Warlord: An Alex Hawke Novel Page 4

  “Brilliant shot,” Congreve said, honestly. He knew nothing about billiards, of course, but he recognized finesse when he saw it.

  “Courtesy of a misspent youth,” Hawke said, smiling up at him. “All your fault. You and Pelham needed a tighter leash. Grab a stick and join me for a game of 8-Ball.”

  “Shoot pool? Me? Do I really look like some kind of barbarian?” Congreve said gruffly. He loathed all sports and athletic activity save one. Golf. Golf, he worshipped and adored, thy staff and thy mashie they comfort me.

  Hawke put his stick back in the rack and walked the length of the room toward his friend.

  “Hullo, Constable,” he said, using the one term of address he knew the former god of all Scotland Yard found most irritating.

  “My God, it’s true,” Ambrose said, taking his friend’s measure from head to toe. “You are back.”

  “I do seem to be in residence, don’t I?” Hawke said, extending his hand.

  Congreve ignored it and embraced his friend, pounding him on the back out of sheer joy. It was as if Alex Hawke was indeed, as Pelham so aptly put it, “risen.” Back from the dead, and though not literally true, it had been a damned close thing indeed.

  The world had almost lost him, and there were damn few like him left.

  Congreve said, “What on earth happened to you after Diana and I left Bermuda, Alex? We feared we might not ever see you again, frankly. I’ve never seen such an extraordinary transformation in my entire life!”

  “A wake-up call. Literally.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I received a wake-up call in the middle of the night. And I chose to answer it instead of ignoring it, as I would have done most nights. Come along, now, we’ll talk about it at breakfast. Pelham’s got a small buffet waiting in the Conservatory. Nice and sunny down there, unlike this gloomy den of iniquity.”

  “Lead on, I am famished. Driving at speed makes a chap ravenous.”

  “Don’t tell me the infamous Yellow Peril is still running.”

  “Still running? Like a top! I may enter it in the Goodwood Classic Revival race this year. Show Sir Stirling Moss and the lads a thing or two.”

  The breakfast room was a former conservatory with a domed glass and delicately laced iron ceiling soaring overhead. Potted tropical palms ten feet high stood around the perimeter. Beneath the sparkling glass, Ambrose Congreve and his reborn friend tucked into a hearty breakfast.

  The chief inspector’s eggs Benedict looked positively voluptuous. Hawke’s thin layer of Tiptree’s raspberry preserves on a single slice of whole grain bread looked Spartan in the extreme. Both had steaming hot tea, but Hawke’s was herbal.

  “You’re serious about this new regime, aren’t you?” Congreve asked, wiping his mouth with his napkin.

  Hawke sipped his tea quietly, his eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance. He was present, but he was clearly absorbed with something else.

  “Deadly serious.”

  “Then tell me about this life-changing ‘wake-up’ call before I go mad. I’m a copper. I can’t stand unsolved mysteries.”

  “Oh, it was a wake-up call, all right,” Hawke said, his blue eyes crinkling in the brilliant sunshine of the octagonal room. “Both literally and metaphorically.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning the call actually woke me up in the middle of the night. And it forced me to come to my senses. Such as they are, of course.”

  “May I ask who was on the other end of the line?”

  “You may.”

  Congreve frowned at this typical childishness. “All right, once more with feeling. Who was on—”

  “His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales.”

  “HRH himself?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He called to invite me, and anyone else I cared to bring along, out to his country home at Highgrove for a long weekend. Your oversized brain obviously helped you make the cut.”

  “So. Not the usual fishing, shooting, and hunting weekend, one assumes?”

  “Hardly.”

  Congreve leaned back in his chair, thinking. It didn’t take long to arrive at his conclusion.

  “There’s been some credible threat to the Royal Family,” Ambrose said. “Correct?”

  “Hmm. Quite impressive. You should have been a detective.”

  “Anyone else going to be there?”

  “We shall see, but I would imagine so.”

  “When do we leave for Highgrove?”

  “Now would be as good a time as any.”

  “Alex?”

  “Yes?”

