“Stop him!” the Tsar howled, clambering over chairs and shoving aside anyone who got in his way, including the very furious King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, in his desperate efforts to gain the stage and get at Alex Hawke’s throat, shouting all the while, “Someone stop this fucking madman!”
“Sorry for these beastly interruptions,” Hawke said, continuing with his conversational tone despite the shouted threats and the imminent arrival of the enraged Tsar at the podium.
“In addition to the marvels of impalement, let me touch briefly on our honoree’s invention of the Zeta computer. Hailed as a godsend in Third World countries, the Zeta computers are actually powerful bombs, used just last week to destroy an entire American town. But the Americans are not our honoree’s only target. No, he has shipped countless millions of these cleverly disguised bombs all over the world, creating a worldwide web of death, which he is even now using to threaten his political enemies, forcing them to stand by and watch as his Russian storm troopers sweep into Eastern European countries, the Baltics, East Ukraine, and other sovereign nations in an effort to reclaim these lands for Russia and—”
Hawke stood his ground as Korsakov clambered up onto the podium and headed straight for the lectern. The man was literally snarling, stringy loops of saliva flying from his open mouth as he crossed the wide stage. Hawke smiled and calmly continued, as if nothing were out of the ordinary.
“Under this self-proclaimed Tsar, the New Russia will become like the old Soviet Union. A cynical tyranny, a cruel and heartless state, no rule of law, trampling on basic rights and human dignity, expansionist by creed, and—oh, here’s our honoree now—I’d like you all to welcome—”
Korsakov reached out, ripped the microphone from the lectern, and flung it to the floor in a fury.
“I will kill you for this!” he said in a low growl, going for Hawke’s throat with his outstretched hands.
Hawke, still behind the lectern, thought a physical brawl at the Nobel podium would be a bit unseemly, so he pulled the small Walther PPK automatic from his shoulder holster and shoved the muzzle deep under the Tsar’s ribs, aiming straight for the heart.
“No, sire, I will kill you,” Hawke said in a low voice. “Here.
Now.
Or we can step outside and settle this matter like gentlemen. Which do you prefer, you murderous bastard?”
He now shoved the Walther up under the Tsar’s chin, grabbed him by the lapel, and yanked him closer. He was aware of security men edging toward the lectern.
“I will do it,” Hawke said. “Believe me.”
“He’s got a gun!” one of the Nobel officials shouted, and the members of the Nobel Committee still on the podium either dove off the stage into the crowd or raced up the staircase between the bewildered trumpeters.
The Tsar looked into Hawke’s icy blue eyes. The Russian was breathing heavily through flared nostrils, his pupils dilated, his nose only inches away from the hated Englishman’s. He spat full into Hawke’s face. Then he turned and leaped from the podium onto the royal table, sending china and crystal crashing to the stone floor.
“You will have cause to regret that, sir,” Hawke said to his retreating back. The man was storming the length of the tabletop, slashing flaming candelabras aside with his hands and kicking great urns and tureens of hot soup out of his path toward the main exit at the far end of the table.
Hawke holstered his Walther, pulled his white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his cutaway, and wiped the Tsar’s saliva from his face. Various security men seemed to be making their way toward him, so he simply dove into the hysterical crowd and resurfaced a hundred yards away, melting into a seething mass of identically dressed men heading for the exits.
There was utter panic and pandemonium in the hall.
He was afraid he’d quite ruined the entire evening.
But after all, some things just couldn’t be helped.
T
he Maybach roared out of the car park on two wheels as Hawke raced up to the Saab. Halter was sitting in the passenger seat with the engine running and the driver’s door open. Hawke jumped behind the wheel and fastened his safety belt. Engaging first gear, he slammed the accelerator to the floor, popped the clutch, and fishtailed out into the Avenue Hantverkargatan, taking a right turn just as the Maybach had done. He was hoping for a glimpse of taillights, but the Tsar’s big black automobile had already crossed the large bridge and disappeared.
