock said, sticking his smiling face inside the door.

“No, no, wait,” the shaken woman said. “I’m all right. Get your corpsman to help those poor people in the ballroom. Some of them are terribly ill and afraid. Especially the elderly. Please, don’t waste any more time on me. I’m fine. Perhaps some water, and if I might just lie down for a moment?”

“Here’s water,” Brock said, tossing a bottle to Stoke. “I’ll dispatch the corpsman to the ballroom right away.”

Harry bolted.

“Ma’am, let me help you with that pillow. That man’s name is Harry Brock, Mrs. McCloskey. He’s a CIA field agent. He’s going to see that you get home to Washington safe and sound. There’s a Navy plane waiting at Bermuda. I’ll have you there in less than an hour.”

“So, it’s-over?”

“Yes, ma’am, it’s just about over.”

“Thank you,” she said, looking up at Stoke, and then the big tears started rolling, and she collapsed against the pillow. “Thank you so very much.”

“You’re most welcome,” Stoke said, not letting go of her hand.

“Those poor people down there. All that shooting. Can you possibly save them?”

“We are certainly trying, ma’am. We’ve got the best hostage-rescue team on the planet down there right now. I think it’s going to be all right.”

HAWKE, EYES BURNING red from flashbang smoke, barely saw the lone tango trying to escape the carnage. It was another muscle-bound brute with close-cropped blond hair, using the smoke screen to try to slip through the curtains at the back of the stage. Hawke caught a bit of profile as the guy disappeared and recognized him instantly. It was the barbarian who’d gunned down the four elderly hostages in cold blood, the very same bastard he’d lost in the smoke a while earlier.

Yeah, this had to be the guy from Miami, all right, the one Stoke had told him all about. An OMON officer named Yurin who’d specialized in killing small children in Chechnya after the carpet-bombing of the Chechen capital at Grozny. In wardroom briefing, Stoke had referred to him as the baby killer. This was Yurin’s operation, Hawke knew, and if you kill the head, you kill the snake. He wiped his stinging eyes, moving rapidly through the smoke toward the stage.

Hawke mounted the stage and pushed through the heavy velvet curtains. It was pitch-black backstage, but he heard gunfire above and saw flashes of light beneath a door at the top of a metal stairway. It had to be the projection booth. Most, if not all, of the Russian operators had been taken out by Bravo by now. But the effect of Yurin’s fire on the dance floor below would be murderous: firing into the panic, killing indiscriminately, the elderly people filled with hope now, running madly for the exits, only to be cruelly cut down as they tried to escape.

Hawke mounted the steps three at a time.

The door was slightly ajar, and he kicked it open with his boot. He tried to bring himself to shoot the bastard in the back but just couldn’t do it.

“Hey, baby killer!” Hawke shouted, his M8 trained on the Russian’s broad back as the OMON commander slammed a fresh mag into his subgun and squeezed the trigger, the explosive chatter deafening in the tiny room.

“What did you say?” the guy said, rapidly pulling away from the little window and bringing his gun around to bear on Hawke.

“I said baby killer. That’s you, right?” Hawke’s finger was already applying pressure to the M8’s trigger when the Russian looked up into his stone-cold eyes.

“Hawke?”

“That’s me,” Alex said, and cut him to ribbons with a sustained burst from his very lethal weapon.

63

“Sit down, Tom,” the president told his vice president. The poor man was a walking train wreck, pale and trembling, two days’ worth of stubble on his haggard face. He’d been pacing the hallway outside the White House Situation Room for hours, chain-smoking Marlboros and drinking countless pots of coffee. The McCloskey children were upstairs in the Residence, waiting for any word on their mother’s fate, trying to console their father whenever he came upstairs to console them.

“Damn it, we should have heard something by now,” McCloskey said from the doorway. The big man crossed the room and took his customary seat at the table beside President McAtee. Looking forlornly at the large digital clock on the opposite wall, he added, “The assault commenced nearly an hour ago. It’s a blimp, for God’s sake. How long can that take?”

He pushed a soggy box of half-eaten pizza away from him, knocking over a water glass.

The president reached over and squeezed his forearm in what was a likely futile effort to reassure his friend.

“Tom, we’ve got the toughest, most professional team in the world on that airship right now. If anyone can save Bonnie and all those poor people, it’s Alex Hawke and the Navy’s Team Six boys. You know that as well as I do, Tom.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry, Mr. President. It’s just-”

“Totally understandable is what it is,” the president said, rubbing his own fatigue-reddened eyes and nodding at the Joint Chiefs chairman, General Moore. “Charlie, please continue. NATO troop redeployment in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Baltics. Where are we on that?”

It was well after midnight, Washington time, an hour later in Bermuda. The wan and drawn faces of the men and women in the room bore mute witness to the unbearable stress the entire White House staff was under. It had been a hellish week.

The boyishly handsome FBI director, Mike Reiter, in particular, looked like unadulterated hell. He looked like a man who was about to give the president of the United States some really, really bad news. And in fact, that was precisely why he was there.

Now, less than a week before Christmas, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue had assumed a bunker mentality. This despite the cheery tree just put up in the Blue Room, the red, green, and gold Christmas decorations throughout the residence, and the huge lighted tree standing on the fresh blanket of snow covering the South Lawn.

There was little cause for cheer this Christmas. A megalomaniacal ruler had seized power in Russia and was threatening world war. A Russian death squad was holding four hundred terrified and exhausted hostages at gunpoint on an airship over the North Atlantic, including, just to spice things up, the lovely wife of his own vice president. Merry bleeping Christmas, Jack McAtee thought, scribbling the three words on his pad and drawing some scraggly holly leaves around them as General Moore wound up his report on NATO redeployment. Moore turned, looked solemnly at Reiter, and spoke to the president.

“Mr. President, Director Reiter is here to give you a report on what the FBI has learned during its ongoing investigation into the recent bombing at Salina. Mike?”

Reiter got to his feet.

“Mr. President, I’m afraid what we’ve learned at Salina indicates that we confront a threat that is far more serious, far worse than anything we could have ever imagined. The potential exists for a catastrophe of enormous, worldwide magnitude here. I’ve got a few slides here on PowerPoint, and I’d like to use them to demonstrate what we’re-”

“Mr. President?” a naval orderly said, striding rapidly into the room. “Sorry to interrupt, sir. Urgent call for you coming in from Moscow.”

“Korsakov.” The president scowled, picking up the phone directly in front of him. “Wonder what the crazy bastard is up to now.”

Reiter and Moore just looked at each other and shook their heads.

“Yes?” McAtee barked into the phone. “This is the president.”

“Ah, Mr. President. Good. Thank you for taking my call. Our negotiations with your embassy personnel have been most unsatisfactory. I have terminated discussions. As you know, we are at an important crossroads in the relationship of our two nations, and cool heads must prevail.”

“There is nothing cool-headed about invading sovereign nations and expecting the civilized world to sit back and do nothing, Mr. Korsakov. Listen to me very carefully. You are treading on very dangerous ground. Extraordinarily dangerous ground.”

“And do you think that moving ten divisions of NATO troops onto my country’s borders is cool-headed? As you know from our last conversation, I am currently trying to negotiate the release of four hundred innocent hostages, including the wife of your Vice President McCloskey. We are at a delicate stage in these negotiations with the Chechen Sunni Muslim terrorists aboard my airship. Your threats will do little to aid these discussions, I assure you.”

“Don’t insult me further. We both know damn well the terrorists who hijacked that ship are not Chechen Muslims. They are OMON special forces operating explicitly at the Kremlin’s direction. And if any harm should befall those poor people, I shall hold you personally responsible.”

“Think what you wish,” Korsakov said. “Let their blood be on your hands. I wash my own of the matter. But I will tell you this, Mr. President. What happened in Kansas can and will happen elsewhere. I will give you twenty-four hours. In that time, I expect to see NATO and U.S. troop withdrawals, a stand-down of naval forces in the Black Sea, and your own personal guarantee, in writing, that the Western allies will not interfere with my country’s desire to reestablish the unity of all Russian citizens within Russia’s naturally ordained borders.”

“Naturally ordained?” McAtee said. “What the hell does that mean besides illegal? Can you cite some legal precedent for that phrase?”

“This conversation is terminated, President McAtee. Look at your watch. Unless my demands are met, exactly twenty-four hours from this moment, I will shut off the flow of energy through the Ukraine to Europe. They’re having an especially cold December, and it’s about to get a lot colder. Twelve hours after that, an unnamed Western city with a population in excess of one million souls will cease to exist. Then we move to five million population twelve hours later, then ten, and so on. Until you decide to be more cooperative. Do we fully understand each other?”

McAtee slammed the phone down.

“Christ,” McAtee said. “The man is absolutely insane! He’s threatening to shut off the gas pipelines to Europe and blow up the whole damn world one city at a time unless we pull back. Khrushchev was a bully and a thug, but at least Jack Kennedy didn’t have a deranged psychopath on his hands. Blow up a city of one million? Five million? How the hell can he do that, Brick? Dirty nukes?”

Kelly looked at the president until the anger had subsided and he was certain of his complete attention. “No, sir. Something far more insidious than dirty nukes. As Mike was saying, the FBI has been looking into how the Russians took out Salina. It’s not good news, I’m afraid. In fact, it’s extraordinarily bad news. Mike, would you continue?”

“The frightening thing is, sir, these are not idle threats. For decades, we’ve all been focused on big bombs, nuclear devices in the ten-to-twenty-megaton range. But Korsakov, over a period of many years, has been using countless millions of small, innocent-appearing devices to basically hardwire the whole world with inordinately powerful small bombs, preposterous as that may sound. At first, we found it hard to believe ourselves. These Zeta machines are-”

“Sorry, Mike. Zeta machines? Help me out here.”

“Computers, Mr. President. You probably know them as Wizards. Low-cost Russian computers, designed and built by Korsakov’s company, TSAR, that have been sold by the tens of millions everywhere on the planet. And inside every single Zeta is a bomb. Each computer contains eight ounces of a nonnuclear explosive called Hexagon, plus GPS transmitters that continuously broadcast the machine’s location. Each one capable of remote detonation. And-”

The president had a stunned look on his face. “How many of these things are out there, did you say? Millions?”

A young female orderly entered the room, mouthing the word urgent at the president, and silently handed him a single sheet of paper folded in half. The president quickly read the message while Reiter continued.

He folded the note, placed it under his water glass, then looked across the room and found Tom McCloskey’s desperate eyes. He gave the man a silent thumbs-up and mouthed the words Bonnie’s okay.

McCloskey dropped his head into his hands, his shoulders heaving. “Tens of millions of these weapons, Mr. President, in every city and town on the planet. Perhaps hundreds of millions. In homes, schools, office and government buildings, airports, churches, literally everywhere. The Pentagon, for God’s sake. Millions and millions of bombs. In every city and country on earth. At the push of a button, Korsakov can take out a city, a country, a continent, a-”

“Good Lord,” the president said, sinking back in his chair as the enormity of what he’d just heard began to sink in. All of the blood had drained from his face, and Kelly began to fear he was on the verge of a stroke.

A few moments later, he recovered a bit, leaned forward, and placed both hands on the table.

“He needs to be stopped, Brick. You, too, Mike. Now.”

“We’re working on that, Mr. President, believe me.”