  “Listen carefully, Alex, because I mean every word I’m about to say. I am deeply glad to have you back. Even if it took something like some, some awful threat against the Royal Family to do it.”

  “Thank you. Had it been anyone else but Charles, I’m not sure I could have managed to pull myself back from the—”

  “But it was Charles, wasn’t it? And he called you because he’s known you all your life. And he trusts you and you alone. No one else in this country is capable of the kinds of things you do. No one. He knows that.”

  “Please. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Alex?”

  “What?”

  “It’s been a long time. To be perfectly honest, I’ve missed you terribly, dear boy. I think I may—”

  “Oh, Ambrose, for heaven’s sake, dry up. Don’t go all leaky like a schoolgirl. We’re back in action in case you hadn’t noticed. Tears are frowned upon both on horseback and under fire.”

  Congreve smiled.

  Alex was back. As Dr. Watson had once said of a rejuvenated Sherlock Holmes, “The man was once again on the foredeck, cutlass in hand, eyes on the far horizon, searching for bad weather or enemy sails.”

  Hawke had returned indeed, in full measure.

  FIVE

  GLOUCESTERSHIRE

  YOU DON’T REALLY MEAN TO SAY, Alex, that we are not taking the Yellow Peril to Highgrove?” Congreve said, gazing wistfully over his shoulder as they passed right by his lovely Morgan ticking and gleaming in the morning sunlight.

  “Sorry, not taking the Yellow Peril to Highgrove,” Hawke replied. He was striding quite briskly across the mossy brick, and whistling, Ambrose noticed.

  Whistling?

  “Why on earth not, Alex?” Ambrose asked, puffing a bit, trying to keep up with Hawke’s rapid pace. “You think the Royals might find the old Peril a bit unseemly? A bit of flash? Outré? Is that it?”

  “Outré? Please, try not to use French in my presence,” Hawke said, pausing a moment to look over his shoulder. “You should get down on your knees every night and thank God you don’t have the world’s thinnest vocabulary, a distinction accorded solely to the bloody French.”

  “A fact, may I remind you, that you learned from me.”

  Congreve, prior to joining the Metropolitan Police, had been a formidable language scholar at Cambridge and never tired of reminding Hawke of it. Ambrose had the remarkable ability to place a man within twenty miles of his home, wherever in the world it might be, as soon as he heard him speaking. Dialects were recorded permanently in his brain and, by some synaptic perfection of brain machinery, were always on tap for his use.

  Slight details of a man’s behavior or his dress would have meaning for Congreve that most men would miss: he had an intuitive power of quick deduction that made it extraordinarily difficult for any but the rarest of men to deceive him for long. These powers accounted for his success as a criminalist and the obsessive fondness Ambrose felt for Conan Doyle’s transcendent creation, Sherlock Holmes. He and Holmes, Ambrose felt, privately of course, were cut from the same cloth.

  Across Hawkesmoor’s wide car park stood a large granite stone building with a long row of gleaming dark green garage doors, formerly stables. A steep slate roof sloped down from the high pitch, and there was a dormer window for every room where a stable boy once slept.

  As a child
of eight, Hawke had decided he liked one of these rooms and the company of the rowdy, fun-loving stable boys far more than his own high-ceilinged corner room in the Hawkesmoor’s West Wing. Eventually, he had wheedled and cajoled Pelham into secretly moving him lock, stock, and barrel into one of the tiny stable rooms.

  He’d brought with him to the new room exactly half of his books, half his toy soldiers, and half his wooden ship models. The other half of his worldly goods remained in his old room in order to keep up appearances.

  Nannies, nurses, and other assorted jailers had been ordered by Pelham to keep mum on the matter of his moving out. Pelham ruled Hawkesmoor with an iron fist in those days and his word was law. Alex took to wearing clothes provided by his new mates, and every day you’d find him mucking out stalls, grooming horses, and repairing tack right along with the lads. Many an afternoon you’d find him, a woolen cap pulled low on his forehead, learning to take fences at a full gallop.

  The stable master privately told one of his charges that young Hawke was “as fine a natural rider as ever he’d seen.”