“You did it!” Halter said. “You bloody well flushed him out!”
“Yeah.”
“Before or after his moment of glory?”
“I’d say what his moment lacked in glory was more than compensated for by drama.”
Halter smiled. “Good work.”
“Damn it,” Hawke said, slamming the wheel with his closed fist. “He’s going to be tough to catch, much less keep up with. A real automobile would have come in handy tonight.”
“Relax, Alex. I know where he’s going,” Halter said, holding onto the dashboard with one hand, cradling the Beta detonator in his lap with the other.
“You do?”
“Yes. I heard him shout at his driver as he was getting into the car. ‘Morto!’ That’s an island out in the Stockholm Archipelago. The Tsar has a summer house there, the only house on the island. It used to belong to King Carl XIV Johan. Built in 1818.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“I’m a professor of history at Cambridge University.”
“Stefan, please tell me that he was alone when he came out.”
“No. His daughter Anastasia was with him.”
“Damn it! I told her to run!”
“You spoke with her?”
“No. I left a message on her mobile. Did she seem a willing passenger?”
“Hardly. She was screaming obscenities, trying to escape from her father, who was holding her by the wrist. Korsakov and his gorilla of a driver were trying to force her into the backseat. It looked as if she banged her head pretty badly on the roof. She slumped to the ground, and they stuffed her into the rear seat. The driver, by the way, had the Tsar’s Beta detonator manacled to his wrist. We’re good to go.”
Hawke, while relieved that Anastasia had obviously gotten his message, knew what Halter had to be thinking.
The doomsday clock was ticking, but they still had sufficient time to get away from the civilian population. They could do this as soon as they reached a stretch of deserted road beyond the outskirts of Stockholm. Blow the crazy bastard straight to hell with the Beta detonator up there in the Maybach’s front seat.
Because both men knew that in little more than one hour, the Tsar intended to murder at least a million innocent people with the push of a button on that machine. Sir David Trulove had informed Halter that Washington would retaliate immediately. At this very moment, there were twelve U.S. Navy Ohio-class submarines on high alert in the Baltic, the Barents Sea, and the North Pacific. Each sub was carrying twenty-two Trident II nuclear missiles bearing up to eight multiple warheads, up to 3.8 megatons apiece.
MI-6 had recently determined that Russia’s early-warning radar system was vulnerable. A single British or American nuclear missile detonated high in the atmosphere would blind all of the early-warning radars below, rendering them unable to monitor subsequent launches. Russia, seeing a launch, would then be faced with a terrible decision. Wait and see if a Trident missile explodes and blinds its radars, or launch a retaliatory strike immediately. Halter, like Sir David and the man in the White House, had no doubt which way Russia’s new leader would respond.
World War III.
Downshifting and sliding around a turn, Hawke felt as if his head were full of angry bees. What the hell was he going to do? His duty was clear, but his heart was a formidable foe. He loved that woman, deeply. She was carrying his child. He had to find a way to save her, even as he averted a world catastrophe by killing her father. He’d find a way. He had to.
“Bastard,” Hawke said, the horsepower-challenged rattletrap going airborne as he crested the bridge at full speed. The streets of Stockholm were patched with black ice, and unlike his adversary, he didn’t have four-wheel drive. Catching the Maybach was going to require some ingenuity.
“Which way to this Morto? I still don’t see the bloody Maybach. Are you sure he didn’t turn off on a side street somewhere here in the Gamla Stan?”
“There’s only one road to the sea, Alex. He’ll be on it, don’t worry.”
“As long as you say so, professor.”
Halter had turned the dim yellow map light on and held the Swedish map across his knees. Unlike Hawke, he didn’t seem to have any trouble reading it.
“We head due east on this road along the fjord. Route 222, called the Varmodoleden. We follow the mainland coast all the way out to the Baltic Sea. There are literally thousands of islands of various sizes east of here. Most of them with a few houses or villas. Eventually, we’ll come to this little town of Dalaro right on the Baltic proper. I see some dotted lines here. Looks as if there’s a ferry service from there out to Morto.”
