by Ted Bell
“Eat a whole lemon? Good lord. Why?”
“Some kind of new diet, sir. He is attempting to purge his body. I believe the word for his new regimen is ‘holistic.’ You’ll have to ask his lordship, I’m afraid. I don’t go there, as they say these days.”
“Well, let’s have it, then. Save your knees, my dear Pelham. I’ll carry this noble feast up to him.”
“You’ll find him in the armory, Chief Inspector. He’s been up there all morning long since his American friend Mr. Kelly departed.”
“Really? What on earth is he doing up there?”
“Cleaning his guns, sir. He says we’re going to war.”
“War? With whom?”
“I believe he mentioned France, sir.”
“France?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ye gods.”
Ambrose mounted the smooth worn stone of the curving back staircase leading to the upper floors. Gaining the third floor, he paused at a door of carved oak to catch his breath. The design incorporated two animals locked in combat—the Scottish unicorn and the English lion. The door was slightly ajar and he pushed inside, using the tray. He saw Hawke at the far end of the room with his back to the door, standing beside a sunny window, burnishing an ancient pistol barrel to gleaming perfection. His beloved parrot, Sniper, was on his shoulder.
The walls of the great room were decorated floor to ceiling with spiral arrangements of antique arms. Just below the crown moldings were long ranks of stag antlers. And below that, a profusion of every kind of armament: swords, pikes, pistols, and long rifles. Perhaps a thousand weapons, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, lined the walls.
Other than the library, Congreve knew this was Alex’s favorite room in the entire house. The heavy velvet draperies had all been tied back away from the tall leaded windows and sunlight flooded the room. On the far wall hung a collection of eighteenth-century pirate flags, including the grim Jolly Roger flown by Hawke’s ancestor, Blackhawke himself.
“Morning, Alex,” Congreve said upon entering the room with the tray. “I saw your personal black standard fluttering from the ramparts and assumed you were in residence. ‘Fortune favors the fast.’ Blackhawke’s noble sentiment.”
Alex turned toward him and smiled. “And, so true, Ambrose! A fast ship and a star to sail her by, that’s the winning ticket. How else do you think I came to sit atop this pile of ill-gotten lucre? Piracy, of course! Give no quarter, lads!”
“Am I interrupting some sort of…private ritual?”
“No, no, by all means, come in, do come in!”
“Where’ve you been hiding yourself, Alex?”
“I just returned from la belle France yesterday morning. I haven’t rung you up because I’ve had Brick Kelly here, you see, and—what’s that?”
“Your lemon.”
“Right. Put it over there, if you don’t mind. I seem to have lost my bottle for it this morning.”
“One wonders why lemon, of all fruits,” Ambrose said, putting the tray down amidst an array of partially disassembled sixteenth-century rifles and flintlock pistols.
Hawke ignored the question and picked up a rifle.
“You see this gun, Ambrose? Bloody marvelous, isn’t it?”
“Stunning. What is it?”
“Wheellock rifle with breech-loader system, manufactured in Augsburg or Nuremberg in 1540. Belonged to some Prussian colonel named Andreas Teuffel von Gundersdorf. Glorious piece, I must say.”
“Alex, speak to me of war. And the dreaded French. But first, speak to me of lemons.”
“Ah. The latest thing,” Hawke said, plucking it from the tray and dipping it in a bowl of white powder. “Plenty of bioflavonoids in lemons, not to mention Vitamin C. Especially good for you if you dip them in this stuff. Natural sweetener the Japanese have been using for centuries. Called Stevia rebaudiana. Produces a blood-sugar-lowering effect on normal nondiabetics. Give it a whirl.”
“I’m trying to quit lemons, thanks very much, but don’t let me stop you.” Bioflavonoids? Japanese sweeteners? What on earth had the world come to?
Alex took a bite out of the thing and made an awful face. “I may give this up. Step closer to the window, Constable,” he said. “I must show you something before we conspire to save the world from the Red Menace.”
“What is it?”
“Look down there, in the courtyard,” Hawke said, feeding the lemon to Sniper, a bird who would eat red-hot plutonium if offered the stuff. “I’ve just noticed something odd. See it, old thing?” He was pointing directly at the Yellow Peril, as Ambrose had privately named his new iron steed.
