Phantom: An Alex Hawke Novel (24 page)

Thirty-three

Moscow

T
he 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 place 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

T
he Pushkin Café was one of the most popular restaurants in Moscow. Viktor Gurov, a corpulent, balding, well-dressed man, was frequently to be found there, a habitué, 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 noise 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 & 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.”

“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?”