“Good. We take him out at the ferry.”
“We can’t chance it. Look at the map. I think we can take him out right here. This stretch of road coming up in a few miles is wooded on both sides. No houses for a few miles in any direction.”
“We can’t take him out in the car, Stefan. Not now.”
“Of course we can. We have to, Alex, for God’s sake! What are you thinking? Korsakov’s men could have found Kuragin by now, put the whole thing together! If so, this thing in my bloody lap blows at any second!”
“I need to get him alone, that’s all. I’m sorry.”
“Alone?”
Halter looked at him, speechless. Then he understood. The daughter. Of course. Hawke was involved with the Tsar’s daughter. It must have happened in Bermuda. And he had recently been with her at the winter palace. Holy mother of hell, that was a complication he’d not even dreamed of. Well, he had the Beta in his hands. If worst came to worst, he’d just—
“We’ll do this at the ferry, Stefan. It’s the only way. I’ll get Anastasia out of that car somehow. Don’t worry about how. As soon as she and I are clear, do it. You got that? We don’t touch the father until the daughter is safely outside the kill radius.”
“Alex, you’re not thinking. What if he beats us to the ferry? Then what?”
“He won’t.”
“Alex, listen to me. You, of all people, must know you can’t let your personal feelings enter into a situation of this magnitude. I’m sorry about the girl. It’s obvious you have feelings for her. But if I see us running out of time, I will act. I am going to take him out, no matter what. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Hang on,” Hawke said, ignoring the question and accelerating out of a turn. “I’m going to drive as fast as I possibly can without killing us. How much time have we got until he starts blowing up the planet?”
“An hour and ten minutes.”
“Should be enough.”
“It has to be enough. Please listen to me. If I see it’s not, I’m going to take this man out, Alex. It’s my sworn duty to do so. As it is yours, I might remind you. I know you’ve got a gun. You can try to stop me. But I swear to you, I will gladly die pushing this button. Understand?”
Hawke ignored him.
“Aren’t there any bloody shortcuts to the ferry?” he asked.
“No.”
“Bloody hell,” Hawke said, braking and fishtailing through another turn. Luckily, most of the local constabulary was busy providing security at the Stadshuset tonight.
Hawke’s driving that night was either inspired or insane, depending on your point of view. He somehow kept the car out of the icy fjord, remained mostly on the road, at any rate, his eyes always a hundred yards ahead, willing the vehicle to go where it was pointed.
He fished his mobile out of his pocket and speed-dialed Asia.
Answer, answer, answer
, he prayed, but all he got was a machine and a beep tone.
“Hey, it’s me. Look, I’m right behind you. I’m coming for you. When you get to the Morto ferry, you’ll have to stop. That’s when you run, okay? Just jump out and run as fast as you can. I’ll find you. I love you. Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right.”
Occasionally, he’d look sideways at Halter. The professor’s eyes were always straight ahead. He had the Beta in his lap, programmed with the code, his finger on the trigger. Hawke knew that if Halter should feel the Saab leaving the road, headed for the trees or into the inky waters of the fjord on their left, he’d instantly push the button, no doubt about it. He’d see an enormous flash of light on the road far up ahead, flames climbing into the night sky, an explosion vaporizing the Tsar of Russia and his daughter, Anastasia.
And so Hawke drove furiously on, waiting, praying to see a blinking brake light on the road ahead. Something, anything that would prove he was gaining ground on the Maybach and the woman he loved.
But he never did.
H
awke 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.”
“I hope God’s watching this channel,” Hawke said, sprinting down the beach and up into the woods at a dead run. His mind was racing, too. Find Anastasia, find a way, any way at all, to get her away from her crazed father before he and Halter killed the man. Five-hundred-yard kill radius? Is that what Kuragin had said about the Beta’s destructive range? He’d do it somehow, get her outside that circle of death.
But he was fast running out of time.
And Halter still had his finger on the trigger.