“Why, yes, I do.”
“It’s a Morgan, you know,” Hawke explained. “A fairly old one, I think. The Plus Four. Wooden chassis. An absolute stunner, I must say. Brilliant paint scheme. I wonder what lucky fellow it belongs to. Pelham hasn’t announced anyone.”
“It’s mine, actually,” Congreve said, desperately trying to avoid looking smug.
“Yours? Don’t be silly, Ambrose! You don’t even know how to drive. You loathe any form of powered conveyance. You’ve not the least interest in—”
Congreve withdrew the keys from his trousers. They caught the light as he dangled them in front of Hawke’s eyes. “Let’s take her for a spin, shall we?”
“That machine actually belongs to you?”
“It does. I drove it here just minutes ago.”
“Good lord, he’s serious.”
“Any interest in a high-speed run over to the Cock & Cork for a bevvy to celebrate? A midmorning eye-opener?”
“We will indeed, but for now we have to talk of more serious matters, Constable. Let’s sit over there by the fire.”
When they were comfortable, Hawke said, “Brick Kelly was singing your praises last night at supper. He gave me something for you; it’s on my desk down in the library. A cold case file. A bizarre murder that occurred in Paris thirty-five years ago. Should you crack it, we could save the whole bloody world a lot of trouble.”
“I should be happy to put this affair on my docket, Alex. However, there’s another murder I’m bashing away at at the moment. My own.”
“Don’t tell me there’s been a second attempt? This is serious.”
“Very serious. This happened last night, in fact. I shot the bastard through a window. Down at Lady Mars’s Spring Cottage. Only winged him, unfortunately. Scene-of-Crime officers are all over the place now. There was a bit of blood on the roses below the window. They’ve promised a report before day’s end. The culprit escaped through the woods to a waiting car. I heard it start, ran to my own vehicle, and gave pursuit. Tried to catch it, you see, and very nearly succeeded. The Morgan is race-tuned. Something to do with the camshaft.”
“Someone is making a concerted effort to kill you, Ambrose. We must put a stop to this. Any idea who it is?”
“I thought it was my cousin, Bulling. And it might well be. But there’s also a Chinese agent involved, Alex, a woman. This might be an old wound reopened, I’m afraid. In which case, they’re after you, as well.”
“Ah. Last year’s tour up the Yangtze River to the Three Gorges Dam. Lucky to get out of there alive, weren’t we?”
“Possibly that unfortunate incident has come back to haunt us. On it’s simply that this woman, Bianca, has it in for me.”
“What’s her beef with you?”
“Her beef? You sound like some kind of film noir gumshoe, Alex. Well. You no doubt remember my dear cousin, Henry Bulling? Formerly employed in a secretarial position at the French embassy in London.”
“Chap whose chin was always trying to reach up to his mouth and finally gave up?”
“Exactly.”
“Peeved about your aunt’s will, was he not?”
“Hmm. My inheritance of Heart’s Ease. At the beginning of this affair, I thought Henry was perhaps sufficiently peeved about the house to commit murder. Upon further investigation, Sutherland and I have learned that
it’s a bit more complicated. A woman named Bianca Moon is intimately involved. ‘Intimately’ is not a word chosen lightly. Bianca, a Chinese agent, is sexually involved, God help us, with my cousin. She discovered that Henry and I were meeting for quiet lunches in the park. The Yard, as you well know, was running Henry. So, we now learn, were the Chinese.”
“So Henry’s a double. The Chinese are trying to warn us off.”
“Henry was a double. Henry may be dead. Our Miss Moon was not at all pleased when Henry sent my new housekeeper, Mrs. Purvis, to hospital instead of me.”
“Mrs. Purvis was shot? I’d no idea. Was she seriously wounded?”
“She’s recovering nicely, thank heaven.”
“Good news. I was thinking it was our Henry hiding in the rosebushes at Spring Cottage. It sounds like his style.”
“I thought about that, too. The only one on earth who knew I was leaving my house in the middle of the night was Mrs. Purvis. Henry could have been parked on the street and followed me, I suppose, but it’s unlikely. I drove at high speed and watched the mirror the whole time. Nothing.”