“I want hourly updates. We do whatever it takes. State believes an invasion of Estonia is imminent. If one goddamn Russian soldier plants a foot where it’s not supposed to be, I’m going to Congress. I’m going to ask for an immediate declaration of war on the Russian Federation. I mean, we are going to the wall, you understand me? Does everyone in this room understand me?”

“A preemptive strike against Russian cities?” Moore said.

“You’re goddamn right, Charlie. That’s exactly what I mean.”

Heavy silence followed, everyone rearranging pencils and papers as they saw the whole world going up in flames before their very eyes. They understood, all right.

The end of the world was in plain sight.

“That note, Mr. President,” an obviously relieved Tom McCloskey said, still unable to tear his eyes away from the folded white paper beneath the president’s water glass. “Any more news in there about the hostage situation?”

For the first time in days, the president smiled.

“Yes, there is, Tom. Very good news. Bonnie is safe. Distraught but physically unharmed. At this very moment, she is en route to Bermuda. A Navy plane there is warming up its engines, and she will be on it and headed home to Bethesda in less than an hour. She wishes you and the kids Merry Christmas and can’t wait to see you.”

“And the rest of the hostages, Mr. President?” McCloskey asked, his eyes shining.

“All of the hostages have been rescued, Tom. The airship itself is now under the control of the U.S. Navy, having been taken in tow by one of our submarines en route to Bermuda. There were some hostage casualties. Minimal, considering the extreme nature of the situation. But still, an intolerable loss of innocent lives.”

“Oh,” McCloskey said, bowing his head. “Oh, my God. Those poor people. Thank you for that message, Mr. President. I didn’t think I could-”

“Tom. I think you should go upstairs to the Residence and tell the children their mother’s coming home in time for Christmas.”

McCloskey rose unsteadily from his seat and headed for the door.

“Merry Christmas, everyone,” the vice president said in a strangled voice as he left the room.

ALONE IN THE Oval Office, snow falling gently beyond the windows, McAtee quietly sat at his desk staring at the phone. He’d done all he could do. If the Russians were determined to have a war, by God, they’d get one. But there was something he was missing here. A critical piece of the Russian puzzle buried deep within his brain years ago, during the Cold War, back in the days when he’d chaired the Senate Arms Committee.

He stared at his phone until his eyes lost focus. It wouldn’t come.

And then it did.

The Brits had once had a mole deep inside the Kremlin. Not a high-level mole but a very effective one, as McAtee remembered. He was military originally, a colonel or perhaps even a general. Then, later, KGB. What the hell was his name? He’d been very helpful during the Korean Airlines incident, and that was the last McAtee had ever heard of him. He’d gone off the screen. But if he was still alive, and still an insider…

He picked up the phone and called Sir David Trulove’s home number. It was almost seven in the morning, U.K. time. Surely he’d be up and about, even though it was Sunday.

“Hello?” said a sleepy voice at the other end.

“David, it’s Jack McAtee.”

“Good morning.”

“You’ve heard the good news about the airship?”

“Yes. I received a call from Bermuda a few moments ago. The sub and all of the survivors are en route there now. Good show, I daresay. My heartfelt congratulations.”

“I want to thank you for Red Banner’s leadership on that one. Your man Alex Hawke did one hell of a job. Especially considering the fact that no one on earth had ever done anything like it before. And this woman-what is her name? The passenger who managed to get the hatch open for our boys?”

“Fancha is the name I was given by my chief of station. Not one of the passengers, apparently, a shipboard entertainer.”

“That’s it. Must be quite an amazing woman. Took enormous courage to do what she did. Well done all around.”

“Mr. President, I think the lion’s share of credit has to go to your young SEAL teams. Magnificent job, from what I understand. Very few casualties at our end. If transoceanic airships are the coming thing, and they may well be, we now have a textbook scenario for any future hostage crisis.”

“David, I called about another urgent matter. Now that we’ve taken the airship out of play, I’m determined to remove these damn Zeta machines from the table as well. You’re aware of these things I assume?”

“Indeed, I am. The FBI shared all of that information with MI-5, MI-6, and New Scotland Yard during the night. Tens of millions of bombs, all connected? It’s frankly unbelievable but apparently quite true. This new Kremlin fellow is absolutely mad. My chaps are hard at it as we speak. It’s a bloody nightmare, all right, but there has to be some way to take out those things.”

“I’ve been sitting here thinking about that. We have to assume Korsakov, or someone close to him, has to have some kind of detonator. A nuclear football, for want of a better term. Agree?”

“I certainly do. A unified way to trigger countless small bombs simultaneously. Like Salina but on a grander scale.”

“Exactly. So, we need to find and neutralize that damn detonator before Korsakov or someone else can use it. He gave us twenty-four hours before he takes out a Western city of one million souls.”

“Good God. Well, best luck on that. So far, we’re absolutely stumped around here. I’ve got a crisis team on this specifically as well. We just have to crack it, that’s all there is to it.”

“David, bear with me a moment. You had an asset inside the Kremlin during the eighties. I can’t remember his name, but-”

“Stefanovich Halter? A don at Cambridge?”

“No, no. I know Professor Halter. This man I’m thinking of was ex-military. KGB. Tough, smart, Teutonic bastard, a German-Russian, almost neo-Nazi, as I recall, but if you threw enough money at him, he’d play ball. Helped us with that Korean airliner they shot down, the one that strayed into Soviet airspace. I dealt with him directly through the CIA. Greedy bastard, but he delivered the goods.”

“Sounds like most of the chaps Ivan Korsakov surrounds himself with. You’re looking for someone extremely close to the Tsar, I take it. A trusted confidant of long standing.”

“Exactly.”

“I see where you’re going with this. Good thought. I’ll get on this immediately. See if we can’t sort out your man. Determine if he’s still alive, and if so, if he’s any kind of key player in the Tsar’s new regime.”

“How quickly can you get back to me, David?”

“As you will remember, we had more than a few KGB doubles on MI-6 books for a while way back when. We had numbered accounts for them in Zurich or Geneva, some offshore in the Caymans and elsewhere. Shouldn’t take me too long to get someone onto this, see if there are still some active accounts on the books.”

“One minute sounds good to me.”

“We’ll do our best. I warn you, though, we haven’t used these fellows since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. As I say, I’m not even sure if any of them are still alive. Red Banner’s charge is to rebuild the old Moscow network. Just begun scratching the surface there, I’m afraid.”

“Is there anyone at all on your side who could find out quickly? Every second counts from here on in.”

“Stefan Halter might actually recall the fellow you’re after. He’s deep cover in Moscow right now, but he’s spent time in Bermuda recently, briefing Hawke and Red Banner on dormant Moscow assets. I’ll ring him post haste.”

“Do that. Sir David, I don’t need to stress how vitally important this is. I need a reliable asset deep inside the Kremlin, and I need him now. Someone who can help us get close enough to Korsakov to neutralize his goddamn worldwide web of death machines. The CIA says Korsakov’s private airship arrives in Stockholm in twelve hours. He shows up at the Stockholm Concert Hall two hours later to accept his Nobel. I’d like your Red Banner boys on him the second he lands. Got any ideas? Hawke would be ideal.”

“Alex Hawke? May need a bit of a rest-up after Energetika and this Bermuda operation, I’m afraid.”

“No time for rest-ups, David. I’d appreciate it if you could get your man Hawke on the next thing smoking to Stockholm. That’s where Korsakov is headed, and that’s where we need him. We’ll provide transportation. Agreed?”

“I’ll ring him now.”

“And David, tell your Mr. Hawke one thing directly from the American president’s lips to his ears, will you, please?”

“Certainly.”

“Everything is riding on this. Everything.”

“Got it. I’ll ring you back as soon as I have something definite on your Kremlin question. Cheerio.”

Cheerio?

Did they still say that over there?

64

The tiny village of Kungsholm was roughly one hour by car from the center of Stockholm. As it was nearly buried within a deep, dark wood, Hawke had found it rather difficult to locate. The limbs of gnarled old trees on either side of the lane were laden with freshly fallen December snow and threw long black arms across the scene. The quaint cottages glimpsed now and then on either side of the narrow thoroughfare seemed supernaturally quiet.

No movement, save a delicate mist wafting across the road and into the thrusting, yearning tangle of the woodland fringe. Perfect stillness. It was as if some evil wizard had recently waved his wand above all the rooftops, sprinkling fairy dust that put the village’s few inhabitants to sleep for an eternity.

Hawke motored slowly through the town. Smoke curled from a few chimneys, rising through spindly black tree limbs sharply etched against the rose-gold afternoon sky. But these few wispy smoke trails were the sole signs of human life. On the outskirts of town, he had seen three magnificent reindeer staring at him from the safety of the woods, frozen in place, nostrils quivering, their huge black eyes glistening.

Hawke was shivering behind the wheel of an ancient Saab in which both the heater and the windscreen wipers were woefully inadequate. Despite this deliberately inconspicuous vehicle, he’d somehow picked up a tail leaving the airport, a blacked-out late-model Audi. After a bit of cat and mouse in the narrow cobbled lanes of the Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s Old Town, he’d finally managed to lose them, whoever they were. Russian secret police, he supposed, the Tsar’s men. Korsakov would no doubt have his Third Department operatives watching the airports and rail stations.

Having made it safely out of Stockholm and driving south through the Swedish countryside to Kungsholm, he was now looking for any road signs not completely frosted over with snow. He was struggling a bit with the map unfolded on his knee. He wasn’t fluent in Swedish, and the damn thing was no help at all.

He was not yet prepared to admit that he was lost, but he was considering getting out his mobile and calling Stefan Halter, his contact, when he finally saw the snow-filled lane he was probably meant to take. He put the wheel hard over and skidded into it, careening harmlessly off the snowbanks on either side. The trees above him intersected to form a long dark tunnel snaking through the wood.

Stefan would be waiting for him at the end of this lane. An Interpol safe house here in Kungsholm had been chosen for Hawke’s rendezvous with the Russian double agent Halter had identified for the White House. All he knew was that the agent, whose name Hawke had not been told, was a man President McAtee had dealt with in the past and that Hawke’s meeting with him had apparently been specifically ordered by the president.

Hawke’s brief on this new mission had been straightforward enough:

Get to Kungsholm, Sweden, as fast as he possibly could without attracting undue attention. Find Halter.

The simple two-story farmhouse appeared through his frosted windscreen. It was built of roughhewn stone and had a sharply pitched roof of slate and two large chimneys at either end made of brick. It had a storybook quality, Hawke thought, which seemed to be the norm in this neck of the woods.

He parked the Saab next to a battered Mercedes sedan in a small yard just outside the entryway, climbed out, and rapped thrice, then twice, on the heavy wooden door, just as he’d been instructed.

The Russian mole, Dr. Stefanovich Halter, just as tweedy and natty as Hawke remembered him from Bermuda, pulled the door open. The smell of wood smoke inside was pleasant, and the weary British spy was pleased to come in from the cold.

“Alex,” Halter said, wasting no time on amenities, “prepare yourself.”

“Tell me, Stefan.”

“The man you’re about to meet is General Kuragin, the head of the Third Department, the Tsar’s private secret police. He’s waiting at a table in the kitchen. He’s a bit tight, I’m afraid.”

“Nikolai Kuragin?” Hawke said.

“Indeed. Know him?”

“I met him briefly at the winter palace. He’s the Tsar’s oldest and closest friend, is he not?”

