Dragonfire

by Ted Bell

  He snapped to, saluted, and said, “Crystal clear, sir, aye-aye!”

  Commander Hawke smiled and said, “Well, then, by God, man, let’s get the lads upstairs and find ourselves a big fat Nazi minesweeper!”

  CHAPTER 26

  The English Channel

  January 1942

  Nothing untoward happened on the flight out over the crystalline blue Channel to the target zone, save the appearance of the Aleksandr Kolchak at about twenty miles off Calais. Stauffenberg was flying the plane, and Hawke told him to descend and maintain three thousand so he could get a closer look at her. An intelligence officer had told him about a rogue Soviet Navy vessel cruising around off the coast of France. A PR stunt, the man said, the Russkies just showing the flag in the Channel.

  She was a Soviet Kirov-class cruiser, all right, a six hundred footer with double-shaft-geared steam turbines and the usual array of guns and rows of antisub depth charges at her stern. She had nine six-inch B-38 guns mounted in Mark 5 triple turrets. And as Hawke watched, they were already slowly swinging around.

  Hawke, riveted, watched as the barrels of the big guns were being elevated and converged on his bomber. Would the Soviets be crazy enough to shoot down a German bomber in the middle of a public relations ploy? Not bloody likely.

  Hawke used the little Leica he’d bought in Zurich to snap photos of the Russian vessel, just in case anybody at Whitehall was curious as to what the hell she was doing twenty miles from the French coastline. Steady on they flew for another half hour, engines droning, climbing steadily back up to twenty thousand feet and a course bearing south-southwest.

  They’d spotted the two German Kriegsmarine minelayers first, both busily depositing their deadly wares in the waters where channel markers outlined the approach to the busy harbor at German-occupied Le Havre. Ignoring them, the camo-colored Luftwaffe attack bomber lumbered, its four engines emitting a rather low and muted growl, for another twenty minutes.

  That was when Hawke, growing tired and frustrated at gazing down at empty seas, first saw a sight he’d seen in his dreams a hundred times or more. A big fat German minesweeper cruising along at about fifteen knots on a northerly course that would most likely take her around Lizard Point, the southernmost tip of England, and then probably north to Norway.

  “Skipper, I have radar contact. It’s the large minesweeper, all right. Right on schedule. . . . I have visual contact at two miles’ separation. Target heading three-twenty degrees, speed over water twelve knots. . . .”

  “Okay, Lieutenant, I’ll take it from here,” Hawke said, shedding altitude as he put the bomber’s nose down sharply, easily reaching and exceeding crash-dive speeds. . . . He watched his airspeed indicator increasing rapidly and fought the natural inclination to pull her nose up and bleed speed.

  “Could you put the revs up, please? Need to get her nose up just a bit. . . .”

  “Aye-aye, sir. At eleven thousand, descending through ten thousand, Skipper.”

  “I want visible smoke pouring from the portside engines descending through cloud cover at five thousand. . . .”

  “Portside smoke at five thousand . . . aye.”

  “Steady, steady,” the skipper said, a grim look of complete and utter determination on his face as they dropped into clean air. “Give me smoke at the outboard starboard engines. All you’ve got, Lieutenant!”

  “Aye, Skipper!”

  “Time to make the SOS call to Rescue Service.”

  Lieutnant Stauffenberg grabbed his mike and switched the wireless to an open mike, uncoded, then spoke in his word-perfect German. He said: “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! We’re on fire and going down! Attention, all ships in mid-Channel. We are a Luftwaffe Heinkel bomber in a crash dive at thirty-two-point-zero-one west latitude and ninety-eight-point-thirty-three north longitude. . . . Again, this is an SOS, repeat, SOS, and we require immediate assistance! Kommen-sie, bitte, kommen-sie!”

  Hawke then pushed forward on the yoke, pushing the big airplane into a near vertical dive. All the while trailing thick black smoke from the engines. He dove down at an ever-steeper angle of attack. They were two nautical miles from the approaching German vessel, now increasing her speed to twenty knots. The water was coming up to meet them in a big hurry now. . . . Hawke throttled back, bleeding off a little speed. He wanted to land in the direct path of the German vessel, and he wanted to crash-dive his bomber at a surface point exactly two miles from the boat’s current position.

