Tsar

by Ted Bell

  One night, when the poor child was only ten or eleven, Dr. Lundvig had come out of Anastasia’s room with sadness in his eyes and softly closed the door. Waiting for him in the darkened hallway, he had found Katerina Arnborg, the head housekeeper. He confided that he’d seen evidence of other kinds of abuse. He whispered to her that it was so vile that perhaps the police should be notified.

  But Katerina had been terrified of the count’s wrath, and so she had never told a living soul. The old doctor had never come back to Morto Island. He’d died a month or so later, drowned in a boating accident out on the fjord in the middle of the night. An unsolved mystery to this day.

  The next doctor they’d had was a Russian from Stalingrad, and he never said anything to anyone when he emerged from the child’s room.

  Katerina now stood on the stairway landing below Anastasia’s bedroom, listening to the two of them up there as he caned her mercilessly. She still hated herself for her cowardice, not saying anything all these years, and now it was far, far too late for that.

  She’d never seen the count so drunk as when he’d arrived home from the Nobel ceremony. He was raging at his daughter as he dragged her up the stairs behind him. Suddenly, the screams coming from the child’s bedroom were even louder.

  And inside the bedroom, “Get away from me, you bastard! No more. I’m a grown woman! Not your little whipping girl who cowers before the great-”

  “Traitor! You think I don’t know what’s going on? I told you to rid yourself of that bastard child growing inside you. And did you listen? No! No! And…no!”

  “I hate you! Do you understand that? I’ve always hated you! Even your own sons despise you for the monster you are! You have no idea how much we all laugh at your stupid arrogance, your perverted-”

  “Silence! You knew what he was going to do tonight. You planned it together, didn’t you? Humiliate me before the whole world. You are a traitor, Anastasia. To me, and to all of Russia. You don’t deserve to live.”

  “It’s not true. As much as I’ve learned to loathe you, I’d never conspire against you. I love Russia too much, God help me.”

  “Get up! Get on the bed. And then-”

  “Never! If you think that is ever, ever going to happen again, you are truly mad. You’ll have to kill me if that’s what you want. I know you’re angry with him, for what he did to you tonight, but I love him and I’m going to marry him and have his child!”

  “In hell, perhaps.”

  “You should see yourself now, standing there. The mighty Tsar. Beating his pregnant daughter. How majestic! How brave and noble he is! How-”

  From outside, the unmistakable sound of gunfire. Heavy automatic weapons. The Tsar smiled as he looked toward the window, Anastasia’s small bedroom repeatedly lit with bright flashes from the rooftop above. He dropped the cane and moved to the window.

  “Silence, daughter! You think he’s coming for you? Your great hero arrived to save you, is he? Come here and have a look!”

  “Please. Just go. Leave me alone.”

  “The spy is dead, Anastasia. Do you hear me? Dead.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I knew he was coming here for me. Following me, this arrogant British spy. And I was ready for him. Don’t you want to see him? Your dead lover? Get up and see for yourself!”

  He seized her arm and dragged her bodily over to the window, took her face in his violently shaking hand and pressed it against the windowpane, forcing her to look down into the snow-covered gardens.

  He lay faceup in the snow, his arms flung wide. There was blood everywhere, on his body, on the snow around him, spreading black in the moonlight. He was still, and the snow was falling on his face. It was true. Alex was gone.

  “Oh. Oh, my God, you’ve murdered him, you madman, the only human being I’ve ever loved!”

  “Get some clothes on. We’re leaving for St. Petersburg. The doctor will come for you in two minutes. He’ll give you something to calm you down. I have some important business to attend to during the crossing. Soon the people who humiliated me tonight will feel the pain. Tonight begins the end of the West and the glorious triumph of Mother Russia. And you, my little traitor, will be a witness to history.”

  The door slammed, and the monster, too, was gone.

  69

  Halter burst out of the woods at a full run. He had the automatic rifle at his shoulder and was firing up at the clearly silhouetted snipers on the roof. He had the element of surprise and, with his weapon on full auto and at this range, even moving, his fire suppression was instantly effective and deadly. He saw two snipers pitch forward and plummet four floors to the snowy ground below. The deaths of two comrades caused a sudden, if momentary, cessation of fire from above. Heads disappeared beneath the parapet.

