Tsar: A Thriller (Alex Hawke)

by Ted Bell

  “Yeah. But to win, you’ve got to have boots on the ground. You don’t, and neither do we, partner.”

  “No shit. For twenty-five years, they’ve chained our spies like dogs to a stake, and now that the damn house has been robbed, we get yelled at for not protecting them. Jimmy Carter, in his infinite wisdom, decided the best way to gather international intelligence was to use spy satellites, since, after all, you could see a license plate from two hundred miles up. Very helpful if you’ve been attacked by a license plate. But we’re being attacked by humans, and you can’t find humans with satellites. You have to use other humans.”

  “Like us, Harry. We’ve got to find out fast who’s still usable on the ground,” Hawke said, thinking the thing through. He hadn’t been to Moscow in years. All of his former contacts there were surely long gone. It would not be easy.

  Harry said, “CIA thinks the notorious gang of Twelve may be secretly planning a coup to overthrow President Rostov. Too doveish, I figure. Once he’s gone, they move troops and tanks into the old Eastern European republics.”

  “That’s hard intel? What’s the psychology of these damn people?”

  “Inferiority complex. That’s the trigger. These old Soviets, they see the U.S. running around the world playing planetary police, telling everyone what to do. And frankly, they don’t like it. They’re personally tired of being pushed around. Witness their reaction to us putting missiles into Poland and Czechoslovakia. On the flip side, they see our president as seriously distracted all around the planet, and they want to strike while the iron is cold.”

  “Back to square one.” Hawke sighed.

  “I’m afraid so, buddy.”

  Hawke leaned back against the cold iron bench and stared into the wintry sky.

  “God, democracy is a fragile damn thing,” Hawke said after a few long minutes had passed. “I don’t know how the hell anybody in Washington and London ever thought it could take root in Russia, of all places.”

  “Cockeyed optimists, Alex, that’s all we are.”

  “There was a moment there, though, when it actually had a chance,” Hawke said. “Before the bloody criminal class starved and bled it to death, there was a tiny window of opportunity. But Russia had no infrastructure to support something as tricky as democracy. You know the history, Harry?”

  “Not all of it.”

  “After Yeltsin emerged victorious from the August 1991 Putsch, only one man stood between him and absolute rule of the Soviet empire.”

  “Gorbachev.”

  “Right.

  “And since Gorbachev had assumed his position legally, in accordance with the Soviet Constitution, there was only one way for old Boris to get rid of him. So, early that December, Yeltsin flew to a Belarussian hunting resort known as Belovezhskaya Pushcha. There he met with three other men, two of them leaders of the two other big Slavic republics—Ukraine’s Leonid Kravchuk and Belarus’s Stanislav Shushkevich. Together, on December 8, these three guys had a few cocktails and decided to simply abolish the Soviet Union.”

  “Christ.”

  “Right. Abolish it for good. Declare independence. That decision, just nine months after a nationwide referendum where seventy-six percent of Soviet citizens voted to keep the union intact, was both unconstitutional and antidemocratic. Basically, it was all over for Russian democracy right then and there. Poof, up in bloody smoke.”

  “Who was the other guy?”

  “What other guy?” Hawke said.

  “You said Yeltsin met with three men at the hunting lodge. You only named two. Who was the third?”

  “Ah. The Third Man. I have no idea. That’s what C wants us to find out. He’s certainly a member of the Twelve. Maybe even the head honcho. The secret power behind the Kremlin’s throne. We’ll see.”

  “What’s next?” Harry asked.

  “We’ve got briefings all day tomorrow out at Langley. Brick Kelly wants to understand exactly how Red Banner and the CIA will function together. Then we’ll head back to Bermuda tomorrow night and meet with C first thing next morning. You’re flying Hawke Air, Harry.”

  Brock nodded. “What’s on C’s agenda?”

  “A series of fairly intensive organizational meetings are going on right now. A skeleton staff there is already getting Red Banner up and running. C is remaining in Bermuda until we return. We’ll get our first assignment from him.”

  “Moscow?”

  “That would be my bet,” Hawke said. “Slip ourselves into Moscow and try to find this Third Man.”

