Tsar: A Thriller (Alex Hawke) Read online

  “What’s this?”

  “That would be my driver’s license, officer. Wrapped inside five hundred spanking-new U.S. dollars.”

  “Sir, you—”

  “Officer, look, I’m in kind of a hurry here, and I’d appreciate it if you’d just give me my license back and take the rest as a small token of my undying gratitude.”

  “Look, pal, I—”

  “Okay, okay, I gotcha.”

  Strelnikov stuck his hand back inside his pocket and pulled out a neatly packed wad of cash.

  “Five thousand dollars. That’s my final offer,” Paddy said, giving the guy his killer smile, the one he’d learned on the streets of Brighton Beach and Coney, use it just before you punch some scumbag’s lights out. “Christmas is right around the corner, you know, officer. Five large could come in very handy.”

  He could tell from the look on the cop’s face which way this thing was going to go. Due south.

  “Okay, sir, I’m going to ask you to step out of the vehicle. Now. Keep your hands up where I can see them.”

  “Look, you’re making a fatal mistake here, officer.”

  “Out of the car, sir,” the trooper said, backing away with his hand on his holster. “Now!”

  The honest cop didn’t see the ugly little snub-nose appear just above the windowsill. Maybe he’d missed that word, fatal. Too bad, it was a key word.

  Pop pop, went the .38. Two of the best, smack dab in the middle of the trooper’s noggin.

  “Buh-bye,” Paddy said, looking out the window at the dead man splayed in the red snow as he accelerated away, the Mustang fishtailing wildly on the icy shoulder of the highway.

  Hey. Shit happens.

  All you can do is try, right?

  6

  BERMUDA

  Teakettle Cottage perched on a narrow coral precipice some fifty feet above the turquoise sea. It was a study in simplicity. The cottage was perfectly suited to Hawke’s needs. In addition to satisfying his desire for peace, the precariously situated house provided a sense of “living rough.” Hawke’s more romantic instincts, which he would never admit to possessing, equated roughness with reality.

  He had discussed this rather arcane notion over cocktails one rainy evening with the brainiest man he knew, the famous criminalist Chief Inspector Ambrose Congreve of Scotland Yard.

  Congreve had said that Hawke’s very human instinct, he suspected, equated the sheer discomfort and occasional violence of living directly on the sea with some guarantee of authenticity. Living always on the very edge of things the way Hawke did, with the attendant lack of safety, provided Hawke, Congreve believed, with a measure of truth.

  That, Hawke had informed his friend, was laying it on a bit thick. But while Hawke much preferred to swim on life’s surface, Congreve tended to dive deep. It’s what had made their lifelong friendship such a lasting and successful one. In the cloak-and-dagger world they inhabited, they needed each other.

  Hawke’s modest limestone house was partially hidden in a grove of ancient lignum vitae, kapok, and fragrant cedar trees. Coconut palms lined a sandy lane that finally arrived at the house after winding through a mature banana grove. The layout of the house proper was an exercise in minimalism: a broad coquina-shell terrace that overlooked the Atlantic fanned out from a rounded, barnlike main room open to the elements.

  A crooked white-bricked watchtower on the seaward side of the domed house formed the teakettle’s “spout.”

  The large whitewashed living room, with its well-worn Spanish-tile floors, was furnished with old planter’s chairs and cast-off furniture donated or simply left behind by various residents over the years.

  The massive carved monkey-wood bar standing in one corner had been donated by Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who’d lived in the house on and off for many seasons. At one end of the bar stood an ancient but still operable shortwave radio. The old set was rumored to have been used by Admiral Sir Morgan Wheelock, commandant of the Royal Navy Air Station Bermuda during World War II. From Teakettle’s terrace, he’d monitored the comings and goings of U-boat and German merchant marine traffic just offshore.

  Rumor also had it that Teakettle was once a safe house for briefing British spies en route to assignments in various Caribbean stations. Having heard that rumor, Hawke delighted all the more in his tiny home, his little den of spies.

