Tsar (54 page)

“Thank you,” General Kuragin said.

“This was
your
idea?” Hawke said, astonished. He’d naturally assumed the mad genius had been Ivan Korsakov.

“Yes, I’m to blame for this madness, I’m afraid. The military strategy of seeding the bombs, at any rate. Korsakov was the scientific genius behind designing and creating the actual Zeta machine. My grievous error was in letting my military strategy for Russian dominance fall into the wrong hands.”

“The Tsar’s.”

“Of course. I should have seen this coming. I did not. Now, I will pay for my mistake and correct it at a single stroke.”

“Still, the Zeta-network idea is brilliant in its simplicity,” Hawke said. “I’ll give you that much.”

“Simplicity is a cornerstone of genius. Tell me, Lord Hawke, have you ever heard anyone exclaim, ‘I love this idea. It’s so damn complicated!’”

Hawke smiled. Here he was, sharing a bottle with a man who’d hatched an evil scheme for world domination, and he found he rather liked him.

“General,” Halter said, “you were telling me earlier that each of the two Beta detonators also contains Hexagon explosives, correct? Like the explosives inside the Zeta computers.”

“Yes, but each Beta is packed with twice the explosive power. This one can explode the one in the Tsar’s possession, and vice versa.”

“Why?” Hawke asked.

“In case one or the other ever fell into the wrong hands, of course. The Tsar wanted to be able to eliminate that person instantly. He’s not comfortable sharing such power.”

“Except with you.”

Kuragin nodded his head, “Except with me, the only man on earth he trusts.”

Hawke ignored the implicit irony in this and said, “You’re saying you could use it now, to kill the Tsar?”

“I could. There is a code, known only to me. I enter it, arm this machine, press Detonate, and it will instantly explode the other Beta. If the Tsar is anywhere within, say, a radius of five hundred yards, he dies. But I never murder people, Lord Hawke. I have people murdered. It’s why I’m still alive.”

“The Tsar presumably has the Beta with him at all times?” Hawke asked.

“Of course. His nuclear football. Chained to the wrist of his bodyguard, named Kuba, a highly trained assassin who doubles as his driver. Kuba is never more than a few hundred yards away from his lord and master.”

Kuragin pulled a pack of cigarettes from his inside pocket, extracted one, and lit it with a paper match. The same brand Putin smoked, Hawke noticed, Sobranie Black Russians from the Ukraine.

Hawke pushed his chair back from the table and smiled at the general.

“General Kuragin, when was the last time you checked your account in Geneva?”

“I don’t really know. Some months ago, I suppose.”

“And what was the balance at the time?”

“Five million, I believe. American dollars.”

Hawke pulled his sat phone from his jacket pocket and placed it on the table in front of the Russian.

“You might want to give your Swiss bankers a call, general. Just to confirm your current balance. According to Dr. Halter, it should now be twenty-five million.”

“Twenty million dollars to save the whole world? It hardly seems enough,” Kuragin said, gazing at them from beneath his heavily lidded eyes.

“Shall we say thirty million?”

“Say it and find out.”

“Thirty million.”

“Not enough.”

“All right. We are prepared to pay you forty million dollars for that machine, General Kuragin. And the code that goes with it, of course. Effective immediately. Dr. Halter will call the bank in Geneva with wiring instructions for an additional twenty million dollars.”

“Can you say fifty?”

Hawke glanced at Halter, who nodded his head. Stefan had held the sat phone to his ear, speaking French to an anonymous banker in Geneva as the negotiation progressed.

“Fifty million dollars,” Hawke said. “Final offer.”

“I accept.”

Halter spoke a few more words into the phone, handed it to Kuragin, and said, “This gentleman will confirm that an additional thirty million dollars has been electronically placed in your account, general.”

“This is Kuragin. My account number is 4413789-A. May I have my balance, please? I see. Well, thank you very much.
Au revoir, monsieur, et merci.”

He handed the phone back to Halter and pulled a gold pen from inside his uniform jacket.

“Here, I’ll write the code down for you inside this matchbook cover. Now, I must ask you both to leave the room. But first, please bring me some clean towels and a large bowl of ice. Also, that meat cleaver hanging by the stove, if you’d be so kind. It looks reasonably sharp.”

Hawke and Halter looked at each other, stunned, as the Cambridge don pocketed the matchbook with the detonator code printed inside.

“Surely you’re not planning to do anything foolish, general.”