  His wholly unexpected appearance and the Bizon’s vicious firepower gave him a few precious seconds to reach his fallen comrade. Hawke lay on his back in a spreading pool of blood-soaked snow. He was conscious and breathing, Halter saw, quick shallow breaths, but he was grievously wounded in any number of places and losing a lot of blood. Another second or two out here, and they’d both be dead.

  “Give me a hand here, will you, old sport?” Hawke gasped, his voice hoarse with pain.

  Halter couldn’t carry him, but he got an arm under him, and Hawke made use of his one good leg, getting to his feet with a rush of pure adrenaline. The two men moved surprisingly swiftly toward the woods. Halter was deceptively strong, and Hawke was hobbling but determinedly keeping up with him as best he could. They were totally exposed, and both men fully expected to die before they reached the tree line.

  Suddenly, more sporadic fire erupted from the roof, rounds thunking into the ground all around them as they struggled toward the safety of the tree line barely twenty yards away.

  Halter paused, turned, and unleashed another lethal burst of heavy fire with the Bizon on full auto, great thumping rounds that blasted chunks of cement from the parapet and either killed or wounded at least some of those still trying to bring them down. Hawke was still on his feet, using Halter for support, and he emptied the Walther’s magazine at the remaining guards visible on the rooftop. Two more pitched forward into space, and under this final bit of covering fire, the two men were able to dive into the relative safety of the thick woods.

  THEY QUICKLY FOUND the bearskin in the small clearing, and Halter gently lowered Hawke to the ground. Rounds were still striking the trees around and above them, whistling and cracking in the branches, sending showers of freshly fallen snow down on the two men. Halter took a moment to examine the worst of Hawke’s wounds.

  “You’ll live if you’re lucky,” Stefan told Hawke. He’d ripped his own shirt into strips and was applying tourniquets to the gravest injuries, pressing a folded piece of his white shirt into the very worst of them, the shoulder. The thigh and the rest of his injuries were flesh wounds, superficial. “That should do it. You’ll be all right, at least until we can get you to a doctor.”

  “Goes without saying,” Hawke murmured. He knew it was standard procedure to tell a dying man he was going to be perfectly all right.

  “Just hold this compress on with your left hand, press it deeply into the shoulder wound. Now, where’s that damn Zeiss scope of yours?” Hawke managed to pat the outside of his jacket, and Halter pulled the thing from the inside pocket.

  “Time?” Hawke asked weakly.

  “Three minutes. A bloody eternity, eh?”

  Halter held the scope to his eye and peered up at the rooftop. The lights had been extinguished. But in the moonlight, he saw the Tsar running at a low crouch for the airship’s bow entry stairway, surrounded by his cordon of security forces. He could see the liveried Maybach driver’s cap, the big fellow named Kuba cradling the Beta machine attached to his wrist, two steps behind Korsakov as they mounted the steps and disappeared inside the hull.

  A second later, two more men emerged from inside the house, bearing a stretcher. He couldn’t
make out any faces, but there was clearly a woman on the stretcher. He saw an arm fall limply, only to dangle over the side as she was lifted up inside the ship. Drugged, no doubt. He saw the sleeve of the full-length white ermine coat she’d been wearing at the Nobel ceremony and knew without a doubt it was the Tsar’s daughter, Anastasia, on that stretcher.

  “What’s happening?” Hawke whispered.

  “He’s getting aboard. He’ll be aloft in a few seconds.”

  “Is he-alone?”

  “No, Alex. I’m sorry. She’s traveling with him.”

  “Give me that bloody machine,” Hawke said, his voice weak but grim.

  “Alex, no. I’ll do it. It’s better if I do it.”

  Halter had the detonator in his hands now, his forefinger poised on the illuminated red trigger button. Hawke had lost a lot of blood. His mind might not be clear. Halter eyed him carefully. Could he, even in this very last moment, try to save the woman he loved? It was not at all beyond the realm of possibility.