“There was one other person who knew you’d be at the cottage last night. The person who invited you to come there.”
“Lady Mars.”
“You said it, not me. It’s no secret that Brixden House has been a hotbed of spies at various times in its history.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Diana has nothing at all to do with this. She’s quite lovely, in fact.”
“So was Tokyo Rose, apparently.”
“Please. Don’t be absurd.”
“Listen, Constable, you and Cousin Henry may have stumbled into something far more ominous than either of you anticipated. Something worth killing you both over. I’m talking about that disc you found in Henry’s freezer. The French oil refineries and tankers.”
“Yes. It’s all about oil somehow, Alex. The whole bloody thing.”
“I think the next world war will be about oil. And someone clearly wants you and me as early casualties of that conflict. Tell me what you’ve learned.”
“The few computer discs in Henry’s flat contained photographs of French refineries and pipelines. Supertankers in the Strait of Hormuz. Henry was passing Bianca Moon hard intelligence about current oil production at Leuna and French transport tanker statistics. It’s a subject she has keen knowledge of, having been an employee of the French behemoth Elf Aquitaine.”
“There was a scandal,” Hawke said. “I knew I remembered that name. Bianca. She was the mistress, wasn’t she, of the former French Foreign Trade minister who was disgraced in the matter?”
“Exactly. She was Honfleur’s geisha. She absconded with millions and disappeared. Now, she appears to be back in spades.”
“Likewise, Monsieur Honfleur. He seems to have rehabilitated himself. He’s the new prime minister. That’s a remarkable recovery, even in France.”
“I was listening to the radio on the way here,” Ambrose said. “The BBC is saying that Honfleur’s son Philippe was killed yesterday in a terrorist attack on the latest French Foreign Trade minister, a chap with the old familiar name of Bonaparte.”
“The French are killing each other, Constable,” Hawke said, and turned to face the window. “Another Revolution. Another Bonaparte.”
“It’s worse. It’s the dragon and the frog,” Congreve said, thinking out loud.
“China and France,” said Hawke, shaking his head sadly. “‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.’”
“A lovely sonnet indeed. But, something tells me you are going to be an impediment in this unholy marriage, Alex. You’re going to spoil their bloody honeymoon, at any rate.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Cannes
“PUT THE GIRL DOWN,” STOKE HEARD A VOICE BEHIND HIM say. Major German accent. Sounded like Colonel Klink on that old TV show Hogan’s Heroes. Stoke had Jet in his arms, having just lifted her from the bed. He’d wrapped her in the sheet, since she was buck naked except for a little pair of black lace panties. Girl had some nasty cuts and bruises in various places, but the blood had clotted up okay. In the mirrored wall behind the bed cage, he could see there was just one guy. The door was closed behind him. Big guy, weird blond fuzz on his head, and he had on a white dinner jacket and a rich man’s thin smile on his face.
Thin smiles, thin watches.
“Hey, Baron,” Stoke said to the reflection. “How’s it going?”
“Drop her.”
The German also had an ugly little black automatic in his hand. Austrian Walther. He had it pointed smack dab in the middle of Stoke’s broad back. Hard to miss at this range. Like trying to hit a barn. Stoke was armed, but he couldn’t think how the hell he could get to his weapon without putting Jet in the line of fire.
“She’s hurt,” Stoke said, keeping his back to the guy and watching him in the mirror. “She needs a doctor. You got a sickbay on this floating gin palace, boss?”
“Schweinehund!” Even in the dim light, Stoke could see him turning purple in the face. High blood pressure aggravated by people not listening to his ass say “jump.” “I repeat, put her down. This is a private matter.”
“How’d your speech go? Nobody gives more rousing speeches than you crazy Nazis when you’re fired up. Man oh man, I’m telling you.”
“I said, put her down!”
“I asked you a question. Is there a doctor aboard or not? I’m taking this girl to a doctor. Some of these cuts are deep.”
“She is a guest aboard this yacht. She is here of her own free will. Now, put her fucking down.”
“The tycoon himself. Sorry I missed that welcome speech. Bet you had ’em screaming for blood.”
