The baker was gone, melted into the crowd and probably headed for his truck. He looked at the candles, spewing fiery sparks. They’d burned almost all the way down to the icing on the cake. Time to go.
He stepped up onto the stage, right behind Fancha, swept her up into his arms, and leaned into the microphone. Fancha was squirming, trying to finish her song, looking at him as if he’d lost his mind.
Stoke said, “Isn’t she fabulous, ladies and gentlemen? The lovely Fancha! We’ll be taking a short break while the guest of honor blows out all those candles, but don’t worry, folks, she’ll be back for an encore!”
With that, Stoke stepped off the stage, Fancha twisting in his arms, and started pushing his way through the crowd headed toward the dock. He could see Sharkey on the bow, already heaving the bow line ashore, and Stoke heard the muffled roar of
He saw Harry at the top of the tower, screaming at him to hurry, hurry, and the crowd finally had thinned to the point where he could break into a full-tilt run across the sloping lawn toward the dock.
Sharkey was on the stern, heaving the line, and the big Viking’s props were churning now. She was beginning to edge away from the dock.
Two of the black shirts saw him coming and stepped in front of him. Stoke just ran right through them, flinging them to either side, and they sprawled to the ground. He had maybe twenty yards to reach the dock. The distance between the boat and the dock was opening up fast. Three feet, four…he sprinted that last bit, took a running jump off the dock, and leaped across the widening gap, landing hard on the deck in the aft cockpit. He managed to keep his balance and hold tightly to Fancha at the same time.
“Are you crazy? Put me down!” Fancha shouted in his ear, pounding on his shoulders with her fists.
There was a lot of shouting and confusion back on the lawn as Harry leaned on the throttles and the big yacht jumped up on plane and roared away from the dock.
“Go!” Stoke yelled up at Brock, “Hit it! Get us out of here!”
Stoke was in a crouch, moving with Fancha toward the door to the main salon, when the whole world was rocked on its side. The night sky lit with a white flash and then an intense blossoming orange glow that was blinding. Stoke, still cradling Fancha in his arms, dropped to the deck as the shockwave of the massive explosion slammed the big yacht, rolling her over onto her side, nearly broaching her completely. Stoke and Fancha slid down the deck, crashing against the gunwale. He protected her as best he could, but both of them were stunned.
Where the pool had been, nothing but a large black hole. The whole backside of the house was gone, and you could look into the interior rooms of the Russian’s flaming mansion as if it was some kind of oversized, burnt-out dollhouse.
He looked down at Fancha, her head in his lap, staring up at him with those great big beautiful wide-open eyes.
“You okay, sugar? You hurt anywhere?”
“I thought you’d lost your mind, Stoke, grabbing me off that stage.”
“I was just trying
“Oh, baby. I never saw somebody move so fast. I didn’t know anybody could run like that.”
“You watch me run to you next time you call my name.”
She reached up and brushed his cheek with the back of her hand.
“Stokely Jones Jr., I don’t know how to-”
“Shh. You thank me later. I’ve got to go see if Harry and Sharkey are okay, jump on the horn, tell my clients in D.C. what just happened to Comrade Ramzan.”
“Love you, baby.”
“Love you more.”
Stoke shrugged out of his jacket, folded it, and put it beneath Fancha’s head. Then he started climbing the stainless ladder to the top of the tower, moving fast.
Harry Brock was up there, staring at something in the sky through his binoculars.
“Holy shit. Will you look at that?”
“What?”
“Over there. To the west, just coming up over the
Stoke looked at the thing. “Damn.”
“What the hell is that thing, Stoke?”
“Some kind of new airship, I guess. Doesn’t look like any blimp I ever saw. Military, maybe, looking for go-fast drug boats coming up from the Keys.”
It was massive, whatever the hell it was. Stoke stared at the great silver ship floating over the Miami skyline toward him, a giant round opening where the nose should be. Weird-looking. Scary-looking, almost.
Make that definitely scary-looking.
18
Hawke, arriving at Shadowlands, found Ambrose Congreve standing at the front door, dressed to the nines, but adamantly refusing to get into the automobile Hawke had shown up in.
“Some car, isn’t it?” Hawke said, grinning. “Absolutely ripping.”
“I simply won’t ride into town in that contraption, Alex,” Congreve said. “I won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Look at it. It’s a deathtrap, for one thing. No doors, no roof. It’s utterly ridiculous.”
“It has a delightful roof. A daffodil surrey roof of fringed canvas, I’ll grant you, and the fringe is a bit outre, but a roof all the same.”
Congreve disdainfully tapped one of the tiny moon-shaped wheel covers with the tip of his walking stick, making a hollow, tinny sound. He looked at Hawke and did not bother to disguise his sigh of frustration.
“Frankly, Alex, I find it astounding that you can transit this island in such a conveyance and keep a straight face. This…car, if one can call it such, looks as if it formerly belonged to a circus clown.”
“Mind your tongue, Constable. And get in the damn thing. C is waiting, and we’re already late.”
“Yes, and this is quite a serious meeting he’s invited us to. We’re taking on the dreaded Russians again, Alex. If Sir David happens to be standing outside the club when we arrive, he’ll think he’s invited the bloody Ringling Brothers to help him save Western civilization.”
Hawke tried not to laugh out loud.
Because of traffic congestion on the small island, every residence on Bermuda was allotted only one vehicle per household. Hawke was driving the car that had come along with his cottage. This tiny vehicle by the noble Italian design house of Pininfarina, was a 1958 Fiat 600 Jolly, and he’d somehow acquired it when he signed his lease for Teakettle Cottage.
It was an odd duck, to be honest, bright sunshine yellow, with seats made, improbably enough, of wicker.
But Hawke thought it quite sporting, and certainly Pelham enjoyed squiring the Jolly around town on his market runs each week. Besides, Congreve was right, there were few places on earth where a man could drive such an outrageous automobile and maintain a straight face. But Bermuda was one of those places.
Congreve sighed one of his immense sighs and settled his rather large person into the wicker armchair bolted after a fashion to the floor. He was shocked to discover that even the dashboard was wicker. He looked at Hawke with dismay. He felt as if he were riding in a ladies’ sewing basket.
He put his smart straw hat firmly on his head and prepared for the worst.
