by Ted Bell
“Why not?”
“The plane never made it to Nice, that’s why not. It just dropped off the radar. CIA did a sat recon of the flight path between Moscow and Nice. Nada. No sign of any wreckage, no mayday distress calls from the cockpit, nothing. Up in smoke.”
“Oh, the mystery of it all.”
“Yeah. But two days ago, we got lucky. Head of CIA in Paris, under orders from Brick Kelly, sent two of his top encrypted communications guys to go out in the field and listen for any sign of radio activity. Even a beep generated by Putin’s encrypted sat phone could be traced. For weeks, nothing. But then Monday night, Putin popped his head up and took a look around. Not just a beep. He made a call to Los Angeles. A long call. Who it was and what they talked about, we don’t know. But he’s alive, and still on the move.”
“He’s got a friend in L.A. His former right-hand man . . . Uncle Joe . . .”
“Who?”
“Just thinking out loud.” Hawke thought for another moment. “Wherever he is, he’ll head for France. His best bet is still the yacht. But somehow he has to travel below the radar and board the boat unseen. Then they sail straight for the back of beyond, right? That’s what I’d do.”
“Right. So here’s the deal. Harry’s in the air. On a CIA Gulfstream flight to Nice. He wants me and Sharkey to meet him there. Get in position to surprise Putin when he arrives at the yacht.”
“So I’ve got Harry whether I want him or not.”
“Afraid so. But right now he’s way ahead of the rest of us, don’t you agree? We’re all playing catch-up?”
“Agreed.”
“Best use of my time right now, boss. Have a face-to-face with old Vladimir, see what he knows about Alexei?”
“It certainly is. I’ll get my pilot back here tonight. You and your Sharkman can take off at first light.”
“Thanks, boss. This is maybe a necessary first step to finding Alexei.”
“I know. Okay, good luck. Let’s get back up to the war room and debrief everyone on these new developments.”
“Do I get Harry?” Stoke said.
“You get Harry. Jesus,” Hawke said, shaking his head. “Harry ‘I don’t give a shit about anybody but me’ Brock.”
“Right. That Harry,” Stoke said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hawke sat back in his chair, sipped his tepid coffee, and looked around the room. His gaze lit on each one of the team members seated around the war room table. After the Rasputin debrief from Stoke, they’d been at it for hours. It was now nearly midnight and everyone was running on caffeine; tobacco smoke swirled about beneath the recessed ceiling lights.
Ambrose had his pipe going full blast and Hawke and Sharkey were gulping coffee and chain-smoking Hawke’s gold-tipped Morland cigarettes.
Stoke had booked the private meeting room in the hotel, one with a round table to encourage free-flowing discussion and argument. They were all here now, his team of five reunited. And facing a huge challenge once more. Chalkboards and easels with whiteboards now covered with scribbles, overflowing ashtrays, pungent room-service trays with half-eaten sandwiches and stone-cold pizzas.
Congreve and Sigrid were in deep discussion, arguing about who should and should not be included on Hawke’s enemies list. The current list was too long, spanned continents around the world. It had all of the usual suspects and then some, and it needed to be whittled down, especially in light of the new intel regarding Putin’s sudden reappearance among the living.
Stoke was talking to Sharkey about logistics. They would be departing for Nice on a Hawke Air plane at first light. Now they were discussing what the team would need in the way of weapons, body armor, transportation, accommodations, passports, encrypted sat phones, et cetera, for the hostage rescue mission to come.
All of which left Hawke alone with his thoughts.
There was still no sign of a ransom note. And his dwindling hopes that Alexei, having suffered a concussion, had simply wandered off after landing at the hospital had evaporated into nothingness. It had been forty-eight hours now, and the absence of any sign of the boy now led him to an inescapable conclusion.
Alexei had been kidnapped.
But why? How? No demands for cash. No threats against his life.
So how had they managed to take him? A snatch on the roof of the hospital when the chopper landed? Too public. Way too public and incredibly complicated to coordinate and execute.
But someone might have torched the rescue helicopter in Italy. If true, that was the key to it all.