“On the contrary. If it appears in any way that I have given up this damn thing voluntarily, I won’t last five minutes. Every KGB agent in the world will be lining up to assassinate me.”

“Wait,” Hawke said. “I’m sure we can get that damn bracelet off with a hacksaw. We’ll think of some way to make it look as if you were abducted, and then—”

“No. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’ve been drinking vodka all day in anticipation of what’s coming, and I’m damn well ready to do it. It is the only way for me to survive this, I promise you. Even the most cynical Russian would never believe a man capable of doing such a thing to himself!” He laughed at his own notion and filled his glass to the brim.

“You’ll have to explain giving up the code, general,” Hawke said.

“A moment of weakness? A butcher has a meat cleaver poised above your left hand, and he asks you for a number. Few among us could resist the temptation to give it to him, wouldn’t you agree?”

Hawke and Dr. Halter rose from the table and brought him the items he’d requested. Hawke couldn’t resist running his index finger along the edge of the heavy cleaver’s blade. Sharp as a razor, it instantly produced a thin line of bright red blood on the pad of his fingertip.

“Please leave me alone until it’s over and done,” Kuragin said. “When you return, you can bind me to this table in a convincing fashion. There is a length of heavy rope beneath my chair. Then call the emergency medical ambulance. And then you must leave at once. Understood? And never tell a living soul what has happened here. Never.”

“Yes,” Hawke said, holding the swinging kitchen door open for Dr. Halter. “We understand perfectly.”

The two men walked out into the adjacent living room and sat in the two wooden chairs facing the fire. Neither spoke for a few long minutes.

“He’s finishing the vodka,” Hawke finally said, gazing into the flames, “then he’ll do it.”

“Do it? You don’t actually think he’ll go through with this insanity, do you?” Halter said, an incredulous look in his eyes. “No one has that kind of courage. No one.”

“We shall soon see, won’t we?”

A moment later, a horrendous
thunk
was followed by a howl of animal agony that pierced Hawke’s soul. He leaped from his chair and raced into the kitchen.

Kuragin had done it.

Bright red blood spattered the white stucco wall beside the kitchen table. The bloody left hand, still twitching, was completely severed from the forearm by the blade of the meat cleaver, now buried at least an inch deep into the wooden table. The general had pitched forward in his chair when he passed out, his forehead resting on the table. He wasn’t making a sound. Shock had already set in, and the man was clearly unconscious, blood spurting wildly from the grievous wound at the end of his arm.

Hawke quickly wrapped the man’s bloody stump in a tightly wound towel and plunged it into the bowl of ice, while Halter collected the blood-spattered Beta detonator that had fallen to the floor. That done, Halter picked up the kitchen phone and rang for an ambulance, giving the address of the farmhouse, saying only that a man had been found grievously injured and was losing a lot of blood. A doctor should come as quickly as humanly possible. He hung up without giving his name.

“W
HAT TIME IS
the Tsar accepting his award tonight?” Hawke asked, as they carefully lifted the general’s body and placed him faceup on the table. Hawke used the heavy hemp rope the general had placed beneath his chair to bind the man in a position required for an amputation. It looked real enough, he decided, stepping back to inspect his efforts. As if a man had been bound and relieved of his hand with a meat cleaver. It might work.

“The banquet is at seven, I believe,” Halter said. “Why?”

“I plan to be there,” Hawke said. “I want to make sure his Imperial Majesty, the new Tsar of all Russia, gets the rousing welcome he so richly deserves.”

“Alex, there’s something you should know right now. Korsakov is threatening to destroy an unspecified Western city with a population of one million if the NATO troops just deployed in Eastern Europe are not pulled back from the borders. He phoned the White House and gave President McAtee twenty-four hours to demonstrate his willingness to back off whilst he regained his lost territories.”

“When was this?”

“Sixteen hours ago.”

“So, we’ve got to move very quickly.”

“I’d say that’s an understatement of a huge order of magnitude.”

“Get into the bloody car, then, man! You’ve got the code? The matchbook?”

“Yes. In my waistcoat pocket.”

“A bunch of random numbers, from the look of it. Mean anything to you, professor?” Hawke turned the key, praying the damn car would turn over. Now that the sun had dropped behind the forest, the temperature had plummeted. The highway back to Stockholm would be treacherous.

“One-seven-ought-seven-one-nine-one-eight. Seventeen July, nineteen hundred and eighteen. The exact date of the night Commandant Yurokovsky and his Chekists herded the Romanovs down into the cellar of the house in Ekaterinberg and murdered Tsar Nicholas II, the Empress Katherine, the heir, their four daughters, and the servants.”

