Tsar (9 page)

“Just us three,” Hawke said. “What a treat.”

Ambrose and Diana looked at each other.

Diana said, “Well, yes, Alex, it was just the three of us until about an hour ago. We’ve a surprise guest for dinner. Ambrose hasn’t told you?” She looked at her man again, and Congreve frowned.

“Sorry, dearest, hadn’t got round to it yet,” Ambrose said, expelling a fragrant cloud of Peterson’s Irish Blend.

“Coward,” Diana said to her beloved, taking Ambrose’s hand and squeezing it.

“Well, who is this mystery guest?” Hawke asked, looking at the two of them, who were looking at each other. “Don’t tell me the monarch heard I was coming and arrived unexpectedly on your doorstep.”

“No, no, not Her Majesty the Queen, I’m sorry to say. But someone equally formidable. Tell him, dear, don’t keep the poor boy hanging.”

Ambrose looked at Hawke like a brain surgeon steeling himself to deliver a less than ideal diagnosis.

“Sir David Trulove rang me up earlier today, Alex. He just arrived in Bermuda late last evening. I offered to put him up, but he’s staying with some dear old friends who live here on the island, Dick and Jeanne Pearman. They’ve a lovely place over in Paget called Callithea. They’ve put Sir David in their guest house, Bellini.”

“C is here? On Bermuda? Why?”

C was the chief of MI-6, the British Intelligence Service. As far as Hawke knew, his idea of an extended vacation was a leisurely stroll to the corner concessionaire for a pack of his favorite smokes, Morland’s, a blend of Turkish and Balkan tobaccos with three gold bands on the filter.

“Well, good question. He’s been out inspecting the Royal Navy Dockyards all day. Lord knows why. Nothing but curio shops and a few restaurants out there now. At any rate, he called here rather early this morning looking for you. Sounded as if you yourself might be in a spot of
eau chaud
with the old boy.”

“Eau chaud?”

“Sorry. Hot water.”

“Just because one
can
speak French doesn’t mean one should.”

Congreve sighed and gave Hawke a narrow look.

“At any rate, he feels you dropped off his radar without much warning. I told him of our dinner plans with you tonight, and it would have been rude not to include him.”

Hawke was astounded. “What on earth would he be doing in Bermuda, Ambrose? C, of all people. He doesn’t take holidays, as far as I know. He barely takes food and water.”

“You’ll have to ask him, I’m afraid,” Ambrose said, getting his pipe going again.

“Oh, come on, Constable. Spill it. You must have some inkling. What does your gut tell you?”

“My gut? I wouldn’t trust my subconscious if it were only just around the corner.”

Hawke had known Ambrose Congreve for far too long not to suspect he was holding something back. He could feel the beginnings of tension surging into his neck and shoulders, and the feeling was not altogether unpleasant. Of course, he could be leaping to conclusions. C, the chief of British Intelligence, might well take a few days’ island time. He worked like a dog, round the clock, but the head of MI-6 was certainly entitled to some vacation now and then.

But he would not be calling around looking for Alex Hawke if something spicy wasn’t up. Would he?

Diana squeezed Alex’s hand and moved away. Hawke watched her floating across the moonlit terrace toward the house and thought she’d never looked lovelier. Congreve was a lucky man.

“Dinner will be served in one hour. I’m off for the kitchen,” Diana said, smiling back at the two men, “Sir David’s just arrived, Alex. I put him in the library. He said he had to make a few urgent calls, but he wanted a word with you before dinner. I have a feeling you’re in for quite a session.”

“So much for peace,” Hawke said to Ambrose after Diana had left them alone. “That’s what I bloody came here for, isn’t it? A little peace?”

“Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum!”

“I’m sorry. What did you say, Constable?”

“‘Let he who desires peace prepare for war.’ Flavius Vegetius Renatus. Roman military strategist, fourth century.”

“Ah. I thought that might have been Flavius. Sounds like something the old bugger might say.”

Congreve was not amused.

“Vastly overrated, peace, I daresay,” Ambrose said, looking at his friend with narrowed eyes.

“Well, that’s a fairly bellicose comment, coming from one who fancies nothing so much as burrowing about in his garden amongst his bloody dahlias.”

