Tsar

“You’ve severed your military connections?”

“Yes.”

That little three-letter affirmative hung in the air for a seeming eternity. Hawke and Korsakov seemed content to stare into the fire in silence, sipping their drinks, thinking their separate thoughts. Suddenly, Korsakov slapped his right knee and spoke up.

“I may drop by Blue Water one day, when I return to Bermuda. If that suits you.”

“I’d be delighted.”

“You know about these computers of mine? The Zeta machines? Popularly known as Wizards these days?”

“I daresay the whole world knows of them. You’re rather the Henry Ford of the computer era, you know.”

“Well, you flatter me, of course. But TSAR, my company, does ship millions of these things all over the world from our factories here and in China. Perhaps the Zeta might be of interest to your new logistics firm?”

“It certainly would.”

“I wonder. Have you any written material on your new enterprise? Any brochures or things like that I could peruse?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. I’ll give them to you first thing in the morning.”

“Excellent. And now, I must confess, I’m a bit tired. It’s been a rather long evening. You could do with a bit of rest yourself after your travels.”

Count Korsakov got to his feet and raised his arms over his head, unable to stifle a surprisingly noisy yawn.

“I could sleep for a week,” Hawke said, rising as well, though in truth, his one-hour nap had completely refreshed him. Naps were the secret of life, as his hero Churchill had discovered during the war.

The count put his arm around Alex’s shoulder, and together they moved toward the door.

“One curious thing, Alex,” he said, pausing in midstride. “Speaking of shooting in Scotland. You’re a sportsman, obviously. I wonder. Do you ever visit the island of Scarp? Up in the Hebrides?”

“I do. I’ve an ancestral hunting lodge there. I do a bit of stalking now and then. Why do you ask?”

“My older brother Sergei, you see, was a great one for stalking. Tragically, he disappeared while on such a hunt. On Scarp, as a matter of fact.”

“On Scarp? Surely you must be mistaken. It is a very small island, mostly uninhabited. Only a few crofters and farmers. I’m sure I would have heard of his disappearance.”

“Oh, no, this was years ago, Alex. Back in the drear dark days of the Cold War.”

“How did he come to choose Scarp, of all places? Most forbidding place on earth.”

“Sergei was a Soviet intelligence officer, on leave from the military, and had sailed his small sloop to the island for a day’s stalking. We never saw him again.”

“Really? What year was this?”

“Oh, I hardly remember. Let’s see, October 1962 or thereabouts. We were impossibly close, my brother and I, and I miss him dreadfully. We were both away at a school in Switzerland, you see, just the two of us. Le Rosey, perhaps you’ve heard of it. The dormitory caught fire one night when I was about seven years old, Sergei was eleven. The old wooden building burned to the ground. Only the two of us boys survived. Sergei was badly burned saving my life. I owed him everything, and his loss haunts me to this day.”

“I’m terribly sorry.”

“Your father was a British naval intelligence officer, I believe, wasn’t he?”

“He was.”

“Probably did some stalking himself, I’d imagine, used the family lodge on Scarp from time to time?”

“He may well have. He was a great one for the outdoors. I was only seven when he died. I don’t recall hearing much about Scarp. There was a great stag he mentioned once or twice, a big red stag. That’s about all I remember.”

“Not called Redstick, was he? This red stag?”

“No. Monarch of Shalloch, he was called, I’m sure.”

“Hmm. Fascinating. Extraordinary to think that their paths might well have crossed at some point, isn’t it? Two Cold Warriors?”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

“Well, off you go, then. Sleep well.”

He pulled open the tall walnut doors. There was a man waiting in the hallway, looking as if someone should put him to bed. His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked a bit unsteady on his pins. Frowning, he looked Hawke up and down and said, in furry English, “You’re the Englishman.”

“One of them, at any rate, sir. There are millions of us, you know.”

“Hmpf,” the man muttered, unamused.

“Vladimir, my very good friend,” Korsakov said with a forced smile. “Come in and have a drink.”

“Aha! There you are,” the man said angrily to Korsakov. “I’ve been looking all over for you. I’ll have a word, if you don’t fucking mind.”

“What did you say to me?” the count said, the words seeming to come from another being.

Hawke looked at Korsakov, astounded at the raw animalism in the man’s face. For the tiniest instant, his hard blue eyes flashed with the glint of incalculable malice. He’d caught only the briefest glimpse of what lay hidden beneath the polished veneer, the genteel mask of the philosopher king. But he had seen a monster, sacred and profane, a strange, arrogant, terrifying glimpse of evil at full throttle. Hawke believed that had he made a sudden, threatening move at that moment, Korsakov, like a dog, would have bared his teeth in a furious snarl.

When he looked again, the count was once more the picture of beneficent charm, so convincing that Alex wondered if he only imagined what he’d seen.

“Yes, yes, of course,” the count said, “First, please say hello to Alex Hawke, Vladimir. Alex, this is my old comrade, Vladimir Rostov.”

“Good evening,” the Russian said, badly slurring his words and not offering his hand.

“Good evening,” Hawke said, standing aside so that the man might enter Korsakov’s study. He recognized him now, the current president of the Russian Federation.

Once President Rostov was safely inside, the count quickly closed the door, and Alex was left standing alone in the great vaulted hallway. There was a good deal of shouting in Russian, and he desperately wished Ambrose were at his side translating. He heard the word Amerikanski a number of times, from both men, and so at least the subject matter of their violent disagreement was known.

He decided to linger a moment, see if he could pick up anything interesting. A moment later, he heard the inebriated Russian president shout something in English. “The Americans will annihilate us for this insanity!”

For what insanity? Hawke wondered, but the shouting match had quickly reverted to Russian. What the hell had the Russians done now?

He looked down at his hand and saw a tumbler of good black rum. That’s a bloody waste, he said half aloud, quaffing it at one draught. The count and the president seemed to have moved deeper into the study, their voices no longer audible through the door. He looked left, then right. He realized he hadn’t the faintest notion how to get through this architectural wonderland to his bloody room.

To the right, he thought, lay the Great Hall, where he’d met the twins. He’d start there, if he could find it, and do a little exploring on his way to bed and Anastasia. Snooping, really, but then, he was a natural-born spy and couldn’t help himself. He had noticed a very large hangar out beyond the stables, a corrugated-aluminum structure that looked large enough to accommodate the real Hindenburg.

If this bloody snowstorm would just ease up a bit, and if he could find himself a warm fur coat and a pair of size-twelve Wellies in a mudroom somewhere, he thought he just might go out and poke around a bit.

He looked at his watch. No, he had more important things to do than snoop about the count’s hangar. With the time difference, he could still make a few calls via his sat phone. Yes, it was still early enough in London to catch C before he went to bed. He thought C would find the confrontation between Korsakov and an angry Rostov most interesting. He’d call Ambrose in Bermuda as well, bring him up to speed on recent developments.

Red Banner had a lot to talk about.

Harry Brock was waiting for him in Moscow, staying at the Hotel Metropol under an assumed name. Simon Weatherstone, as Harry’s passport now described him, was holding secret meetings around Moscow with the small cadre of newly recruited agents of Red Banner. Hawke decided he’d call Harry’s room at the Metropol first thing in