by Ted Bell
“Da, da.”
“The man said put your hands behind you, asshole,” Harry said, bringing the butt of his pistol down hard on the top of Gurov’s head. He complied and Harry cuffed his hands and then secured his feet to the legs of the chair. Stoke stood up and started pacing back and forth in front of the window, glancing at the Russian from time to time.
“Okay. Now, listen up, Viktor. In this first scene, we’re going to run through some dialogue from the script, right? And if we don’t like the answers, we’re going to beat the living shit out of you, understand? Look at me, Viktor. Darryl, help him out, will you?”
“Sure thing, Sheldon,” Harry said, grabbing a fistful of the man’s hair and lifting his face into the light.
“Darryl?”
“Yeah, Sheldon?”
“You think this guy looks the part or not? Too ugly, maybe?”
“That mug of his would look good for a night nurse at a home for the blind. Other than that, I dunno. He works for me, I guess.”
“Are we ready to do this thing, Darryl?”
“Yeah. He ain’t going anywhere.”
“Ready, Viktor? Remember, no special effects here, this is total reality. Let’s do this, people. Ready on the set. Now, Viktor? I’ll give you the first line in your opening scene, here it comes: ‘Viktor, you fat, filthy scumbag, did you order the murder of a child named Alexei Hawke?’ ”
“ Nyet- no. Never heard of him. You think you frighten me, coal-burner? Big man, huh, Mr. Blackamoor?”
“Sizable, yes. But all diamonds look big in the rough, Viktor.”
“Did nobody tell you we don’t like black faces in this country? Especially ugly black ones.”
“Cut! Darryl? Did you like that take?”
“Sucked,” Harry said, stepping around to face the Russian and adding, “Let’s shoot it again. Viktor, let me hear that line again, once more with feeling. And this time, dickhead, put more truth in it. You gotta believe what you’re saying, see?”
“Fuck yourself.”
Harry used his gun hand, slamming it squarely into Gurov’s nose, hard enough to crush every bone, blood gushing from the fresh wound in the middle of his face. Stoke looked over.
“Damn, I wish we’d had the camera running, Darryl, this guy is good, that blood looks so real. Okay. Let’s do the scene where the homicide detective asks him about the two thugs on the Trans-Siberian train, the guy at the wedding in Florida, and the two horsemen in Hyde Park, okay? Give him the line.”
Harry asked him about the three attacks and got the same negative result.
“Viktor, Viktor, Viktor, what am I going to do with you? You’re just not coming off as very believable in this role,” Stoke said, thinking about it. “Although his look is perfect, a total asshole.”
Harry said, “Tell him his motivation, Sheldon. Maybe that’ll help.”
“Motivation? Good idea. Here’s your motivation, Viktor. You don’t want a guy as big as me forcing his hand down your throat and pulling your intestines out of your mouth one foot at a time. Okay, babe? You got that, find that motivating?”
“You got no idea who you fucking with,” Viktor muttered, in gruff, barely understandable English.
“What? What’d he say? Is that line in the script, Darryl? I don’t recall that line. Opportunity of a lifetime and he’s improvising instead of sticking to the script.”
“Unbelievable,” Harry said, “I’m just not buying this guy, Sheldon. Seriously.”
“Maybe it’s the teeth. What do you think, Darryl? Teeth look okay to you? Pull his upper lip up over his busted nose and let’s take a good look.”
Harry did, and said, “Too perfect. He’d look like a more authentic villain if he were missing a few up front.”
“I agree. Viktor, listen up, the truth is, Darryl and I already know how this movie ends, okay? We’ve read the whole script. Not a happy ending. It ends with you going out that window behind me and landing headfirst in the parking lot. Understand? If you’re not going to tell us the truth, Darryl is going to knock your pretty white teeth out. Then he’s going to start removing the flesh from your face so that you’ll be unrecognizable when the police find you. After that, he’s going to cut your hands off. No fingerprints, right? Show him the knife, Darryl.”
Harry pulled out the hunting knife. It was serrated, about eight inches long.
“What do you say, Viktor?”
“Fuck you, you big black nigger bastard.”