They would have to find out if it actually was number four. If it was, all the evidence was pointing him in one direction. If he was right, his enemies list could be shortened considerably. Whoever orchestrated Alexei’s kidnapping had enormous resources. And was an extraordinarily powerful adversary. One with the ability to project its reach anywhere on the planet and pull off a spectacular crime in broad daylight.
Three powerful nations on the planet had very good reason to hate him. The Chinese loathed him because he’d slipped into their country and killed a wildly popular rogue general who taken control of the Chinese Communist Party.
The Russians despised him because a couple of years ago he’d humiliated Vladimir Putin in a showdown over Putin’s putting troops and tanks on the borders of his Eastern European neighbors.
Putin had disappeared shortly after that final confrontation with Hawke. Nobody knew what had happened to him. Hawke strongly believed it was a suicide. Or even more likely, a KGB murder. The very public humiliation had been the last straw in the man’s descent into desperation at the fall of Russia from the world’s stage. Under his aegis, they’d gone from superpower status to also-ran.
He closed his eyes, remembering that night, the very last time he and Putin had spoken. The two of them had been alone together, drinking heavily, by the fireside at Putin’s private dacha, Rus Lodge outside of Moscow . . . Putin’s beloved Russian wolfhound, Blofeld, puddled at his feet, sleeping . . .
In the tall eastern windows of the lodge, the watery thin light beyond took on a vague pinkish cast. Hawke, bleary-eyed, had finally had enough of the endlessly combative conversation. Putin was unapologetic about trying to start World War III by his aggressive actions in the Baltics. Hawke got to his feet and started pacing back and forth before the fireplace, just to get his blood flowing again. He finally spoke.
“Look here, damn it. You don’t seem to understand that the Americans have already gone to DEFCON 3, Volodya! A state of war with America already exists! America and Britain are on a war footing, do you understand me? Just waiting to get rid of you once and for all. Don’t give them that excuse, Volodya. Don’t have history record you as the one who bet it all and lost.”
“Fuck you,” Putin said. “You hear me? Fuck you, Hawke!”
Putin was plainly drunk now. Hawke knew he had to hurry. The last vestiges of sobriety were now evaporating and, with them, any hope of amelioration or a peace with Russia. Hawke, desperate, said, as forcefully as he’d ever said anything in his life:
“For god’s sake! Look at yourself! You’re up to your armpits in shit. And now that Western economic sanctions have brought you to your knees, where do you think that leaves you, damn it? Plummeting oil prices have emptied your coffers. You’re broke. Your gold reserves are down to twenty tons. And now you would go to war? You don’t want to be remembered by future Russian schoolchildren as history’s number one fool, do you? Hell, I know you. We’re friends, remember? And you don’t want that and I don’t want that. You’re far too bloody narcissistic for that. Am I wrong? That was a question, damn it. I said, Does the great Vladimir Putin want to be remembered for all time as history’s fool? Or not? Now is the time to decide.”
Putin paused a moment. Then he rose, quite wobbly now, to his feet. He threw back his head, drained the last of his vodka, and hurled the crystal vodka tumbler against the stone. More shattered bits of glass scattered on the hearthstone, glittering in the fire
light.
Everything was broken now. It was all broken. And the end, his end, was very near.
“How long have I got?” Putin said, his voice cracked and shaking. He was a broken man, Hawke saw, one perhaps not long for this world.
Hawke had told him forty-eight hours. In the end, Putin relented. He signed the treaty papers Hawke had brought with him. The next day he told all his commanders in Eastern Europe to stand down and begin withdrawing back inside Russian borders. The threat of imminent world war was over. Hawke had won. Putin had lost.
Hawke would never forget what had happened next. What Putin had told him that night, at the very end.
An unsteady Putin backed up against the wall, rubbing his bruised throat, his eyes glaring and red.
