Tsar

  Tsar

  Ted Bell

  Swashbuckling counter Spy Alex Hawke returns in New York Times bestselling author Ted Bell's most explosive tale of international suspense to date.

  There dwells, somewhere in Russia, a man so powerful no one even knows his name. His existence is only speculated upon, only whispered about in American corridors of power and CIA strategy meetings. Though he is all but invisible, he is pulling strings – and pulling them hard. For suddenly, Russia is a far, far more ominous threat than even the most hardened cold warriors ever thought possible.

  The Russians have their finger on the switch to the European economy and an eye on the American jugular. And, most importantly, they want to be made whole again. Should America interfere with Russia's plans to "reintegrate" her rogue states, well then, America will pay in blood.

  In Ted Bell's latest pulse-pounding and action-packed tour de force, Alex Hawke must face a global nightmare of epic proportions. As this political crisis plays out, Russia gains a new leader. Not just a president, but a new tsar, a signal to the world that the old, imperial Russia is back and plans to have her day. And in America, a mysterious killer, known only as Happy the Baker, brutally murders an innocent family and literally flattens the small Midwestern town they once called home. Just a taste, according to the new tsar, of what will happen if America does not back down. Onto this stage must step Alex Hawke, espionage agent extraordinaire and the only man, both Americans and the Brits agree, who can stop the absolute madness borne and bred inside the modern police state of Vladimir Putin's 'New Russia'.

  Ted Bell

  Tsar

  The fifth book in the Alexander Hawke series, 2008

  For Page Lee Hufty,

  with undying love and eternal gratitude

  “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

  – Winston Churchill, 1939

  PROLOGUE

  OCTOBER 1962

  The end of the world was in plain sight. Missiles sprouted in the cane fields of Cuba, American and Soviet battleships squared off in the South Atlantic. America’s young president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, had had himself one hell of a week.

  The Kremlin’s angry salvos continued night and day, as events spun rapidly out of control. Bellicose communiqués volleyed and thundered between Moscow and Washington; frayed nerves snapped and sizzled like live wires at either end. Diplomacy was long past the tipping point, and the old, tried-and-true Cold War rules of engagement no longer applied.

  There were no rules, none at all, not now. Not since Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev had started declaring “We will bury you!” to Western ambassadors and banging his shoe on the table at the UN. And certainly not since Castro’s imported Russian ICBMs had been discovered ninety miles from Miami.

  The once rock-solid fortress of Camelot, the cherished, peaceful realm of the handsome young king and his beautiful queen, Jacqueline, had begun to crumble and crack. And through that ever-widening fissure, Jack Kennedy knew, lay a doorway straight to hell.

  Between them, the two major combatants had more than fifteen thousand nuclear warheads aimed at each other’s throat. On the borders of Western Europe stood ninety Soviet divisions, ready to roll. America’s Army, Navy, and Strategic Air Command bomber squadrons had gone, for the first time in history, to DEFCON 2, a heartbeat away from all-out war. And that’s where things had stood all week.

  Two helpless giants, afraid to breathe.

  Until now.

  On this rainy, late October afternoon in 1962, Jack Kennedy was well aware that global nuclear annihilation was no longer the stuff of nightmares; it was right around the corner.

  It was closer than Christmas.

  At the nightmare’s vortex stood the embattled White House. Everyone who worked at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was struggling to function for one more hour, one more day, in an atmosphere of impending doom. On people’s desks, the faces of cherished children, pets, and loved ones, many framed in crayon-colored Popsicle sticks, never let them forget for an instant what they might, at any moment, lose forever.

  The U.S. response time to a Cuba-based incoming Soviet missile attack was only thirty-five minutes. That gave a few lucky White House staffers and high-ranking generals seven minutes to scramble into helicopters bound for the “Rock,” a top-secret underground bunker carved inside a Maryland mountain.

  Those remaining behind would just have to grab their pictures, shut their eyes, and dive under their desks, like the schoolkids in those pitiful Civil Defense ads on TV. The Desk against the Bomb. It was a sick joke.