  “C have any idea who this third bird might be?”

  “Only, as I said, that he’s probably the power behind the throne. The one who’s pulling all the strings inside the Kremlin. The man behind the Iron Curtain, one might say.”

  “Like that fat little bastard in The Wizard of Oz.”

  “Precisely. Our job is to put a serious damper on this Third Man’s plans for global conquest.”

  “Tall order.”

  “Right, Harry, it’s up to us. C, like everyone else in our service, is concerned that the West is desperately weak at this moment in history. America is tied down in a no-win war and has an unstable southern border, and Britain is preoccupied with a restive Muslim population, among other things. It’s his view that if the allies are not especially vigilant at this moment in time, we may soon see the Iron Curtain descending over Europe yet again.”

  “And so Red Banner?”

  “And so Red Banner, Harry. Let’s get out of here. I’m cold as hell.”

  Hawke marched up the steps leading to his hero’s home, feeling his blood quickening. He welcomed the familiar feeling of focus and suppressed excitement that preceded every important mission. After months of recuperation and hard training he knew he was as fit as he’d ever been.

  He had no excuses.

  He was ready to go.

  It was good to know that the fight was well and truly joined.

  24

  BERMUDA

  Everyone was drunk. Or, at least, it certainly seemed that way to Diana Mars. She scanned the colorful crowd scattered over the lawn, looking for Ambrose. Had he left her? Or had she left him? She wasn’t at all sure, but his absence was irritating all the same. Perhaps another drink was called for. After all, she’d had only one or two Pimm’s cups. Or was it three? No matter. Everyone seemed to be having a jolly good time. The party, a spur-of-the-moment garden affair at the Darlings’ quaint place on Harbour Road, was winding down.

  It was nearly six o’clock on a drowsy Sunday afternoon, and the Darlings clearly wanted everyone to go home.

  “No more Pimm’s?” she asked the barman, cocking one well-arched eyebrow. “You cannot be serious.” Diana rarely drank to excess, such was her horror of losing her soigné air, losing a touch of bloom or a ray of admiration. But this party was a trial.

  They’d run out of hooch, for one thing. And the hors d’oeuvres platters were long gone. She settled for a tall club soda and wandered off to find her true love.

  Lady Mars made her way through the twitter of golf chatter (it was always golf at these charming affairs, wasn’t it? or bridge, grandchildren, or needlepoint?), hearing the lovely tinkle of ice in good crystal as she passed, moving across the sloping green lawn up toward the gabled and russet-painted house, moving through small islands of people, all dressed in various shades of pastel linen, the men in monogrammed velvet slippers with no socks, the chattering classes up to their usual boozy bonhomie.

  There was a fresh whiff of scandal on the island, just in time for Christmas. The very married American chairman of one of the big offshore insurance companies was running off with the very young wife of the pastor at St. Mark’s. Apparently, this torrid affair had been going on for years, right under Tippi Mordren’s nose! In the vestryman’s wardrobe!

  Quel horreur!

  Island gossip is so different from big-city gossip, she thought, pausing at the pantry door. Even the juiciest bon-bons (frequently with a nut or even a fruit
at the center!) have a predictably evanescent arc. The tittle-tattle flares up suddenly and self-extinguishes, far more rapidly than elsewhere, poor things, for on a small island like Bermuda, the sly whispers simply have nowhere left to go. Even the hottest rumor burns itself out with a hiss at the shoreline.

  She found herself in the empty pantry, pouring warm white wine from a large economy-sized jug into her water glass. These hot afternoons made one thirsty. And she was feeling most disagreeable, to be brutally honest. Put out with Ambrose for some reason she couldn’t put her finger on. Poor dear. Every time he opened his mouth, she snapped at him. She loathed the hurt look in his innocent-baby eyes, but she couldn’t stop herself.

  Where is that damn ring? she thought, stamping her foot in a rare display of anger, realizing she’d just put her quite ringless finger right on the problem at last. She knew he had the ring. She’d heard it rattling around in his can of shaving cream when she was straightening up his bathroom one morning. So, why on earth hadn’t he given it to her?