  “Good show, sir! You’re right on the money, Skipper, on target flight path. . . . Crew’s out on her decks now. . . . Lots of German eyes on us down there . . . All crew and officers gathering on her starboard rail for the big show, sir.”

  “Give me more smoke . . . all you’ve got. . . . Gentlemen, drop your cocks and grab your socks, boys. We’re going in!” Hawke was determined to keep his eyes open until the exact moment of impact. But in those last few seconds, his instincts prevailed, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

  It was like hitting a solid-brick wall in an automobile going two hundred miles an hour. The tip of the port wing caught a wave first, and the entire wing was ripped off, but they were still afloat. The nose was still intact as well as the battered fuselage. All the Perspex in the cockpit windows was immediately blown out. A flying dagger of synthetic glass caught his copilot in the forehead and a solid sheet of blood already covered his face.

  He appeared to be unconscious, but when Hawke unbuckled his harness and pulled him to his feet, the man opened his eyes and smiled, wiping the blood from his eyes.

  “Still alive, am I?” he said.

  “It appears that way,” Hawke said. Hawke got his arm around him and kicked open the cockpit door, and they started aft to help the crew. Assuming they were still alive.

  “Hurry up, Lieutenant,” Hawke added, feeling the nose of the plane slowly dipping about five degrees. Five more and seawater would flood the cockpit.

  The bloody Nazi bomber had already begun to sink.

  And suddenly, she was going down faster, picking up momentum. . . . If he was to get five men out of the doomed airplane alive, he was fast running out of time.

  CHAPTER 27

  Paradise Island, Nassau, the Bahamas

  Present Day

  She was sitting at the roulette table. Enwreathed in a haze of cigarette smoke and black silk, Dior, casually betting red and black, odds or evens. A beginner’s game, a waste of time. Why play a game over which you had literally zero control? He knew her well enough to know that she had not an ounce of gambler’s blood in her. She was only here for the scene. Or perhaps she was here on duty, just like he was. When they’d met, she had been one of the highest-ranking officers in the Chinese Secret Police. He had no reason to think she wasn’t still.

  He had to blink a few times to make sure he wasn’t just seeing things. He caught a sidewise glimpse of those smoldering black eyes.

  He was not seeing things. It was her, all right. Of all the women in the world. It was China Moon.

  Hawke could not take his eyes off her. She was poised. A long white ivory cigarette holder in her right hand caught the eye. She had one elbow on the table with her arm and hand shaped like a swan’s neck. As if she were modeling for a cigarette advertisement. Her hair was gleaming jet-black and hung luxuriously, framing a face that was, at the moment, all business.

  Hawke could sense she possessed a steely determination to never lose. Yet here she was dressed in Dior, a black shantung dress with a tightly fitting bodice. It was the bodice that had him stifling old memories of the way they were back then. Her bosom was lush, and the bodice exaggerated her bust. It was classic China and classic haute couture. A dress that could easily have been made for her and, Alex Hawke reflected, most likely had been. A gold-and-diamond collier cravate with matching earrings put the final touches on the female masterpiece that had stolen his heart so long ago.
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  Hawke had first met China years earlier in the Côte d’Azur, in the south of France. In Cannes, in the wee small hours of the morning at the Petite Bar at the famous—some said infamous—Carlton Hotel one night so long ago. Her beauty and magnetism drew him to her like a moth to a flame. He’d eagerly embraced that flickering flame, and he had embraced her as well. Not to mention his soul and his body.

