Phantom ah-7

by Ted Bell

  “You’d be good at it. Still, try to come back in one piece, will you, Stoke?”

  “Always do. See you in Istanbul after we straighten things out in Moscow.”

  “Bring Brock, too. To Istanbul.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yeah. She’s a fighting boat, like I said, and Harry’s nothing if not a fighter. There may come a day when we’re glad he’s aboard. Might as well have him know his way around the ship in any event.”

  S toke was about to pick up the phone again and call Harry about the upcoming trip to Mo-Town, as Brock called the Russian capital. But then he had a better idea. A much better idea.

  Charles brought his 1965 black-raspberry metallic Pontiac GTO convertible up from the ten-car garage and around to the mansion’s front portico entrance, the deep rumble of the huge mill bringing a smile to Stoke’s face. Street-legal, but it could smoke the quarter mile in under seven seconds. Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about, right there. He climbed in and hit the button that lowered the ragtop. It was a beautiful day, perfect for a quick cruise over the causeway to his old stomping ground, Brickell Key in downtown Miami.

  Harry’d gotten rid of Stoke’s old dining room table set and put in a pool table. They could shoot a little pool and shoot the shit about killing Commies and religious fanatics for Jesus.

  Thirty-three

  Moscow

  The Hotel Metropol was the last surviving hotel in Moscow built before the Russian Revolution of 1917. A monumental edifice, adjacent to the Bolshoi Theatre and a five-minute walk from Red Square, the place seemed completely unchanged since the Soviet era when it was a KGB apparatchik hangout. Grim and grey, just the way you’d expect it to be. There was never anything lighthearted and colorful about the KGB, that’s what Stoke thought, anyway.

  Spooky, too.

  Yeah, the whole damn hotel was full of spooks and bad vibes. You could just feel that a lot of very unsavory KGB shit had gone down here. Stoke felt the ghosts of dead spies floating right alongside him as he walked down the endless dark and dreary corridors of the place. He didn’t know how to say “boo” in Russian, but if he did, he was pretty sure he’d hear one of them say it.

  Something else about the hotel. It kept him thinking about that old movie The Shining. Elevator pops open and there’s old Joe Stalin with a shit-eating grin and a bloody axe raised above his head:

  “I’m ba-a-a-ck!”

  Stoke and Harry Brock had checked in late the previous night after connecting through Heathrow en route from Miami. A driver had been sent to pick them up at the airport. Stoke wasn’t expecting VIP treatment or a limo, but he also wasn’t expecting a hulking driver wearing bloodstained camo head to toe. Or driving a beat-up old Volkswagen minibus, either. When the guy opened the back to put their bags in, Stoke saw the space was filled with shotguns, ammo, and dead birds. The guy just tossed the luggage in on top, grunted, and slammed the door.

  “Is it me, or is this whole limo deal pretty weird?” Stoke asked Harry as they pulled out of the airport. Harry had been here on business before. A lot.

  “It would be weird anywhere else in the world. But here? Par for the course.”

  Welcome to Russia, Comrade-o-vich.

  Stoke was going to ask some tourist questions, but the driver hadn’t said word one and didn’t seem up for chatty conversation with the big black Amerikanski. Clearly, they’d interrupted his hunting trip and he wasn’t happy about it.

  The first thing Stoke noticed upon arrival at the hotel was how smoky the hotel lobby was. It was huge, with high ceilings, and yet it was filled with smoke. You could barely see the bulbs in the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. While waiting with Harry for their luggage to appear, Stoke walked over to a group of people sitting in a circle drinking vodka and all smoking like paper factories.

  “Any of y’all ever read the Surgeon General’s warning?” he asked. They all looked up at the giant black man with blank faces. “No? Well, you should. Seriously scary shit in there. I’m just sayin’.”

  Even the people manning the reception desk were a little spooky. Grimmer than the grimmest flight attendants in the unfriendly skies over America. Not a smile to be seen. Like, so unfriendly it was almost as if this were some kind of Roach Motel. Which, Stoke thought, had probably been true. A whole lot of guests who’d checked in here had probably not checked out.

