Tsar: A Thriller (Alex Hawke)

by Ted Bell

  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. N
othing 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 hellh
ole, 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.