  China, then the beloved daughter of one the most powerful military officers in Beijing. And China herself had been a very high-ranking officer and political assassin in the Chinese Secret Police. Little did Alex know that she’d been lying in wait at that bar for three hours, sure that he’d pass right by the Petite Bar on his way to the elevators. It was only much later that Hawke finally stumbled on the truth. China had been there in France on an important mission: to assassinate Lord Alexander Hawke, a master British spy who had gotten his name high on the death roster of the Secret Service’s list of foreign espionage agents. He had meddled once too often in Chinese internal affairs of state. After a good deal of scintillating Pol Roger, and Hawke’s arctic blue eyes looking deep into hers, she slowly adjusted her game plan. Course correction.

  She didn’t want to kill this beautiful man, at least not until after she’d bedded him.

  Later, each enjoying a cigarette in his vast bed, in his suite overlooking the bustle of busy traffic along the wide and fashionable boulevard known as the Croisette and the blue sea beyond, she confessed her duplicity. She was still a foreign agent, and she’d been sent to kill him, she said. She leaned over and kissed him hard on the lips, her darting tongue probing, pleading. And then her grasping hand found him, and China Moon had announced that she’d changed her mind and damn the consequences in Beijing.

  Alive and in the flesh, here she was again, always the one he’d loved and lost. Ten long years ago. The woman who’d seduced him that first night at the famous Carlton Hotel. He’d learned a hard lesson from her. If you really love a woman, it’s a very bad idea to assassinate her father, no matter how much he may deserve it. They can’t seem to get over it. But if ever one man had it coming, it was her infamous father, General Sun Yung Moon.

  Sun Moon, the billionaire, was amassing a private army of paid legionnaires in China. His goal: a military insurrection in Beijing that would put him in power. He would then devote 80 percent of China’s wealth to the military and declare war in Asia, first invading Japan after threatening to bomb all of Tokyo into oblivion. Hawke was the only man who could have stopped him. And, a world war.

  Now his heartbreakingly beautiful daughter was sitting in a relaxed fashion, her two elbows on the banquette, alone, no other players. She smoked a fresh cigarette, glowing orange at the tip of a long holder in her right hand. He’d always loved the way she looked when in her casino mode.

  Her bare arms, sculpted by incessant hours in strength training. The graceful curve of her neck, the glittering gold choker studded with diamonds, the largest of which was nestling in the cavern of her throat. Black silk seemed to flow around her hips. As always, she was wearing classic black satin stiletto heels decorated with rhinestones. She was concentrating on the careless little ball bouncing around on the roulette wheel.

  He walked up behind her, pausing when he was in whispering distance and softly saying: “Diamonds on the soles of her shoes. . . .”

  She turned in her chair and gazed up at him. “Alex Hawke,” she said with the barest trace of a smile of surprise on her lips. “Of all the men in the world.”

  “China Moon,” Hawke said, smiling at her. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “You almost didn’t,” she replied. “If I’d seen you first, I would have disappeared.”

  “China, please don’t go down this road. I tried a thousand times to see you or talk with you on the phone. To explain what happened with your father and me. I knew my explanation might not lead to forgiveness, but at least I’d have the comfort of you knowing it was anything but cold-blooded murder. I took the only action I could take to prevent a holocaust in Asia and, after that, worldwide nuclear war.”

  She looked at him for a very long time before she spoke again. “You killed my father, you bastard. I lost my twin sister because of what you did to her in Hong Kong. Go away. I vowed to my father and my sister never to set eyes on you again.”

  “I had no choices that terrible day. China, please give me a chance to explain myself. I was doing my duty. I have sworn an oath to protect my country and its allies. That’s what I do. I am honor bound to act on behalf of my country’s best interests, just as you were when you were Chinese Secret Police.”

  “I still am.”

  “I should have guessed as much.”

  She looked at him, felt her heart cave an inch, sighed, and said, “Buy me a drink, will you?”

  “Where are you staying? Here at Atlantis?”

  “Good God, no. Tourist trap. Look at all these sun-toasted Americans. I’m staying at Dragonfire Club, of course. Vastly more elegant. But the casinos out there are all rigged so that the house wins. I come over to Nassau whenever the gambling bug bites me.”

  Hawke sat down in the chair next to her and took her hand. “Listen, China, I’ve an idea. I have to be over at Pindling Airport in half an hour. You may remember my good friend Stokely Jones Jr.? Rather a large chap, approximately the size of your average armoire.”