  Emerging from the elevator on his floor, Stoke found all four walls hung with black-and-white photos of famous guests. Stoke made the circuit. Completely random. Hanging next to Stalin? Michael Jackson, who else? And there was Lenin rubbing shoulders with Walt Disney. Stoke had a hard time imagining Walt Disney staying in this hotel. One night, tops.

  Harry assured Stoke his room would be bugged, and Stoke had no reason to doubt Russian spooks were eavesdropping on his every word. He’d asked Fancha once if he talked in his sleep and she’d said no. Didn’t hurt to check, though, so he swept the room. Usually the bugs were in the bedside lamps. But the lamps in Stoke’s room looked like busted umbrellas and had no bulbs-no bugs either, that he could find, anyway. Only bugs he found at the Metropol were in the bed.

  Russia, Stoke decided pretty quickly, had a slightly nutty quality to it. And slightly scary in a weird, time-warp, ice-pick-in-the-side-of-your-neck way. And he didn’t scare easy. And he hadn’t even left his hotel room yet.

  They went sightseeing the next morning. First stop was Red Square. Stoke was surprised at how beautiful it was. The trees, the flower beds, the amazing onion-domed churches. But the best was when Harry told him it wasn’t called Red Square because it had been home to the Commies in the Kremlin. It was called that because the word red, in Russian, meant “beautiful.” That kind of insider info could be worth a jackpot on Jeopardy! someday.

  At five, they were sitting in Trotsky’s, a small, smoky bar just off Red Square, waiting for Hawke’s pal Concasseur to arrive from the British Embassy. There were two uniformed Moscow militia bully boys drinking at the bar, but they seemed stone drunk and didn’t even seem to notice when the two Americans walked past to their table.

  “I gotta say this whole town sorta weirds me out, Harry,” Stoke said, staring back at all the people who were openly staring at him. Weren’t a whole lot of black folks in Moscow, he’d noticed. All the brothers who’d visited had decided once was more than enough. He hadn’t seen a single black man since he got here. And certainly none of them “the size of your average armoire,” as Hawke always said about Stoke.

  “You get used to it,” Harry said, drinking his coffee with a shot of vodka on the side.

  “You spend a lot of time here?”

  “Yeah,” Brock said, and then dropped his eyes and shut up. Whatever career paths he’d gone down in Russia in the old days, he didn’t want to talk about. He changed the subject.

  “So, newlywed, how’s it going with Fancha? Good?”

  “I dunno, Harry. Woman complains a lot. Just the other night she told me I give her the wrong kind of orgasms.”

  “The wrong kind? What did you say?”

  “The truth. I said I wouldn’t know, I’d never had the wrong kind. That even the absolute positively baddest worst orgasm I ever had was smack-dab on the money.”

  “Hell, yeah,” Harry said, and laughed. “Good thing they’re all split-tails or there’d be a bounty on ’em.”

  “Careful, Harry. Saying shit like that can ruin your reputation.”

  “I don’t have a reputation.”

  “That’s got to be our boy,” Stoke whispered, as a tall, well-dressed Englishman came through the door. “Doesn’t look like a badass, but the boss says he is.”

  Concasseur made straight for their table, Stoke being fairly recognizable in this crowd.

  “Ian Concasseur. Mind if I join you?” he said, pulling up a chair. They had a banquette in the corner and the bar was very noisy. Concasseur, the guy now running Red Banner in Moscow for Alex Hawke, had picked it, so Stoke figured it to be a safe p
lace for a private chat.

  The big Brit had a leather briefcase and he put it on the floor and nudged it over to Harry under the table. Weapons, Russian currency, and maybe even a photograph of the cat they were looking for, Stoke figured.

  “How is my old friend Alex?” the guy said, smiling.

  “Been better,” Stoke said. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “Yes, it’s a very nasty situation. Mr. Jones and Mr. Brock, I’m pleased to meet you. Alex speaks very highly of you both.”

  “Big fan of yours, too,” Harry said, looking into his coffee cup. Harry had a problem with guys who were taller, better built, and better looking than he was. Couldn’t help himself. Harry looked a little like Bruce Willis, Concasseur looked like Daniel Craig. What are you going to do?

  “Bit of good news. I was able to learn the name of the troublemaker,” Concasseur said. “Chap who’s actually ordering these hits on Hawke and his son. One of my men got a photograph of him leaving his apartment. There are also photographs of the exterior of the Tsarist Society. And some interior shots I grabbed secretly when I stopped by there for a cocktail. You’ll find all the other relevant information in the satchel. Pair of SIGs and some rubles as well.”

