Tsar: A Thriller (Alex Hawke) Read online

  The door at the end was open, and you could see inside to the pale green tile walls of the death chamber. Bright lights, like an operating room. Medical equipment. There was a lot of activity, and Paddy, catching a glimpse of the gurney, was curious about all of it. But he was on a mission.

  It had taken Strelnikov ten minutes just to negotiate the Mustang through the mob scene of press and protesters at the gate. Then another twenty or so to get through the check points at Wing Block D, the maximum-security building at the rear of the Little Miss complex.

  It was a long three-story building made entirely of concrete block with a guard tower rising at either end. In addition to the warden’s office, D Block was home to Death Row. Sixty-one inmates were awaiting execution, including some of the most notorious pedophiles, sexual sadists, and serial killers west of the Mississippi.

  Little Miss had replaced Terre Haute Correctional Facility in Indiana as the federal government’s new special confinement unit for inmates serving federal death sentences. A couple of botched lethal injections (needles passing right through veins and injecting the sodium chlorate into the muscle) had led to public protests and the shutting down of the Indiana facility. Powerful lobbyists in Washington had made sure the new federal correctional complex ended up in North Dakota.

  No one was ever quite sure who’d hired all of these expensive lobbyists, but no one much cared, either. In Washington, someone was always pulling the strings. Often, the true maestro went unseen and unnoticed. Like back in Russia.

  Overhead, searchlights and TV lights lit the snowy skies like a Hollywood premiere. Lots of excitement when you pan-fry a guy as world-famous as Charles Edward Stump, when he walks that lonely last mile.

  The warden, named Warren Garmadge, a short, wide toad of a man in a double-wide paisley tie, stood right up when the deputies escorted Paddy Strelnikov into his flag-bedecked office. He stuck out his meaty hand, a big smile on his face. He seemed to be having a good time, being on TV a lot recently. Interviews and all, CNN, Fox, all the biggies. Also, he saw the beautiful alligator carrying case in Paddy’s hand and figured it had his name on it.

  He stuck his hand out, and Strelnikov shook it.

  “Mr. Strelnikov, welcome to Little Missouri Prison. I’m honored you made time in your busy schedule to pay us a visit,” the warden said, showing off his white Chiclet-capped chompers. Guy was a real pol, you could tell that by the firm, slightly moist grip of his fat little hand.

  “Exciting time to be here, Warden Garmadge,” Paddy said, taking one of the two red leather chairs facing the warden’s desk. He put the case on the floor beside him, casual like, no big deal. Make the guy wait for it.

  “Everything’s going according to schedule, you’ll be glad to know,” Garmadge said, plopping down in his big executive swivel chair.

  “A lot can happen in an hour,” Paddy said, lighting up a big Cuban stogie he’d been saving for this meeting. He had another sticking out of his breast pocket with his hankie, but he made a point of not offering it to the warden. What he did, he crossed his legs at the knee, lifting the material of his grey silk trousers so that it draped nice, and smiled, expelling a stream of fragrant smoke at the warden.

  “So. We’re all right? We’re a go?” Paddy said.

  “Yeah. Don’t worry. The governor has given me every assurance that there will be no last-minute surprises. As you know, the governor and I had a meeting of the minds on that subject one month ago.”

  Paddy laughed. “Yeah, an expensive meeting, from our point of view. What’d we finally do for hizzoner the governor? Two-fifty large? Two-seventy-five?”

  “I believe that was the number.”

  “Which one?”

  “The latter.”

  “Yeah, the latter, that’s right.” When shitbirds like this guy used phrases like the latter, it made him want to punch their friggin’ lights out. Paddy looked casually around the office, one wall covered with photos of the warden with a lot of people nobody he knew had ever heard of. Local pols, police officials, et cetera. Martians.

  “You ever witness an execution, Mr. Strelnikov?” Garmadge asked him.

  “You mean other than the ones where I was personally pulling the trigger?”

  The warden shifted in his chair, laughed uncomfortably, and said, “Yes, I mean a…court-ordered execution.”

  “Just one. Allen Lee Davis back in 1999. You familiar with that one?”

  “Old Sparky, down there in Starke, Florida.”