“Well, let’s just say the general’s loyalty has never been above reproach and leave it at that.”

“Drunk, is he?”

“Not yet, but he’s working on it.”

“Take the bottle away.”

“Good cop, bad cop, as you Yanks say. I’m the good one. Listen, he’s got the Beta detonator with him. It’s one of only two in existence. It’s manacled permanently to his left wrist. He bloody sleeps with the damn thing.”

“Beta detonator? What the hell does it detonate?”

“Everything.”

“What do you mean, everything?”

“The whole bloody world, basically.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I’m deadly serious, Alex. Look, there’s no time to explain now, but Korsakov has basically hardwired the whole world with explosives inside computers. Zeta machines.”

“The Wizards? I own one.”

“Yes. Sounds far-fetched, I know, but it’s not. It’s bloody reality. Witness the demise of Salina, Kansas.”

“You said two detonators. Where is the other one?”

“Always with the Tsar. Kuragin’s is the fail-safe backup in case something untoward should happen to Korsakov.”

“Is our general feeling cooperative?”

“He will be when he learns how much we’re prepared to pay for the Beta detonator.”

“Am I doing the negotiating?” Hawke asked.

“We’ll double-team him. He wouldn’t have agreed to come here if he weren’t for sale, that I can promise you.”

“What’s our ceiling?”

“Fifty million U.S. dollars. But we’ll start the bidding at twenty. I’ve already transferred that amount to his account in Geneva.”

“I knew I’d gone into the wrong business,” Hawke said with a wry smile. “The kitchen is back this way, I assume?”

“LORD HAWKE, WELCOME,” General Kuragin said, getting somewhat shakily to his feet and extending his hand. “We met briefly under slightly grander circumstances a week ago in the country. The Tsar’s winter palace.”

“Indeed we did, general,” Hawke said, shaking the Russian’s skeletal hand and taking a seat at the old butcher-block table. The man’s splendid black uniform, heavy, deep-set dark eyes, and pale yellow skin gave him an uncanny resemblance to Himmler, if Hawke’s mental picture of the old Nazi was accurate. Halter joined them at the table, and Kuragin ceremoniously filled the glasses at each man’s seat from a half-empty carafe of vodka. Kuragin spoke first, and what he said brought Hawke upright in his chair.

“I understand you spent some time sharing a cell with my old friend at Energetika, Lord Hawke.”

“Putin is your friend? But you helped overthrow him.”

“Things in Russia are not always what they seem. There are wheels within wheels, Lord Hawke, believe me.”

“Oh, I believe you, general. Absolutely Byzantine.”

The general nodded, a fleeting smile on his lips. He’d actually taken the word as a compliment. Then he covered Hawke’s hand with his own, patting it as one would a child’s. The bony fingers were trembling, cold as ice.

“Putin was most impressed in his appraisal of you. In fact, it was Putin himself who insisted I meet with you today.”

“Really? Why?”

“Why do you think? Surely he brought you into his confidence. Made his future plans known to you that night in his wretched cell.”

“He did, indeed,” Hawke said, replaying bits of the long conversation in his mind.

“And?”

“Eliminate the Tsar and return to power,” Hawke said slowly, sitting back in his chair. This entire Russian affair was suddenly clicking into place like the encryption rotors inside an Enigma machine.

A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, Churchill had said of Russia, and truer words were never spoken. Hawke sat back, sipped his vodka, and studied the man.

General Kuragin was the one secretly protecting Putin inside the prison. And it was Kuragin who would orchestrate Putin’s return to power once the Tsar was safely out of the way. And it was Kuragin who would emerge from this latest coup even more powerful than from the last two or three.

Yes, it was all quite clear now. He’d finally found him. The man MI-6 had long ago dubbed the Third Man, the unseen power behind the Kremlin throne.

It was never Ivan Korsakov, as Hawke had gradually come to believe.

It was General Nikolai Kuragin.

Palace intrigue was a noble tradition in ancient Russia, and Hawke had managed to get himself tangled up in this bloody intrigue without even knowing it. He’d come to Russia suffused with confidence, ready to practice his craft, to spy on them, only to learn that he was merely a tiny pawn on their great board. And the Third Man, the grandest chess master of them all, had been using him all along.

Using the pawn to take out the king?

Kuragin smiled, his eyes like black slits behind the thick lenses, and Hawke had the disconcerting sensation that the man had been reading his thoughts.

“It was you, wasn’t it, general? You had me arrested and thrown into Energetika Prison for a bloody job interview!” Hawke said.

“Hmm. Let’s say I may have put the notion into the Tsar’s head. Of course, Korsakov had no idea you would live long enough to speak privately with our beloved former prime minister. No, Ivan the Terrible assumed you’d be impaled shortly after your arrival inside those forbidding black walls.”

“Ivan the Terrible,” Hawke said, smiling at the wily old spy. “Surprising you, of all people, would call him that. Your dear friend.”

“He’s a fucking monster,” Kuragin said with sudden ferocity.

“Impaling his enemies by the thousands is child’s play for him. Bringing about the total destruction of my beloved homeland by incurring America’s nuclear wrath is much more difficult. And yet that is precisely what he is about to do.”

“Unless you stop him.”

“Unless you stop him, Lord Hawke. I can never be seen as having anything to do with this, this…whatever you intend to do, for obvious reasons. I believe the current American expression is plausible deniability. I intend to have very plausible deniability, I assure you. Excruciatingly plausible.”

Hawke glanced at Halter, wondering how much he already knew of all this. Had Stefanovich Halter traveled all the way to Bermuda to take Hawke’s measure for Kuragin? It was surely possible they’d been planning a role for him even then. But Halter was giving nothing away. Men who’d spent their lives playing both sides of the scrimmage line were good at that kind of thing, else they paid in blood.

“I think perhaps we understand each other, general,” Hawke said, making his decision even as he said the words, raising his glass. Putin was far from perfect, but he was vastly preferable to the vainglorious psychopath who represented the status quo.

The pawn now saw the whole board as if from above and found he was more than willing to make the next move.

“To world peace,” Kuragin said, raising his own glass.

“To world peace,” the other two echoed, and then all three of them downed their drinks in a single draught.

“General,” Hawke said, glancing at his watch, “tell me more about your lovely bracelet and the object attached to it.”

“Certainly,” Kuragin said, pushing the detonator closer to Hawke. “What do you wish to know?”

“How does it work, for starters?” Hawke asked, picking it up and turning it over in his hands. He eyed the detonator carefully, contemplating the enormous power of it. It was simply a smaller version of the brain-shaped Zeta computer but without the brain-stem stalk to support it. Polished to a mirror finish. Quite heavy, with a hairline crack around the exterior, where it opened.

“The two extant detonators, called Beta machines, are connected by Bluetooth and other sophisticated wireless servers to every Zeta machine on the planet. I can easily program this Beta to blow up a single Zeta or, say, a hundred million of them. Individually or simultaneously. Only at the Tsar’s command, of course.”

“You actually can blow up the whole world with this thing,” Hawke said, eyeing Halter again. “Right here. Right now.”

“Basically, yes, I can, but I won’t. I am not insane. Not yet, anyway. The Tsar, on the other hand, would be perfectly happy to do so if someone on the other side either miscalculates or underestimates and gets in his way.”

“Amazing,” Hawke said, placing the Beta machine carefully on the table. He took the carafe from where it stood in front of Kuragin, poured himself a fresh drink, and looked at the two men with something akin to admiration.

Hawke said, “You don’t stockpile bombs or spend billions on reactors, delivery systems, nuclear subs, ICBMs. No, you distribute your bombs among your enemies! Better yet, you make a fortune by selling your enemies the seeds of their own destruction. Millions of them over a period of years. Such a simple, ingenious way to gather the fate of the world into one’s own hands.”

“Thank you,” General Kuragin said.

“This was your idea?” Hawke said, astonished. He’d naturally assumed the mad genius had been Ivan Korsakov.

“Yes, I’m to blame for this madness, I’m afraid. The military strategy of seeding the bombs, at any rate. Korsakov was the scientific genius behind designing and creating the actual Zeta machine. My grievous error was in letting my military strategy for Russian dominance fall into the wrong hands.”

“The Tsar’s.”

“Of course. I should have seen this coming. I did not. Now, I will pay for my mistake and correct it at a single stroke.”

“Still, the Zeta-network idea is brilliant in its simplicity,” Hawke said. “I’ll give you that much.”

“Simplicity is a cornerstone of genius. Tell me, Lord Hawke, have you ever heard anyone exclaim, ‘I love this idea. It’s so damn complicated!’”

Hawke smiled. Here he was, sharing a bottle with a man who’d hatched an evil scheme for world domination, and he found he rather liked him.

“General,” Halter said, “you were telling me earlier that each of the two Beta detonators also contains Hexagon explosives, correct? Like the explosives inside the Zeta computers.”

“Yes, but each Beta is packed with twice the explosive power. This one can explode the one in the Tsar’s possession, and vice versa.”

“Why?” Hawke asked.

“In case one or the other ever fell into the wrong hands, of course. The Tsar wanted to be able to eliminate that person instantly. He’s not comfortable sharing such power.”

“Except with you.”

Kuragin nodded his head, “Except with me, the only man on earth he trusts.”

Hawke ignored the implicit irony in this and said, “You’re saying you could use it now, to kill the Tsar?”

“I could. There is a code, known only to me. I enter it, arm this machine, press Detonate, and it will instantly explode the other Beta. If the Tsar is anywhere within, say, a radius of five hundred yards, he dies. But I never murder people, Lord Hawke. I have people murdered. It’s why I’m still alive.”

“The Tsar presumably has the Beta with him at all times?” Hawke asked.

“Of course. His nuclear football. Chained to the wrist of his bodyguard, named Kuba, a highly trained assassin who doubles as his driver. Kuba is never more than a few hundred yards away from his lord and master.”

Kuragin pulled a pack of cigarettes from his inside pocket, extracted one, and lit it with a paper match. The same brand Putin smoked, Hawke noticed, Sobranie Black Russians from the Ukraine.

Hawke pushed his chair back from the table and smiled at the general.

“General Kuragin, when was the last time you checked your account in Geneva?”

“I don’t really know. Some months ago, I suppose.”

“And what was the balance at the time?”

“Five million, I believe. American dollars.”

Hawke pulled his sat phone from his jacket pocket and placed it on the table in front of the Russian.

“You might want to give your Swiss bankers a call, general. Just to confirm your current balance. According to Dr. Halter, it should now be twenty-five million.”

“Twenty million dollars to save the whole world? It hardly seems enough,” Kuragin said, gazing at them from beneath his heavily lidded eyes.

“Shall we say thirty million?”

“Say it and find out.”

“Thirty million.”

“Not enough.”

“All right. We are prepared to pay you forty million dollars for that machine, General Kuragin. And the code that goes with it, of course. Effective immediately. Dr. Halter will call the bank in Geneva with wiring instructions for an additional twenty million dollars.”

“Can you say fifty?”

Hawke glanced at Halter, who nodded his head. Stefan had held the sat phone to his ear, speaking French to an anonymous banker in Geneva as the negotiation progressed.

“Fifty million dollars,” Hawke said. “Final offer.”

“I accept.”

Halter spoke a few more words into the phone, handed it to Kuragin, and said, “This gentleman will confirm that an additional thirty million dollars has been electronically placed in your account, general.”