“Uh-oh. Racial epithet, N-word, politically incorrect. Bye-bye, pearly whites. Darryl? Will you do the honors?”
Harry smashed Viktor in the mouth with the SIG.
“What do you think, Sheldon?” Harry said, taking a step back and camera-framing Viktor with his two hands. “Better look? More convincing?”
“Much.”
Viktor was moaning now, rocking his head back and forth, trying to spit all the broken teeth out of his mouth before he swallowed them. He was trying to speak, but it sounded like every word had to swim up through his lungs to reach his mouth.
Stoke stood up and crossed the room, standing directly in front of the Russian, literally towering over him. He bent over until he was right up in the man’s bloodied face.
“Viktor, I’m tired of you. You know what? I’m staring hard at your ugly face, Viktor. I see all the scars, the bleary alcoholic eyes, the crevices and pits of your butt-ugly mug, and I know that somewhere under the sickening face of a shithead-is a real shithead. But I’m going to give you one last chance at stardom. I know who you are. I know you’re a card-carrying member of the Tsarist Society. Your nickname there is the ‘Executioner.’ You ordered two of your ex-KGB assassins to board a Russian train and kill Alexei Hawke. When that didn’t work out, you sent another slug to Florida to do the job. That was a flop, so you sent two more to London. Hyde Park. That’s how we got on to you. One horseman was killed, as you know. But the one that lived? We nabbed him and ran his balls through the wringer. And guess what? He gave you up, Viktor, ratted you out, pal. So here’s the deal. You swear to call off your fucking dogs, or you’re going out that big window behind me. What’s it going to be? I’ll count to five. One… two… three…”
“Fuck you.”
“Open the window, Darryl.”
Harry did it. One huge pane of glass that swung inward. Then he and Stoke lifted Gurov’s chair and placed him out on the window ledge, the sounds of traffic and sirens far below suddenly audible, cold night air rushing inside.
Gurov started screaming, bucking, sobbing, cursing himself for a fool. He’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, a honeytrap.
Stoke tilted the chair forward so that the man was looking straight down at the parking lot twenty-two stories below. Stoke had to shout to be heard above the sounds of the howling wind and the traffic below.
“Only thing holding you to this chair are the plasticuffs. One on your wrists and two on your ankles. Darryl’s got his knife out again. Snip-snip, nosedive into space, Viktor. What’s it going to be? You going to call off the dogs, partner? Or are you going down to the lobby level the hard way?”
He was gagging and choking on his own blood.
“Mummmpfh…”
“I don’t know that word. Darryl, cut his hands loose.”
Harry’s knife sliced through the plastic. Gurov instantly pitched forward, his head making a dull thud as his face slammed into the hotel’s exterior wall. His head and torso were now hanging completely outside the building, his arms swinging wildly, only the thin strip of plastic around each ankle holding him to the chair.
“You prepared to wax this guy, Stoke?” Harry asked. “Take it that far?”
“You damn right I am. In a heartbeat.”
“Okay, good to know.”
Stoke stuck his head out the window and called down to him. “Viktor, time’s up. You’re about to end up on the cutting-room floor. If you want to die, don’t do anything, I’ll understand. If you want to live, and agree to
do exactly what I tell you to do, put your hands together like you’re praying.
The Russian instantly clasped his hands together, interlocking his fingers, finding his voice and crying out, “Stop! I’ll do what you say! Pull me up!”
“Are you sure?”
“Please! I beg you…”
“Let’s haul him in, Darryl,” Stoke said and they did, setting his chair upright on the floor by the window. Stoke leaned down and put both hands on the man’s violently shaking shoulders, staring into his terrified eyes.
“Look at me,” he said. “Look at my face. Look at my black face. My eyes. Hear my voice. Never forget me. Because I will not forget you. And if I have to, I will come back for you. I will come back here and I will make you sorry your mama ever met your papa. I will not just kill you. I will drive my fist inside your chest and I will rip your black heart out and feed it to you. And that, Viktor Gurov, is the solemn promise I make to you. Are we clear on that?”
Viktor nodded his bloody head violently.