  Wandering with her wineglass through the house, a warren of rooms, she finally found Ambrose in a small, low-ceilinged sitting room, a kind of den, she supposed, nautical regalia all round. Ambrose was seated in one corner, deep in conversation with Sir David Trulove, predictably, as the two of them had been conspiring all afternoon. Talking about some top-secret project, the details of which Ambrose would not even share with her. This wrinkle, fairly new in their relationship, was troublesome. But she had decided not to let it bother her. He could have his secrets. She could have hers. Tra-la-la.

  It wasn’t as if he and she were formally engaged, after all. They’d been in Bermuda for weeks, and not once had the subject even come up. The question remained unpopped after almost a month. Why, she’d no sooner—

  “Diana!” Ambrose said, leaping to his feet as she entered the otherwise empty room. “There you are, darling! We were just speaking of you.” Steadying himself with his cane, he crossed the room to kiss her cheek.

  “I very much doubt that,” she said, smiling at him. “Here in this…den of spies, I rather doubt I’m topic A. Oh, hullo, David. I didn’t realize you were here.”

  “Diana,” C said, getting to his feet. “Sorry to keep the old boy from you all this time. Terribly rude, I’m afraid.”

  “Not at all,” Diana said. “I’ve been having a splendid time wandering about by myself. I adore garden parties. Doesn’t everyone?”

  Ambrose could see she was peeved and said, “You were bored. I’m terribly sorry, darling.”

  “I could murder a gin and tonic right now. Lot of heavy furniture out on the lawn, darling,” she said, sipping her wine, “not that you’d have noticed, mind.”

  “What’s that you said, dear?” C asked. Collapsing back into his deep chair, he pulled a pencil-thin cheroot from his gun-metal cigar case and lit it with a match. He let the smoke dribble out between his lips and inhaled the thick stream up his nostrils. “Something about heavy furniture?”

  “Diana’s code name for boring people,” Congreve said.

  C smiled. “You know Harold Nicolson’s comment about boring people? ‘Only one person in a thousand is a bore, and he is interesting because he’s one in a thousand.’”

  “Marvelous!” Diana giggled. “But, idiocy all the same.”

  “Listen, Diana,” Ambrose said, looking around the room in a conspiratorial fashion. “Sir David and I are planning a little clandestine excursion this evening. We thought you might like to join us.”

  “Where to?” she said. At the moment, her idea of an excursion was climbing up into bed, popping a baby-blue Ambien, and getting a good night’s sleep.

  “We’re going to take the boat for a moonlit sail around Nonsuch Island. Not that there’s any moonlight tonight, thank heavens.”

  “Nonsuch? That dismal rock? Whatever for, dear?” she said.

  “Surveillance. On that island, according to Alex Hawke, resides a well-entrenched Rastafarian criminal gang. Call themselves the Disciples of Judah. A Jamaican drug lord named King Coale runs the operation. He’s been sending his chaps around, bothering Alex. Sir David and I want to find out why. And put an early end to the practice.”

  “Yes,” C said, a serious expression furrowing his high brow. “For obvious reasons, I’m not at all comfortable having Alex Hawke’s current movements a subject of interest to a criminal enterprise. Ambrose and I are going to snoop around a bit tonight and see what we can learn. It’s been a while since I’ve been out in the field, as it were.”

  Diana saw the excitement at the prospect of adventure in his eyes. Who could blame him, trapped behind that desk at MI-6 year after year?

  Diana plopped down into a soft tomato-red sofa and sipped her wine. “Which boat are you taking? Rumrunner? She’s by far the fastest thing in the boathouse.”

  “No, no, dearest. It’s stealth we’re after tonight, not speed. We want to sail around the island, unobserved. We thought we’d take Swagman.”

  The white yawl, a Hinckley Bermuda 40, was Diana’s own, a cherished gift bequeathed to her by her late father. She’d spent many childhood summers racing Swagman in Bermuda Harbour and round-the-island races. Not a few trophies at the RBYC bore her name.

  “Ambrose, there’s a lot of shoal around that island, ‘skinny water,’ as Papa used to call the shallows. Are you two sure you can navigate safely at night?”