“This is Kuragin. My account number is 4413789-A. May I have my balance, please? I see. Well, thank you very much. Au revoir, monsieur, et merci.”

He handed the phone back to Halter and pulled a gold pen from inside his uniform jacket.

“Here, I’ll write the code down for you inside this matchbook cover. Now, I must ask you both to leave the room. But first, please bring me some clean towels and a large bowl of ice. Also, that meat cleaver hanging by the stove, if you’d be so kind. It looks reasonably sharp.”

Hawke and Halter looked at each other, stunned, as the Cambridge don pocketed the matchbook with the detonator code printed inside.

“Surely you’re not planning to do anything foolish, general.”

“On the contrary. If it appears in any way that I have given up this damn thing voluntarily, I won’t last five minutes. Every KGB agent in the world will be lining up to assassinate me.”

“Wait,” Hawke said. “I’m sure we can get that damn bracelet off with a hacksaw. We’ll think of some way to make it look as if you were abducted, and then-”

“No. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’ve been drinking vodka all day in anticipation of what’s coming, and I’m damn well ready to do it. It is the only way for me to survive this, I promise you. Even the most cynical Russian would never believe a man capable of doing such a thing to himself!” He laughed at his own notion and filled his glass to the brim.

“You’ll have to explain giving up the code, general,” Hawke said.

“A moment of weakness? A butcher has a meat cleaver poised above your left hand, and he asks you for a number. Few among us could resist the temptation to give it to him, wouldn’t you agree?”

Hawke and Dr. Halter rose from the table and brought him the items he’d requested. Hawke couldn’t resist running his index finger along the edge of the heavy cleaver’s blade. Sharp as a razor, it instantly produced a thin line of bright red blood on the pad of his fingertip.

“Please leave me alone until it’s over and done,” Kuragin said. “When you return, you can bind me to this table in a convincing fashion. There is a length of heavy rope beneath my chair. Then call the emergency medical ambulance. And then you must leave at once. Understood? And never tell a living soul what has happened here. Never.”

“Yes,” Hawke said, holding the swinging kitchen door open for Dr. Halter. “We understand perfectly.”

The two men walked out into the adjacent living room and sat in the two wooden chairs facing the fire. Neither spoke for a few long minutes.

“He’s finishing the vodka,” Hawke finally said, gazing into the flames, “then he’ll do it.”

“Do it? You don’t actually think he’ll go through with this insanity, do you?” Halter said, an incredulous look in his eyes. “No one has that kind of courage. No one.”

“We shall soon see, won’t we?”

A moment later, a horrendous thunk was followed by a howl of animal agony that pierced Hawke’s soul. He leaped from his chair and raced into the kitchen.

Kuragin had done it.

Bright red blood spattered the white stucco wall beside the kitchen table. The bloody left hand, still twitching, was completely severed from the forearm by the blade of the meat cleaver, now buried at least an inch deep into the wooden table. The general had pitched forward in his chair when he passed out, his forehead resting on the table. He wasn’t making a sound. Shock had already set in, and the man was clearly unconscious, blood spurting wildly from the grievous wound at the end of his arm.

Hawke quickly wrapped the man’s bloody stump in a tightly wound towel and plunged it into the bowl of ice, while Halter collected the blood-spattered Beta detonator that had fallen to the floor. That done, Halter picked up the kitchen phone and rang for an ambulance, giving the address of the farmhouse, saying only that a man had been found grievously injured and was losing a lot of blood. A doctor should come as quickly as humanly possible. He hung up without giving his name.

“WHAT TIME IS the Tsar accepting his award tonight?” Hawke asked, as they carefully lifted the general’s body and placed him faceup on the table. Hawke used the heavy hemp rope the general had placed beneath his chair to bind the man in a position required for an amputation. It looked real enough, he decided, stepping back to inspect his efforts. As if a man had been bound and relieved of his hand with a meat cleaver. It might work.

“The banquet is at seven, I believe,” Halter said. “Why?”

“I plan to be there,” Hawke said. “I want to make sure his Imperial Majesty, the new Tsar of all Russia, gets the rousing welcome he so richly deserves.”

“Alex, there’s something you should know right now. Korsakov is threatening to destroy an unspecified Western city with a population of one million if the NATO troops just deployed in Eastern Europe are not pulled back from the borders. He phoned the White House and gave President McAtee twenty-four hours to demonstrate his willingness to back off whilst he regained his lost territories.”

“When was this?”

“Sixteen hours ago.”

“So, we’ve got to move very quickly.”

“I’d say that’s an understatement of a huge order of magnitude.”

“Get into the bloody car, then, man! You’ve got the code? The matchbook?”

“Yes. In my waistcoat pocket.”

“A bunch of random numbers, from the look of it. Mean anything to you, professor?” Hawke turned the key, praying the damn car would turn over. Now that the sun had dropped behind the forest, the temperature had plummeted. The highway back to Stockholm would be treacherous.

“One-seven-ought-seven-one-nine-one-eight. Seventeen July, nineteen hundred and eighteen. The exact date of the night Commandant Yurokovsky and his Chekists herded the Romanovs down into the cellar of the house in Ekaterinberg and murdered Tsar Nicholas II, the Empress Katherine, the heir, their four daughters, and the servants.”

“Why would Korsakov choose that date, do you suppose?” Hawke asked. The motor caught on the second try, and he grabbed first gear, racing out of the farmhouse yard, the old Saab whining in its traces.

“It was the last night of the Tsars, Alex. Perhaps he fancies himself as the dawn of a new era, wouldn’t you suppose?”

“Yeah, I suppose he does,” Hawke said, accelerating up the snowy lane, careening once more off the snowbanks lining the road. He drove with ferocity. But in his mind was a perfectly composed picture of his beautiful Anastasia when last he’d seen her. They’d not spoken in days. Tonight, she would be with her father in Stockholm as he accepted his Nobel Prize from the king of Sweden. Somehow, he’d find her. She’d invited him, after all.

Sooner or, he hoped, later, the Tsar would learn that the second detonator had been forcibly taken from Kuragin and fallen into enemy hands. When he did, Hawke knew Korsakov would instantly trigger the thing and detonate it, not caring which enemy had it or where they were.

Which made the timing of everything to come a bit more interesting. He and his new friend Dr. Halter were literally babysitting a live bomb.

Someone would be first to push the button. And someone else would be first to die.

Hawke, his mind racing, knew he’d have to find some way to take the Tsar out when he was alone, or at least get him out in the open. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, accept any collateral damage. He could not conscience the death of innocents.

Such as the woman he loved.

Or, and here his heart paused a beat, their unborn child.

65

The Nobel Prize banquet ceremony is held each year at the Stadshuset in Stockholm. Even a monarch’s coronation cannot rival the Nobel celebration in terms of pure grandeur and epic scale. The massive Stadshuset complex, with its three-hundred-fifty-foot tower at one corner, is built in the Swedish Romantic style. It stands on the banks of the Riddarfjarden, a freshwater lake in the heart of Stockholm. Tonight, Sweden’s beautiful State House was ablaze with light.

Alex Hawke, shivering as he climbed out of the Saab’s passenger seat, thought it looked like a great medieval fortress, but Professor Halter had informed him that it was built in 1923.

“Are you sure you’re not going to freeze to death out here?” he asked the professor. Halter would remain in the car while Hawke went inside. Halter was dressed for Russian winter, wearing an ushanka, the Russian trapper’s fur cap with ear flaps, and a full-length bearskin coat. Sitting behind the wheel, his brow furrowed in concentration, he resembled some great bear, fiddling with the silvery Beta detonator on his lap, making sure he’d know how to use it when the time came.

“I’ll be fine. But try to hurry this up, will you?” he said. “It is frightfully cold, and we’re rapidly running out of time. He intends to destroy the first city on his agenda in a little less than two hours.”

“I’ll be twenty minutes,” Hawke said, glancing at his watch. “Thirty max. Keep your eye on that entry door, and please keep the engine running. When he comes out, he will likely be in a hurry. You see his car and driver over there, the liveried chap standing beside the heavily armored Maybach? He’ll head for that, straightaway.”

“How the hell do you know that’s his car?”

“I’m a British spy, professor. Besides, it’s got Russian plates. Moscow. Now, try to stay awake. Maybe turn the heat down.”

“What heat?”

Hawke smiled, shut the passenger door, and raced across the snowy car park to join the party inside. He felt his mobile vibrating in his trouser pocket. Anastasia? He’d rung her cell phone from his room while he was shaving; perhaps she was returning the call. No time to find out now. He’d just have to call her later. He’d not spoken to her since they’d kissed good-bye when he boarded the Navy fighter at Ramstein. But since then, he’d been maintaining a fairly active schedule. With any luck, he’d see her tonight. But whether or not they’d have time alone, he had no idea.

He knew he had roughly two hours to get the Tsar out into the open, in the countryside, preferably, somewhere where he could take him out without endangering anyone else. Two hours was enough time, perhaps, but there was a slight complication. He had no idea how he was going to accomplish this objective. Ah, well, he’d think of something.

First things first, he thought, showing his beautifully engraved invitation to the security chaps at the entrance. He’d need to smoke Korsakov out of the massive crowd inside the banquet hall. Find a way to force him outside in the open. And do it rather quickly. That would be the trick.

The Nobel guest list included some 1,300 dignitaries from around the world. This closely guarded A List included the Nobel laureates and their families, their majesties the king and queen of Sweden, and the entire royal family, plus various European heads of state and a smattering of celebrities and bigwigs. The dinner was always held in a magnificent space called the Blue Hall, and Hawke hurried there now, the inkling of a workable idea just forming in his mind.

He was late. He and Halter had pushed the ancient Saab to the limit on the icy roads returning north to Stockholm, and he’d barely arrived with time enough to race up to his room at the Grand Hotel, shower and shave, and don his white tie and tails. With some help from Sir David Trulove, Hawke had managed to get his last-minute invitation courtesy of the British ambassador to Sweden.

When he arrived inside the venue, he was first surprised to find that the famous Blue Hall was not blue at all. The architect had originally planned to paint the great hall blue but changed his mind when he saw the beauty of the handmade red bricks. The name, however, stuck.

The gala dinner was just beginning as Hawke straightened the white piqué tie at his neck and made his way along a great gallery overlooking the guests still being seated in the vast hall below. Thirteen hundred people, with all that chatter and tinkling china and silverware, made for quite a din. And then there were the trumpets.

Vast numbers of trumpeters in period costume lined the gallery balustrade and both sides of the grand staircase leading to the floor below. Their gleaming brass horns were as long as Amazonian blowguns. They sounded an impressive fanfare before each of the few remaining laureates and dignitaries was announced, everyone pausing regally at the top of the staircase, waiting to hear their names called before descending.

There was a stern chap in court regalia with a great ornamental staff, and just after the fanfare and before someone’s name was announced, he’d bang the staff down on the marble step, making a fine noise that got everyone’s attention.

Hawke joined this august line of Nobel geniuses, wondering if he’d get a whack of the staff and a fanfare. He certainly hoped so. He’d never had a fanfare before.

At the foot of the staircase, a temporary stage had been built. At the center of this flower-bedecked podium was a gleaming mahogany lectern, where an elderly white-haired gentleman, the presumed head of the Nobel Prize Committee, was introducing the winners and assorted Swedish big shots as they made their way down the broad marble stairs.

There were television cameras everywhere, and Hawke knew the annual ceremony was being beamed around the world to an audience of millions.