  The battered mahogany canasta table where Hawke took all of his indoor meals was allegedly a gift of Errol Flynn. Flynn sought refuge in the cottage for a few months in 1937, during a particularly stormy period in his marriage to Lili Damita. Leafing through the faded guest book one rainy night, Hawke saw an entry in Flynn’s own hand, saying he’d found Teakettle “a perfectly ghastly house, no hot water, pictures of snakes plastered all over the bedroom wall.”

  There was plenty of hot water now, and Flynn’s snake pictures were mercifully long gone. There were only two pictures in Hawke’s bedroom now: an old black-and-white of his late parents seated in the stern of a gondola on their honeymoon in Venice and a picture of his late wife, Victoria, taken when she was a child. In the photograph, she was sitting on an upper limb of an old oak tree on a levee beside the Mississippi River.

  On a table in the bedroom’s corner was an old Victrola, a Cole Porter disc still sitting on the turntable, next to it a Royal typewriter. Hawke had seen Hemingway’s name scrawled in the guest book. Papa had apparently stayed at Teakettle a few times, too. He’d visited the island during a fishing tournament, staying on as a guest of Flynn, working like mad to finish his book Islands in the Stream. Hawke could imagine him over there in the corner, shirtless and sweating in Bermuda shorts, sipping Cinzano from the bottle and banging away on the Royal.

  Hawke took great comfort in his strange little house. Oddly enough, considering his substantial real estate holdings, it offered him a sense of abiding peace he’d not found elsewhere. In addition to his small room, there were three other bedrooms. Hawke had chosen the smallest for two reasons. It had three large windows, framed with vivid purple bougainvillea, that opened directly onto the sea. And the most intriguing thing of all was that it had a secret door, one that concealed an escape hatch.

  At the back of his cedar-lined closet, a door-sized panel slid upward to reveal a serpentine staircase of hand-hewn coral. The narrow steps curved down to the most perfect fresh saltwater pool you could imagine, a fairly large deep-water lagoon, sheltered within rock walls but with a sizable opening to the sea. The deep blue pool was edged with jade where it washed over the rocks. He’d had a wooden dock built and kept his pretty little masthead sloop tied there, the Gin Fizz.

  Hawke had indulged himself with one expensive eccentricity. Knowing his bedroom was some twenty feet directly above the surface of the lagoon, he’d had a three-foot-diameter hole cut in the floor and installed a gleaming brass fireman’s pole in the center of it. This system allowed him to slip naked from bed of a morning, still half asleep, grab the pole, and slide into the water below without even opening his eyes until he was three feet below the surface.

  It was a lovely way to wake up.

  He’d paddle around for ten minutes or so in the pool of sea-blue water, swim out into the open Atlantic, and commence his five-point daily regimen.

  The newly devised fitness program was straightforward enough.

  First, a 500-yard open-water swim, breaststroke or sidestroke, to be completed in less than twelve minutes, thirty seconds. A minimum of eighty pushups, four sets of twenty in two minutes. He would do the last set with one arm. Next, a minimum of eighty situps in two minutes. A minimum of eight dead-hang pullups. And finally, a 1.5-mile run along the beach to be accomplished in less than eleven minutes, thirty seconds. This run was always completed wearing combat assault boots, namely his old Oakleys from the Royal Navy.

  Hawke was first and foremost a warrior, and he placed his emphasis on strength and speed but with no premium on bulking up. Bulk just makes you slow, especially when running in soft sand in combat boots.


  He prized speed above all else. Speed through the water, speed over the ground, and speed of thought in rapidly evolving combat situations. He’d long ago lost his awe for the heavily muscled bodybuilding types. They always looked ferocious but were never a match for a fast, highly trained martial artist. Reggae god Jimmy Cliff had said it best, as far as Hawke was concerned.

  De harder dey come, de harder dey fall.

  One and all.

  Morning routine done, Hawke would climb the winding steps back to his room, pull on a pair of faded khaki shorts and a T-shirt, and join dear old Pelham for some marvelous breakfast or other. This was the kind of simple, idyllic life he’d long dreamed of. And now that dream seemed to be coming true.