“Why would Korsakov choose that date, do you suppose?” Hawke asked. The motor caught on the second try, and he grabbed first gear, racing out of the farmhouse yard, the old Saab whining in its traces.

“It was the last night of the Tsars, Alex. Perhaps he fancies himself as the dawn of a new era, wouldn’t you suppose?”

“Yeah, I suppose he does,” Hawke said, accelerating up the snowy lane, careening once more off the snowbanks lining the road. He drove with ferocity. But in his mind was a perfectly composed picture of his beautiful Anastasia when last he’d seen her. They’d not spoken in days. Tonight, she would be with her father in Stockholm as he accepted his Nobel Prize from the king of Sweden. Somehow, he’d find her. She’d invited him, after all.

Sooner or, he hoped, later, the Tsar would learn that the second detonator had been forcibly taken from Kuragin and fallen into enemy hands. When he did, Hawke knew Korsakov would instantly trigger the thing and detonate it, not caring which enemy had it or where they were.

Which made the timing of everything to come a bit more interesting. He and his new friend Dr. Halter were literally babysitting a live bomb.

Someone would be first to push the button. And someone else would be first to die.

Hawke, his mind racing, knew he’d have to find some way to take the Tsar out when he was alone, or at least get him out in the open. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, accept any collateral damage. He could not conscience the death of innocents.

Such as the woman he loved.

Or, and here his heart paused a beat, their unborn child.

T
he Nobel Prize banquet ceremony is held each year at the Stadshuset in Stockholm. Even a monarch’s coronation cannot rival the Nobel celebration in terms of pure grandeur and epic scale. The massive Stadshuset complex, with its three-hundred-fifty-foot tower at one corner, is built in the Swedish Romantic style. It stands on the banks of the Riddarfjarden, a freshwater lake in the heart of Stockholm. Tonight, Sweden’s beautiful State House was ablaze with light.

Alex Hawke, shivering as he climbed out of the Saab’s passenger seat, thought it looked like a great medieval fortress, but Professor Halter had informed him that it was built in 1923.

“Are you sure you’re not going to freeze to death out here?” he asked the professor. Halter would remain in the car while Hawke went inside. Halter was dressed for Russian winter, wearing an
ushanka
, the Russian trapper’s fur cap with ear flaps, and a full-length bearskin coat. Sitting behind the wheel, his brow furrowed in concentration, he resembled some great bear, fiddling with the silvery Beta detonator on his lap, making sure he’d know how to use it when the time came.

“I’ll be fine. But try to hurry this up, will you?” he said. “It is frightfully cold, and we’re rapidly running out of time. He intends to destroy the first city on his agenda in a little less than two hours.”

“I’ll be twenty minutes,” Hawke said, glancing at his watch. “Thirty max. Keep your eye on that entry door, and please keep the engine running. When he comes out, he will likely be in a hurry. You see his car and driver over there, the liveried chap standing beside the heavily armored Maybach? He’ll head for that, straightaway.”

“How the hell do you know that’s his car?”

“I’m a British spy, professor. Besides, it’s got Russian plates. Moscow. Now, try to stay awake. Maybe turn the heat down.”

“What heat?”

Hawke smiled, shut the passenger door, and raced across the snowy car park to join the party inside. He felt his mobile vibrating in his trouser pocket. Anastasia? He’d rung her cell phone from his room while he was shaving; perhaps she was returning the call. No time to find out now. He’d just have to call her later. He’d not spoken to her since they’d kissed good-bye when he boarded the Navy fighter at Ramstein. But since then, he’d been maintaining a fairly active schedule. With any luck, he’d see her tonight. But whether or not they’d have time alone, he had no idea.

He knew he had roughly two hours to get the Tsar out into the open, in the countryside, preferably, somewhere where he could take him out without endangering anyone else. Two hours was enough time, perhaps, but there was a slight complication. He had no idea how he was going to accomplish this objective. Ah, well, he’d think of something.

First things first, he thought, showing his beautifully engraved invitation to the security chaps at the entrance. He’d need to smoke Korsakov out of the massive crowd inside the banquet hall. Find a way to force him outside in the open. And do it rather quickly. That would be the trick.

