Hawke skidded to a stop at the top of the hill next to a sign for Dalaro. He’d made it there in less than half an hour, nearly going off the road dozens of times, never once catching a glimpse of the bloody black Maybach. Now he was praying Halter had been right about the Tsar’s destination. If he wasn’t-
“This is it,” Hawke said, putting on the emergency brake and climbing out of the car. “Now, where’s that ferry?”
Halter got out, too, moving to the front of the car, the Beta in his hands, gleaming in the light of the headlamps. “There,” he said after a few moments of peering at the tiny village at the bottom of the hill.
“Where?”
“Down there to your left. Bottom of that little road leading through the woods over there. I saw taillights flash at the edge of the water. It has to be him, Alex. No one else would be going over to the island at this time of night.”
“Is the ferry already there?”
“I can’t tell. Maybe. Too far away to see.”
“Get in.”
They sledded rather than drove down the tiny road, the Saab now merely a toboggan, careening through heavy woods of pine and spruce down to the sea. Hawke kept his foot on and off the brakes the entire way, only accelerating when they slowed, not minding at all the fact that he was bashing both sides of the car against the trees on the sides of the narrow road as long as he kept the thing moving forward.
Hawke saw starlit sky ahead and reached down and switched off the headlamps; this was on the slim chance that the Tsar had glimpsed them racing along the fjord in their efforts to catch him.
If Hawke was driving them right into a trap, he’d like his arrival to be a surprise. And besides, even in the forest, there was enough moonlight reflecting off snow to see by.
Suddenly, they were out of the woods, the icy road dipping right down to the black water.
Five hundred yards below, he finally saw the Maybach’s big red brake lights flash.
The mammoth limousine was pulling slowly out onto the tiny ferry, large enough for only two vehicles. A crewman in dark coveralls was motioning the driver forward, all the way to the bow rail. Inside the yellow glow of the small pilothouse window, Hawke saw the ferryboat skipper’s black silhouette, even noticing the pipe he held clenched in his teeth. Amazing the things your mind took in at times like this.
“This might be tight,” he said to Halter as they careened toward the ferry. “Can you swim?”
“Hurry, for God’s sake, they’re about to pull away!”
It would be a close thing.
Hawke leaned on his horn, tinny but loud, and flashed his headlamps as he floored the Saab. He accelerated the rest of the way down the steep hill, watching the lone crewman heaving the first of the lines ashore. Hawke was still thinking he just might make it aboard, even if it had to be on the fly, but then he saw the Tsar fling open his door, step out onto the deck, and scream something at the bewildered crewman.
The ferryman clearly wasn’t going to wait, and now all lines were cast off, and the fluorescent red-and-white- striped gate with the blinking red warning light was descending. Suddenly, the ferry was pulling away, a puff of smoke from its stack, steaming toward the black shape of Morto in the distance.
“Damn it!” Hawke cried, hitting the brakes, sliding into a spin, yanking up on the emergency brake, and stopping on a patch of dry pavement barely in time to avoid going down the ramp and into the icy waters of the fjord.
He climbed out of the miserable Saab and stood watching the little ferry make its way across the choppy waters toward Morto Island.
He’d lost her.
“Let’s go!” Halter said, climbing out of the car with the Beta machine tucked safely under his arm. Hawke breathed a sigh of relief. For whatever reason, Halter had decided to play this out to the end, give Hawke until the last possible moment before ending this.
“Where?”
“I saw a house with a dock out on the end of that point. Where there’s a dock, there might well be a boat.”
“How much time?” Hawke cried, following Halter across the slippery algal rocks that lined the shore.
“Forty minutes! We might still save her, Alex. We’ll try, anyway.”
As logic or fate or luck would have it, there was a boat.
A beautiful wooden runabout, maybe twenty-five feet long. She looked fast enough, Hawke thought, racing down the dock toward her. She looked well maintained, probably with a big inboard Volvo engine. They could make it over to Morto in a hurry.
“Check the helm for ignition and keys,” Hawke shouted to Halter. Hawke leaped aboard at the stern and opened the engine-hatch cover as the professor jumped down into the cockpit.
“No luck!” Halter cried.
“Never mind, I’ve got it,” Hawke said, two bared wires in his hands. Suddenly, the big 300-horsepower engine roared to life. And just as suddenly, it conked out.
“What’s wrong, Alex?”
“I don’t know. Felt as if it wasn’t getting any fuel.”
“Fuel shutoff valve?”
“Yeah, but where is the bloody thing on these engines is the problem. I’m looking.”
“Alex, we have perhaps thirty-five minutes until the beginning of the end of the world. Find it quickly, would you, please?”
Hawke muttered something obscene as his head disappeared below the hatchway. Halter stood in the cockpit, watching helplessly as the ferry bearing Korsakov moved ever nearer to the long dock emerging from the heavily wooded island, a low-lying black silhouette on the horizon.
“Cast off all of the lines except the stern,” he heard Hawke’s muffled voice behind him say. “Just in case I find the damn valve. Wait, is this it? Yes? No, damn it!”
Five minutes later, the big Volvo rumbled to life again, and Hawke came up through the engine-room hatch in a hurry. He uncleated the stern line and jumped down to join Halter in the cockpit, grabbing the wheel and shoving the throttle forward. The sleek mahogany runabout surged forward, throwing a wide white wake to either side.
Five minutes later, they were ghosting up to a rocky beach with the motor shut down. Hawke hopped off the bow with the anchor in his hand, waded ashore, and wedged the hook between two large boulders. Then he hauled the boat in closer to shore and called out to Halter, “Are you coming?”
“Can’t you get it in any closer?”
The man was sitting on the stern with his legs dangling over the side, cradling the Beta machine in both hands.
Hawke was about to tell him to be careful, when the windshield of the runabout exploded into a million pieces. He whirled in the direction of the gunfire. A guard with a German shepherd at the end of a leash was running toward them, shouting something in Russian. He extended his arm again, aiming his submachine gun at Halter on the run. Hawke pulled the Walther from his holster, drew a quick bead, and shot the man once in the head.
Halter was splashing ashore, holding the detonator above his head, as Alex bent over the dead body.
“What the hell are you doing?” Halter said.
“Looking for a radio. See if he called us in.”
“And?”
“Nothing. No radio. Good. Here, take his gun. Bizon Two. Excellent weapon. Know how to use it?”
“Of course.”
“Good. I hope the sound of those shots didn’t carry up the face of that rock. Here are a couple of extra mags of ammunition. Let’s move. I saw the house from the water. It stands right at the top of this granite cliff. But I think I saw a path up through the woods around that point. We’d better hurry. Time?”
“Nineteen minutes,” Halter said, worry plain on his face.
“Let’s go.”
“God, this is close.”