  The old mill house had been electrified during the war years, but at night, Hawke preferred candles in wall sconces, oil lanterns, and the kerosene Tonga torches ringing the open terrace. On cold, rainy nights, Pelham got a roaring fire going. The fireplace had a lovely mantel of old Bermuda cedar inlaid with polished pink conchs. Atop the mantel was a model of Sea Venture that Pelham had found in Hamilton. The English vessel, en route to rescue Jamestown settlers, had suffered an unfortunate encounter with Bermuda’s reefs, and thus Sea Venture had provided Bermuda with its first European settlers.

  Hawke had tried to persuade the feisty octogenarian to stay put at Hawke’s London house in Belgravia, but Pelham, the family retainer who’d practically raised Hawke from boyhood, wasn’t having any of it. So here they both reigned in squalid splendor, two happy bachelors in paradise. The fact that a half-century separated their birthdays mattered not a whit. They’d always enjoyed each other’s company and were long accustomed to each other’s idiosyncrasies.

  It was six P.M. Hawke’s dinner invitation at Shadowlands was called for eight sharp. The lovebirds, Ambrose and Diana, had only just arrived from England a few days earlier. Hawke was looking forward to a quiet evening spent in the company of two dear friends.

  Outside, soft dusk cooled the waning day. Hawke stood at his steamy bathroom mirror, shaving. He’d been ignoring his beard for some few days and was sure his friend Congreve would not approve should he darken Lady Mars’s door unshaven. No doubt, Ambrose would cast a stern eye on his hair as well. His unruly black locks threatened to brush his shoulders. If it got much longer, he’d let Pelham have a whack at it with his kitchen shears.

  In the dense banana grove beyond his opened window, the tinkle and zing of nocturnal insects kept him company while he shaved. Another thing he liked about this island: the simple music of everyday life. The birds, the bees, the Bermudians. Every passerby you met seemed to be either singing or whistling some tune or other all day long. Bermudians were happy people. Hawke was happy, too.

  “But I say,” Hawke suddenly sang out loud, simultaneously lifting his voice and his chin, scraping the straight razor’s blade upward along his throat, “dat de women of today, smarter than de man in every way…”

  He put his straight razor down on the sink and stared at himself in the mirror.

  Where on earth had that strangled lyric come from? He had a terrible singing voice and seldom used it. At his school in England, there had been two choral groups: the headmaster had named them the Agonies and the Ecstasies. Hawke had been a proud member of the former group. Couldn’t sing a note. He smiled, picked up his blade, and continued shaving, picking up the tune with gusto.

  “Dat’s right, de woman is smarter, dat’s right, de woman is smarter…”

  Someone was knocking at his bathroom door. Pelham, come to complain about the noise, no doubt.

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” came the voice outside.

  “What is it?”

  He was still warbling the old calypso tune when Pelham rapped again on the loo’s louvered door.

  “Yes?” Hawke said, cracking the door an inch with his bare foot.

  “Telephone for you, sir.”

  “Who is it?”

  “A young lady, I believe.”

  “Did she give her name?”

  “No, m’lord, she did not.”

  “What on earth does she want?”

  “I couldn’t really say, sir. Something about a painting, sir.”

  “Painting? We don’t need any painting.”

  “Yes, sir. She’ll pay a fee, but not more than a hundred Bermuda dollars an hour.”

  Hawke uttered something unprintable and splashed hot water on his face. Grabbing a towel from the door hook, he wrapped it round his waist and strode down the short hallway that led to the great room. A vintage Bakelite black telephone, the only phone in the house, sat where it always had, at one end of the monkey bar.

  Pelham had followed him down the hall and now moved quickly behind the bar. He got busy with a jug of Mr. Gosling’s rum and ice, slicing a juicy lime within an inch of its life, preparing the evening restorative.

  Hawke glanced at Pelham with a thin smile. Both men knew it was a bit too early for sundowners, and both also knew this mixology business was only Pelham’s sly ruse for the most blatant form of eavesdropping.

  “Hello? Who’s this?” Hawke demanded, snatching up the receiver.

  “Is this Hawke?”

  “That depends. Who is this?”

  “Anastasia Korsakova. We met earlier today, you may recall. I was just telling your…friend that I’m interested in painting you. I pay my models well, but I won’t be bullied.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “You. I want to paint you.”