The Nobel guest list included some 1,300 dignitaries from around the world. This closely guarded A List included the Nobel laureates and their families, their majesties the king and queen of Sweden, and the entire royal family, plus various European heads of state and a smattering of celebrities and bigwigs. The dinner was always held in a magnificent space called the Blue Hall, and Hawke hurried there now, the inkling of a workable idea just forming in his mind.

He was late. He and Halter had pushed the ancient Saab to the limit on the icy roads returning north to Stockholm, and he’d barely arrived with time enough to race up to his room at the Grand Hotel, shower and shave, and don his white tie and tails. With some help from Sir David Trulove, Hawke had managed to get his last-minute invitation courtesy of the British ambassador to Sweden.

When he arrived inside the venue, he was first surprised to find that the famous Blue Hall was not blue at all. The architect had originally planned to paint the great hall blue but changed his mind when he saw the beauty of the handmade red bricks. The name, however, stuck.

The gala dinner was just beginning as Hawke straightened the white piqué tie at his neck and made his way along a great gallery overlooking the guests still being seated in the vast hall below. Thirteen hundred people, with all that chatter and tinkling china and silverware, made for quite a din. And then there were the trumpets.

Vast numbers of trumpeters in period costume lined the gallery balustrade and both sides of the grand staircase leading to the floor below. Their gleaming brass horns were as long as Amazonian blowguns. They sounded an impressive fanfare before each of the few remaining laureates and dignitaries was announced, everyone pausing regally at the top of the staircase, waiting to hear their names called before descending.

There was a stern chap in court regalia with a great ornamental staff, and just after the fanfare and before someone’s name was announced, he’d bang the staff down on the marble step, making a fine noise that got everyone’s attention.

Hawke joined this august line of Nobel geniuses, wondering if he’d get a whack of the staff and a fanfare. He certainly hoped so. He’d never had a fanfare before.

At the foot of the staircase, a temporary stage had been built. At the center of this flower-bedecked podium was a gleaming mahogany lectern, where an elderly white-haired gentleman, the presumed head of the Nobel Prize Committee, was introducing the winners and assorted Swedish big shots as they made their way down the broad marble stairs.

There were television cameras everywhere, and Hawke knew the annual ceremony was being beamed around the world to an audience of millions.

A vast worldwide audience only made his germ of an idea all the more appealing.

Perpendicular to the podium was a massively long dining table that stretched the entire length of the huge hall. This brilliantly laid table was reserved for the laureates and their immediate families and, of course, the king and queen, their daughter, and the royal family. Here at this table, one would naturally suppose, he would spy his favorite Tsar. The man’s car was outside. Was he inside? He had to be.

Hawke stepped out of line a moment and, ducking between two trumpeters, leaned out over the balustrade to peer at the crowd below. Spread beneath him was an undulating sea of women in beautiful gowns and sparkling jewelry with gentlemen resplendent in white-tie evening attire, all lit in the warm glow of countless candles. He pulled a cigarette-thin but powerful Zeiss monocular from inside his black cutaway and scanned the guests seated at the royal table from one end to the other, then back up the opposite side.

Halfway down, on the far side of the table, he saw Anastasia, exquisite in a diamond tiara. She was seated beside her father, who wore a great red sash across his chest and many jeweled decorations. Tsar Ivan was speaking expansively to someone across the table, and his daughter was listening, a smile on her lips. He zoomed in on her lovely face. He wasn’t so sure about that smile. It looked brave, pasted on. His poor darling.

He was desperate to speak with her. Would she have her mobile at a gala like this? Perhaps not, but worth a try.

He pulled out his own, saw his message light flashing, and punched in her number, watching her through the monocular as he heard it ringing at the other end.
Yes!
She reached down to pick up her evening bag and was about to open it, when her father grabbed her wrist, squeezing it cruelly by the look on her face.
Bastard.

She returned the bag to the floor and pasted the smile back on her face. He waited for the tone and then spoke.

“Darling, I pray you get this soon. I’m here at the banquet. If you look up at the balcony between the trumpet players, you’ll see me smiling down at you. Listen carefully, this is vitally important. I can’t explain now, but it’s imperative that you get away from your father. As quickly as possible! It’s extremely dangerous to be anywhere near him. I wish I could explain more, but I beg you, make any excuse, say you’re ill and have to use the loo, anything, but run at the first opportunity! I love you. We’ll be together soon, and I will explain everything.”

He shoved the thing back into his pocket. Well, at least it was almost over. Somehow, they’d both survive this night. And when it was over—no time for that now.