“I have hidden depths, Alex. Even from you.”

Hawke took a long swig of his rum. “Ah, well, no matter. Easy come, easy go.”

“Another Dark and Stormy?”

Alex shook his head. “You know what this is all about, don’t you, Ambrose? Why C is here on the island?”

“Hmm,” Congreve said, and he meant it.

“Spill it.”

“Russians.”

“Russians?”

“Remember the hungry Russian bear, Alex? Remember the Cold War?”

“Vaguely. That was my father’s war, not mine.”

“Well, it’s back with a vengeance. Only this time around, it’s not cold. It’s hot as hell.”

T
he skipper of the
Kishin Maru,
a giant commercial fishing trawler sailing out of Shiogama, Japan, had been on the bridge for the duration of the sudden and appalling storm. The blow had appeared out of the clear blue, with nothing on radar or weather sat to indicate its approach or severity. Only a sharp drop of the mercury minutes before the storm hit had alerted the crew to what was in store for them.

The waves were mountainous, now thirty feet or more and building. Winds, now out of the northeast, were clocking at more than fifty knots. And the barometer was at 29.5 and still dropping.

The skipper’s trawler, normally in use as a pirate longliner, was now seining in the Gulf of Alaska for Alaskan pollock. Noboru knew he was inside the two hundred mile limit imposed by the Americans because of overexploitation, but at the moment that was the least of his problems. The sudden blow had caught him unawares and he was scrambling to secure his vessel.

Captain Noboru Sakashita’s trawler, owned by the giant Japanese fishing conglomerate Nippon Suisan, was accustomed to navigating dangerous waters. Indeed, it was company policy to push the edge of the envelope, as the Americans said.

Noboru’s company was run by a madman named Typhoon Tommy Kurasawa, a man who liked to live, and work, dangerously. He had one rule for his commercial skippers: Do whatever it takes to fill your holds. The ships in his fleet were all “pirates.” They carried no markings, to ensure that they could fish without restriction. These fishing pirates all flew “flags of convenience” to hide their owners’ identities. FOCs were sold by many countries with no questions asked.

Typhoon Tommy hated the Americans. But he loathed the Russians more. Russians shot first and asked questions later.

Just six months earlier, Noboru’s FOC trawler had been fired on by a Russian Border Coast Guard patrol vessel. The Japanese captain, under corporate orders, had been fishing the banks off Kaigarajima Island, part of the disputed Russian-controlled northern territories. It was there, in a place called the Kuril Islands, that the shooting took place.

When Noboru, under orders, had sailed outside the authorized area, the Russians had immediately fired flares in an attempt to get him to stop. He slowed his vessel, radioing Nippon headquarters for further instructions. Meanwhile, the Russians had launched dinghies loaded with armed men in an attempt to board him. That’s when he’d further ignored their orders and tried to escape. The border patrolmen in the small boats had opened up with machine-gun fire.

Three of Noboru’s crewmen had been killed instantly. Three others who had been wounded had fallen into the water and were taken captive aboard the Russian patrol boat. Later, the Russians claimed the illegal Japanese trawler had rammed their patrol boat and refused to stop despite repeated orders to do so. The Russian ambassador to Japan had taken this case to Tokyo, and there had been a very public trial. Protesters from Greenpeace had hounded the captain mercilessly every day outside the courthouse.

Noboru was lucky just to avoid the loss of his commercial license and even jail.

“Sir!” the radioman shouted above the noise of the wind. “We have an emergency distress beacon. Repeating SOS signal. Very close by, sir.”

Noboru stepped away from the helm and held out his hand for his binoculars.

“How close is the EPIRB?”

“Half a mile off our starboard bow, sir. You may be able to see him shortly.”

The captain stood at the rain-streaked windows and scanned the horizon as much as the shifting waves allowed. The emergency position-indicating radio beacon used a five-watt radio transmitter and GPS to indicate the precise location of a mariner in distress. It was odd, Noboru thought, that he’d heard no radio messages of a vessel in distress prior to the EPIRB broadcast. Whatever boat this raft had come from, she’d gone down in an awful hurry.