  Jack Kennedy ducked into a darkened West Wing alcove and popped two Percodans. His Addison’s was acting up, his nerves were shot, and his back was killing him. But his brother Bobby was waiting for him in his last remaining sanctuary, the Oval Office, and he headed for the stairs.

  Kennedy had just emerged from the Situation Room after yet another superheated briefing with his Joint Chiefs. The hawkish Pentagon brass wanted immediate preemptive nuclear strikes, deep within the heart of Russia. Kennedy wouldn’t budge. His Cuban naval blockade, he insisted, was America’s best hope of calling Khrushchev’s bluff and averting all-out war.

  Behind the closed doors of the Oval Office, Jack Kennedy paced before the crackling fire, his public face gone, his private one a rictus of worry and pain.

  “You heard about this goddamn Redstick business, Jack?” Bobby Kennedy asked his older brother.

  “Hell, it’s all they want to talk about down there. Now that they’ve finally got the stick to beat me with, they are hell-bent on using it.”

  “Tell me, Jack.”

  “At the Russian convoy’s current speed, the Pentagon calculates Soviet ships will arrive at our outer defensive perimeter in less than seventy-two hours. But based on all this new information we’ve been getting from British Naval Intelligence, the scales may have tipped dangerously in favor of Russia’s submarine hunter-killers.”

  “Why?”

  “The Russkies have some new kind of undersea acoustic technology called SOFAR, an advanced sonar buoy code-named Redstick. Apparently, they can pick up our sub’s screw signatures from a thousand miles away. Jesus, Bobby, if it’s true, it means our blockade is full of holes. Worthless, just like the Chiefs have been telling me for days.”

  Bobby, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his shoulders slumping with fatigue and anxiety, stood staring through the window at the sodden Rose Garden. He wasn’t sure how much more bad news his brother could take. He put a smile on his face and turned toward Jack.

  “Look. The Brits are on it. All we can do at the moment is being done.”

  “Any word from them? Christ, we’ve been waiting to hear something from that sub of theirs since dawn. Timely information from these people is as rare as rocking-horse shit.”

  “Naval Intelligence London called Defense ten minutes ago. Their sub Dreadnought is steaming at flank speed, en route to pick up one of their top field agents in Scotland. A man named Hawke. Sub’s ETA at Scarp Island in the Hebrides is oh-six-hundred GMT. Hawke will be inserted inside the Soviets’ Arctic Redstick base six hours later. If their man gets in and out alive, we’ll know something definitive about Redstick’s range parameters, acoustic sensitivity, communication capabilities, and-”

  “Fuck the acoustic sensitivity! I want to know how many of these damn things they’ve got and where the hell they’re located! If they’re anywhere near our theater of operations, I want to know how fast we can take them out.”

  “The Brits say we’ll have that intelligence in twelve hours.”

  “Twelve? Bobby, goddamn it, I need this information now. If they’ve deployed these fucking Redsticks in the South Atlantic, it affects every single defensive
operation Admiral Dennison’s submarine forces are conducting down there.”

  “Apparently, Hawke is the best they’ve got, Jack. If anything can be done, he can do it.”

  “Well, I hope to God they’re right,” Jack said, collapsing into his favorite wooden rocker, the one with the cane seat and yellow canvas covering the wooden back.

  He rocked as he stared into the fire, desperately trying to come to grips with the fact that he was suddenly entrusting the fate of the whole damn world to some goddamn Englishman he’d never even heard of.

  “Hawke?” Jack Kennedy said, rubbing his reddened eyes and staring up at Bobby.

  “Who the living hell is Hawke?”

  HE HAD A rifle slung on his back and a single bullet burning a hole in his pocket.

  His name was Hawke.

  He was a hard-hearted warrior in a Cold War suddenly gone piping hot. Killing time before a mission pickup, he was stalking a giant red stag across the rain-swept moors of Scarp Island. The Monarch of Shalloch had eluded him for years. But Hawke’s trigger finger was itching so severely he thought this might be the day man and beast would have their final reckoning.