  “We need to have a serious conversation with this dude,” Stoke said. “Does he speak English?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’d you get his name?” Harry asked.

  “One of his colleagues is a friend from London days. Vaz values money more than his life. It was expensive information. Sometimes the deeply ingrained Russian culture of corruption works against them.”

  “Tell me about it,” Harry said. “What’s our guy like?”

  “Your man is an extremely successful automobile salesman named Viktor Gurov. Ex-Mafyia hit man. Now owns half the Mercedes dealerships in town, meaning he had half the competing dealers murdered. Not a high-ranking Tsarist, however, more middle management. He doesn’t get his hands all that dirty anymore, but his nickname at the club is ‘the Executioner.’ I’ve had a tail on him for the last few days. You’ll find his typical schedule in the envelope with the photos.”

  “Why’s he picking on our mutual friend?”

  “He’s the bastard son of the chap Hawke killed. Korsakov, the late Tsar. This fellow worshipped his father, as do most members of the bloody Tsarists. But with Viktor, it’s personal, too. His mother, a woman named Gurov, was simply one of Korsakov’s legion of mistresses and courtesans. She, like many such women, turned up dead in the snow in Gorky Park.”

  “All that makes our job a lot easier,” Stoke said to him, smiling. “Thanks.”

  “Not at all. I would do anything for Alex Hawke. His courage got me through some extraordinarily tough times once. I am forever in his debt.”

  Stoke said, “Buy you a drink?”

  “Thanks, no. I think the less time we’re seen together, the better. But I am always available to you, of course. I gave you a number. My private mobile. Call it twenty-four hours a day. Cheers, then. Cheerio.”

  The man stood up, nodded a friendly good-bye, and left the bar.

  “Now what?” Harry said, downing his vodka.

  “I got an idea.”

  “Just now?”

  “No, dude. Stayed awake all night flying across the ocean while you were sleeping like a baby. Thinking it up. Working it out. Fine-tuning all the details.”

  “Yeah? Is it any good?”

  “Nah, it sucks.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Unless you got a better one, I guess we’ll have to wait and find out, won’t we, Harry?”

  Thirty-four

  The Pushkin Cafe was one of the most popular restaurants in Moscow. Viktor Gurov, a corpulent, balding, well-dressed man, was frequently to be found there, a habitue, not for the food, but for the women. The most beautiful women in the city congregated at the bar there, many of them prostitutes, some of them just lonely, or merely alcoholics. Viktor didn’t particularly care one way or the other, though he had a predilection for bosomy blondes. Hell, he’d fuck a Muscovy duck if it had big breasts and blond feathers.

  He’d found one tonight, a little number named Natalya Litvinova, a plump little duckling who fit the profile perfectly. She was, she’d told him after joining him at his table for a bottle of champagne, a famous movie star. She named a couple of films he’d never seen (who went to movies?) and he pretended to have been deeply impressed with her theatrical credits. He did not have to pretend to be deeply impressed with her cleavage; it was a showstopper.

  He sat back and regarded her, sipping his champagne and licking his protuberant, rubbery lips. The night held great promise.

  “Will you walk me back to my hotel?” she asked, returning from the powder room a little while later.

  “Of course, my dear. The streets are not safe for a beautiful woman alone at this hour.”

  “So kind, Viktor. My brave protector. Shall we go?”

  He fished a tightly rolled wad of cash out of his pocket, peeled off some rubles, stuck them under the ice bucket, and said, “After you, darling girl.”

  She was staying at the nearby Sofitel, not even a four-star hotel and certainly not known as a haven for movie stars, but Viktor was far beyond caring about how many stars her hotel had. He was proud of his small joke, and was thinking of mentioning it, but decided against it. She was a bit wobbly, but that was all right. Women were less fussy about some of his more exotic sexual demands when they’d had half a bottle of champagne and a few large brandies.

  “What floor?” he asked as the elevator doors slid closed.