  “To say he is unforgettable is the very height of understatement. Funny, too. The man is a living monument to masculinity.”

  “Indeed, he is. I’m picking him up and ferrying him and my crew over to Black Dragon Bay. So, listen. I have a lovely little speedboat tied up here at the Atlantis dock. Why don’t you join me aboard? We’ll gather up the human armoire, that man mountain, and his luggage and speed you back to the Dragonfire Club. We can have our drink there, the three of us, up on the roof for the setting sun. Sound good to you?”

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said, grinding her cigarette to ashes in the silver tray and getting gracefully to her feet.

  China looked very Jackie O in her big black sunglasses and red and gold Hermès scarf. She was enjoying the ride, the wind, and the sudden sea spray coming over the bow. She was continually urging Hawke to ever-greater speeds. The forty-eight-foot Wally was an effortless speed demon, capable of thirty-eight knots or more. She said: “You always had exquisite taste in boats, automobiles, and airplanes, Alex. But this thing is amazing. What the hell is it?”

  “Oh, it’s a Wally boat. Most beautiful boats out there in my view.”

  “How long have you had her?”

  “About two hours, actually.”

  “You just bought it?”

  “No, actually, I just borrowed it. Someone named Tommy Tang is the actual owner.”

  China suddenly went deadly serious. She stared at Hawke for many long seconds before she said, “Hold on. Are you telling me that you’re friends with Tommy Tang?”

  “No. Never met the man. It was his sister who told me he wouldn’t mind if I borrowed her for a few days.”

  “Zhang Tang? If you borrowed her?”

  “Mmm. No, not Zhang. The boat, dear. I’ll grant you, she may well be available for rent, but I’ve been given no indication of that so far.”

  “Beware that one, my friend. She’s the big black spider in the deep dark web. A real-life Mata Hari. That bitch will be the death of you yet, Lord Hawke. Mark my words.”

  “I don’t think that’s exactly what she has in mind. . . .”

  “Of course you don’t. You’re just a man. You don’t think when it comes to women like that. You just yank at your zipper and have at it. So, tell me, lover boy, are you’re actually staying at Dragonfire Club?”

  “If that’s all right with you, then, yes, that’s where I’m staying.”

  “Did they give you one of the new seaside villas? Over on Foochow Island?”
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br />   “No. I’ve got the penthouse at the hotel.”

  “On that island, a penthouse is the outhouse, Alex. And by the way, has the Mistress of Dragonfire Club gotten her claws into you? Gotten you into her bed yet? Or better yet, down into her deep, dark dungeon of desire?”

  “Neither. I’ve taken a vow of chastity since last we met.”

  “Very funny, Alex. How much do you know about these Tangs?”

  “Not enough, apparently. I’m down here on business, you see. Government work for Her Majesty the Queen.”

  “The infamous missing prince, I assume? Prince Henry, Duke of Bedford, I believe his name is.”

  He looked at her, his blue eyes gone stone cold. “Listen to me. I know who you are. I’ve seen your files. I know all about some of the people who have been your victims.”

  “Hmm. I prefer to call them clients.”

  “I’m sure you do. But look here, China. This may all be a game to you. But a godson of mine, whose life I’ve sworn to protect, is missing and may well be dead. And that’s no game, believe me.”

  “I’m sorry, Alex. Really I am.”

  “I’ve been sent down here to find Henry or find his kidnappers, perhaps his murderers. Right now I’d say you were one of the most likely suspects.”

  “Me?” China laughed. “Don’t be absurd. Believe it or not, my business here has nothing at all to do with you, hard as it may be on your precious ego to accept.”

  Hawke smiled at the barb and throttled back, letting the big boat ghost toward the dock at a burbling idle speed. The wind was out of the west now, right on his starboard bow, in his favor. The light wind would push the Wally right up against the dock with no effort on his part.

  “If you could possibly go forward and throw that coiled bowline to the dockmaster? And then the aft? That would be lovely.”