  Marching along the seaside cliff, head high, Hawke himself was like a stag in a state of high alert. The year was 1962, and he was twenty-seven years old, already an old man in Naval Intelligence. After many long months patrolling these very waters aboard a Royal Navy destroyer, searching for Russian submarines, he’d personally felt the menace and reach of Soviet power. He was always aching to strike back, and it looked as if he might finally have a sporting chance to spill some bright red Russian blood.

  He’d arrived on the godforsaken island of Scarp two days ahead of his scheduled submarine pickup, travel arrangements courtesy of the Royal Navy. His mission, Operation Redstick, was so highly classified he wouldn’t be briefed until he was aboard Dreadnought and headed north of the Arctic Circle. There, on a Norwegian island called Svalbard, was some kind of secret Russian listening post. That’s all he knew.

  He could guess the rest. It would be his job, he imagined, to find out what the hell the post was all about and then destroy it. Getting out alive would not be mentioned in his brief. But that would be the tricky bit, all right, always was.

  Sod it all. He wasn’t dead yet, and he still had a few hours left until his pickup. The Monarch, a great red stag, was out there somewhere on the moors or the cliff below. The single bullet in Hawke’s pocket had its name engraved on it. He began a careful descent of the cliff face. It was bitterly cold. A fog was rolling in from the sea. Visibility: not good.

  Suddenly, amid the cries of gulls and terns, an odd sound made him look up. Bloody hell, it sounded like the crack of a high-powered rifle!

  Another stalker tracking the Monarch of Shalloch? Impossible. This miserable island was inhabited only by sheep, crofters, and farmers. They would hardly be out stalking on a god-awful day like-

  Christ! The bastard fired again. And this time, there was no mistaking his target. Hawke ducked behind a rocky outcropping and waited, forcing his heart rate to slow to normal. Another round whistled just above his head. And another.

  He caught a glint of sunlight up above, probably reflected off the shooter’s binoculars. The man was climbing. Hawke’s own position was dangerously exposed. He looked around frantically for cover. Should the man climb even a few feet higher, he’d be completely unprotected. That thicket of trees on the ledge below now looked very good.

  Hawke bolted from the now worthless protection of rock and leaped into space. He landed on the ledge on his feet, went into a tuck, and rolled inside the trees. A hundred feet below, the cold and fogbound sea crashed against ageless rocks.

  Five more shots rang out, rounds ripping into the thicket of birch above his head, shredding leaves and branches, debris raining down. Firing blindly now, the shooter knew he was the one exposed for the moment.

  Hawke removed the single red-tipped cartridge from his pocket, inserted it into the breech, and shot the bolt.

  He took a deep breath and held it, slowing his mind and body down. He was a trained sniper. He knew how to do this. He knew the distance to the target, about 190 yards, the angle of incidence, approximately 37 degrees, humidity 100 percent, wind three to six miles per hour from his left at 45 degrees. One bullet, one shot. You got the kill, or you did not.

  Stags, of course, could not shoot back if you missed.

  Hawke tucked the stock deep into his shoulder and welded his cheek to it. He put his eye to the scope and set his aim, bisecting the target’s form with the crosshairs. His finger closed, adding precisely a pound and a half’s worth of pressure to the trigger, not an ounce more. Keep it light…deep breath now…release it halfway…wait for it.

  The crosshairs bisected the target’s face. That’s precisely where he aimed to shoot him. Right in the face. Into his eyes. Shoot him in a part of the skull that would cause irrevocable, instantaneous death.

  He fired.

  The round cooked off; his single bullet found its mark.

  HIS STALKER LAY facedown, a pool of dark blood forming under what remained of his head. He was dressed for the hunt, in a well-used oiled coat and twills. Hawke looked at his boots and saw they were identical to his own, custom-made at Lobb’s of St. James. An Englishman? He fished inside the dead chap’s trouser pockets. A few quid, an American Zippo lighter, a book of matches from the Savoy Grill with a London phone number scrawled inside in a feminine hand.

