Warriors

CHAPTER 30

Lord Hawke was dressed casually for the weekend. Badly faded jeans ripped at one knee and a black turtleneck jersey. He was reclining in his favorite leather chair, one long leg hooked over the armrest, his foot idly swinging to some imaginary rhythm.

Hawke was smiling at something his guest had just said, but he owned the room; tall, lean, well muscled, still boyish in his midthirties, the startling ice-blue eyes, the thick head of unruly black hair, and the strongly chiseled face that had launched a thousand female daydreams, serving to remind one as always of the late film actor Errol Flynn.

He’s always seemed to me a boy born with a heart for any fate, his father had said of little Alex the night of his sixth birthday here in the library at Hawkesmoor.

Flynn, the legendary Hollywood actor, had gone to seed, but not Hawke. He was in better shape than men ten years younger, not an ounce of fat on him. Royal Navy regimen. Six miles a day in open ocean whenever he could manage it. He worked at it. Every day. Hard.

Always such an irony, Ambrose thought. The sixth-richest man in England, a courteous, well-mannered peer of the realm, yet he knew thirty ways to kill you before you knew it with his bare hands.

And always reading. A book to shield him against the world and its terrors.

There was a well-worn volume in his hands right now; Congreve could see the tattered cover of the first edition. Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms for the umpteenth time. God. He’d once asked Hawke what on earth he’d ever learned from Hemingway, a writer he himself had little patience for.

“I don’t rightly know. Not to blow my head off with a shotgun?” Hawke had replied, not even bothering to look up from the pages.

Ambrose turned his attention to the other visitor.

A great bear of a man, he was, and staring down into the blazing fire, warming his hands. He, at least, was well dressed in pale grey flannels and a double-breasted black cashmere blazer. He may have had his back to the door but Congreve was pretty certain as to his identity. It was a man whose very presence indicated trouble ahead. A man whose knowledge and skills at the tradecraft of espionage bordered on the supernatural. Professor Stefan Halter.

He heard a tiny laugh coming from the windows and searched the room.

And then he saw the child.

Hawke’s beloved son, the four-year-old Alexei, was seated cross-legged on the bare floor beneath a window seat. He was wearing white flannel trousers and a fire-engine red sweater over a white turtleneck jumper. He was currently engaged with a battered tin hook-and-ladder fire engine that Ambrose recognized as having once belonged to his father. The boy, his face a mask of concentration, was trying to extend the tiny ladder from the tufted cushion up to the window’s broad sill. His puppy, Harry, asleep in a nearby leather armchair, was blissfully unaware of all their excitement.

Hawke looked up, fired a flash of blue across the room, and laughed at the sight of his old and dearest friend in the world.

“Don’t tell me! These old eyes don’t deceive me, it can only be that Demon of Deduction, that august repository of wisdom and scientific criminalist learning, come to darken my door once more!”

“Good morning, Alex,” Congreve said, smiling.

At the sight of his old friend entering the room, Hawke jumped to his feet, strode across the room. Hawke had a lifelong habit. He left charm trailing in his wake, like it was something incidental to his being, something to be cast off… left behind.

He embraced his closest friend, clapping him rather too soundly on the back. Then he placed his hands on Congreve’s shoulders and smiled broadly.

“Ah, yes, Constable, my God, but it’s good to see you! Thanks for coming all the way out here in that bloody blizzard out there. You remember Professor Stefan Halter from Cambridge, of course? Stef, come say hello to former chief inspector Ambrose Congreve. Of Scotland Yard.”

Congreve smiled at the heavyset man who now turned round to face him. He was ruggedly handsome, with bushy black eyebrows and a deceptively warm smile.

“Chief Inspector. How lovely to see you again.”

“Yes, yes, of course, the good Dr. Halter,” Ambrose said. “Delighted you’re here at Hawkesmoor. Your esteemed presence always bodes well for whatever deviltry the future holds. And ill for the devils who perpetrate it.”

Halter laughed and came over to pump the famous criminalist’s hand warmly.

“True enough, sir. I fear I am seldom the bearer of glad tidings, as you well know,” Halter said, his trademark Cheshire grin making a welcome appearance.

“Then I trust you won’t disappoint me this time, Professor.”

“I’m afraid I won’t. It was I who asked Alex to invite you out. We could use your help, sir.”

Hawke smiled. “He told me to remind you to bring your formidable brain along. Did you?”