  “Yeah. Starke was the only weenie roast I ever saw up close and personal. Soon as they flipped the switch, smoke and flames started to spurt out from Allen Lee’s head, must have been flames a foot long or more. Like blue lightning coming out from under the little metal yarmulke on his head. Burned his eyebrows and eyelashes right off. It was some shit to see, I’ll tell you. They shut the power down, then cranked it two more times before he finally fried. Must have taken him twenty minutes to check out, stick a fork in him, boys, he’s done.”

  Garmadge was impressed, you could see it.

  “Well, we pretty much got that all figured out now here at Little Miss. What happened down in Starke was, see, the saline-soaked sponge inside that little metal skullcap is meant to increase the flow of electricity to the head. In that case, the sponge was synthetic, which generated the problem. Starke uses only all-natural sponge now, and that solved that issue pretty much.”

  “Gone green, huh, warden? All-natural sponges?”

  He smiled. “Lethal injection is much more humane, as you’ll see down the hall in a few minutes,” the warden said, glancing up at the clock, eager to move on.

  “Humane, huh? I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, warden, some of these animals you got sitting on Death Row don’t deserve humane.”

  “Well, there is that,” he said, coughing into his fist.

  Strelnikov got to his feet.

  “Anyway, I won’t be sticking around for Stumpy’s send-off, warden. I’m only here to make a delivery from my employers and your benefactors.”

  Paddy reached down and picked up the alligator case. Then he walked around the desk and placed it right in front of Warden Garmadge.

  “Our organization is very grateful for your help over the years and especially your work with the governor in expediting tonight’s main event, warden. The management asked me to personally show their appreciation with this little memento.”

  “Beautiful hide, absolutely gorgeous.” He was feeling up that case as if he had a raging hard-on under the desk.

  “Isn’t it?” Paddy said. “Genuine alligator. Go ahead, open her up, warden.”

  “This is for me? What the heck…”

  The guy’s fingers were trembling as he twisted the gold-plated clasp on the top and finally pulled the case open. The case was lined in black velvet. The object resting inside caught the light and sent silvery shimmers across the walls and ceiling. Garmadge sat back and stared.

  “Omigod.”

  “Yeah. Something else, ain’t it? Here, let me remove it and place it on the desk for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a computer, warden. The Zeta. The Platinum Edition, by the way.”

  “You’re kidding me. Looks like a sculpture of a brain or something.”

  “That’s the idea. It’s our most popular design. You’ve seen the ads. ‘Zeta, the last word in computers.’ Get it?”

  “No.”

  “Zeta’s the last word in the Greek alphabet, I understand, but what the fuck. Some marketing bullshit. Kids have nicknamed it the Wizard or the Wiz, for short. See, the cord pulls out of the base of the brain stem. Let me plug it in for you, and I’ll show you how it works.”

  “Where’s the keyboard?” the warden asked.

  “Wherever you want it,” Paddy said. “Watch.”

  Strelnikov found an outlet and plugged in the silvery machine. A small hidden lamp in the frontal lobe projected a virtual keypad onto the warden’s
desktop.

  “Holy smoke,” the guy said, tapping his fingers on the nonexistent keyboard.

  “Hit enter,” Paddy said. “And there you go, you see the screen? It’s a holographic image. See? Kinda floats in the air above the brain.”

  The Zeta machine was a piece of work, all right. From the supernaturally brilliant mind of Paddy’s ultimate employer, a very reclusive Russian multibillionaire who didn’t even have a name. Less expensive editions of the Wiz (with hardware made of mirror-polished aluminum, not platinum) would retail for about sixty bucks worldwide. Whole countries were already back-ordered for millions of these machines. India alone had ordered 10 million units at a discount price of fifty bucks. You didn’t have to be a mathematical genius to figure the margins, how much that did for the company’s bottom line.

  “It’s engraved,” Paddy said. “Right here. ‘To Warden Warren Garmadge, with everlasting gratitude.’”

  “The most fantastic-looking thing I’ve ever seen,” the warden said, stroking the sculpted brain’s polished surface.