  “Paint me? Good Lord. To what end?”

  “I’m an artist, Mr. Hawke. I’m having a one-woman show at the Royal Academy in London come spring. I’m doing a series of male figures. Life-size.”

  “Why are you picking on me?”

  “There is no need to be rude. I think you’d make a good subject, that’s all. And based on your rather quaint…lodging, I assumed you might be a man who’d find the money attractive. Surely you’ve done some modeling in your time, Mr. Hawke. A hundred an hour is not easily come by on this island.”

  Modeling? Hawke stifled the urge to laugh out loud and said, “Miss Korsakova, I’m terribly flattered by your offer. But I’m afraid I must refuse.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Well, any number of reasons. I’m a very busy man, for one. I imagine this painting business would require a good deal of sitting around. And I don’t at all like sitting around.”

  “Your schedule didn’t seem too full this afternoon. Sleeping on the beach.”

  “That was a catnap.”

  “Look, I could paint you reclining, if you’d like. You could even sleep on the divan, for all I care. Wouldn’t bother me.”

  “May I ask where you got my number?”

  “Friends.”

  “Friends of mine?”

  “Hardly. I would scarcely imagine we travel in the same social circles, Mr. Hawke. No, friends of mine found the number of your cottage for me.”

  “You have friends who know my number?”

  “I have friends who know everything.”

  “Well, look here, it’s been lovely chatting with you, Miss Korsakova, but I’m afraid I’m late for a dinner engagement.”

  “Will you consider my offer, Mr. Hawke? I’m really most anxious to get started on you.”

  Hawke held the phone away from his ear a moment and accepted a frosted silver cup with a sprig of mint from Pelham. It was really a bit early, but what the hell. He took a sip. Delicious. A fleeting image of a nude goddess emerging dripping from the sea appeared suddenly before his eyes as he put the phone back to his ear.

  Get started on me?

  “Sorry,” Hawke murmured, sipping. “Rum delivery man at the door.”

  “Well?” Korsakova asked, impatience frosting the word.

  “I’ll sleep on it.”

  “Do that. I call you first thing in the morning.”

  The line went dead.

  “Bloody hell,” Hawke murmured to Pelham.
“She wants to paint my picture.”

  “So I inferred, sir.”

  “Ridiculous. Absolute rubbish.”

  “Are you going to do it?”

  “Are you completely mad?”

  Pelham’s bushy white eyebrows went straight up.

  “Really, m’lord. One hundred smackers an hour is nothing to sniff one’s nose at. Pretty good gravy, in my view, sir.”

  Hawke laughed aloud, threw his head back, and took another healthy swig of Pelham’s delicious concoction before padding off toward his bedroom to strap on the black tie and his Royal Navy dress uniform. It was Saturday night. Congreve had told him they still dressed for dinner at Shadowlands. A quaint practice, but, to Hawke, anyway, an agreeable one.

  The muffled strains of the calypso song soon resumed from down the hall, his lordship singing at the top of his lungs, “Smarter than de man in every way!”

  “Trouble in paradise.” Pelham sighed to himself, wiping clean the varnished bar and smiling at his reflection.

  “Trouble in paradise,” echoed Sniper, Hawke’s pet parrot, who’d just flown from his perch and alighted on Pelham’s shoulder. Hawke had cared for the bird, a black hyacinth macaw, since childhood. Despite her name, her color was a glossy ultramarine blue. She was almost eighty years old, had a very sharp tongue, and would probably live to see one hundred.

  “Oh, hush up,” Pelham said, and slipped the bird a few crackers from the bowl on the bar.

  “Thanks for nothing, buster,” Sniper squawked.

  “Do sod off, won’t you?” Pelham replied.

  7

  MEDORA, NORTH DAKOTA

  Paddy Strelnikov waltzed into the warden’s office at Little Miss Penitentiary at eleven o’clock. Sleet was rattling against the windowpanes. Stumpy’s midnight date with destiny, in a little more than an hour, was going to happen right down the hall. Hell, he’d seen them getting ready, coming up the stairs to the warden’s office.