A vast worldwide audience only made his germ of an idea all the more appealing.

Perpendicular to the podium was a massively long dining table that stretched the entire length of the huge hall. This brilliantly laid table was reserved for the laureates and their immediate families and, of course, the king and queen, their daughter, and the royal family. Here at this table, one would naturally suppose, he would spy his favorite Tsar. The man’s car was outside. Was he inside? He had to be.

Hawke stepped out of line a moment and, ducking between two trumpeters, leaned out over the balustrade to peer at the crowd below. Spread beneath him was an undulating sea of women in beautiful gowns and sparkling jewelry with gentlemen resplendent in white-tie evening attire, all lit in the warm glow of countless candles. He pulled a cigarette-thin but powerful Zeiss monocular from inside his black cutaway and scanned the guests seated at the royal table from one end to the other, then back up the opposite side.

Halfway down, on the far side of the table, he saw Anastasia, exquisite in a diamond tiara. She was seated beside her father, who wore a great red sash across his chest and many jeweled decorations. Tsar Ivan was speaking expansively to someone across the table, and his daughter was listening, a smile on her lips. He zoomed in on her lovely face. He wasn’t so sure about that smile. It looked brave, pasted on. His poor darling.

He was desperate to speak with her. Would she have her mobile at a gala like this? Perhaps not, but worth a try.

He pulled out his own, saw his message light flashing, and punched in her number, watching her through the monocular as he heard it ringing at the other end. Yes! She reached down to pick up her evening bag and was about to open it, when her father grabbed her wrist, squeezing it cruelly by the look on her face. Bastard.

She returned the bag to the floor and pasted the smile back on her face. He waited for the tone and then spoke.

“Darling, I pray you get this soon. I’m here at the banquet. If you look up at the balcony between the trumpet players, you’ll see me smiling down at you. Listen carefully, this is vitally important. I can’t explain now, but it’s imperative that you get away from your father. As quickly as possible! It’s extremely dangerous to be anywhere near him. I wish I could explain more, but I beg you, make any excuse, say you’re ill and have to use the loo, anything, but run at the first opportunity! I love you. We’ll be together soon, and I will explain everything.”

He shoved the thing back into his pocket. Well, at least it was almost over. Somehow, they’d both survive this night. And when it was over-no time for that now.

The line was moving quickly, nearing the end, and he stepped back to take his place. The important fellow in front of him was introduced and proceeded down the steps, his wife at his side, her diamond necklace and earrings sparkling in the spotlights. Hawke took his place alone at the head of the staircase and waited, as the spotlights found him.

The staff came down with a great thump, and then the trumpets sounded a rising series of triumphal notes. A clarion voice rang out, “Your royal majesties, ladies and gentlemen, may I present Lord Alexander Hawke!”

He couldn’t imagine how the British ambassador had pulled that one off, but he was delighted. The fanfare still ringing in his ears, he put his hands in his trouser pockets and descended the wide steps in a somewhat jaunty fashion, affecting-unsuccessfully, he imagined-a kind of Fred Astaire nonchalance. He wished he could see Anastasia’s face at this moment, as this little performance was meant for her. And her father, of course. He’d have paid a pretty penny to see that face right now.

The Nobel Committee chairman was at the podium, standing next to the old fellow introducing this year’s winners in Physiology or Medicine. As he spoke, the honorees were making their way from their seats at the royal table back up to the lectern for a short acceptance speech. Along with his invitation, there’d been a copy of the evening’s program in his hotel room, and Alex had carefully studied the order of presentation he’d taped to the bathroom mirror while he dressed. After Medicine, he knew, came Physics, the Tsar’s prize.

Showtime.

Instead of proceeding to one of the many hundreds of round guest tables on either side of the lengthy royal one, Hawke remained discreetly on the podium, standing politely to one side with a group of officials as the four winners for Medicine made their brief remarks.

The Nobel chairman thanked the winners as they left the stage and then said, “And now, your royal majesties, the prize for Physics. I’d like to welcome Sir George Roderick Llewellyn of the British Royal Academy to the podium to present this year’s winner.”

Hawke walked toward the elderly chairman, who glanced once, then twice, over his shoulder, covering the microphone with his hand so he couldn’t be heard by the huge audience.

“You’re not Sir George,” he whispered as Hawke drew near.

“Sorry, no, I’m not at all, am I? Poor old fellow took ill, I’m afraid to say. I’m his replacement. Alex Hawke, British Embassy. How do you do?”

The lovely old gent, a bit flustered, shook his hand and walked away from the lectern, muttering something angrily in Swedish. He clearly wasn’t accustomed to last-minute changes in schedules on this night of nights.

Hawke adjusted the microphone upward to suit his height and looked out over the enormous crowd.

“Before I begin, I’d like to say hello to a few familiar faces I see in the audience this evening. These wonderful and brave people are all survivors of the horrendous hostage crisis aboard the airship Pushkin. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. I’m glad you’re all here tonight! Would you stand, please, so that we can acknowledge your presence?”

The crowd erupted into cheers and applause as the rescued laureates and their families got to their feet, many of them with smiles of gratitude for the handsome Englishman who stood at the podium.

“The Nobel Prize for Physics,” Hawke said in a loud, clear voice, “is presented this year for outstanding achievement in the field of black matter. Black holes, things in the universe so dense that no radiation, no light, can escape. You can’t see it, but you know it’s there. Your royal majesties, ladies and gentlemen, the man we all honor here tonight is no stranger to dark matter. As he makes his way up here to the podium, let me tell you a little bit about this murderous and truly evil human being.”

The room went dead silent save the sharp intake of a thousand breaths at once. There was suddenly a good deal of murmuring and hand wringing on the podium. This new speaker was clearly deviating from the well-rehearsed script they all held in their hands. There was no mention of “murder” or “evil” in their copies.

“In addition to his brilliant scientific achievements, Russia’s new Tsar builds prisons. Like the one called Energetika, built, ingeniously, on top of a radioactive nuclear-waste site on a small island off St. Petersburg. Here the Tsar has restored the ancient practice of impalement. For those of you unfamiliar with this medieval torture, the victim is stripped naked and placed on a sharpened stake. The tip of the stake is inserted into the rectum and gradually pierces the body’s internal organs until-”

Someone, a woman at the royal table, Hawke thought, screamed loudly. She was thrown bodily from her chair as the new Tsar of Russia tried to force his way through the crowd to the stage. A spotlight was immediately swung his way, and Hawke could see the demonic rage in his eyes all the way from his perch on the podium.

“Sorry for the commotion,” Hawke continued. “As I was saying, the wooden stake perforates the perineum or the rectum itself and takes perhaps a week to kill the victim as it travels upward through the body and-”

“Stop him!” the Tsar howled, clambering over chairs and shoving aside anyone who got in his way, including the very furious King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, in his desperate efforts to gain the stage and get at Alex Hawke’s throat, shouting all the while, “Someone stop this fucking madman!”

“Sorry for these beastly interruptions,” Hawke said, continuing with his conversational tone despite the shouted threats and the imminent arrival of the enraged Tsar at the podium.

“In addition to the marvels of impalement, let me touch briefly on our honoree’s invention of the Zeta computer. Hailed as a godsend in Third World countries, the Zeta computers are actually powerful bombs, used just last week to destroy an entire American town. But the Americans are not our honoree’s only target. No, he has shipped countless millions of these cleverly disguised bombs all over the world, creating a worldwide web of death, which he is even now using to threaten his political enemies, forcing them to stand by and watch as his Russian storm troopers sweep into Eastern European countries, the Baltics, East Ukraine, and other sovereign nations in an effort to reclaim these lands for Russia and-”

Hawke stood his ground as Korsakov clambered up onto the podium and headed straight for the lectern. The man was literally snarling, stringy loops of saliva flying from his open mouth as he crossed the wide stage. Hawke smiled and calmly continued, as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

“Under this self-proclaimed Tsar, the New Russia will become like the old Soviet Union. A cynical tyranny, a cruel and heartless state, no rule of law, trampling on basic rights and human dignity, expansionist by creed, and-oh, here’s our honoree now-I’d like you all to welcome-”

Korsakov reached out, ripped the microphone from the lectern, and flung it to the floor in a fury.

“I will kill you for this!” he said in a low growl, going for Hawke’s throat with his outstretched hands.

Hawke, still behind the lectern, thought a physical brawl at the Nobel podium would be a bit unseemly, so he pulled the small Walther PPK automatic from his shoulder holster and shoved the muzzle deep under the Tsar’s ribs, aiming straight for the heart.

“No, sire, I will kill you,” Hawke said in a low voice. “Here. Now. Or we can step outside and settle this matter like gentlemen. Which do you prefer, you murderous bastard?”

He now shoved the Walther up under the Tsar’s chin, grabbed him by the lapel, and yanked him closer. He was aware of security men edging toward the lectern.

“I will do it,” Hawke said. “Believe me.”

“He’s got a gun!” one of the Nobel officials shouted, and the members of the Nobel Committee still on the podium either dove off the stage into the crowd or raced up the staircase between the bewildered trumpeters.

The Tsar looked into Hawke’s icy blue eyes. The Russian was breathing heavily through flared nostrils, his pupils dilated, his nose only inches away from the hated Englishman’s. He spat full into Hawke’s face. Then he turned and leaped from the podium onto the royal table, sending china and crystal crashing to the stone floor.

“You will have cause to regret that, sir,” Hawke said to his retreating back. The man was storming the length of the tabletop, slashing flaming candelabras aside with his hands and kicking great urns and tureens of hot soup out of his path toward the main exit at the far end of the table.

Hawke holstered his Walther, pulled his white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his cutaway, and wiped the Tsar’s saliva from his face. Various security men seemed to be making their way toward him, so he simply dove into the hysterical crowd and resurfaced a hundred yards away, melting into a seething mass of identically dressed men heading for the exits.

There was utter panic and pandemonium in the hall.

He was afraid he’d quite ruined the entire evening.

But after all, some things just couldn’t be helped.

66

The Maybach roared out of the car park on two wheels as Hawke raced up to the Saab. Halter was sitting in the passenger seat with the engine running and the driver’s door open. Hawke jumped behind the wheel and fastened his safety belt. Engaging first gear, he slammed the accelerator to the floor, popped the clutch, and fishtailed out into the Avenue Hantverkargatan, taking a right turn just as the Maybach had done. He was hoping for a glimpse of taillights, but the Tsar’s big black automobile had already crossed the large bridge and disappeared.

“You did it!” Halter said. “You bloody well flushed him out!”

“Yeah.”

“Before or after his moment of glory?”

“I’d say what his moment lacked in glory was more than compensated for by drama.”

Halter smiled. “Good work.”

“Damn it,” Hawke said, slamming the wheel with his closed fist. “He’s going to be tough to catch, much less keep up with. A real automobile would have come in handy tonight.”

“Relax, Alex. I know where he’s going,” Halter said, holding onto the dashboard with one hand, cradling the Beta detonator in his lap with the other.

“You do?”

“Yes. I heard him shout at his driver as he was getting into the car. ‘Morto!’ That’s an island out in the Stockholm Archipelago. The Tsar has a summer house there, the only house on the island. It used to belong to King Carl XIV Johan. Built in 1818.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“I’m a professor of history at Cambridge University.”

“Stefan, please tell me that he was alone when he came out.”