  “Yeah, well, the quesos grandes I work for can be very generous when people see things their way. In your case, it’s keeping these wild animals caged up. And taking a personal interest in Mr. Stump’s going-away party. Nice meeting you, warden. I’m going to take off now. Sorry to miss the big bang tonight.”

  “Will you give your employer my deepest thanks when you see him?”

  “See him?” Paddy laughed. “Nobody sees the big man. Nobody even knows his name.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s the guy behind the curtain, warden. Like in that old movie, The Wizard of Oz? The boss of our operation? He’s the friggin’ Wizard himself.”

  PADDY DROVE SLOWLY through the crowd gathered outside the prison gates. It seemed to have grown larger during the short time he’d been inside. The snow had let up some, now it was just cold, and hundreds of people were holding candles aloft, chanting some fruitcake-brotherly-love-a-weem-away song he couldn’t hear the words to because he had the windows up and the radio on.

  WKKO Chicago was still on the air, and the airy-fairy tree huggers and Stumpy supporters were still calling in, some of them wailing in despair as the final minutes approached. He looked into the rearview mirror and carefully peeled off his walrus mustache and the bushy eyebrows. He left the white wig atop his bald head, thinking it wasn’t half so bad-looking as most of his wigs.

  The show’s host, the hyperkinetic night owl Greg Noack, was going back and forth to a WKKO reporter he had standing with the crowd at the gate, and now Paddy could hear the song. It was “We Shall Overcome,” which Paddy thought was a slightly weird choice, since Stumpy was pure white trailer trash, not even a poor black dude who needed to overcome anything. But who could tell anymore what was correct or incorrect with these fruitcakes. In a country where “Merry Christmas” had replaced the F word as a big no-no, who could figure?

  And Paddy wasn’t even a Baptist, f’crissakes. He was Russian Orthodox!

  Then Noack broke in all excited and said there was breaking news coming out of Bismarck, and they were going live to their man Willis Lowry, standing with the press corps just outside the governor’s office on the capitol steps.

  Lowry said, “In an amazing turn of events, Channel Five News has just learned that the governor has issued a last-minute stay of execution for Charles Edward Stump. Everyone here at the capitol is stunned at the news, because as late as eight o’clock this evening, the governor’s office was insisting there was no chance of a pardon. But now we’ve learned that—”

  “Fuck me,” Strelnikov said, and turned off the radio. He reached over and grabbed his cell phone from the seat beside him. Flipping it open, he speed-dialed a number in New York.

  “You watching TV? You believe this shit?” he asked Ruko, the guy who answered. “The asshole governor just pardoned the Stump. Hello?”

  “Tell me you made the warden’s delivery,” the voice at the other end said.

  “Done.”

  “Good. Do what you gotta do, Beef.”

  Because of his size and muscular build, all the boys in the old neighborhood had nicknamed him All-Beef Paddy. Pretty funny, right? Not.

  The line went dead.

  Paddy looked in his rearview. He could still see the prison back there, searchlights lighting up the sky. He pulled over onto the shoulder and set the emergency brake.

  From his inside pocket, Strelnikov withdrew a small black radio transmitter. A tiny green light was illuminated. Paddy pushed one button, and the light turned red. Then he pushed a second button and held it down for three seconds. A signal went from his black box to a company Comsat satellite orbiting high above central North America.

  The whole world lit up behind him, and a second or two later, the shockwave of the massive explosion rocked his rented Mustang nearly off its wheels.

  Wing Block D, the toady warden, and all of the other illustrious doomed inhabitants no longer existed. It had been reduced to a pile of rubble by eight extraordinarily powerful ounces of Hexagon-based explosives carefully molded inside the hard drive of the Wizard computer Paddy had recently placed on Warden Garmadge’s desk.

  “Pop goes the weasel,” Strelnikov said to himself, smiling.

  Hexagon was another of the Wiz’s inventions, discovered when he was experimenting with the molecular structures of nonnuclear explosives. It was bright blue, had the consistency of putty, and one ounce packed a wallop one thousand times that of nitroglycerine. By sheer accident, the man had discovered the most powerful nonnuclear explosive on the planet.