“Good boy. And you tell the goon squad back at the clubhouse to back the hell off Alex Hawke. They don’t, they’re going to find themselves under a pile of rubble. Will you do that for me, Viktor?”
“Da!”
Harry said, “Sheldon, question.”
“Shoot, Darryl.”
“What do we do with this sack of shit now?”
“Oh, you’re going to love this. You know that hot English screenwriter we met at the bar near Red Square yesterday?”
“Yeah, guy who wrote Gorky Park III?”
“That’s him. Well, he wrote a killer new ending for Viktor’s character. Killer. Matter of fact, he just texted his notes to me. He’s waiting for us now at the location.”
Brock stood up, smiling at everyone.
“That’s a wrap,” Harry said. “Next location, people.”
The next morning, members of the Tsarist Society who arrived for an early breakfast got a bit of a shock. Instead of the triumphal and historic flag that normally hung from the shining brass flagpole projecting high above the street, there was a naked fat man hanging by his heels.
Absolutely appalling.
At first everyone thought he was dead. He must have been unconscious, for he abruptly started yelling to be cut down and someone had to call the fire department for a truck and ladder that was tall enough to reach him.
The firemen lowered him to the street.
The president of the Tsarist Society, former KGB general Vladimir Kutov, who happened upon the scene at that very moment, hurried over to the great white whale of a man floundering on the asphalt, shivering arms wrapped around his knees, violently rocking back and forth, muttering some unintelligible word. He had lost a lot of blood and was clearly in shock. And his mouth was full of broken teeth, which made his mad ravings even more incoherent.
“What is it, Viktor?” Kutov said to him. “What the devil are you trying to say?”
The man managed to utter a single word before he lost consciousness and collapsed in the street, his wild eyes staring up at the sky.
“Hollywood.”
Thirty-five
Istanbul
Hawke’s naval architect said, “I am launching our tour of the new Blackhawke on the bridge, Lord Hawke, if that suits you. We had a rather dramatic event last night, recorded by the ship’s video surveillance, and I think you should see it first.”
Hawke didn’t like the “our tour” bit, but he bit his tongue. It wasn’t our boat, it was his damn boat. He and the architect had certainly had their moments during the design and construction of his boat. Architects sometimes had difficulty remembering who would actually inhabit the house, or cross the North Atlantic in a boat. Pure ego, which he could understand, but the best ones knew when to concede to the man who wrote the checks.
“By all means, sir,” Hawke said. “Lead on, lead on.”
“Follow me, please, gentlemen.” Abdullah Badie, a reed-thin and somewhat imperious Turkish yacht designer, stepped aboard the monstrous vessel’s boarding platform, easily handling the tricky move from the gunwale of the high-speed tender, bobbing in a mild chop. He turned to offer Hawke a helping hand, which was declined. Hawke had been hopping on and off boats his entire life.
Once aboard, waiting for Stokely and Harry, Hawke gazed aloft with a mixture of pride and wonder. The bridge deck, which nearly spanned the ship’s fifty-foot beam, towered six decks above him. The foremast soared into the heavens, nearly twenty stories; the press had gushed that the sheer size of this thing he had poured his heart into helping to design and build was magnificent, was stunning, was a dream. A technological masterwork. The final result provided him with much needed satisfaction, solace, and a refuge from the world.
“This way, gentlemen,” Badie said, his white teeth startling beneath a full black moustache.
Abdullah, an athletic Turk, tall and bronzed in a crisp white linen suit, turned and sprinted for the nearest staircase. He was quite the dandy, Alex thought, with his scarlet cap and black canvas espadrilles. Hawke, Stokely, and Brock were right behind him, saluting the ship’s sixteen-member crew standing at attention in dress uniforms of black as they passed by. Hawke saw a lot of familiar faces; most of the group had been crew aboard the previous Blackhawke.
They reached the bridge wing and paused a moment to look down, taking in the grandeur of the clipper yacht’s foredeck in the sunshine-brass, stainless-steel fixtures, the varnished cap rail, teak decks-everything scrubbed, polished, and gleaming to a fare-thee-well. Brock stared, openmouthed in wonder since he first laid eyes on the megayacht lying at anchor. He looked over at Hawke and said, “So, Lord Hawke, a boat like this will set you back, what-a couple of-”
“If you have to ask, you can’t afford it,” Hawke said, quoting a fine old sport-fishing boat-builder from Florida he’d known, an old salt named Rybovich.