His voice was raw when he finally spoke in a harsh whispery croak. “Oh, what a noble image of yourself you’ve always had, Alex! The valiant Arthurian knight on his black charger. But you hear this, Hawke. The second you walk out that door, you will no longer enjoy my benevolent protection. Nor will your beloved son, Alexei, be safe, Alex. Nor even the Russian whore who bore you your bastard child. So I suggest you run for the woods once you step outside my door. Run as fast as you can. Do I make myself perfectly clear? Now get out of my sight!”
Nor will your beloved son, Alexei, Putin had said, be favored with my protection.
And now his old friend had somehow arranged for a miraculous resurrection . . .
Chapter Twenty-Three
Riga, Switzerland
Joe heard the sub before he saw it surface. She was moving slowly closer, fifty yards from the end of the pier. It was a monochrome yellow Triton 1000, a smaller version of Putin’s personal exploration sub aboard the yacht Tsar. Great machines, these Tritons. Capable of diving to a thousand feet, about thirteen feet long, weighing in at about 18,000 pounds, and equipped with two powerful thrusters, it was the real deal.
Joe got to his feet, picked up his leather overnight bag, and headed for the steel ladder at the end of the pier. The night was cold and very still. The delicious smell of the freshwater lake wafted up from below. The night was ready-made for the adventure his life had suddenly become. He was back in the game, all right, and this time he would play to win.
He could see Horst plainly inside the bubble of plexiglass, his face illuminated by the light of his instruments. The little sub slowly approached the pier, and Horst used the submarine’s extendable claw to make the craft fast to the ladder. The hatch popped open.
Small lights embedded in the foredeck illuminated it for boarding.
“Careful coming down,” Horst said as Joe began his descent to the sub. The dock rungs were coated with thick ice and it was hard to keep his boots from slipping off as he climbed down the ladder. Last thing he needed tonight was plunging all the way to the bottom of a cold dark lake!
“Careful!” Horst shouted again as the Russian slipped again, then caught himself.
He stepped off the bottom rung of the ladder and boarded the Triton. He couldn’t help but admire the sub. If ever there was a perfect toy for the man who had everything, the Triton was it. A high-tech masterpiece, the sight of it gave an already freezing Joe Stalingrad a little extra chill.
“Hey, how you doing?” Joe said, sliding down into his seat. “I’m Joe.”
“Glad to hear that. I’d be worried if you weren’t, my good sir,” Horst said, extending his hand. He was a Swiss guy, sure, but one who talked like a normal person trying to sound like a fancy person.
“Glad to be aboard,” Joe said. “I love these damn things.”
“Subs, you mean?” he said, hitting a button that lowered the hatch with a soft whoosh. He then reversed the props and backed slowly away from the dock, before bringing her around to port and beginning their descent. Stoke watched, fascinated, as the dive began. Horst smiled at him.
“Ready to go? Venting the ballast tanks now. Commencing our dive. All very simple, you see.”
The sub nosed over and began to submerge.
“Damn right, subs. Love ’em.”
“Not your first voyage to the briny deep then, I take it, sir?”
“No, an old friend of mine has one of these Tritons. We’ve explored just about everywhere in it . . . off his yacht, you see.”
“Then I don’t have to give you the safety briefing?”
“I’m good. How long a trip?”
“About an hour, he said, his eyes taking one last look at the weather here on the surface. “We’re crossing the lake at its widest point. You saw the Eiger over there, the mountain on the far side, on the horizon?”
“Which one?”
“The highest one, Mr. Stalingrad. Most people know that.”
“Really? Is that the Eiger from The Eiger Sanction? Clint Eastwood?”
“Indeed, it is. The tall mountain just beside it is Der Nadel. The Needle. Not as famous as the Eiger, but well known just the same. The climbers all call it White Death. There’s this vertical face up there that—”
“White Death? Really? Why?” Joe said, as the sub dove deeper.
“A short history lesson, Mr. Stalingrad. In the 1930s, sporting climbers from all over the world began flocking to Switzerland as word of Der Nadel and its impossible vertical face, called the Murder Wall, spread. They came in droves, they did, all determined to conquer the wall. Topping out at 25,430 feet, Der Nadel ranks with Everest and K2 as one of the deadliest mountains in the world. In storm conditions, it is the deadliest.”