“Like a certain credit card, one never leaves home without it.”

“Excellent!” Halter said. “The joyful outcome of this nasty business is all but certain.”

Professor Stefan Halter was a life Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was also a rather large cheese at POLIS, the university’s own spy command, the Department of Politics and International Studies. Most of the senior officers at MI6, MI5, the CIA and NSA, and other assorted acronyms did their top-level recruiting at Cambridge.

Many postdoctoral candidates at Cambridge under Halter’s tutelage at POLIS returned to their home countries as counsel to prime ministers, presidents, and the like. To say that this prestigious Cambridge department was highly regarded in international diplomatic and espionage circles would be putting it rather mildly.

After they were comfortably seated before the roaring hearth, and Pelham had shimmered in with a tray of tea and more coffee, they quickly got down to chases.

“There’s been a murder at Cambridge,” Halter said, turning his strong brown eyes on Congreve, who registered mild shock at the words.

“Murder at Cambridge? Really? Anyone I know?” Ambrose said, leaning forward, his keen interest in this matter already fully engaged. He had close, long-standing ties to the university. He’d taken his doctorate in languages there many years ago, but still had colleagues and close friends among the faculties at the various colleges.

“The victim has not yet been identified, I’m afraid,” Halter said. “However, a professor at King’s has simultaneously gone missing.”

“Which one?” Congreve asked the two men. “The man at King’s, I mean.”

“A Dr. Watanabe. Know him?” Hawke asked.

He saw Congreve’s face fall.

“Know him? I do, indeed. A lifelong friend and mentor. Watanabe’s a brilliant chap. Good man, too. Watanabe-san, we called him then. Japanese by birth, but raised in China by his Chinese mother after the death of his father. Proud of his heritage, of course, but never drank from Beijing’s Communist Kool-Aid pitcher. And he was a perpetual thorn in the side of those at Cambridge who had imbibed.”

Halter laughed. “Good Lord, Alex, he’s already picked up the scent!”

“Our own master Sherlockian,” Hawke said.

“Has the local constabulary gotten anywhere with this?” Congreve asked. “You say there’s been no positive identification.”

“Afraid not,” Halter said. “Nor is there likely to be one soon. The victim was tortured and then mutilated postmortem. Fingertips and facial features removed. Also, the teeth, I’m afraid. Nasty business.”

“Good God,” Congreve said. “Doesn’t sound like the Cambridge I knew, does it.”

“It isn’t,” Halter said. “Believe me. The place is a political tinderbox.”

“Tell him what’s going on, Stef,” Hawke said.

“You’re familiar, no doubt, with the Te-Wu, Chief Inspector?”

“I am indeed. Assassins. Chinese secret police. Societies, sworn brotherhoods, whatever, first to recognize the PRC and first to fly the Communist Party flag. Very active in the States and here in Britain to some extent. There was certainly some Te-Wu activity at Cambridge back in the day. Nasty lot. Capable of anything.”

“Still is, perhaps still are, capable,” Halter said, lighting a Russian unfiltered cigarette. He looked at Congreve as if deciding how much to reveal.

Halter, Congreve well knew, was sitting on not a few secrets of his own. He was the longest-serving MI6 mole inside the Kremlin, in the living history of the Secret Service. Dr. Stefan Halter, Hawke’s go-to in events dealing with the West in general and the United Kingdom in particular. The idea that he was still alive after all these years was a never-ending source of amazement to both Hawke, Congreve, and everyone with a need to know at MI6.

The man was a magician, a fact he’d proved once saving Hawke’s life on an island in the Stockholm archipelago some years back.

“A resurgent Te-Wu gang at Cambridge? Really?” Congreve said, getting his pipe going. “I suppose that’s a viable path of investigation. But I thought we’d rid ourselves of that curse upon society decades ago.”

At that precise moment, Pelham slipped in and announced that luncheon was served.

“Didn’t we all, Chief Inspector?” Halter said, shifting his gaze toward the window. “Didn’t we all? Do either of you know a man at Cambridge by the name of Sir Lucian Hobdale? I seem to recall that you both do, although I can’t for the life of me recall why.”

“He helped us identify and run down that rogue Iranian scientist, remember?” Hawke said. “The mad inventor of Perseus, the Singularity machine.”

“Mmm,” Halter said, but his eyes were far away. “I was thinking Hobdale might help us identify the corpse…”

The wintry day outside was pressing against the cold glass. And the snow was still coming down, much harder.