we now have a textbook scenario for any future hostage crisis.”
“David, I called about another urgent matter. Now that we’ve taken the airship out of play, I’m determined to remove these damn Zeta machines from the table as well. You’re aware of these things I assume?”
“Indeed, I am. The FBI shared all of that information with MI-5, MI-6, and New Scotland Yard during the night. Tens of millions of bombs, all connected? It’s frankly unbelievable but apparently quite true. This new Kremlin fellow is absolutely mad. My chaps are hard at it as we speak. It’s a bloody nightmare, all right, but there has to be some way to take out those things.”
“I’ve been sitting here thinking about that. We have to assume Korsakov, or someone close to him, has to have some kind of detonator. A nuclear football, for want of a better term. Agree?”
“I certainly do. A unified way to trigger countless small bombs simultaneously. Like Salina but on a grander scale.”
“Exactly. So, we need to find and neutralize that damn detonator before Korsakov or someone else can use it. He gave us twenty-four hours before he takes out a Western city of one million souls.”
“Good God. Well, best luck on that. So far, we’re absolutely stumped around here. I’ve got a crisis team on this specifically as well. We just have to crack it, that’s all there is to it.”
“David, bear with me a moment. You had an asset inside the Kremlin during the eighties. I can’t remember his name, but-”
“Stefanovich Halter? A don at Cambridge?”
“No, no. I know Professor Halter. This man I’m thinking of was ex-military. KGB. Tough, smart, Teutonic bastard, a German-Russian, almost neo-Nazi, as I recall, but if you threw enough money at him, he’d play ball. Helped us with that Korean airliner they shot down, the one that strayed into Soviet airspace. I dealt with him directly through the CIA. Greedy bastard, but he delivered the goods.”
“Sounds like most of the chaps Ivan Korsakov surrounds himself with. You’re looking for someone extremely close to the Tsar, I take it. A trusted confidant of long standing.”
“Exactly.”
“I see where you’re going with this. Good thought. I’ll get on this immediately. See if we can’t sort out your man. Determine if he’s still alive, and if so, if he’s any kind of key player in the Tsar’s new regime.”
“How quickly can you get back to me, David?”
“As you will remember, we had more than a few KGB doubles on MI-6 books for a while way back when. We had numbered accounts for them in Zurich or Geneva, some offshore in the Caymans and elsewhere. Shouldn’t take me too long to get someone onto this, see if there are still some active accounts on the books.”
“One minute sounds good to me.”
“We’ll do our best. I warn you, though, we haven’t used these fellows since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. As I say, I’m not even sure if any of them are still alive. Red Banner’s charge is to rebuild the old Moscow network. Just begun scratching the surface there, I’m afraid.”
“Is there anyone at all on your side who could find out quickly? Every second counts from here on in.”
“Stefan Halter might actually recall the fellow you’re after. He’s deep cover in Moscow right now, but he’s spent time in Bermuda recently, briefing Hawke and Red Banner on dormant Moscow assets. I’ll ring him post haste.”
“Do that. Sir David, I don’t need to stress how vitally important this is. I need a reliable asset deep inside the Kremlin, and I need him now. Someone who can help us get close enough to Korsakov to neutralize his goddamn worldwide web of death machines. The CIA says Korsakov’s private airship arrives in Stockholm in twelve hours. He shows up at the Stockholm Concert Hall two hours later to accept his Nobel. I’d like your Red Banner boys on him the second he lands. Got any ideas? Hawke would be ideal.”
“Alex Hawke? May need a bit of a rest-up after Energetika and this Bermuda operation, I’m afraid.”
“No time for rest-ups, David. I’d appreciate it if you could get your man Hawke on the next thing smoking to Stockholm. That’s where Korsakov is headed, and that’s where we need him. We’ll provide transportation. Agreed?”
“I’ll ring him now.”
“And David, tell your Mr. Hawke one thing directly from the American president’s lips to his ears, will you, please?”
“Certainly.”
“Everything is riding on this. Everything.”
“Got it. I’ll ring you back as soon as I have something definite on your Kremlin question. Cheerio.”
Did they still say that over there?
64
The tiny village of Kungsholm was roughly one hour by car from the center of Stockholm. As it was nearly buried within a deep, dark wood, Hawke had found it rather difficult to locate. The limbs of gnarled old trees on either side of the lane were laden with freshly fallen December snow and threw long black arms across the scene. The quaint cottages glimpsed now and then on either side of the narrow thoroughfare seemed supernaturally quiet.
No movement, save a delicate mist wafting across the road and into the thrusting, yearning tangle of the woodland fringe. Perfect stillness. It was as if some evil wizard had recently waved his wand above all the rooftops, sprinkling fairy dust that put the village’s few inhabitants to sleep for an eternity.
Hawke motored slowly through the town. Smoke curled from a few chimneys, rising through spindly black tree limbs sharply etched against the rose-gold afternoon sky. But these few wispy smoke trails were the sole signs of human life. On the outskirts of town, he had seen three magnificent reindeer staring at him from the safety of the woods, frozen in place, nostrils quivering, their huge black eyes glistening.
Hawke was shivering behind the wheel of an ancient Saab in which both the heater and the windscreen wipers were woefully inadequate. Despite this deliberately inconspicuous vehicle, he’d somehow picked up a tail leaving the airport, a blacked-out late-model Audi. After a bit of cat and mouse in the narrow cobbled lanes of the Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s Old Town, he’d finally managed to lose them, whoever they were. Russian secret police, he supposed, the Tsar’s men. Korsakov would no doubt have his Third Department operatives watching the airports and rail stations.
Having made it safely out of Stockholm and driving south through the Swedish countryside to Kungsholm, he was now looking for any road signs not completely frosted over with snow. He was struggling a bit with the map unfolded on his knee. He wasn’t fluent in Swedish, and the damn thing was no help at all.
He was not yet prepared to admit that he was lost, but he was considering getting out his mobile and calling Stefan Halter, his contact, when he finally saw the snow-filled lane he was probably meant to take. He put the wheel hard over and skidded into it, careening harmlessly off the snowbanks on either side. The trees above him intersected to form a long dark tunnel snaking through the wood.
Stefan would be waiting for him at the end of this lane. An Interpol safe house here in Kungsholm had been chosen for Hawke’s rendezvous with the Russian double agent Halter had identified for the White House. All he knew was that the agent, whose name Hawke had not been told, was a man President McAtee had dealt with in the past and that Hawke’s meeting with him had apparently been specifically ordered by the president.
Hawke’s brief on this new mission had been straightforward enough:
Get to Kungsholm, Sweden, as fast as he possibly could without attracting undue attention. Find Halter.
The simple two-story farmhouse appeared through his frosted windscreen. It was built of roughhewn stone and had a sharply pitched roof of slate and two large chimneys at either end made of brick. It had a storybook quality, Hawke thought, which seemed to be the norm in this neck of the woods.
He parked the Saab next to a battered Mercedes sedan in a small yard just outside the entryway, climbed out, and rapped thrice, then twice, on the heavy wooden door, just as he’d been instructed.