“Who are you? What are you doing on my boat?”
“Me? I’m a decorator. From Orlando. Just poking around, looking for fabric ideas. Chintz and shit. Toile. Found this lady who was hurt. You do this to her?”
“Drop her on the bed and turn around. Now.”
“I want to know if you did this to her.”
“It’s none of your affair. A private matter, as I said. She disappointed me. She was punished. Simple.”
“Punished? That what you call this? Punished?”
“She resisted and she got a little banged up. Nothing serious. Ask her.”
“You were planning to leave her down here in a damn cage to bleed to death?”
“You have five seconds. If you don’t do as I say, I will put one bullet in the back of each of your knees. Shatter the patella, sever the tendons. You won’t walk again. One…”
“Do what he says,” Jet said. “He will shoot.”
“Hey—”
“Two…”
“Shit, man, you making this harder than it has to be.”
“Three…”
“Damn, you Germans are stubborn,” Stoke said, and then he dove across the bed with Jet tucked safely within the solid cradle of his arms. There was a rapid pop-pop, two slugs thunked into the thick mattress, and then Stoke and Jet were on the floor on the far side of the bed. He pushed her down with his left hand and drew his gun with his right. The Sig Sauer P220 was Velcroed into a nylon holster just above his left ankle. Aluminum alloy frame made it light, Black Talon ammo made it right.
Stoke figured he had two-three seconds before the guy came over the bed or around it. “Stay down on the floor, girl,” he said to Jet, “no matter what.” And then he just exploded up and sideways, planting one foot in the bed and using it as a springboard to the right. He fired the Sig while still midair, putting one in the German’s shoulder, spinning him clockwise. Stoke caught the wall pretty high up and shoved off that by planting one foot, did a little half spin and flew into the German hard, using his right shoulder, hitting the guy just below the knees. There was a loud pop as the braced knee went and then the baron screamed a whole lot of unprintable stuff in German as he hit the deck.
Von Draxis was rolling around on his back, grunting with the pain of that bad
knee and the shoulder. He still had the gun and he was pointing it in dangerous directions, so Stoke wrapped his hand around the man’s pistol. He twisted the weapon, snapping the finger still inside the trigger guard. Oldest trick in the book, but the German hadn’t seen it coming. The big fella howled in pain and Stoke sat back on his heels and tried to offer some comfort by patting him on the top of his big downy head.
“See? That’s your problem, Baron, thinking you some kind of badass. You just a stereotype, son. Get over it. I’m serious. Relax.”
Stoke removed the man’s gun from his grip as gently as he could, trying to wriggle it free from the broken index finger. Still, you could tell it hurt a little bit when it came off. He pocketed the gun, got to his feet, and walked around to where Jet lay beside the bed.
“You can open your eyes now,” Stoke said, bending to cradle her in his arms. “Fireworks are over.”
“They’ll never let you off this boat,” Jet said.
“Really? We’ll see.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“I got a launch picking me up in about, oh, four minutes. We’ve got a great doc on board Blackhawke. Danish woman Alex hired because of her resume. Former Miss Denmark. She’ll stitch you up. Then we’ll see where you want to take it from there. Sound good? What do you think?”
“I think you are out of your mind.”
“Yeah, most probably. Picking up strange women and taking them home when we hardly know each other.”
“Let’s go.”
“Good idea. Hey, Baron. Auf wiedersehen, okay? I’ll check up on you tomorrow. Thanks a lot for the party. I really enjoyed myself.”
Stroke stepped over the German guy writhing on the floor on his way to the door. He could see the guy thinking about grabbing his foot or some crazy shit like that and then see him figuring out just how bad an idea that was, seeing Stoke’s foot an inch from his head.
He got an idea. He took the German by one hand and dragged him across the leather floor to the bed.
“Alley-oop, Mein Herr,” he said as he lifted the baron up and plopped him down right in the middle of the bed. Then he pulled the remote out of his pocket and lowered the cage back into place. As an afterthought, he dropped the remote on the floor and stepped on it, crushing it. That drove the baron crazy, beating on the cage and all with his good hand, but Stoke just let it go.