The line was moving quickly, nearing the end, and he stepped back to take his place. The important fellow in front of him was introduced and proceeded down the steps, his wife at his side, her diamond necklace and earrings sparkling in the spotlights. Hawke took his place alone at the head of the staircase and waited, as the spotlights found him.

The staff came down with a great thump, and then the trumpets sounded a rising series of triumphal notes. A clarion voice rang out, “Your royal majesties, ladies and gentlemen, may I present Lord Alexander Hawke!”

He couldn’t imagine how the British ambassador had pulled that one off, but he was delighted. The fanfare still ringing in his ears, he put his hands in his trouser pockets and descended the wide steps in a somewhat jaunty fashion, affecting—unsuccessfully, he imagined—a kind of Fred Astaire nonchalance. He wished he could see Anastasia’s face at this moment, as this little performance was meant for her. And her father, of course. He’d have paid a pretty penny to see that face right now.

The Nobel Committee chairman was at the podium, standing next to the old fellow introducing this year’s winners in Physiology or Medicine. As he spoke, the honorees were making their way from their seats at the royal table back up to the lectern for a short acceptance speech. Along with his invitation, there’d been a copy of the evening’s program in his hotel room, and Alex had carefully studied the order of presentation he’d taped to the bathroom mirror while he dressed. After Medicine, he knew, came Physics, the Tsar’s prize.

Showtime.

Instead of proceeding to one of the many hundreds of round guest tables on either side of the lengthy royal one, Hawke remained discreetly on the podium, standing politely to one side with a group of officials as the four winners for Medicine made their brief remarks.

The Nobel chairman thanked the winners as they left the stage and then said, “And now, your royal majesties, the prize for Physics. I’d like to welcome Sir George Roderick Llewellyn of the British Royal Academy to the podium to present this year’s winner.”

Hawke walked toward the elderly chairman, who glanced once, then twice, over his shoulder, covering the microphone with his hand so he couldn’t be heard by the huge audience.

“You’re not Sir George,” he whispered as Hawke drew near.

“Sorry, no, I’m not at all, am I? Poor old fellow took ill, I’m afraid to say. I’m his replacement. Alex Hawke, British Embassy. How do you do?”

The lovely old gent, a bit flustered, shook his hand and walked away from the lectern, muttering something angrily in Swedish. He clearly wasn’t accustomed to last-minute changes in schedules on this night of nights.

Hawke adjusted the microphone upward to suit his height and looked out over the enormous crowd.

“Before I begin, I’d like to say hello to a few familiar faces I see in the audience this evening. These wonderful and brave people are all survivors of the horrendous hostage crisis aboard the airship
Pushkin.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. I’m glad you’re all here tonight! Would you stand, please, so that we can acknowledge your presence?”

The crowd erupted into cheers and applause as the rescued laureates and their families got to their feet, many of them with smiles of gratitude for the handsome Englishman who stood at the podium.

“The Nobel Prize for Physics,” Hawke said in a loud, clear voice, “is presented this year for outstanding achievement in the field of black matter. Black holes, things in the universe so dense that no radiation, no light, can escape. You can’t see it, but you know it’s there. Your royal majesties, ladies and gentlemen, the man we all honor here tonight is no stranger to dark matter. As he makes his way up here to the podium, let me tell you a little bit about this murderous and truly evil human being.”

The room went dead silent save the sharp intake of a thousand breaths at once. There was suddenly a good deal of murmuring and hand wringing on the podium. This new speaker was clearly deviating from the well-rehearsed script they all held in their hands. There was no mention of “murder” or “evil” in their copies.

“In addition to his brilliant scientific achievements, Russia’s new Tsar builds prisons. Like the one called Energetika, built, ingeniously, on top of a radioactive nuclear-waste site on a small island off St. Petersburg. Here the Tsar has restored the ancient practice of impalement. For those of you unfamiliar with this medieval torture, the victim is stripped naked and placed on a sharpened stake. The tip of the stake is inserted into the rectum and gradually pierces the body’s internal organs until—”

Someone, a woman at the royal table, Hawke thought, screamed loudly. She was thrown bodily from her chair as the new Tsar of Russia tried to force his way through the crowd to the stage. A spotlight was immediately swung his way, and Hawke could see the demonic rage in his eyes all the way from his perch on the podium.

“Sorry for the commotion,” Hawke continued. “As I was saying, the wooden stake perforates the perineum or the rectum itself and takes perhaps a week to kill the victim as it travels upward through the body and—”