“Holy shit. And I’m going up there?”
“You certainly are, Mr. Stalingrad. Since the first climbers attempted to climb the north face in 1933, over seventy-five men have died up there. Countless more have been severely injured. And here’s the thing. Almost everyone lucky enough to survive the climb never went anywhere near that nasty bitch again.”
“Oh, goody. Can’t wait,” Joe said.
“And that mountain, Mr. Stalingrad, is the home of Professor Gerhardt Steinhauser and our destination.”
“Can’t imagine why the hell anyone would want to live up there, Horst.”
“No. You can’t. But the Sorcerer does, and it’s been his home for decades. When he disappeared, he was the most powerful man in Swiss finance. He ruled the roost. And nothing happened or didn’t happen in the great Swiss financial institutions that did not have his blessing or his fingerprints on it. Since the world relies on Switzerland to maintain global financial security, not to mention protect eighty percent of the world’s gold reserves, that makes the Sorcerer a one-man world power.”
“So why does this genius hide inside a mountain?”
“He cherishes his privacy, you see. Walked away from the outside world and never looked back. Some people, though the professor would never agree, claim he’s the most powerful man on earth. Presidents and kings come to kneel at his feet.”
“So, what, there’s an underwater air lock or something over there, on the other side of the lake? The way we get inside, I mean.”
“Air lock, exactly.”
Joe smiled. When you were rich, everything was simple. Or something like that. Outside, in the dark underwater world, a single brilliant shaft of light illuminated the route ahead.
Joe was in heaven.
An hour later, the little sub slid silently inside the submerged air lock. The thick steel and plexiglass doors hissed shut behind it. This secret entrance was located at the base of the mountain, some fifty feet beneath the surface of Lake Zurich. The underwater structure was a steel and glass compartment with controlled pressure inside. Two parallel sets of doors permitted movement between the two areas at different pressures.
Joe looked up. The water inside the airtight compartment began to recede, revealing a white ceiling above with bright recessed lighting.
“Know what I’m thinking about, Horst, old shipmate?”
“No, sir, I do not.”
“Groceries.”
“Ah. Groceries. Canned goods, et cetera.”
“Exactly. So, what? You deliver groceries to the guy this way?” Joe asked, unfastening his seat-belt harness. “I mean, otherwise, how’s he eat?”
“The boss told me I can speak freely with you. Says you work for a very close friend of his. So I don’t mind sharing a few details.”
“Great.”
Horst said, “Two larger subs deliver groceries, fresh flowers, and fuel oil, the daily mail and newspapers, firewood, wine, whatever he needs. He owns three of these Tritons, you see. Another pilot—Jurgen’s his name—drives the other passenger boat, and the freighter runs every other week. We’re on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”
“He lives alone, I suppose.”
“My god, no. Has a private army inside, in fact. Not to mention an air force.”
“Air force?”
“Small squadron of six F-18s, sir. Pilots, crew, maintenance.”
“Jesus Christ. Inside a goddamn mountain?”
“Hmm. You may get to see for yourself. Professor Steinhauser gets very few visitors. I don’t know who you are, Mr. Stalingrad, but you certainly must be somebody. To have this kind of access to a man like this, I mean, and—”
“Nah, nah. I’m only an actor,” Joe said. “Studied at the Stella Adler Studio in New York. Lived in the West Village for the last couple of years, then moved out to L.A. Got into pictures. Maybe you saw me in Kill, Baby, Kill! or my favorite, The Tipsy Gypsy? Tarantino helmed that first one. I played the killer.”
“Sorry. No. I must have missed those.”
“No biggie. My stage name is Joey Stalingrad. I’m all over Hulu, places like that.”
“So you’re here because . . .”
“He’s a huge fan, this Sorcerer. What can I tell you? Seen everything I’ve ever done. Says my latest, Too Hot to Sleep, and Forrest Gump, which I was not in, are his two favorite flicks of all time. Of course, he’s never seen my star turn in Tit for Tat.”