“Fuck you.”
“Open the window, Darryl.”
Harry did it. One huge pane of glass that swung inward. Then he and Stoke lifted Gurov’s chair and placed him out on the window ledge, the sounds of traffic and sirens far below suddenly audible, cold night air rushing inside.
Gurov started screaming, bucking, sobbing, cursing himself for a fool. He’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, a honeytrap.
Stoke tilted the chair forward so that the man was looking straight down at the parking lot twenty-two stories below. Stoke had to shout to be heard above the sounds of the howling wind and the traffic below.
“Only thing holding you to this chair are the plasticuffs. One on your wrists and two on your ankles. Darryl’s got his knife out again. Snip-snip, nosedive into space, Viktor. What’s it going to be? You going to call off the dogs, partner? Or are you going down to the lobby level the hard way?”
He was gagging and choking on his own blood.
“Mummmpfh…”
“I don’t know that word. Darryl, cut his hands loose.”
Harry’s knife sliced through the plastic. Gurov instantly pitched forward, his head making a dull thud as his face slammed into the hotel’s exterior wall. His head and torso were now hanging completely outside the building, his arms swinging wildly, only the thin strip of plastic around each ankle holding him to the chair.
“You prepared to wax this guy, Stoke?” Harry asked. “Take it that far?”
“You damn right I am. In a heartbeat.”
“Okay, good to know.”
Stoke stuck his head out the window and called down to him. “Viktor, time’s up. You’re about to end up on the cutting-room floor. If you want to die, don’t do anything, I’ll understand. If you want to live, and agree to do exactly what I tell you to do, put your hands together like you’re praying.
The Russian instantly clasped his hands together, interlocking his fingers, finding his voice and crying out, “Stop! I’ll do what you say! Pull me up!”
“Are you sure?”
“Please! I beg you…”
“Let’s haul him in, Darryl,” Stoke said and they did, setting his chair upright on the floor by the window. Stoke leaned down and put both hands on the man’s violently shaking shoulders, staring into his terrified eyes.
“Look at me,” he said. “Look at my face. Look at my black face. My eyes. Hear my voice. Never forget me. Because I will not forget you. And if I have to, I will come back for you. I will come back here and I will make you sorry your mama ever met your papa. I will not just kill you. I will drive my fist inside your chest and I will rip your black heart out and feed it to you. And that, Viktor Gurov, is the solemn promise I make to you. Are we clear on that?”
Viktor nodded his bloody head violently.
“Good boy. And you tell the goon squad back at the clubhouse to back the hell off Alex Hawke. They don’t, they’re going to find themselves under a pile of rubble. Will you do that for me, Viktor?”
“Da!”
Harry said, “Sheldon, question.”
“Shoot, Darryl.”
“What do we do with this sack of shit now?”
“Oh, you’re going to love this. You know that hot English screenwriter we met at the bar near Red Square yesterday?”
“Yeah, guy who wrote Gorky Park III?”
“That’s him. Well, he wrote a killer new ending for Viktor’s character. Killer. Matter of fact, he just texted his notes to me. He’s waiting for us now at the location.”
Brock stood up, smiling at everyone.
“That’s a wrap,” Harry said. “Next location, people.”
The next morning, members of the Tsarist Society who arrived for an early breakfast got a bit of a shock. Instead of the triumphal and historic flag that normally hung from the shining brass flagpole projecting high above the street, there was a naked fat man hanging by his heels.
Absolutely appalling.
At first everyone thought he was dead. He must have been unconscious, for he abruptly started yelling to be cut down and someone had to call the fire department for a truck and ladder that was tall enough to reach him.
The firemen lowered him to the street.
The president of the Tsarist Society, former KGB general Vladimir Kutov, who happened upon the scene at that very moment, hurried over to the great white whale of a man floundering on the asphalt, shivering arms wrapped around his knees, violently rocking back and forth, muttering some unintelligible word. He had lost a lot of blood and was clearly in shock. And his mouth was full of broken teeth, which made his mad ravings even more incoherent.
“What is it, Viktor?” Kutov said to him. “What the devil are you trying to say?”
The man managed to utter a single word before he lost consciousness and collapsed in the street, his wild eyes staring up at the sky.
“Hollywood.”
Thirty-five
Istanbul
Hawke’s naval architect said, “I am launching our tour of the new Blackhawke on the bridge, Lord Hawke, if that suits you. We had a rather dramatic event last night, recorded by the ship’s video surveillance, and I think you should see it first.”
Hawke didn’t like the “our tour” bit, but he bit his tongue. It wasn’t our boat, it was his damn boat. He and the architect had certainly had their moments during the design and construction of his boat. Architects sometimes had difficulty remembering who would actually inhabit the house, or cross the North Atlantic in a boat. Pure ego, which he could understand, but the best ones knew when to concede to the man who wrote the checks.
“By all means, sir,” Hawke said. “Lead on, lead on.”
“Follow me, please, gentlemen.” Abdullah Badie, a reed-thin and somewhat imperious Turkish yacht designer, stepped aboard the monstrous vessel’s boarding platform, easily handling the tricky move from the gunwale of the high-speed tender, bobbing in a mild chop. He turned to offer Hawke a helping hand, which was declined. Hawke had been hopping on and off boats his entire life.
Once aboard, waiting for Stokely and Harry, Hawke gazed aloft with a mixture of pride and wonder. The bridge deck, which nearly spanned the ship’s fifty-foot beam, towered six decks above him. The foremast soared into the heavens, nearly twenty stories; the press had gushed that the sheer size of this thing he had poured his heart into helping to design and build was magnificent, was stunning, was a dream. A technological masterwork. The final result provided him with much needed satisfaction, solace, and a refuge from the world.
“This way, gentlemen,” Badie said, his white teeth startling beneath a full black moustache.
Abdullah, an athletic Turk, tall and bronzed in a crisp white linen suit, turned and sprinted for the nearest staircase. He was quite the dandy, Alex thought, with his scarlet cap and black canvas espadrilles. Hawke, Stokely, and Brock were right behind him, saluting the ship’s sixteen-member crew standing at attention in dress uniforms of black as they passed by. Hawke saw a lot of familiar faces; most of the group had been crew aboard the previous Blackhawke.
They reached the bridge wing and paused a moment to look down, taking in the grandeur of the clipper yacht’s foredeck in the sunshine-brass, stainless-steel fixtures, the varnished cap rail, teak decks-everything scrubbed, polished, and gleaming to a fare-thee-well. Brock stared, openmouthed in wonder since he first laid eyes on the megayacht lying at anchor. He looked over at Hawke and said, “So, Lord Hawke, a boat like this will set you