  So it was that little Alex and Pelham had kept this change of quarters a semi-secret from Alex’s grandfather for years. The boy had happily made the stables his residence until he was shipped off to the Fettes School in Edinburgh to begin his education.

  “What car are we taking, then?” Congreve asked, a sullen expression on his face.

  Behind all those stable doors was a fabulous automotive and motorcycle collection, from the actual British racing green Jaguar “C” type that had, to the Queen’s delight, beaten the American Briggs Cunningham to win Le Mans for England in 1953. Among the collection, too, were a lovely midnight blue 1957 Jaguar XK-140 Drop-head Coupe and a Corso red Ferrari 250 GT SWB.

  “The Locomotive, of course,” Hawke said, entering the one opened stable door.

  “Morning, sir,” said an old fellow in white coveralls. “Just topping the old girl off for you.”

  “Lovely shine, George. Thanks.”

  The older man, who had amazingly bushy white eyebrows and muttonchops, was just finishing a wipe-down of Hawke’s daily driver whenever he was at Hawkesmoor. Affectionately referred to as the “Locomotive,” it was a 1953 battleship-grey Bentley “R”-type Continental.

  Modified extensively over the years, he’d upgraded the engine to the Mark IV 4.9 liter and had her fitted with bucket seats reupholstered in dark green Connolly hides. By adding an Arnott “blower,” the newly supercharged monstrosity was capable of well over 130 miles per hour.

  It had been more than a year since he’d driven her and he’d been looking forward to climbing behind the wheel of his great grey beast all morning.

  Once on the road to Prince Charles’s Highgrove estate, located at Doughton, near Tetbury, Hawke said, “You’ve not been to Highgrove before, I take it?”

  “No, I’ve never been to Highgrove, as you know perfectly well, Alex,” Ambrose said with some petulance, still pouting about the Yellow Peril being left behind. “But I must say I very much look forward to seeing His Royal Highness’s dahlias.”

  “His dahlias?”

  “Yes. Highgrove has one of the most splendid gardens in the country, you know. Seldom open to the public. I’m sure his dahlias are superb. My own ‘Bronzed Adonis’ came third at the Chelsea Flower Show last spring, did I mention that? I was quite pleased. There was even a rather handsome photo of me in Country Life. My dear housekeeper, May, she bought two copies, cut the pictures out, and pasted one into her scrapbook and the other on the door of the fridge.”

  “Sorry, I must have missed that issue.”

  “Not a problem. I’ll see that you get one.”

  “Consider my breath held,” Hawke said.

  “Ah, good, the much longed-for irony is back.”

  “Ambrose, listen,” Hawke said above the engine’s muffled roar. “Someone, some organized group, both extraordinarily clever and monstrously determined, is trying to take out the British Monarchy. And has been for years, apparently. I very much doubt we’ll have time for leisurely strolls in the garden discussing dahlias.”

  “Prince Charles is a gardener of the first order, Alex. Highgrove just happens to be the horticultural hot ticket for garden lovers all over the world. I’m sure His Royal Highness will understand my fervent desire to see a bit of his handiwork while I’m there.”

  Hawke was in no mood to bicker.

  “I’m sure you two will have a great deal to talk about. Whether it’s prizewinning dahlias or serious threats to the lives of the Queen of England, the heir apparent to the throne, and his two sons, I cannot safely predict.”

  Congreve said, “Your safe return to poisonous sarcasm is also annoying but gratifying, I must say. More evidence that the real you has returned. Therefore, I shall refrain from any witty rejoinder. Or, riposte, as they say en France.”

  Hawke bit his tongue. “Good.”

  “Splendid word, riposte, don’t you think?”

  Hawke gave a look but no reply.

  Congreve seemed determined to maintain the ensuing silence for the balance of the short journey. Which was fine with Hawke. He was listening quite intently to the exquisitely moving symphony of the Locomotive’s 4.9-litre engine and the deep rumble of the custom two-inch twin exhausts.

  Music, more melodic than Mozart, to his ears.