  Inside the old Barbour jacket pockets was nothing but ammunition and a tourist map of the Outer Hebrides, recently purchased. He pulled off the boots and used his hunting knife to pry off the heels. Inside the left boot heel, a hollowed out space had been created professionally.

  After opening the small oilskin packet stuffed inside, Hawke found a thin leather billfold bearing the familiar sword-and-shield pin of the KGB. He knew its meaning well enough: the shield to defend the glorious Revolution, the sword to smite its foes. Inside the wallet were papers in Cyrillic, clearly issued by the Committee for State Security, popularly known as the KGB.

  Also inside the wallet, a not unflattering photograph of Hawke himself taken recently at an outdoor café in Paris. The woman at the table with him was a pretty American actress from Louisiana. His beloved Kitty. Moments after this picture had been taken, he’d asked her to marry him.

  Was this just an isolated assassination attempt, based on his past sins? Or had the KGB penetrated Operation Redstick? If the latter, the mission was clearly compromised. The Russians on that frozen Arctic island would be waiting for him. Losing the cherished element of surprise always made things a bit spicier.

  He stood there, looking at the dead Russian, an idea forming in his head. Whitehall could immediately put out a coded signal, on a channel the Russians regularly monitored.

  “SSN HMS Dreadnought arrived on station 0600 for pickup,” the false signal would read. “Two corpses found at site: British field agent and KGB assassin both apparently killed during struggle. Mission compromised, operation aborted per Naval Command Whitehall.”

  Worth a shot, at any rate.

  There was a collapsible spade inside the stalking pack on his back. Hawke slipped out of the canvas shoulder straps, removed the shovel from the pack, and, his spirits lightened considerably, found himself whistling his favorite tune, “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” as he plunged his spade again and again into the icy ground.

  Sometimes a man just had to bury his past and bloody well get on with it.

  PART ONE. BLUE DAYS

  1

  BERMUDA, PRESENT DAY

  War and peace. In Alexander Hawke’s experience, life usually boiled down to one or the other. Like his namesake late father, a hero much decorated for his daring Cold War exploits against the Soviets, Hawke greatly favored peace but was notoriously adept at war. Whenever and wherever in the world his rather exotic skill set was required, Alex Hawke gladly sallied forth. Cloak donned, dagger to hand, he would j
ubilantly enter and reenter the eternal fray.

  He was thirty-three years old. A good age, by his accounts, not too young and not too old. A fine balance of youth and experience, if one could be so bold.

  Alex Hawke, let it first be said, was a creature of radiant violence. Attack came naturally to him; the man was all fire. Shortly after his squalling birth, his very English father had declared to Kitty, his equally American mother, “He seems to me a boy born with a heart ready for any fate. I only wonder what ballast will balance all that bloody sail.”

  He was normally a cool, rather detached character, but Alex Hawke’s simmering blood could roil to a rapid boil at very short notice. Oddly enough, his true nature was not readily apparent to the casual observer. Someone who chanced to meet him, say, on an evening’s stroll through Berkeley Square would find him an amiable, even jolly chap. He might even be whistling a chirrupy tune about nightingales or some such. There was an easy grace about the man, a cheery nonchalance, a faint look of amusement uncorrupted by self-satisfaction about the eyes.

  But it was Hawke’s “What the hell” grin, a look so freighted with charm that no woman, and even few men, could resist, that made him who he was.

  Hawke was noticeable. A big man with a heroic head, he stood well north of six feet and worked hard at a strict exercise regimen to keep himself extremely fit. His face was finely modeled, its character deeply etched by the myriad wonders and doubts of his inner experience.

  His glacial blue eyes were brilliant, and the play of his expression had a flashing range, from the merriment and charm with which he charged his daily conversation to a profound earnestness. His demeanor quickly could assume a tragic and powerful look, which could make even a trivial topic suddenly assume new and enlightening importance.