“No. His daughter Anastasia was with him.”

“Damn it! I told her to run!”

“You spoke with her?”

“No. I left a message on her mobile. Did she seem a willing passenger?”

“Hardly. She was screaming obscenities, trying to escape from her father, who was holding her by the wrist. Korsakov and his gorilla of a driver were trying to force her into the backseat. It looked as if she banged her head pretty badly on the roof. She slumped to the ground, and they stuffed her into the rear seat. The driver, by the way, had the Tsar’s Beta detonator manacled to his wrist. We’re good to go.”

Hawke, while relieved that Anastasia had obviously gotten his message, knew what Halter had to be thinking.

The doomsday clock was ticking, but they still had sufficient time to get away from the civilian population. They could do this as soon as they reached a stretch of deserted road beyond the outskirts of Stockholm. Blow the crazy bastard straight to hell with the Beta detonator up there in the Maybach’s front seat.

Because both men knew that in little more than one hour, the Tsar intended to murder at least a million innocent people with the push of a button on that machine. Sir David Trulove had informed Halter that Washington would retaliate immediately. At this very moment, there were twelve U.S. Navy Ohio-class submarines on high alert in the Baltic, the Barents Sea, and the North Pacific. Each sub was carrying twenty-two Trident II nuclear missiles bearing up to eight multiple warheads, up to 3.8 megatons apiece.

MI-6 had recently determined that Russia’s early-warning radar system was vulnerable. A single British or American nuclear missile detonated high in the atmosphere would blind all of the early-warning radars below, rendering them unable to monitor subsequent launches. Russia, seeing a launch, would then be faced with a terrible decision. Wait and see if a Trident missile explodes and blinds its radars, or launch a retaliatory strike immediately. Halter, like Sir David and the man in the White House, had no doubt which way Russia’s new leader would respond.

World War III.

Downshifting and sliding around a turn, Hawke felt as if his head were full of angry bees. What the hell was he going to do? His duty was clear, but his heart was a formidable foe. He loved that woman, deeply. She was carrying his child. He had to find a way to save her, even as he averted a world catastrophe by killing her father. He’d find a way. He had to.

“Bastard,” Hawke said, the horsepower-challenged rattletrap going airborne as he crested the bridge at full speed. The streets of Stockholm were patched with black ice, and unlike his adversary, he didn’t have four-wheel drive. Catching the Maybach was going to require some ingenuity.

“Which way to this Morto? I still don’t see the bloody Maybach. Are you sure he didn’t turn off on a side street somewhere here in the Gamla Stan?”

“There’s only one road to the sea, Alex. He’ll be on it, don’t worry.”

“As long as you say so, professor.”

Halter had turned the dim yellow map light on and held the Swedish map across his knees. Unlike Hawke, he didn’t seem to have any trouble reading it.

“We head due east on this road along the fjord. Route 222, called the Varmodoleden. We follow the mainland coast all the way out to the Baltic Sea. There are literally thousands of islands of various sizes east of here. Most of them with a few houses or villas. Eventually, we’ll come to this little town of Dalaro right on the Baltic proper. I see some dotted lines here. Looks as if there’s a ferry service from there out to Morto.”

“Good. We take him out at the ferry.”

“We can’t chance it. Look at the map. I think we can take him out right here. This stretch of road coming up in a few miles is wooded on both sides. No houses for a few miles in any direction.”

“We can’t take him out in the car, Stefan. Not now.”

“Of course we can. We have to, Alex, for God’s sake! What are you thinking? Korsakov’s men could have found Kuragin by now, put the whole thing together! If so, this thing in my bloody lap blows at any second!”

“I need to get him alone, that’s all. I’m sorry.”

“Alone?”

Halter looked at him, speechless. Then he understood. The daughter. Of course. Hawke was involved with the Tsar’s daughter. It must have happened in Bermuda. And he had recently been with her at the winter palace. Holy mother of hell, that was a complication he’d not even dreamed of. Well, he had the Beta in his hands. If worst came to worst, he’d just-

“We’ll do this at the ferry, Stefan. It’s the only way. I’ll get Anastasia out of that car somehow. Don’t worry about how. As soon as she and I are clear, do it. You got that? We don’t touch the father until the daughter is safely outside the kill radius.”

“Alex, you’re not thinking. What if he beats us to the ferry? Then what?”

“He won’t.”

“Alex, listen to me. You, of all people, must know you can’t let your personal feelings enter into a situation of this magnitude. I’m sorry about the girl. It’s obvious you have feelings for her. But if I see us running out of time, I will act. I am going to take him out, no matter what. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Hang on,” Hawke said, ignoring the question and accelerating out of a turn. “I’m going to drive as fast as I possibly can without killing us. How much time have we got until he starts blowing up the planet?”

“An hour and ten minutes.”

“Should be enough.”

“It has to be enough. Please listen to me. If I see it’s not, I’m going to take this man out, Alex. It’s my sworn duty to do so. As it is yours, I might remind you. I know you’ve got a gun. You can try to stop me. But I swear to you, I will gladly die pushing this button. Understand?”

Hawke ignored him.

“Aren’t there any bloody shortcuts to the ferry?” he asked.

“No.”

“Bloody hell,” Hawke said, braking and fishtailing through another turn. Luckily, most of the local constabulary was busy providing security at the Stadshuset tonight.

Hawke’s driving that night was either inspired or insane, depending on your point of view. He somehow kept the car out of the icy fjord, remained mostly on the road, at any rate, his eyes always a hundred yards ahead, willing the vehicle to go where it was pointed.

He fished his mobile out of his pocket and speed-dialed Asia. Answer, answer, answer, he prayed, but all he got was a machine and a beep tone.

“Hey, it’s me. Look, I’m right behind you. I’m coming for you. When you get to the Morto ferry, you’ll have to stop. That’s when you run, okay? Just jump out and run as fast as you can. I’ll find you. I love you. Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right.”

Occasionally, he’d look sideways at Halter. The professor’s eyes were always straight ahead. He had the Beta in his lap, programmed with the code, his finger on the trigger. Hawke knew that if Halter should feel the Saab leaving the road, headed for the trees or into the inky waters of the fjord on their left, he’d instantly push the button, no doubt about it. He’d see an enormous flash of light on the road far up ahead, flames climbing into the night sky, an explosion vaporizing the Tsar of Russia and his daughter, Anastasia.

And so Hawke drove furiously on, waiting, praying to see a blinking brake light on the road ahead. Something, anything that would prove he was gaining ground on the Maybach and the woman he loved.

But he never did.

67

Hawke skidded to a stop at the top of the hill next to a sign for Dalaro. He’d made it there in less than half an hour, nearly going off the road dozens of times, never once catching a glimpse of the bloody black Maybach. Now he was praying Halter had been right about the Tsar’s destination. If he wasn’t-

“This is it,” Hawke said, putting on the emergency brake and climbing out of the car. “Now, where’s that ferry?”

Halter got out, too, moving to the front of the car, the Beta in his hands, gleaming in the light of the headlamps. “There,” he said after a few moments of peering at the tiny village at the bottom of the hill.

“Where?”

“Down there to your left. Bottom of that little road leading through the woods over there. I saw taillights flash at the edge of the water. It has to be him, Alex. No one else would be going over to the island at this time of night.”

“Is the ferry already there?”

“I can’t tell. Maybe. Too far away to see.”

“Get in.”

They sledded rather than drove down the tiny road, the Saab now merely a toboggan, careening through heavy woods of pine and spruce down to the sea. Hawke kept his foot on and off the brakes the entire way, only accelerating when they slowed, not minding at all the fact that he was bashing both sides of the car against the trees on the sides of the narrow road as long as he kept the thing moving forward.

Hawke saw starlit sky ahead and reached down and switched off the headlamps; this was on the slim chance that the Tsar had glimpsed them racing along the fjord in their efforts to catch him.

If Hawke was driving them right into a trap, he’d like his arrival to be a surprise. And besides, even in the forest, there was enough moonlight reflecting off snow to see by.

Suddenly, they were out of the woods, the icy road dipping right down to the black water.

Five hundred yards below, he finally saw the Maybach’s big red brake lights flash.

The mammoth limousine was pulling slowly out onto the tiny ferry, large enough for only two vehicles. A crewman in dark coveralls was motioning the driver forward, all the way to the bow rail. Inside the yellow glow of the small pilothouse window, Hawke saw the ferryboat skipper’s black silhouette, even noticing the pipe he held clenched in his teeth. Amazing the things your mind took in at times like this.

“This might be tight,” he said to Halter as they careened toward the ferry. “Can you swim?”

“Hurry, for God’s sake, they’re about to pull away!”

It would be a close thing.

Hawke leaned on his horn, tinny but loud, and flashed his headlamps as he floored the Saab. He accelerated the rest of the way down the steep hill, watching the lone crewman heaving the first of the lines ashore. Hawke was still thinking he just might make it aboard, even if it had to be on the fly, but then he saw the Tsar fling open his door, step out onto the deck, and scream something at the bewildered crewman.

The ferryman clearly wasn’t going to wait, and now all lines were cast off, and the fluorescent red-and-white-striped gate with the blinking red warning light was descending. Suddenly, the ferry was pulling away, a puff of smoke from its stack, steaming toward the black shape of Morto in the distance.

“Damn it!” Hawke cried, hitting the brakes, sliding into a spin, yanking up on the emergency brake, and stopping on a patch of dry pavement barely in time to avoid going down the ramp and into the icy waters of the fjord.

He climbed out of the miserable Saab and stood watching the little ferry make its way across the choppy waters toward Morto Island.

He’d lost her.

“Let’s go!” Halter said, climbing out of the car with the Beta machine tucked safely under his arm. Hawke breathed a sigh of relief. For whatever reason, Halter had decided to play this out to the end, give Hawke until the last possible moment before ending this.

“Where?”

“I saw a house with a dock out on the end of that point. Where there’s a dock, there might well be a boat.”

“How much time?” Hawke cried, following Halter across the slippery algal rocks that lined the shore.

“Forty minutes! We might still save her, Alex. We’ll try, anyway.”

As logic or fate or luck would have it, there was a boat.

A beautiful wooden runabout, maybe twenty-five feet long. She looked fast enough, Hawke thought, racing down the dock toward her. She looked well maintained, probably with a big inboard Volvo engine. They could make it over to Morto in a hurry.

“Check the helm for ignition and keys,” Hawke shouted to Halter. Hawke leaped aboard at the stern and opened the engine-hatch cover as the professor jumped down into the cockpit.

“No luck!” Halter cried.

“Never mind, I’ve got it,” Hawke said, two bared wires in his hands. Suddenly, the big 300-horsepower engine roared to life. And just as suddenly, it conked out.

“What’s wrong, Alex?”

“I don’t know. Felt as if it wasn’t getting any fuel.”

“Fuel shutoff valve?”

“Yeah, but where is the bloody thing on these engines is the problem. I’m looking.”

“Alex, we have perhaps thirty-five minutes until the beginning of the end of the world. Find it quickly, would you, please?”

Hawke muttered something obscene as his head disappeared below the hatchway. Halter stood in the cockpit, watching helplessly as the ferry bearing Korsakov moved ever nearer to the long dock emerging from the heavily wooded island, a low-lying black silhouette on the horizon.

“Cast off all of the lines except the stern,” he heard Hawke’s muffled voice behind him say. “Just in case I find the damn valve. Wait, is this it? Yes? No, damn it!”