  His reverie was interrupted by the sudden presence in the rearview mirror of a dark green Jaguar sedan, an older version, on the road behind him. He’d glimpsed its nose on a small lane they’d passed, waiting at a stop sign, perhaps a mile back. Now it was behind him, which was not the problem. The problem was the Locomotive was doing nearly one hundred miles per hour on this straight piece of road, and the Jag was rapidly gaining on them.

  “Ambrose?”

  “Yes?” he said, still grouchy.

  “Do me a favor, would you, and take a look at the car behind us. Tell me what you see.”

  Congreve craned his head around and looked back through the rear window.

  “A dark green sedan, older model. A Jaguar, I think. Four men in the car, two up front, two in the rear.”

  “Notice anything else?”

  “Two things. They all seem to be wearing black ski masks. And they’re going nearly as ridiculously fast on this country lane as you are.”

  “Ah. There you have it. Hold on, will you? There’s a grab handle next to the glove box.”

  “Alex, you’re already going quite fast—”

  Hawke accelerated up a hill, the great motor roaring as he did so. He put a little distance between him and his pursuers, but as he crested the hill he saw an immediate problem. The road took a sharp right-hand turn at the bottom and then snaked into a section of heavy forest. He waited till the last second to brake for the turn and saw the Jag in the rearview doing the same.

  Hawke slowed to the maximum speed at which he could negotiate the narrow and serpentine road. The Jag pounced, got right on his tail, and he knew this was not playtime. The Jag, smaller and more nimble than the big Bentley, was better in corners than the Locomotive. There was no way to lose it as long as they were on these twisting wooded lanes.

  “Good Lord!” Congreve exploded.

  “What?” Hawke said, keeping his eyes on the road ahead and concentrating on pushing the old girl to her limits. He’d always loved driving at speed, seeing how much he could get away with, looking for his own limits.

  “Chap’s standing up through the sunroof. Raising a weapon, Alex. I think you’d better—”

  The sound of lead plunking against the fastback coachwork of his beloved Locomotive was not a welcome one. Nor were the sudden spiderwebs spattered across his rear window.

  Congreve was fumbling with his seat belt, muttering something unintelligible.

  “What are you doing, Constable?”

  “Doing? I’m diving for the bloody floor! They’re out to kill us in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Oh, relax, will you?”

&nbs
p; “Relax? Is that what you said? Are you completely insane? They’re shooting at us! Not just from the sunroof, but from both rear windows. Automatic weapons!”

  Hawke pressed a small silver button just to the left of the rev counter on the dash. A nearly invisible panel in the burled walnut instrument panel dropped open on a latch and a small, leather-lined drawer slid outward. Inside was a nickel-plated Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver, four-inch barrel. It was held in place by two short quick-release Velcro straps round the barrel and butt of the gun. Hawke popped the straps but left the Python in place.

  “We’ll be out of these woods and onto another proper straightaway in less than a mile. There’s a Walther PPK in the glove box if you feel like shooting back. I don’t advise it.”

  “Shoot back? With that peashooter?”

  “Will you please get off the floor? You’re far worse off down there if we hit a tree than if you were safely buckled into your seat. As the law requires, may I remind you.”

  “Safely in my seat? You are mad, aren’t you?” Ambrose huffed, and stayed put in the footwell.

  “Steady on, Ambrose. The Locomotive is perhaps as heavily armored as any car in England with the possible exception of the Queen’s Bentley state limousine. Impenetrable to ballistic artillery. Installed by the same chap who does the work for the Royal Garages. It also has bulletproof glass in every window. Triple-laminated with integrated leaded composites and polycarbonate substrates. That’s why you’re not dead. Yet, anyway.”

  “We’re impervious, you say?” said Ambrose from his cramped position beneath the dashboard.

  “Yes. Glad we didn’t take the Yellow Peril? Be honest.”

  “Who in the world would want to kill us?”

  “Let’s see,” Hawke said, eyeing the Jag now pulling up on the left-hand side in his rearview mirror. “The Russians? KGB? They’re probably still a bit peeved with me for having taken out their newly anointed Tsar. The Chinese have never been overly fond of us, ever since we blew up part of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze, among other things. And then there’s the North Koreans who—”