Tsar (37 page)

I
t was gone.

The whole damn town, just flat gone.

Standing beneath one of the giant monitors mounted on a granite lobby wall, Stokely and Fancha, along with everybody else, were watching CNN images of a small Kansas town that no longer existed. Rumors were flying.

The buzz inside the teeming
Miami Herald
lobby was this, it was that; it was al-Qaeda, it was Hezbollah, no, it was the Iranians, some kind of small nuke, a dirty bomb, hell, no, it was simply a main gas line under the town that had blown, a fertilizer factory, some even theorized a fertilizer bomb, set off by some home-grown disciples of Timothy McVeigh, antigovernment militia still simmering over Waco and Ruby Ridge.

The real truth was, nobody knew what the hell had happened to Salina, Kansas. Especially not the talking heads on CNN, in Stoke’s opinion, anyway. Anybody who did know, wasn’t talking to the media.

On the oversized monitors throughout the lobby, the all-too-familiar banner “Breaking News” was running beneath devastating live pictures of what used to be the little town of Salina, Kansas, population 42,000. Salina was now a charred, smoking ruin, with nothing standing but a few brick chimneys and a blackened water tower.

“What’s this all about, Stokely?” Fancha asked, a worried frown on her face. “Terrorists?”

“I don’t know, baby. Could be terrorists. Maybe just a chemical plant or an underground natural-gas main. Could be anything. But we’ve got to be getting aboard, anyway. We’ll get more scoop soon as we’re settled in our stateroom.”

“A whole town? Just gone?” she said, staring at the monitor. “Unbelievable.”

“Yeah, but the town was completely evacuated before, right? So somebody knows something, and whatever it is, they ain’t saying yet.”

One thing Stokely Jones did know for sure: this might turn out to be very, very bad news. For America. For the whole damn world. Say it wasn’t a simple accident, gas main or whatever. Some terror group takes out an entire American town? That’s a message, no matter who sent it. But he’d cleared this trip with Brock, check out Tsar and besides, he’d promised Fancha he’d accompany her, and a promise was a promise.

He gave her waist a squeeze.

“Let’s go, baby, this is going to be fun.”

She was nervous as a cat about this trip, and she was counting on him, big time. Hell, he’d been smiling since the second he woke up that morning, making breakfast, making bad jokes, trying hard all day to keep things upbeat. He took her elbow and steered her toward the short lines waiting at the elevators to the rooftop. They were a little late, and most of the passengers were already onboard.

“You believe all the famous faces we’re rubbing elbows with?” he said.

“You don’t rub elbows with faces, Stokely.”

“You don’t?”

“Faces don’t have elbows. People have elbows.”

“True enough.”

Still, the lobby was celebrity-packed, filled to overflowing with the rich and famous and their entourages, all of the remaining people who would shortly be boarding the giant airship
Pushkin
for her maiden voyage to Stockholm and the Nobel awards ceremony four days from now.

“You excited, sugar?” he asked her, leaning down to whisper in her ear.

“Now that you’re coming, I am. I only feel safe when you’re next to me, Stoke. I need you by my side. That’s the Lord’s truth.”

“I’m there for you, baby, you know that.”

“What about you, Stoke? Aren’t you even a little excited?”

“Honey, you know me. I only got two emotions. Hungry and horny. You see me without an erection, quick, make me a sandwich. Hey, look. You see who I see coming through the door? The Marlboro Man himself.”

The vice president of the United States, a tall, rugged-looking rancher who hailed from the western slope of the Colorado Rockies, was entering the lobby. Tom McCloskey had come to see his wife, Bonnie, off. The veep was originally supposed to go on the voyage himself, but something had come up at the last minute. Stoke had been shaving early that morning when he’d heard on the radio that the vice president’s wife would now be traveling alone.

Now Stoke figured it was maybe this disaster in Kansas that was keeping McCloskey close to home. Washington probably knew more than they were saying? Security was tight, crew-cut guys talking into their sleeves everywhere. Hell, Stoke had never seen so many Secret Service personnel in one room in his life. “M&M is in the lobby, moving to the elevator bank,” he heard an agent say. M&M, Stoke knew, was the Secret Service call sign for McCloskey. It was based on a moniker the agents had given McCloskey when he first arrived at the White House, Marlboro Man.

Of course, any number of Washington types, senators and their wives, were on the trip. Congressmen, God knows who all, but players, mostly. He saw the governator of California and his pretty Kennedy wife, big-time business magnates like Michael Eisner and that Apple guy, Steve Jobs, people like that. And there were Hollywood people, of course, big-time producers and a few movie stars, a few he even recognized.

Plus, you had all the geeks and brainiacs. The Nobel Prize winners and nominees from around the world and their families. A lot of former Nobel laureates had been invited, too, according to the fancy formal invitation Fancha had received at her home on Low Key. Stoke had actually read it. This trip would be the biggest congregation of Nobel laureates ever assembled.

You could understand the excited buzz in the air. Hell, you had media everywhere, celebs mixing it up with geniuses, people thinking and acting as if they were part of history. And they were. The first ocean crossing of the world’s biggest airship, the largest vessel to ever cross the Atlantic. Kinda like the maiden voyage of the
Titanic
, back in the day, Stoke was thinking, but he quickly shoved that bad thought aside.

They’d finally made it to the front of the line, next ones to board the elevator. There were monitors on the walls here, too, some kind of a press conference going on. Stoke ignored the hubbub and listened carefully, but there still didn’t seem to be much new information.

Clearly, nobody, including the state trooper captain in Kansas, had a clue yet to what had happened. He was now holding forth at a podium on a hill overlooking the town.

“Stoke, did you remember to pack your—”

“Hush a second, baby, I want to hear this.”