  The great silver airship separated from the mooring mast and quickly rose twenty feet above the rooftop before commencing a slow turn to the east. She’d probably be headed out over the Baltic, across tiny Estonia, making her Russian landfall at St. Petersburg.

  Halter, transfixed, watched the ship sail directly over him, clearly visible from the small clearing where he and Hawke remained on the bearskin.

  “I want to do it, Stefan,” Hawke said, his voice stronger now, perhaps, but full of strain and heartbreak. “It’s my responsibility. The president ordered me to take this man out. It’s my duty.”

  “Nonsense. I’m going to detonate, Alex. Ship’s out over open water now. No danger of any fiery wreckage falling on the houses below. Can’t wait a minute longer.”

  Hawke managed to sit up, his hands bloody from the gunshot wounds, his whole body shaking terribly. He held out both hands to Halter, his eyes following the endless passage of the airship.

  “Please?” Hawke said.

  “Why? Why must you do it?”

  “I don’t think I could ever forgive you, or me, if I sat here and watched you do it. But I might be able to forgive myself one day. I might. Because it’s my duty, Stefan.”

  Halter handed him the detonator, helping him hold it, because Hawke’s hands were shaking so badly and slippery with his own blood.

  They could still see the majestic airship plainly through the bare treetops of the forest. She had sailed out over the fjord, her powerful motors helped by the prevailing winds. She was lovely to see, a gleaming silver arrow in the full moonlight. Her winking red lights reflected on the surface of the water below as she sailed away, bound for the opposite shore.

  “What are you waiting for, Alex?”

  “Nothing,” he said, his voice already dead, moving his finger to the trigger.

  Hawke wasn’t thinking of Korsakov or the evil that madman intended to wreak upon the world as the final minutes and seconds wound down.

  He was thinking only of his beloved Anastasia as he rested his finger on the blinking red button that would end her life.

  How she’d looked emerging from the water that sunny afternoon on Bermuda so long ago. How grand and full of life she’d been racing the sleigh across the snowy Russian landscape, the reins of the troika in her hands, shouting commands at her chargers. And the warm, perfumed nearness of her in the darkened box at the Bolshoi, that moment when she’d leaned over and whispered those words, telling him he was going to be a father.

  He hadn’t saved her, hadn’t saved either of them, had he?

  He had loved her so.

  His finger moved of its own accord and pushed the button.

  IT BEGAN WITH a crack in the sky. The sound of the explosion was unimaginable, as if atoms were splitting. A great thunder rolled through the forest, a shockwave bending the trees in its path. The world was suddenly illuminated with false daylight, a supernova of blinding orange, and the high branches of the trees above Hawke’s head stood in stark relief, like skeletal images in an X-ray.

  He leaned forward and saw the Tsar erupt into flames, first at the bow and then racing along the fuselage toward the stern. He heard loud cracking noises, probably massive internal bracing wires snapping inside. The thin fabric skin of the outer hull, supposedly flame-retardant and self-extinguishing, was soon hanging in tattered bits from the skeleton of the frame, some of it already consumed by the fiery blast. Burning fuel spewing upward from the top of the ship was causing low pressure inside, allowing atmospheric pressure to collapse the hull into itself.

  There was another muffled detonation and a resounding thud as the Tsar’s back broke. He saw the great ship crack in half, and the rapid expulsion of gas made the little remaining skin at the stern begin to deflate. Flames were still climbing four or five hundred feet into the air.

  No one could have survived that, Hawke thought. Burning bodies and huge chunks of flaming superstructure were falling into the fjord when he finally looked away. He closed his eyes and lay back against the bearskin.

  “Listen,” Stefan said, bending over him. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, dear boy, and I’ve got to get you to a doctor as quickly as possible. Dalaro’s large enough to have at least an emergency trauma center. I think the fastest thing is to take the speedboat back to the town dock. Have an ambulance meet us there.”

  “Let’s go,” Hawke murmured, raising his head to look at Halter, his voice very weak, beginning to go.