Five minutes later, the big Volvo rumbled to life again, and Hawke came up through the engine-room hatch in a hurry. He uncleated the stern line and jumped down to join Halter in the cockpit, grabbing the wheel and shoving the throttle forward. The sleek mahogany runabout surged forward, throwing a wide white wake to either side.

Five minutes later, they were ghosting up to a rocky beach with the motor shut down. Hawke hopped off the bow with the anchor in his hand, waded ashore, and wedged the hook between two large boulders. Then he hauled the boat in closer to shore and called out to Halter, “Are you coming?”

“Can’t you get it in any closer?”

The man was sitting on the stern with his legs dangling over the side, cradling the Beta machine in both hands.

Hawke was about to tell him to be careful, when the windshield of the runabout exploded into a million pieces. He whirled in the direction of the gunfire. A guard with a German shepherd at the end of a leash was running toward them, shouting something in Russian. He extended his arm again, aiming his submachine gun at Halter on the run. Hawke pulled the Walther from his holster, drew a quick bead, and shot the man once in the head.

Halter was splashing ashore, holding the detonator above his head, as Alex bent over the dead body.

“What the hell are you doing?” Halter said.

“Looking for a radio. See if he called us in.”

“And?”

“Nothing. No radio. Good. Here, take his gun. Bizon Two. Excellent weapon. Know how to use it?”

“Of course.”

“Good. I hope the sound of those shots didn’t carry up the face of that rock. Here are a couple of extra mags of ammunition. Let’s move. I saw the house from the water. It stands right at the top of this granite cliff. But I think I saw a path up through the woods around that point. We’d better hurry. Time?”

“Nineteen minutes,” Halter said, worry plain on his face.

“Let’s go.”

“God, this is close.”

“I hope God’s watching this channel,” Hawke said, sprinting down the beach and up into the woods at a dead run. His mind was racing, too. Find Anastasia, find a way, any way at all, to get her away from her crazed father before he and Halter killed the man. Five-hundred-yard kill radius? Is that what Kuragin had said about the Beta’s destructive range? He’d do it somehow, get her outside that circle of death.

But he was fast running out of time.

And Halter still had his finger on the trigger.

68

Hawke was first to reach the clearing at the top of the granite cliff. And first to see why the Tsar had been in such a hurry to get to the island of Morto.

By Tsarist standards, the house itself was nothing extraordinary. It was a four-story Swedish Baroque mansion, standing in a wide snowfield, pale yellow in the moonlight. The interesting thing was not the old mansion but the silver airship hovering just a hundred yards above a steel mooring mast on the rooftop. The ship was descending, coming in to dock. The same ship Hawke and Anastasia had flown to Moscow.

Handling lines were even now being tossed down from the bow to a crew waiting on the roof. Red navigation lights fore and aft were blinking, and there was a massive Soviet red star on the after part of the fuselage. On the flank, the word Tsar in huge red letters was illuminated. Korsakov was in a hurry to get out of Sweden and back to Fortress Russia, it seemed.

The rooftop was well lit. Hawke whipped out his monocular. He could see a number of sharpshooters and armed guards in addition to the ground crew now handling more tether lines as they were tossed down to the roof. At least the damn thing hadn’t already taken off with Anastasia aboard. No, she was still somewhere inside that house. There was still a chance.

He’d find a way inside. Get her out of that house. And then-

“Crikey,” Halter said, slightly out of breath, joining him at the edge of the woods. “A bit steep, that.”

Hawke was too busy calculating the odds to reply. There was open ground all the way around this side of the house. It was perhaps a hundred yards to the covered entranceway at the front door. But he could circle around through the woods. Maybe the house was closer to the tree line around the back. He pulled the Walther from its holster, checked that there was a full mag and a round in the chamber. It wasn’t much of a weapon against sharpshooters with SDV sniper rifles. But then, what the hell were you going to do? Life was seldom perfect.

“Time?” Hawke asked.

“Fifteen.”

“A bloody lifetime,” Hawke said. “I’m going inside that house and bring her out.”

“That’s insanity! It’s wide-open ground for at least a hundred yards on all four sides of the house. Bloody suicide with those sharpshooters up there, Alex. Use your head, man!”

But Halter saw a look in the man’s cold blue eyes that told him any argument was a waste of precious time. He slipped out of his fur coat, spread it out on the snow, and placed the machine carefully on top of it. With practiced fingers, he knelt on the bearskin, opened the Beta, and booted it up. Then he flipped an illuminated red toggle, arming the unit.

“Do what you have to do, Stefan. I’d do the same in your shoes. But I’m going inside that house now. I’ll get her out. Or I won’t. If I’m not back in ten minutes, with or without Anastasia, blow the whole damn house down. Kill the madman and everyone else inside. A million lives are at stake. It doesn’t matter who dies in there to prevent that.”

“Alex, listen, it’s bloody over. I’m sorry about your friend in there. But you can’t help her now. You won’t get twenty feet across that open ground. They’ve got night-vision equipment. I can’t even give you covering fire with the Bizon, because they’d take me out before I triggered the detonator. Christ, just wait until he boards. We’ll take him out when the ship’s over the fjord. I’m just sorry as hell, but that’s the end of it.”

“I have no choice, Stefan. I’d rather die out there in the snow than live the rest of my life knowing I didn’t try to save her. All right? You understand that?”

“I guess I do, Alex, God help me.”

“Good enough. Give ’em hell when the time comes. Cheers, mate.”

“Cheers.”

“Here goes nothing,” Hawke said with a smile, and then he was on his feet and running across the impossibly broad expanse of moonlit snow, head down, arms and legs pumping, the covered entryway to house only sixty or so yards away now…

He almost made it.

Shots rang out, three or four bursts of them, heavy automatic-weapons fire from the roof. There were little geysers of snow erupting all around the running and spinning Englishman. He dodged and darted, keeping his head down, sprinting like a madman, desperately zigzagging for the safety of the entryway.

The first round caught Hawke in the right shoulder and spun him completely around. Halter, watching his new friend from just inside the tree line, found the shocking sight of his red-black blood spraying voluminously over the white snow horrifying. But Hawke managed somehow to keep his feet beneath him and keep moving toward the house. Another round caught him in the left thigh, and he spun again, his left knee barely grazing the snow before he rose again and limped forward, dragging his wounded leg through the crusty snow.

Halter watched him raise the little Walther and fire at the men above who were killing him, even as yet another and another round struck him, and he collapsed to the ground. Hawke lay there, motionless, gazing up at the stars, small snow geysers erupting all around him, some missing, some of them no doubt finding their target. Halter checked his watch and looked down at the machine.

Then his eyes returned to his comrade, alone out on the snow, gravely wounded, surely dying.

He looked at his watch. Eleven minutes. Was that time enough to run out there and try to drag Hawke back to the safety of the woods? And still take out the Tsar before he used his own Beta machine to kill a million people? Maybe just enough time. But he could be shot down himself, of course, die trying to save this brave man. A man who would so willingly, so cheerfully, sacrifice his own life to save the woman he loved.

It would be a death well worth dying, he thought, trying to save the life of a man as noble as this one. Yes, he could comfortably live, or die, with that.

Or he could sit safely in the woods as Hawke died, bled to death out there on the snow, knowing that by staying put, he was perhaps saving the lives of a million souls. It was what Hawke had wanted him to do. What he’d told him to do, in fact. But if he did that, was he any more worthy than the monster they’d both vowed to kill? If he wasn’t willing at least to try to save Hawke’s life, what made him one iota better than his avowed enemy?

Bugger all, he thought, seeing Hawke’s inert body twitch as another round struck home. He might actually succeed, after all, he told himself. Save Hawke and still pull the Beta trigger in time.

It would be a very close thing.

Professor Stefanovich Halter had a decision to make.

HAWKE WAS ALIVE, for the moment, anyway. But he knew he was not far from death. Blood was pumping out of him from too many places. A gentle snow had begun to fall. He closed his eyes. The snowflakes felt like butterfly wings grazing his cheeks. He knew he’d failed. But he also knew he’d tried. And so it would end. He’d done his duty. There was nothing left to think or say. It was, finally, over.

THE SCREAMS FROM the third-floor bedroom could be heard throughout the house. The elderly Swedish servants paused and looked at each other, shook their heads, and went on about their duties. They were long accustomed to these horrible cries.

Every summer, they would come to Morto, the widowed count, his beautiful daughter, and the twin boys. And over the course of every summer, since her childhood, the father had found reason to beat his daughter. Beat her when he was angry. Or depressed. Or had swilled too much vodka after supper. Beat her and whipped her so badly that sometimes the doctor had to be fetched from the mainland.

One night, when the poor child was only ten or eleven, Dr. Lundvig had come out of Anastasia’s room with sadness in his eyes and softly closed the door. Waiting for him in the darkened hallway, he had found Katerina Arnborg, the head housekeeper. He confided that he’d seen evidence of other kinds of abuse. He whispered to her that it was so vile that perhaps the police should be notified.

But Katerina had been terrified of the count’s wrath, and so she had never told a living soul. The old doctor had never come back to Morto Island. He’d died a month or so later, drowned in a boating accident out on the fjord in the middle of the night. An unsolved mystery to this day.

The next doctor they’d had was a Russian from Stalingrad, and he never said anything to anyone when he emerged from the child’s room.

Katerina now stood on the stairway landing below Anastasia’s bedroom, listening to the two of them up there as he caned her mercilessly. She still hated herself for her cowardice, not saying anything all these years, and now it was far, far too late for that.

She’d never seen the count so drunk as when he’d arrived home from the Nobel ceremony. He was raging at his daughter as he dragged her up the stairs behind him. Suddenly, the screams coming from the child’s bedroom were even louder.

And inside the bedroom, “Get away from me, you bastard! No more. I’m a grown woman! Not your little whipping girl who cowers before the great-”

“Traitor! You think I don’t know what’s going on? I told you to rid yourself of that bastard child growing inside you. And did you listen? No! No! And…no!”

“I hate you! Do you understand that? I’ve always hated you! Even your own sons despise you for the monster you are! You have no idea how much we all laugh at your stupid arrogance, your perverted-”

“Silence! You knew what he was going to do tonight. You planned it together, didn’t you? Humiliate me before the whole world. You are a traitor, Anastasia. To me, and to all of Russia. You don’t deserve to live.”

“It’s not true. As much as I’ve learned to loathe you, I’d never conspire against you. I love Russia too much, God help me.”

“Get up! Get on the bed. And then-”

“Never! If you think that is ever, ever going to happen again, you are truly mad. You’ll have to kill me if that’s what you want. I know you’re angry with him, for what he did to you tonight, but I love him and I’m going to marry him and have his child!”

“In hell, perhaps.”

“You should see yourself now, standing there. The mighty Tsar. Beating his pregnant daughter. How majestic! How brave and noble he is! How-”

From outside, the unmistakable sound of gunfire. Heavy automatic weapons. The Tsar smiled as he looked toward the window, Anastasia’s small bedroom repeatedly lit with bright flashes from the rooftop above. He dropped the cane and moved to the window.

“Silence, daughter! You think he’s coming for you? Your great hero arrived to save you, is he? Come here and have a look!”

“Please. Just go. Leave me alone.”

“The spy is dead, Anastasia. Do you hear me? Dead.”

“What are you saying?”