  “Twenty-second,” she said, eyes on the ceiling, humming some unrecognizable American pop tune. Viktor pushed the button, then leaned back against the wall as the lift rose, eyeing the tops of her wobbly breasts beckoning from the deep V of her silk dress. Undressing her mentally, excitement brimming in his brain, Viktor literally licked his fat lips.

  He followed her down the hallway, worried she’d topple off those stiletto high heels, but liking the way her plump buttocks moved under the tight grey silk dress. She paused at one door, squinted at the number, shook her head, and moved on to the next. She couldn’t seem to get the passkey card to work and finally handed it to her escort, saying, “Here’s the key to my heart. See if you can make it work.” Cute, right?

  “I’d rather have the key to your snapper, honey,” he said, opening the door and stepping aside. Natalya gave him her tried-and-true evil eye, her well-practiced “Dick Shriveler” look, but this lout didn’t even seem fazed by it.

  She entered first and he followed, expecting her to turn the lights on. She kept moving into the room and Viktor paused, moving his hand up and down on the wall beside the door, vainly searching for the light switch. He found it, but it seemed to be covered with some kind of tape.

  “Who needs lights,” he said and moved in her direction, her curvaceous silhouette visible at the end of the bed. She saw a pair of handcuffs dangling from his right hand.

  “I do,” someone said.

  The door behind him suddenly slammed shut, and he heard someone shoot the bolt. A high-powered beam of light exploded in his face, blinding him, and he covered his eyes with both hands. The light had come from a flashlight across the room, under the window.

  “Lights, camera, action, that’s what I need, baby,” he heard the unseen voice boom in English. An American Negro, by the sound of him. He’d been set up by this bitch. Thank God he wasn’t wearing his gold Rolex with the diamonds, the one all the Tsarist assassins got after ten kills.

  The room lights snapped on.

  “Drop your hands, Viktor. Toss the cuffs over here; you won’t be needing them. Take two steps forward and empty your pockets. Throw everything onto the bed.”

  There was a huge black man seated in an armchair beneath the big window, facing him. He had the flashlight in his left hand and a long-barreled revolver in his right, pointed at Viktor’s face. He knew the gun well, a. 357 magnum with a n
oise suppressor.

  Viktor reached into his pockets and did what he was told. Car keys, his wad of cash, his leather gloves, pack of smokes, pack of condoms, some loose change from his trousers.

  “Thanks, Viktor. Let me introduce myself. I’m Sheldon Levy. Yeah, that Sheldon Levy. Producer with Magnum Opus Studios in Hollywood. Heard of us? Plan 9.5 from Outer Space? Attack of the Killer Tomatoes II? Whammo B.O. overseas, babe, every one of them. Look it up on IMDb, you don’t believe me.”

  Viktor shook his head at this incomprehensible nonsense. The giant black man was fucking insane.

  “No? Doesn’t matter. We’re in Moscow making a high-budget action tentpole picture starring Natalya here as the female lead. The new James Bond pic, all right, but keep that under your hat, okay? Problem is, we haven’t been able to cast the villain yet. Are you a villain, Viktor?”

  “Nyet.”

  “Speak English, we’re Americans, remember, not multilingual. Now, my colleague, the man who’s standing behind you with a SIG automatic aimed at the back of your head, is my casting director. He’s the one had this idea. Get a real guy off the street for the part, he said, not just some actor. Turn around and say hello to Darryl F. Zanuck Jr., Viktor.”

  The fat man turned and grunted, “Darryl.”

  Stoke said, “Unfortunately, Natalya’s got to run along now, don’t you, sweetheart? Darryl over there has a very thick envelope for you, even a little bonus. Great performance, very convincing. Love your work, babe; we’ll do lunch, okay? I’ll have my girl call your girl.”

  She nodded, picked up her handbag from the bed, and pinched Viktor’s cheek on her way out.

  “Good luck, Viktor,” Natalya said. “Maybe next time you get to fuck me on camera, huh, you get the part?”

  Harry had locked the door behind her, and Stoke, waving the big, nickel-plated Smith amp; Wesson. 357 around, said, “Viktor, full disclosure, this might be a long, unpleasant audition. Darryl, get that desk chair for him, please. Right there is fine. Have a seat, Mr. Gurov, and put your hands behind you so Darryl can handcuff your hands and feet. Comfy? We use those nice plastic cuffs. I said, hands behind you, dickhead.”