  C spoke up. “That was why we hoped you’d consider joining us, Diana. No one knows those waters as well as you do. If things get interesting, we may need you at the helm to get us out of there in a hurry.”

  Suddenly, seeing herself in this heroic role, it seemed to her the most marvelous idea she’d ever heard of. She leaped to her feet, splashing a bit of wine onto the tiled floor.

  “What are we waiting for, then, lads?” she said with a gay laugh. “The tide’s right, and the wind’s up. Let us away, hearties!”

  25

  An hour later, Swagman and her jolly crew of three were ghosting along across the wide mouth to Castle Harbour. The light breeze out of the west was on their port beam, and Swagman was heeling slightly, making a good seven knots through calm seas. Diana was at the helm, nursing a mug of hot coffee, her third. She needed a clear head about her. It would be up to her to get the big yawl somehow safely inside the submerged and treacherous coral reefs that guarded any approach to Nonsuch Island.

  For many years, Nonsuch had been a strictly protected nature preserve. Many, many years before that, Diana and her older brothers had sailed to the island for picnics and exploration. Forts had been built, flags raised. They’d nicknamed it Mucky-Gucky Island. As they grew older, the children and their friends spent many happy hours out there, chasing pirates, cannibals, and all manner of imagined evildoers through the jungly interior.

  Tiring of that, they’d whiled away the hours diving the many wrecks littering the bottom offshore.

  Nonsuch, still nothing more than a squat, rocky hump on the horizon, was just one of many small islets that formed the visible tips of the Bermuda seamount. But, because it was surrounded by razor-sharp reefs, this area made for particularly dicey going. Congreve assumed it was the reason the Disciples of Judah had chosen the forbidding locale as their base of operations. It was hardly a welcoming sight.

  Bermuda was, after all, the location that had given the infamous Bermuda Triangle its name. Below Swagman’s passing keel lay the wrecks of countless sailing ships and Spanish treasure fleets. Not to mention the silent hulks of freighters, rotting on the bottom, their hulls over the decades turned a putrid shade of green. Coral teeth had ripped great slashes in their sides. All had been dispatched to the bottom by the reefs, the sudden squalls, or the carnage of war.

  The Jamaicans who inhabited the island now were squatters. It was clearly posted as a nature preserve. It was a mystery to everyone why the Bermuda police seemed to look the other way. Someone had gotten to someone, of that Congreve had no doubt. But why this interest in Alex Hawke? T
hat was the question at the front of his mind.

  “Mind your heads,” Diana shouted forward. “I’m coming about!”

  Ambrose and Sir David were both standing on the bow, taking turns peering at the dark silhouette of the island through a pair of high-powered binoculars Diana had brought up from below. The black hump had resolved itself somewhat, now resembling a giant comma, tapering down to the sea at either end. An old wooden dock extended out into a small cove at the center, the only sign of civilization so far.

  “Dense vegetation up top,” C said, “but I do see some lights winking deep in the interior. The light seems to be concentrated at the southern end. Some kind of settlement, all right. Have a look, Constable,” he said, handing the famous Scotland Yard detective the glasses.

  “Yes,” Ambrose agreed. “And a couple of nondescript fishing boats moored at the long dock on the southern tip. There to provide transport to and from the mainland, one imagines. Let’s move in a bit closer, don’t you think?”

  “Diana,” Trulove called aft, “we’d like to get in a bit closer, my dear. Can you manage these reefs?”

  “Say again,” she called out.

  C realized his mistake and made his way toward the stern, where they wouldn’t have to shout. There might be guards posted on Nonsuch, and sound carried so clearly across open water, especially on a quiet, nearly windless night like tonight.

  It was a dark night as well, no moon and few stars, but the woman at the helm knew these waters by heart, and C was not overly worried about navigation.

  “All’s well?” he asked, standing atop the cabin house.

  “No worries, David,” she said, as the former hero of the Falklands War stepped down into her cockpit. Diana kept one eye on the dimly lit fathometer mounted on the aft bulkhead of the low cabin house. She was on a starboard tack and still had a good twenty feet of water beneath her keel. “Do you want to circumnavigate the island, David? I think I could manage that, now that the tide is fully in.”