A minute later, he saw the life raft sliding down the face of a huge wave. It looked like a small red mushroom bobbing on the storm-tossed sea. By its size, he judged it to be an emergency offshore raft, two-man. Self-righting, with the bright red canopy top providing high visibility and protection from hypothermia. Probably from a small yacht and not a commercial vessel. That might account for the lack of a radio distress call prior to abandoning ship.

Yachtsmen tended to panic in an emergency.

“All back one-third,” the captain said.

The big trawler, already under just enough power to give her steerage in the huge waves, slowed even further as the crew made preparations to take the raft aboard.

T
HE TWO
R
USSIANS
sealed inside the enclosed circular life raft were ready to rip each other’s throat out. If they hadn’t both been so violently seasick, it’s possible they might have succeeded. The waves were tossing them around inside like a pair of dice in a cup. It was impossible to remain in any one place for more than a split second.

The stench of commingled vomit was contributing mightily to their extreme irritation with each other. Because of the sloshing puke, it was even harder to keep from sliding around inside, slamming into each other every time the raft crested a wave and started screaming down the other side.

“What is this fucking storm?” Paddy Strelnikov shouted at his companion. “I didn’t volunteer for any fucking typhoon duty!”

“Look, you think I did?” Leonid Kapitsa said. He was ex-merchant marine, a burly Russian émigré, maybe forty. He was probably KGB, secret police, just off the fucking boat, as far as Paddy was concerned. All muscle, no brain. Just the kind of guy you want with you when your life is coming to a speedy conclusion. The guy’s English was pathetic, so they were screaming at each other in Russian. In the old KGB days, field agents were trained in languages. Not anymore, obviously.

“It was flat calm when they launched us. Why didn’t they tell us it was going to get this rough?” Paddy shouted hoarsely.

“The storm came up fast. I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t know about it, either.”

“My ass. These big yachts have weather radar and shit. They know what’s going on. They knew we would—”

“They said we’d be floating out here for no more than an hour before the beacon got us picked up. It’s been three hours now. And they didn’t say anything about Hurricane Katrina showing up.”

“You were supposed to turn on that EPIRB thing as soon as the yacht was out of sight.”

“Yeah, well, I was too busy puking my guts out to remember.”

“Look, you’re the merchant marine guy. You’re not supposed to get sick. You’re supposed to know what you’re doing out here. That’s the only reason I agreed to have you along.”

“Wait—I hear something. You hear that?”

Paddy did. Japanese voices, shouting somewhere above them, muffled but very close. The wind was still howling, but suddenly the raft wasn’t bucking and yawing around so much anymore. It felt as if they were being lifted straight up out of the sea. Yeah, he could hear the gears grinding on a winch somewhere.

“Finally,” Paddy said. He tried to wipe his face clean but only smeared stuff in his eyes and made it worse.

“I’m going to be sick again,” Kapitsa said, and suddenly was.

“Ah, fuck,” Paddy said, trying to steer clear of the latest volley of projectile vomit to head his way.

I
T WAS WARM
and dry in the captain’s cabin just aft of the bridge. Paddy and Kapitsa sat on the only two chairs, wrapped in wool blankets and drinking steaming-hot green tea. At Paddy’s feet was a waterproof sea bag he’d had in the raft, a yellow duffel that contained some equipment and his personal items. Kapitsa had a bag, too, slightly larger.

Now that he’d had a hot shower, Paddy’s teeth had stopped chattering, and he felt halfway human again. The Japanese sailors had given them crew clothes, denims and T-shirts and wool sweaters that almost fit. The Japanese captain, who spoke pretty good English, sat at his desk. He had some papers he was filling out and was asking a lot of questions. Since it would never matter what he said, Paddy was having fun with the guy, making stuff up, whatever popped into his brain.

“You are Russian?” the captain asked.

“He is,” Paddy said, indicating Kapitsa and sipping his hot tea. “I’m a Russian-American. Third generation.”

“Your name?”

“First name? Beef. B like in boy, e-e-f,” Paddy said, carefully enunciating each letter, dead serious.

“What city you from in America, Mr. Beef?” the guy said, writing that down and then holding his pencil ready.

“Me? Orlando,” Paddy said, saying the first town that popped into his head. “You know, Mickey Mouse? Goofy?”

The captain smiled and nodded, getting it all on paper.

