Alex Hawke, as it turned out, was naturally good at war. He'd been a decorated Royal Navy airman, flying Harrier jump jets over Baghdad in the first Gulf War, where he was shot down, imprisoned, and brutally tortured before he escaped and carried another gravely wounded man on his shoulders through the burning desert for days before being rescued.
His service record, however, was not unblemished.
Elated upon his escape and safely returned to his old squadron, he'd soon been reprimanded by his commander for 'reprehensible conduct ill-befitting an officer.' His first official 'black mark.'
Hawke, overcome with ennui while waiting to return to combat missions, had taken to staging afternoon martini parties with a few close comrades. Of course, there was absolutely no ice in the desert, so Hawke had conceived the notion of flying pitchers of martinis up to extremely high altitudes. The idea was to chill them before putting the aircraft into a nearly vertical dive to the airstrip and deliver them up to the lads before they'd 'lost their chill.'
Out of natural inclination, the young Hawke had made a deep study of warfare, modern as well as ancient. 'C,' Sir David Trulove, had said that one of Hawke's more important assets at MI6 was his lifetime of wide reading in military strategy, most recently in counterinsurgency operations and counterterror tactics.
Resourcefulness, knowledge, quick intuition, and an indomitable will, all these coupled with an intense fighting spirit-that was Alex Hawke. And that's what Charles needed most now. He found the thought most comforting, running his hand through his thinning hair and closing his weary eyes.
Under attack from within and without, England needed all the help she could get, and he was grateful there were still men the caliber of his friend Hawke within the realm.
'Thank God for Alex Hawke,' the Prince of Wales whispered, mostly in an effort to console himself.
Charles knew Hawke was feeling deeply wounded by the awful event in the skies above Sweden when he lost Anastasia. Perhaps Alex needed Charles's help as badly as Charles needed his. If only he could really help him, somehow get him beyond this great sadness and make him whole again. Maybe this call to action would help. And, God willing, perhaps the two of them could stop the madman who had perhaps murdered his beloved uncle Dickie thirty years ago.
And who now seemed hell-bent on the destruction of the Royal Family.
FOUR
PERHAPS THERE WAS A HAPPIER MAN in all of England that brilliant June morning. There may well have been one or two. But you would be hard-pressed to find someone more joyously alive than one Ambrose Congreve. Bouncing along a sun-dappled country lane, behind the wheel of his Morgan motorcar, a sprightly tartan plaid driving cap on his head, pipe jauntily clenched in his teeth, the sun shining through shimmering spring green leaves, God in his heaven, and, once more, all was right with the world.
His tiny little corner of it at any rate.
Ambrose Congreve, the retired head of Scotland Yard and a brilliant detective, had long been Alex Hawke's best friend in all the world. Ambrose went about life in a fairly straightforward fashion, with few eccentricities or idiosyncrasies, but he was absolutely fanatical about four things. In order of importance, they were: his beloved fiancee, Lady Diana Mars, one. The incandescent Mr. Sherlock Holmes, two. His weekly golf foursome at Sunningdale, three. And his fastidiously acquired wardrobe, four.
Catholic in his tastes, he was basically a tweed man, sometimes given to green velvet smoking jackets from Turnbull's. Or 'siren suits' like the ones Churchill had worn during the war. Or bright yellow cable-stitched socks on certain very special occasions. Today, for instance.
A pair of twinkling blue eyes, the eyes of an innocent baby, belied Congreve's gruff voice. This gruff manner, all this cock-of-the-walk huffing and puffing, well, it was all a pose, anyway, and deceived no one. Congreve was brainy, tough, shrewd, and relentless, but he was the kindest hearted of men, a fellow who gazed at the world from behind a remarkable moustache fully six inches long and waxed into magnificent points.
The lane was flat and ran between towering hawthorn hedges. He saw a sharp turning ahead and quickly downshifted, using the heel-and-toe, double-clutch racing method Hawke had taught him when he'd first acquired the car. The lane had now turned upward, climbing the wooded hillside under overarching trees creating deep wells of shadow, shattered by dazzling blades of stark brightness.
Just two weeks earlier, had anyone told you that the famous criminalist would be tootling down a shady Cotswolds lane en route to an early breakfast with Lord Alexander Hawke, you would have thought them mad as a hatter. And you'd have been quite right.
The former chief inspector had sadly given up on Hawke, a sorrowful, lost soul, gone for good. When Congreve and his fiancee, Lady Diana Mars, had recently bade farewell to Bermuda, they hadn't even stopped by Hawke's Teakettle Cottage to say good-bye. Congreve sadly told Diana he simply couldn't face it on the morning of their departure, tears threatening in his baby blue eyes. The sight of Alex in such a wretched state, he told her, the very idea of seeing his old friend for what might very well be-the last time-
No-enough, he scolded himself. That was all behind them now that Alex Hawke was blessedly, miraculously back among the living. The chief inspector sat back and simply enjoyed whipping along the country road in the Yellow Peril, as he'd dubbed his old Morgan roadster. Painted in (what was to him) a most pleasing shade of buttery yellow, this was his dream machine.
The fact that it was the only car he'd ever owned was beside the point. Every time he got behind the wooden steering wheel he cursed himself for a fool, having spent a lifetime oblivious to the joys of motoring, the smell of Castrol, the throaty rumble of the exhaust system. Well, he was making up for lost time now, he thought, grabbing second gear, downshifting for the tight right-hander coming up, accelerating into it, catching the apex perfectly.
He was currently en route to Hawkesmoor, the ancient Hawke family pile in deepest, darkest Gloucestershire. It seemed that Alex Hawke, and here he would pinch himself were he not driving at high speed, had, astoundingly enough, returned home to England! And, the dear fellow was not only home, but he sounded very much his old self again. Full of that old piss and vinegar that made him such splendid company, even in dicey situations sometimes bordering on the extremely perilous.
Hawke's recovery was nothing short of astounding. He fully intended to call Dr. Nigel Prestwicke at Bermuda's King Edward Hospital as soon as possible and offer his unbounded congratulations. The man was clearly one of the medical gods, a healer of the first magnitude. Small wonder that C, the chief of MI6, placed such enormous faith in him.
Purring along, Ambrose relished the moment he'd gotten Hawke's good news, on a Saturday morning just one week earlier.
As his fiancee had other plans that evening, Congreve had been at home, dining alone at Heart's Ease, the cozy Hampshire cottage he'd inherited from his aunt Agatha. His Scottish housekeeper, the positively angelic May Purvis, had just plucked her inimitable goose-berry sampler from the oven when the phone in the kitchen pantry had rung.
'Probably Lady Mars, sir,' May said, serving him a generous, steaming portion. 'Shall I get it?'
'Hmm,' Congreve said, shoveling the stuff in while it was still piping hot. May was gone for a few moments and returned with a great sparkling smile on her pink face. She looked, what was the word, giddy. Giddy as a schoolgirl who's just glimpsed her first film star.
'It's him, sir,' May said, beaming as if Sexy Rexy Harrison himself were on the line instead of up in heaven.
'Him?'
'His lordship.'
'Which lordship, my dear Mrs. Purvis? As it happens, I know several.'
'Lord Hawke, sir.'
'Alex Hawke? On the telephone? You must be joking,' he said, leaping out of his chair and running for the pantry.