“Sir, first question,” a young female reporter said. “How’s the mayor doing? We hear she’s suddenly gone into seclusion.”

“That’s correct. Mayor Bailey was taken violently ill sometime during the night. She’s at an undisclosed location with her family now, and they have asked that the media please respect their privacy.”

“Where are they, sir?”

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.”

“No truth to the rumor that there was foul play involved? That her disappearance is somehow tied to all this?”

“None at all.”

“Sir, moving on from the mayor, how long ago did you get the order to evacuate?” an NBC talking head asked.

“The first call came in at four o’clock this morning, Central time.”

“Who made that call, sir?” another reporter asked.

“That would be the governor. The second call came direct from FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.”

“And what did the FBI tell you?”

“To evacuate the town immediately.”

“Why?”

“There was a threat.”

“From whom?”

“Didn’t say. Unspecified. But credible, that’s what they said. Credible.”

“Al-Qaeda?”

“Like I say, unspecified.”

“And you were able to evacuate everyone in time?”

“Yessir, we were. Salina PD, working with my folks, did an outstanding job. I’ve got the Salina police chief arriving here in about twenty minutes, and a couple of his officers. They were the last ones patrolling inside the town before she blew. They’d be happy to answer—”

The elevator doors slid open, and Stoke and Fancha moved quickly to the rear. Stoke remembered that it opened at the back when it reached the roof. When it did, he and Fancha stepped out into the brilliant Miami sunshine and looked up at the moored airship, her gleaming hull strung with red, white, and blue bunting. Stoke didn’t say anything, but he thought the stars and stripes sort of clashed with the big red Russian stars painted on the ship’s tail sections.

There were velvet ropes on either side of the red carpet leading to the moving stairs at the stern of the ship, lots of cameras pointing and clicking as he and Fancha walked by. Not clicking at him, at Fancha.

T
EN MINUTES LATER
, a white-coated steward was showing them their stateroom on the promenade deck, portside. It was a beautiful room, paneled in walnut, with a king-size bed and a sofa, table, and chairs sitting under three big opening portholes flooded with light and blue sky. On the coffee table was a huge arrangement of white flowers with a little envelope on a plastic pitchfork. Also a silver bucket with a bottle of Roederer Cristal champagne on ice. Hollywood, Stoke thought. Had to be, right?

He handed the steward a twenty and asked where the TV was. The young fellow picked up a remote from the bedside table and hit a button, and an oil painting over the dresser slid up into the ceiling revealing a flat-screen Toshiba.

The steward bowed, said something in Russian, and left. Fancha, who seemed happy enough with their room and her flowers, began unpacking, and Stoke sat on the edge of the bed, figuring out the remote. Finally, he got Fox News, live from Salina, breaking news. News was always breaking, Stoke thought. Problem was, there was nobody left on the planet smart enough to fix it.

The state trooper had turned it over to the police chief, who seemed to be wrapping up his remarks. Stoke was sorry he’d missed the chief’s remarks. This was a big story, and he was about to be completely out of the loop for the next four days. He wanted to know what the hell was going on.

The chief was saying, “Thank you, and now I’d like to turn it over to two of my finest young officers. These two young fellas standing behind me were the last two on patrol inside the city. They’d be happy to take your questions. This is Officer Andy Sisko, and Patrolman Gene Southey. Officers?”

Stoke saw two uniformed patrolmen, clean-cut Midwest guys, step up to the podium, both looking a little nervous about all the cameras, being on national television.

“Officer Sisko, you were the last man to leave Salina?” a reporter called out.

“Yessir, I was. Me and Officer Southey were assigned to the last sweep.”

“You’re certain the town was completely evacuated? There were no remaining civilians?”

“Well, that’s right. Our fellow officers and the staties did a fine job. They made sure they got everybody out. Everybody.”

“Dogs and cats?”

“Very difficult. Most people took their pets, if they could find them. They left in pretty much of a hurry. So I’m sure some stray animals got left.”

“Officer Southey, even when a hurricane is bearing down on a town, we saw this in Key West last year, you still get a large number of people refusing to leave their homes. You didn’t see any of that in Salina?”

“No, sir, we did not. Folks here were real cooperative. Everybody just loaded up and vamoosed. We did run across one fella, though. He was still out there on the street, but we got him out in time, too.”

“Someone who’d refused to leave his home?”

“No, sir, he was making deliveries.”

“Deliveries? To a deserted town? What was he delivering?”

“Doughnuts. Bakery goods. He had a truck full.”

Stoke leaned forward on the edge of the bed, turning up the volume with the remote.

“You mean you had someone delivering doughnuts in an empty town? Under an emergency evacuation order?”

“Yessir. He’d slept through all the warnings is what he told us. Didn’t know anything at all about any warnings, any evacuation. Just going about his business.”

“Do you have his name?”

“Sure do. His name was Happy. Happy the Baker. Nice fella. Gave us breakfast on his truck right about here where I’m standing now. My partner and I had coffee and doughnuts with him right before she blew.”

Stoke’s jaw dropped, and, eyes riveted to the screen, he said to Fancha, “Happy the Baker, baby. That big guy who delivered the cake at the birthday blast here in Miami.”

But Fancha was already in the head with the door closed, changing her outfit. Didn’t hear him.

Stoke’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket.

“Hello?” he said, flicking it open.

It was Harry Brock. Calling from Moscow, where it had to be the middle of the night.

“Stokely, you watching this? Television? CNN?”

“Yeah, Harry, I’m watching. Happy the Baker.”

“Damn right, our old pal Happy the Baker from the birthday party in the Grove. Jesus Henry Christ. Happy the freaking bomb baker. He blew up that town, Stoke. That’s all there is to it. Why else would he be there?”

“Why the hell does he blow up a whole town?”