“You know why Mickey got so pissed at Minnie, right?”

“Mickey pissed at Minnie? the captain said, writing it down.

“Yeah. He said she was fuckin’ goofy.”

“Ah, yes,” the skipper said, looking now at Leo. “And what about him?”

“Him? Forget about him. He’s from frickin’ Siberia. Just put Siberia, that’ll be good enough. Every Russian postman knows where it is.”

“Last names?”

“Stalin and Lenin.”

“You joking?”

“No, no. Those are two very common names in Russia.”

“What happened to your boat? We did not hear a distress call.”

“Yeah, well, it happened pretty fast.”

“You were only two aboard?”

“Nah. There were some other guys. They didn’t get off in time. Tragic.”

“So. No other survivors?”

“Nope. Just us.”

“What was name of your vessel?”

“Lady Marmalade.”

“How you spell that?” He was actually writing all this shit down. Guy didn’t have a fricking clue.

“L-A-D-Y M-A-R-M-A-L-A-D-E.”

“How big?”

“Maybe a hundred feet. Maybe two hundred. Hard to say. I’m not into boats. And Orlando’s not a real yachty town, you know what I’m saying, Captain? Middle of the state, only a couple of dipshit lakes in the orange groves.”

“What happened to yacht? Fire? Explosion?”

“Beats the shit out of me. I think we just got knocked over by a big-ass wave. She rolled upside down and didn’t come back up for air.”

“You very lucky to get off.”

“You think so? You weren’t inside that frickin’ life raft, Cap.”

“Okay. You get some sleep now, Mr. Beef. I will radio news of your rescue to my company.”

“That won’t be necessary, Cap,” Paddy said, pulling the little snub-nose out from under his blanket. “We don’t want to be rescued quite yet.”

“What you—what you want?” the captain said, his eyes suddenly gone saucer wide.

At Paddy’s nod, Leo Kapitsa got out of his chair and went over to lock the captain’s cabin door. Then he went around behind the captain, standing behind his chair. He placed both hands on the captain’s head, cupping his temples. Then he began to apply pressure, gentle at first, the increasing it in tiny increments, just enough to make the pain excruciatingly unbearable.

“What do we want?” Paddy said. “We want to take care of business and go home, that’s what we want. But first we want you to get on the horn and order a lifeboat lowered.”

“Lifeboat?”

“Here’s the deal, Skipper. Your boss Tommy Kurasawa fucked with the wrong Russians back there in the Kuril Islands. Could you stand up for me a second? Help him up, Leo. Gently, gently.”

Kapitsa lifted the captain straight up out of his chair by the head. The guy looked as if he was going to have kittens.

“We brought you a little something,” Paddy said. “Take a look.”

Paddy had unzipped the sea bag and taken out a large metal disc about four inches thick and twelve inches across. It was a dull grey color and had a digital display panel blinking red on one side. Paddy stood up, took the disc over, and placed it on the seat of the captain’s chair. Thing was heavier than it looked. Must have weighed twenty-five pounds, including five pounds of the explosive sky-blue putty known to terror cognoscenti as Hexagon.

“Sit him back down,” Paddy said, and Leo let go of the guy’s head, letting him drop two feet onto the top of the disc. Paddy pointed the gun at the captain’s nose and spoke softly.

“Pick up that phone to the bridge and order the lifeboat ready, Cap. We’re going to be running along now.”

“You leave ship on lifeboat?”

“Exactly,” Paddy said, reaching between the captain’s trembling legs to key a code into the disc’s arming mechanism. “Here’s the thing. This object you’re now sitting on? Now that I’ve enabled the system, it’s extremely pressure-sensitive. That’s why Mr. Lenin has his hand on top of your head. You lift your ass up even a fraction of an inch off the pressure plate? Boom. There’s enough explosive packed inside that thing to break this boat in half. So you want to be very, very careful, okay?”

“Bomb?”

“Bomb, exactly. It’s set to go off at some point in the very near future. But it’ll go off sooner if you raise your ass. Got that? Okay. Pick up the phone. Call the bridge and tell them about preparing the lifeboat. Mr. Lenin-san here is an expert seaman, so you don’t have to worry about us getting away safely, okay?”