  “Alex, there’s no way you can make it through the woods all the way back to the boat. I’m going to get the boat and bring it around to this part of the island. Then we’ll get you down the trail somehow. Just lie here and rest. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  “Thank you for…for…” Hawke whispered. He wanted to thank the man for saving his life but couldn’t summon the strength. He let his head fall back against the bearskin, listening to the crunch of snow as Halter quickly made his way down through the woods to the water. He looked up into the whirl of falling snowflakes, trying to focus on just one. Focus. He needed focus.

  The president. Had to call the president. Tell him the threat had been blown away. He still had his phone? Where? He patted himself down, feeling all of his pockets.

  After a few moments, he dug his hand inside his blood-soaked trouser pocket and pulled out his mobile. He wiped some of the blood away from the keypad with his sleeve and held the thing unsteadily right in front of his face. He needed to call the president. Now. Tell him the Tsar was dead. That the immediate danger was over. The Beta, the football, gone. His message light was blinking. Maybe the president had called him. Yes. That’s what had happened.

  He punched the code to get his messages.

  He held the phone to his ear.

  “Alex? Darling? It’s me. Oh, I do wish you’d pick up one of these times. We haven’t spoken in so long, and I’ve so much to tell you. First of all, I love you with all my heart. Madly, deeply, truly. But you already know that, of course. And now, the news. I saw a doctor here in Stockholm this morning, a baby doctor, you know, and he did a sonogram. We have a beautiful healthy baby on the way, darling. And they can even tell the sex! Do you want to know? Now? Or should I wait and tell you in person later tonight when I see you at the ceremony? Oh, I’ve been so torn about it all day. What to do, what to do? Oh, I do have to tell you, I must, or I’ll just burst. Ready? It’s a boy, Alex. I’m going to have your son, darling! Isn’t that the most wonderful news in the world? I love you so very much. I can’t wait to see you tonight. I do hope you’re still coming. I love you, Alex Hawke. We have our whole wonderful lives in front of us, darling. I’m so happy. Good-bye.”

  HAWKE HEARD THE guard dogs first. The guards themselves were right behind them. Flashlight beams crisscrossed wildly over his head as they all crashed through the woods toward him, shouting furious directions in Russian. He rolled over and grabbed the Bizon, shoved in a fresh magazine, and racked the slide. He waited until he could see the eyes of the
snarling dogs tearing through the woods right toward him, and then he started firing at everything that moved, his eyes blurred with tears.

  EPILOGUE

  The treasure hunter had been down too long; the air in his lungs was nearly exhausted. He’d been diving the wreck most of the day. Free diving, without tanks, since the wreck lay in fairly shallow water, only down about twenty feet or so. Besides, he’d never much cared for canned air. The water was pellucid this time of day, and shafts of sunlight streaked down through the blue, dappling the sand and coral.

  The wreck, what was left of it, was lying on its side, surrounded by tunnels and small caves, home to parrotfish and grouper, all of them come out to dine. They hovered nearby, hoping for any delicious morsels, worms or tiny crustaceans, that might float their way in the clouds of sand stirred up by his digging.

  There are more than three hundred fifty documented wrecks ringing the island of Bermuda, and he’d visited a few, the Hermes, the Iristo, and the Mary Celestia. This one was undocumented and not much prized by tourists or historians, but there was treasure here, there had to be. He’d begun the exploration earlier in the day, with high hopes and great enthusiasm.

  But he was tired now, early hopes had faded, and this would be his last dive. He thought he saw something, a brief glimmer, but a school of bright blue-and-yellow surgeonfish fluttered by his mask, obscuring his view. When he looked again, nothing. A fluke of light, perhaps, that’s all it had been.

  Moments earlier, kicking his way along the hull, he’d been keenly aware of a rather large barracuda. The fish, sleek as a blade, was hanging motionless, staring at him with one white-rimmed black eye, his jaw agape and filled with ragged, needle-sharp teeth. Barracudas always gave him the creeps, and he was relieved when the big fellow moved on.