Tsar

by Ted Bell

  He had a full head of rather untamable jet-black hair, a high, clear brow, and a straight, imperious nose. Below it was a strong chin and a well-sculpted mouth with just a hint of come-hither cruelty at the corners.

  Picture a hale fellow well met whom men wanted to stand a drink and whom women much preferred horizontal.

  HE’D BEEN DOZING on a pristine Bermuda beach for the better part of an hour. It was a hot day, a day that was shot blue all through. The fluttering eyelids and the thin smile on Hawke’s salt-parched lips belied the rather exotic dream he was having. Suddenly, some noise from above, perhaps the dolphinlike clicking of a long-tailed petrel, startled him from his reverie. He cracked one eye, then the other, smiling at the fleeting memory of sexual bliss still imprinted on the back of his mind.

  Erotic images, fleshy nymphs of pink and creamy white, fled quickly as he raised his head and peered alertly at the brightness of the real world through two fiercely narrowed blue eyes. Just inside the reef line, a white sail shivered and flipped to leeward. As he watched the graceful little Bermuda sloop, the sail turned to windward again, and from across the water he distinctly heard a sound he loved, the ruffle and snap of canvas.

  No question about this time and place in his life, he thought, gazing at the gently lapping surf: my blue heaven.

  Here on this sunlit mid-Atlantic isle, peace abounded. These, finally, were the “blue days” he had longed for. His most recent “red” period, a rather dodgy affair involving a madman named Papa Top and armies of Hezbollah jihadistas deep in the Amazon, was mercifully fading from memory. Every new blue day pushed those fearful memories deeper into the depths of his consciousness, and for that he was truly grateful.

  He rolled over easily onto his back. The sugary sand, like pinkish talc, was warm beneath his bare skin. He must have drifted off after his most recent swim. Hmm. He linked his hands behind his still damp head and breathed deeply, the fresh salt air filling his lungs.

  The sun was still high in the azure Bermuda sky.

  He lifted his arm to gaze lazily at his dive watch. It was just after two o’clock in the afternoon. A smile flitted across his lips as he contemplated the remainder of the day’s schedule. He had nothing on this evening save a quiet dinner with his closest friend, Ambrose Congreve, and Congreve’s fiancée, Diana Mars, at eight. He licked the dried salt from his lips, closed his eyes, and let the sun take his naked body.

  His refuge was a small cove of crystalline turquoise water. Wavelets slid up and over dappled pinkish sand before retreating to regroup and charge once more. This tiny bay, perhaps a hundred yards across at its mouth, was invisible from the coast road. The South Road, as it was called, had been carved into the jagged coral and limestone centuries earlier and extended all the way along the coast to Somerset and the Royal Naval Dockyard.

  Fringed with flourishing green mangrove and sea-grape, Hawke’s little crescent of paradise was indistinguishable from countless coves just like it stretching east and west along the southern coast of Bermuda. The only access was from the sea. After months of visiting the cove undisturbed, he’d begun to think of the spot as his own. He’d even nicknamed it “Bloody Bay” because he was usually so bloody exhausted when he arrived there after a 3-mile swim.

  Hawke had chosen Bermuda carefully. He saw it as an ideal spot to nurse his wounds and heal his battered psyche. Situated in the mid-Atlantic, roughly equidistant between his twin capitals of London and Washington, Bermuda was quaintly civilized, featured balmy weather and a happy-go-lucky population, and it was somewhere few of his acquaintances, friend or foe, would ever think to look for him.

  In the year before, his bout of nasty scrapes in the Amazon jungles had included skirmishes with various tropical fevers that had nearly taken his life. But after six idyllic months of marinating in this tropic sea and air, he concluded that he’d never felt better in his life. Even with a modest daily intake of Mr. Gosling’s elixir, called by the natives black rum, he had somehow gotten his six-foot-plus frame down to his fighting weight of 180. He now had a deep tan and a flat belly, and he felt just fine. In his early thirties, he felt twenty if a day.

  Hawke had taken refuge in a small, somewhat dilapidated beach cottage. The old house, originally a sugar mill, was perched, some might say precariously, above the sea a few miles west of his current location. He had gotten into the very healthy habit of swimming to this isolated beach every day. Three miles twice daily was not excessive and not a bad addition to his normal workout routine, which included a few hundred situps and pullups, not to mention serious weight training.