  To prevent discovery of the Hexagon bomb hidden inside every Zeta machine, the case arrived from the factory permanently sealed. Should hardware problems arise, the machines were simply replaced free of charge. Should someone try to force the computers open, the presence of air would immediately reduce the Hexagon inside to an inert powder.

  Genius.

  He pulled back out onto the highway and accelerated rapidly up the snaky black road. He had a plane to catch. He was going to L.A. and from there to some godforsaken burg in Alaska to get briefed on his next assignment. Something to do with fish, he’d heard. But first, and he’d put money on it, he’d be paying a little surprise visit to the governor of North Dakota. Sometime in the next hour, his cellphone would ring, and he’d be headed for the governor’s mansion. Can you say dead governor?

  Fishing? In Alaska? What did he know from fishing? He was from Brooklyn, f’crissakes! But hey, a job was a job, right? Maybe he’d learn something.

  Paddy smiled and turned the radio back on, looking for an oldies station. Life was pretty good, he had to admit. Yeah, his job kept him on the road a lot, but it was never, ever boring.

  You kill three, four, maybe five hundred people over the course of a long and illustrious career, you think, well, it’s maybe going to get boring at some point, right? You say, you know, how many times can I do this and keep it interesting? It has to get old eventually, right?

  It doesn’t.

  It’s all about creativity, baby.

  Bottom line? You have to find a new way through the woods every time out.

  Name of the game.

  8

  BERMUDA

  Hawke gunned his motorcycle up the final hill before turning into a shady lane that wound its way down to Lady Diana Mars’s oceanfront property.

  As part of his new program to simplify his life radically, Hawke had allowed himself only one toy on Bermuda, but it was perfection. The jet-black Norton Commando motorcycle, model 16H, had been built in 1949. The old bike had won the Isle of Man Race that year and had come fifth in the world championship. It was his favorite mode of transport and a perfect way to get around on the island’s narrow and sometimes traffic-clogged roads.

  The roads could be dangerous. Native Bermudians, teenagers mostly, had affected a riding style of casual nonchalance. They sat sideways on the seat, like a woman riding side-saddle, and guided their bikes with o
ne hand. They took insane chances on roads built for horses and carriages, overtaking on blind curves, racing wildly through traffic. Hawke himself had narrowly escaped disaster at their hands many times. The Wild Onions, he called them privately, rebels without a clue.

  After crossing the narrow swing bridge, originally built to take the old Bermuda train over to St. George’s Island, he downshifted rapidly, delighting in the harsh blat-blat of the Norton’s exhaust. Royal poinciana trees on either side of the lane formed a tunnellike arch overhead, and the soft but fecund smell of dark earth and night-blooming flowers was almost overpowering in his flared nostrils.

  The massive iron gates of the Mars estate were coming up quickly on his right, and he braked sharply.

  He’d not visited Diana’s house yet and was exceedingly curious to see it. Vincent Astor had erected the legendary estate, called Shadowlands, in 1930. It was allegedly enormous, the house proper stretching out along a long, heavily wooded spit of parkland that ran parallel to the old, narrow-gauge railway tracks. In its heyday, Hawke had read, the house had boasted a large saltwater aquarium and Astor’s own private railway, a toylike train called the Scarlet Runner that ran around the property.

  He leaned into the bike, accelerated hard, and crested the hill. As both wheels left the ground, Hawke got his first good look at Shadowlands. It was spread out along the coast, moon shadows turning the succession of white buildings magical shades of softest blue and white.

  The house was not one building; it was more a cluster of connected houses, all white with white roofs. The complex included every possible style of “Bermuda roof.” He saw hipped roofs, fancy Dutch-influenced gable ends, raised parapets, shed roofs, and steep, smooth butteries. Various chimneys and towers completed the look. An architectural marvel, he had to admit.

  Hawke smiled as he roared up to a covered portico, which he had to assume was the main entrance. He shut down his machine and climbed off, brushing the road dust from his white officer’s dinner jacket. He’d worn his Royal Navy Blue No. 2 regalia for the occasion, the Navy’s evening dress for formal dinners. It demanded a white waistcoat, miniature medals, and the three gold bands at the sleeves signifying his rank of commander.