“I knew he was coming here for me. Following me, this arrogant British spy. And I was ready for him. Don’t you want to see him? Your dead lover? Get up and see for yourself!”

He seized her arm and dragged her bodily over to the window, took her face in his violently shaking hand and pressed it against the windowpane, forcing her to look down into the snow-covered gardens.

He lay faceup in the snow, his arms flung wide. There was blood everywhere, on his body, on the snow around him, spreading black in the moonlight. He was still, and the snow was falling on his face. It was true. Alex was gone.

“Oh. Oh, my God, you’ve murdered him, you madman, the only human being I’ve ever loved!”

“Get some clothes on. We’re leaving for St. Petersburg. The doctor will come for you in two minutes. He’ll give you something to calm you down. I have some important business to attend to during the crossing. Soon the people who humiliated me tonight will feel the pain. Tonight begins the end of the West and the glorious triumph of Mother Russia. And you, my little traitor, will be a witness to history.”

The door slammed, and the monster, too, was gone.

69

Halter burst out of the woods at a full run. He had the automatic rifle at his shoulder and was firing up at the clearly silhouetted snipers on the roof. He had the element of surprise and, with his weapon on full auto and at this range, even moving, his fire suppression was instantly effective and deadly. He saw two snipers pitch forward and plummet four floors to the snowy ground below. The deaths of two comrades caused a sudden, if momentary, cessation of fire from above. Heads disappeared beneath the parapet.

His wholly unexpected appearance and the Bizon’s vicious firepower gave him a few precious seconds to reach his fallen comrade. Hawke lay on his back in a spreading pool of blood-soaked snow. He was conscious and breathing, Halter saw, quick shallow breaths, but he was grievously wounded in any number of places and losing a lot of blood. Another second or two out here, and they’d both be dead.

“Give me a hand here, will you, old sport?” Hawke gasped, his voice hoarse with pain.

Halter couldn’t carry him, but he got an arm under him, and Hawke made use of his one good leg, getting to his feet with a rush of pure adrenaline. The two men moved surprisingly swiftly toward the woods. Halter was deceptively strong, and Hawke was hobbling but determinedly keeping up with him as best he could. They were totally exposed, and both men fully expected to die before they reached the tree line.

Suddenly, more sporadic fire erupted from the roof, rounds thunking into the ground all around them as they struggled toward the safety of the tree line barely twenty yards away.

Halter paused, turned, and unleashed another lethal burst of heavy fire with the Bizon on full auto, great thumping rounds that blasted chunks of cement from the parapet and either killed or wounded at least some of those still trying to bring them down. Hawke was still on his feet, using Halter for support, and he emptied the Walther’s magazine at the remaining guards visible on the rooftop. Two more pitched forward into space, and under this final bit of covering fire, the two men were able to dive into the relative safety of the thick woods.

THEY QUICKLY FOUND the bearskin in the small clearing, and Halter gently lowered Hawke to the ground. Rounds were still striking the trees around and above them, whistling and cracking in the branches, sending showers of freshly fallen snow down on the two men. Halter took a moment to examine the worst of Hawke’s wounds.

“You’ll live if you’re lucky,” Stefan told Hawke. He’d ripped his own shirt into strips and was applying tourniquets to the gravest injuries, pressing a folded piece of his white shirt into the very worst of them, the shoulder. The thigh and the rest of his injuries were flesh wounds, superficial. “That should do it. You’ll be all right, at least until we can get you to a doctor.”

“Goes without saying,” Hawke murmured. He knew it was standard procedure to tell a dying man he was going to be perfectly all right.

“Just hold this compress on with your left hand, press it deeply into the shoulder wound. Now, where’s that damn Zeiss scope of yours?” Hawke managed to pat the outside of his jacket, and Halter pulled the thing from the inside pocket.

“Time?” Hawke asked weakly.

“Three minutes. A bloody eternity, eh?”

Halter held the scope to his eye and peered up at the rooftop. The lights had been extinguished. But in the moonlight, he saw the Tsar running at a low crouch for the airship’s bow entry stairway, surrounded by his cordon of security forces. He could see the liveried Maybach driver’s cap, the big fellow named Kuba cradling the Beta machine attached to his wrist, two steps behind Korsakov as they mounted the steps and disappeared inside the hull.

A second later, two more men emerged from inside the house, bearing a stretcher. He couldn’t make out any faces, but there was clearly a woman on the stretcher. He saw an arm fall limply, only to dangle over the side as she was lifted up inside the ship. Drugged, no doubt. He saw the sleeve of the full-length white ermine coat she’d been wearing at the Nobel ceremony and knew without a doubt it was the Tsar’s daughter, Anastasia, on that stretcher.

“What’s happening?” Hawke whispered.

“He’s getting aboard. He’ll be aloft in a few seconds.”

“Is he-alone?”

“No, Alex. I’m sorry. She’s traveling with him.”

“Give me that bloody machine,” Hawke said, his voice weak but grim.

“Alex, no. I’ll do it. It’s better if I do it.”

Halter had the detonator in his hands now, his forefinger poised on the illuminated red trigger button. Hawke had lost a lot of blood. His mind might not be clear. Halter eyed him carefully. Could he, even in this very last moment, try to save the woman he loved? It was not at all beyond the realm of possibility.

The great silver airship separated from the mooring mast and quickly rose twenty feet above the rooftop before commencing a slow turn to the east. She’d probably be headed out over the Baltic, across tiny Estonia, making her Russian landfall at St. Petersburg.

Halter, transfixed, watched the ship sail directly over him, clearly visible from the small clearing where he and Hawke remained on the bearskin.

“I want to do it, Stefan,” Hawke said, his voice stronger now, perhaps, but full of strain and heartbreak. “It’s my responsibility. The president ordered me to take this man out. It’s my duty.”

“Nonsense. I’m going to detonate, Alex. Ship’s out over open water now. No danger of any fiery wreckage falling on the houses below. Can’t wait a minute longer.”

Hawke managed to sit up, his hands bloody from the gunshot wounds, his whole body shaking terribly. He held out both hands to Halter, his eyes following the endless passage of the airship.

“Please?” Hawke said.

“Why? Why must you do it?”

“I don’t think I could ever forgive you, or me, if I sat here and watched you do it. But I might be able to forgive myself one day. I might. Because it’s my duty, Stefan.”

Halter handed him the detonator, helping him hold it, because Hawke’s hands were shaking so badly and slippery with his own blood.

They could still see the majestic airship plainly through the bare treetops of the forest. She had sailed out over the fjord, her powerful motors helped by the prevailing winds. She was lovely to see, a gleaming silver arrow in the full moonlight. Her winking red lights reflected on the surface of the water below as she sailed away, bound for the opposite shore.

“What are you waiting for, Alex?”

“Nothing,” he said, his voice already dead, moving his finger to the trigger.

Hawke wasn’t thinking of Korsakov or the evil that madman intended to wreak upon the world as the final minutes and seconds wound down.

He was thinking only of his beloved Anastasia as he rested his finger on the blinking red button that would end her life.

How she’d looked emerging from the water that sunny afternoon on Bermuda so long ago. How grand and full of life she’d been racing the sleigh across the snowy Russian landscape, the reins of the troika in her hands, shouting commands at her chargers. And the warm, perfumed nearness of her in the darkened box at the Bolshoi, that moment when she’d leaned over and whispered those words, telling him he was going to be a father.

He hadn’t saved her, hadn’t saved either of them, had he?

He had loved her so.

His finger moved of its own accord and pushed the button.

IT BEGAN WITH a crack in the sky. The sound of the explosion was unimaginable, as if atoms were splitting. A great thunder rolled through the forest, a shockwave bending the trees in its path. The world was suddenly illuminated with false daylight, a supernova of blinding orange, and the high branches of the trees above Hawke’s head stood in stark relief, like skeletal images in an X-ray.

He leaned forward and saw the Tsar erupt into flames, first at the bow and then racing along the fuselage toward the stern. He heard loud cracking noises, probably massive internal bracing wires snapping inside. The thin fabric skin of the outer hull, supposedly flame-retardant and self-extinguishing, was soon hanging in tattered bits from the skeleton of the frame, some of it already consumed by the fiery blast. Burning fuel spewing upward from the top of the ship was causing low pressure inside, allowing atmospheric pressure to collapse the hull into itself.

There was another muffled detonation and a resounding thud as the Tsar’s back broke. He saw the great ship crack in half, and the rapid expulsion of gas made the little remaining skin at the stern begin to deflate. Flames were still climbing four or five hundred feet into the air.

No one could have survived that, Hawke thought. Burning bodies and huge chunks of flaming superstructure were falling into the fjord when he finally looked away. He closed his eyes and lay back against the bearskin.

“Listen,” Stefan said, bending over him. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, dear boy, and I’ve got to get you to a doctor as quickly as possible. Dalaro’s large enough to have at least an emergency trauma center. I think the fastest thing is to take the speedboat back to the town dock. Have an ambulance meet us there.”

“Let’s go,” Hawke murmured, raising his head to look at Halter, his voice very weak, beginning to go.

“Alex, there’s no way you can make it through the woods all the way back to the boat. I’m going to get the boat and bring it around to this part of the island. Then we’ll get you down the trail somehow. Just lie here and rest. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

“Thank you for…for…” Hawke whispered. He wanted to thank the man for saving his life but couldn’t summon the strength. He let his head fall back against the bearskin, listening to the crunch of snow as Halter quickly made his way down through the woods to the water. He looked up into the whirl of falling snowflakes, trying to focus on just one. Focus. He needed focus.

The president. Had to call the president. Tell him the threat had been blown away. He still had his phone? Where? He patted himself down, feeling all of his pockets.

After a few moments, he dug his hand inside his blood-soaked trouser pocket and pulled out his mobile. He wiped some of the blood away from the keypad with his sleeve and held the thing unsteadily right in front of his face. He needed to call the president. Now. Tell him the Tsar was dead. That the immediate danger was over. The Beta, the football, gone. His message light was blinking. Maybe the president had called him. Yes. That’s what had happened.

He punched the code to get his messages.

He held the phone to his ear.

“Alex? Darling? It’s me. Oh, I do wish you’d pick up one of these times. We haven’t spoken in so long, and I’ve so much to tell you. First of all, I love you with all my heart. Madly, deeply, truly. But you already know that, of course. And now, the news. I saw a doctor here in Stockholm this morning, a baby doctor, you know, and he did a sonogram. We have a beautiful healthy baby on the way, darling. And they can even tell the sex! Do you want to know? Now? Or should I wait and tell you in person later tonight when I see you at the ceremony? Oh, I’ve been so torn about it all day. What to do, what to do? Oh, I do have to tell you, I must, or I’ll just burst. Ready? It’s a boy, Alex. I’m going to have your son, darling! Isn’t that the most wonderful news in the world? I love you so very much. I can’t wait to see you tonight. I do hope you’re still coming. I love you, Alex Hawke. We have our whole wonderful lives in front of us, darling. I’m so happy. Good-bye.”

HAWKE HEARD THE guard dogs first. The guards themselves were right behind them. Flashlight beams crisscrossed wildly over his head as they all crashed through the woods toward him, shouting furious directions in Russian. He rolled over and grabbed the Bizon, shoved in a fresh magazine, and racked the slide. He waited until he could see the eyes of the snarling dogs tearing through the woods right toward him, and then he started firing at everything that moved, his eyes blurred with tears.