Warriors

CHAPTER 42

The Men’s Grill at Black’s, Alex Hawke’s gentleman’s club on St. James, was filled to overflowing with ebullient gentry and other hearty, somewhat florid members of the well-to-do. Congenial, well-turned-out gentlemen of every size and shape were standing shoulder to shoulder at the bar. This was the prime hour of midday, and they were all tippling, quibbling, chattering like mad.

Luncheon was being served soon, and if you were to have that second whiskey neat or vodka rocks, best have it now, before being seated.

This upper-crust bastion of London male society was abuzz with the usual happy social hubbub and gay repartee of men at drink. As some waggish clubman had once remarked, “It’s always happy hour at Black’s, somehow or other, I find.” Happy, as well it had been, since the club’s inauspicious founding, in 1693, as a popular chocolate shop. Later, in the early eighteenth century, it was notorious as a gambling house, so much so that no less a personage than Jonathan Swift had once referred to Black’s as “the bane of half the English nobility.”

Beau Brummell himself had been a member here then, followed close on the heels by various dukes, earls, assorted Princes of Wales, as well as luminaries David Niven, Evelyn Waugh, Randolph Churchill, and other cads and men of that ilk who would come later.

Lord Alexander Hawke was a direct descendant of the notorious pirate John Black Hawke, known on the Spanish Main as the fearless “Blackhawke.” There was no disputing the fact that he himself was of that ilk. Hawke had, as he liked to remind friend and foe alike, “pirate blood in his veins.”

It was a great, grand, high-ceilinged, and wood-paneled room, with towering leaded glass windows. In every season, sunlight streamed down in splendid shafts, slanted columns of gold in the smoky, dusty air. The shifting light revolved with the day, sliding across worn Persian carpets, making an observer feel as if he were in the cabin of a great ship on a curving course.

There was always a certain lighthearted jocularity in the air, especially here in the third-floor Grill. A palpable bonhomie born of old school ties, old familial bonds, and simmering rivalries forged on the playing fields of Eton or Harrow; and shared time spent in the kindred trenches of war, of love, and of mere commerce.

Lord Alexander Hawke, Sir David Trulove, and Chief Inspector Ambrose Congreve, a formidable trio if ever there was one, sat at Hawke’s customary reserved table. It was a quiet, tufted leather banquette situated beneath a window at the farther reaches of the large room. The hubbub was reduced to a dull roar back here, and one could speak easily of private, even secret, matters with scant fear of being overheard.

C always preferred this reserved table of Hawke’s for any rendezvous that was in the least bit sensitive. And there was no more sensitive a subject within the corridors of MI6 these days than Operation Lightstorm.

They’d ordered cocktails and just begun to get down to cases when a white-gloved steward approached the table, appearing to glide across the carpet.

“M’lord,” he said to Hawke, “so sorry to disturb, but there’s a gentleman arrived downstairs.”

“Yes? Who is it?”

“A Mr. Stokely Jones, he says his name is, your lordship. He says, I mean to say, I believe he’s expected?”

“Ah, good; he’s a bit early, in fact. Sir Stokely Jones! Indeed, he is expected,” Hawke said, glancing at his wristwatch. “Please show him right up, will you, Edward?”

“Indeed, your lordship,” the fellow said, withdrawing silently into the gloom and with seemingly little or no effort required.

Sir Stokely Jones? Congreve had just taken a deep draft of his spicy Bloody Mary. Upon hearing the name, he suddenly found the concoction inconveniently regurgitating. He quickly put his napkin to his lips and tried to contain his surprise.

“Are you quite all right, Ambrose?” C asked, patting him soundly on the shoulder.

“Constable,” Hawke said, “what’s the matter?”

“ ‘Sir Stokely Jones’?” Ambrose finally managed, coughing, his eyes red and tearing up. “Is that what you said, Alex? Sir Stokely Jones?”

Hawke laughed and said, “Hmm. I suppose I forgot to mention it, Constable. Stokely is to be knighted. Tomorrow, in fact.”

“Knighted?” Congreve said. “We are speaking of your dear old American friend? Are we not? Chap from Miami?”

“I am. He is.”

“Bloody well deserved, if you ask me,” the chief of MI6 said. “The man’s a hero of the very first rank.”

“Well, no one said a word to me,” Congreve said somewhat sulkily. “What’s this knighthood all about?”

“Sorry, Constable, my fault that you’re not quite up to speed. You’ll remember the Balmoral affair, when Stokely Jones almost single-handedly saved the life of the Queen? Not to mention most of the Royal Family? A few years ago, as I recall.”

“Ah, yes.”

“It was in all the papers? Telly as well.”

“So sorry, Alex, of course I bloody well remember. It was a day of national celebration. A singular result to an iffy gambit at best. You played no small part in that business yourself. But then, I had no idea. A knighthood, you say?”

Hawke looked up, alerted by a definite volume rise over the general roar at the bar beyond.

“Here he comes now. Look impressed.”

“I am, believe me,” Congreve said, glancing up and smiling in appreciation of the sight he beheld.

The sight of a giant black gentleman, splendidly bedecked in an exquisitely tailored and bespoke Savile Row three-piece suit, a worsted navy chalk-stripe, striding through the Men’s Grill at Black’s with a huge white grin on his face, was bound to cause a bit of notice, even in this most cosmopolitan milieu, home to some of the most poised, the most unflappable gathering of well-bred gentlemen in all London.

Stoke, of course, loved all the attention thrown his way. He suddenly remembered he was still wearing his newly purchased hat, a perfect dove grey fedora he’d snagged that very morning at Lock & Co., the famous hatters of St. James Street.

Stokely smiled and waved his new hat at everyone as he passed along the great length of the bar, saying, “Hey, how’s everybody doin’? Good? All right. That’s great!”

“How do you do, my good sir,” a diminutive but rather large-waisted, mutton-chopped blond fellow said, sticking out his pink, ham-fisted hand as Stoke passed him by.

“I’m good, I’m good,” Stoke said, pausing for the moment to address the man. “How do you do, yourself? You look good, brother. Real good. Love the tie.”

“I am very well, indeed. Lord Cork is my name. I say, will you perhaps join us for a quick sip of something formidable and expensive? A fortifier before luncheon is served?”

“Need a rain check on that one, but thank you. I’m joining my friends back there for lunch.”

“Whom are you lunching with, may I ask?”

“Fellow over there by the window? That’s him. Waving his arm, all giddy with excitement over my arrival.”

“You don’t mean to say our Lord Hawke?”

“That’s the one.”

“Ah, splendid chap indeed, young Hawke. Old college chums, you see, we were at Dartmouth together. Our naval college, here in Britain. Yes, and a chap much beloved by my family as well. Welcome to Black’s, sir. Honored by your presence.”

“Honor is all mine, Lord Cork,” Stoke said with a smile, and pushed on toward his friend’s table at the rear.