“Boss,” Stoke said, eyeing the colorful signal pennants running from bow to stern up and across the tops of the three giant carbon fiber masts. Each flag was an international letter, understood only by mariners. “You know, older I get, more my maritime alphabet gets a little rusty. I know you got an important message spelled out up there in the rigging-what do the flags say, anyway?”
Hawke looked at Stoke and smiled. “You would ask that, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, I know you never miss an opportunity to mess with folks’ heads, that’s all. ’Specially when it comes to putting out special flag messages on your boat, knowing most people can’t read ’em.”
Hawke said, “Those particular flags read: ‘Rarely does one have the privilege to witness vulgar ostentation displayed on such an epic scale.’ ”
Brock and Stoke both laughed out loud. It was vintage Alex Hawke and reminded them that the man in charge always believed you could still have fun, even when the mission was deadly serious. It actually increased your chances of survival and success. Both men had witnessed it many times.
Istanbul’s Barbaros Yacht shipyard, where Blackhawke had been built and was now riding at anchor, was located just east of the city on the left bank of the Bosporus. The size of Hawke’s new yacht was completely and utterly out of scale with anything nearby. The flotilla of handmade, hand-painted fishing boats, the large tourist ferries traveling back and forth across the Bosporus, even Hawke’s palatial hotel standing on the shoreline, all were dwarfed by its presence.
Blackhawke had kept hundreds of Turkish workers employed for more than a million man-hours over four years. This had made the British owner something of a celebrity in Istanbul, a fact he had learned only when he checked into the hotel and found that he’d been upgraded to the presidential suite. His choice of the Barbaros yard had brought Turkey’s shipbuilders long-sought international visibility. In the local papers he was portrayed as something of a hero, his vessel a symbol of Turkish pride.
From the ship’s bridge, the vessel had a commanding view of the strait separating Europe from Asia. The $200 million yacht
, its three-hundred-twenty-foot hull a gleaming jet black, was anchored within sight of the Ciragan Imperial Palace, now a five-star hotel that reeked of marbled opulence, flower petals in every fountain and in every warm bath run by the staff for tired guests.
Arriving a day later than expected, Hawke had taken rooms there to be near his new vessel. When he saw his suite, he felt like Suleiman the Magnificent, gazing through the opened French doors at his magnificent Blackhawke, lit up against the purple night sky with halogen lights from stem to stern.
Stoke and Harry arrived at the Palace, jet-weary and fresh from the hellish Hotel Metropol in Moscow. Upon seeing their splendorous rooms overlooking the sea, they felt like they’d died and gone to heaven. Upon arrival, they’d decided to find out the true meaning of a “Turkish bath” and had met Hawke in the bar for cocktails afterward with smiles on their faces. Hawke didn’t ask.
Once the men were inside the bridge, which boasted a forty-foot curved control panel that looked somewhat more sophisticated than the space shuttle, Badie asked the new owner to have a seat in the captain’s command chair, a lushly padded black leather throne on a stout chromed column that raised and lowered hydraulically.
“Looks like Captain Kirk in that chair,” Stoke said, and Brock stifled a laugh. Harry was literally awestruck by the vessel. He dreamed of cruising the world’s oceans, circumnavigating the globe, sailing to Antarctica and rounding Cape Horn. All in a cocoon of mahogany and oceans of wine he couldn’t begin to name much less afford.
“This is a lot of boat,” he said to Hawke, who smiled and replied, “As Hillary Clinton once said, Harry: It takes a village.”
Abdullah Badie cleared his throat and gained their attention.
“With respect, I’d like to show you gentlemen some video footage that was recorded by Blackhawke ’s underwater surveillance cameras just moments after midnight last night. There are four oscillating cameras mounted on the hull below the waterline: one at the bow, one at the stern, and two amidships-one to port, the other to starboard. The screens above you will show the feeds from all four cameras, equipped with IR lenses for nighttime visibility. Roll tape, please.”