  His privacy thus ensured, his habit at his private beach was to shed his swimsuit once he’d arrived. He’d made a ritual of stripping it off and hanging it on a nearby mangrove branch. Then a few hours sunning au naturel, as our French cousins would have it. He was normally a modest man, but the luxuriant feeling of cool air and sunlight on parts not normally exposed was too delightful to be denied. He’d gotten so accustomed to this new regime that the merest idea of wearing trunks here would seem superfluous, ridiculous even. And-what?

  He stared with disbelieving eyes.

  What the bloody hell was that?

  2

  A small rectangular patch of blue had caught his eye. It lay on the sand, a few yards to his right. Raising his torso and supporting himself on his elbows, he eyed the offending item. Detritus washed in from the sea? No, clearly not. It seemed that while he’d slept, serene in his sanctum sanctorum, some invidious invader had arrived and deposited a blue towel on his shore.

  The thing had been scrupulously arranged on the beach by the silent marauder, at right angles to the surf, with four pink conch shells at the corners to hold it in place. There was, too, in the middle of the dark blue towel, a fanciful K richly embroidered in gleaming gold thread. Above the initial was a symbol he thought he recognized, a two-headed eagle. A rich man’s beach rag.

  Bloody hell. No sight of the owner. Where had he got to, this cheeky Mr. K? Off swimming, Hawke supposed. Why, of all places, should he drop anchor here? Surely, the sight of another man-a nude man, for God’s sake-sleeping peacefully here on the sand would be enough to encourage an intruder, this K whoever the hell he may be, to look elsewhere for solitude?

  Apparently not.

  At that moment, a woman appeared from the sea. Not just a woman but perhaps the most sublimely beautiful creature Hawke had ever seen. She emerged dripping wet. She was tall, with long straight legs, skin tanned a pale shade of café au lait. She was not quite naked. She wore a small patch of white material at the nexus of her thighs and, over her deeply full and perfect pink-tipped breasts, nothing at all.

  She wore a pale blue dive mask pushed back above her high forehead, and damp gold tresses fell to her bronzed shoulders. He had never witnessed such raw animal beauty; her presence as she drew near seemed to give him vertigo.

  She paused in mid-stride, staring down at him for a moment in frank appraisal. Her full red lips pursed in a smile he couldn’t quite read. Amusement at his predicament?

  Hawke cast his eyes warily at the mangrove branch some ten yards away. His faded red swim trunks hung from a bare branch among the round, thick green leaves. Following his gaze, the woman smiled.

  “I shouldn’t bother about the bathing suit,” she said, her wide-set green eyes dazzling in the sun.

  “And why should I not?”

  “That horse has already left the barn.”

  Hawke looked at her for a long moment, suppressing a smile, before he spoke.

  “What, if I may be so bold, the bloody hell are you doing on my beach?”

  “Your beach?”

  “Quite.”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  She was carrying a clear plastic drawstring bag containing what looked to be small pink conch shells and other objects. Hawke also noticed a line looped around her waist, strung with a few small fish. His eyes had been far too busy with her extraordinary body to register
the spear gun in her right hand.

  “Look here,” Hawke said, “there are countless coves just like this one along this coast. Surely, you could have picked-”

  “The shells here are unique,” she said, holding up the bag so it caught the sun. “Pink Chinese, they’re called.”

  “No kidding,” Hawke said. “Do they come in red as well?”

  “Red Chinese? Aren’t you the clever boy?” she said, laughing despite a failed attempt at a straight face.

  For the first time, he heard the Slavic overtones in her otherwise perfect English. Russian? Yes, he thought, suddenly remembering the double-headed eagle above the monogram, the ancient symbol of Imperial Russia.

  She continued to stare down at his naked body, and Hawke shifted uncomfortably under her unblinking gaze. The intensity of her stare was causing an all too familiar stir, both within and without. He thought of covering himself with his hands but realized that at this late juncture, he would only appear more ridiculous than he already did. Still, he wished she’d stop looking at him. He felt like a bloody specimen pinned to the board.

  “You have an extraordinarily beautiful body,” she said, as if stating a scientific fact.

  “Do I, indeed?”

  “Light is attracted to it in interesting ways.”

  “What on earth is that supposed to mean?” Hawke said, frowning. But she’d spun on her heel in the sand and turned away.

  She strode lightly across the sand to the blue towel and folded herself onto it with an economy of motion that suggested a ballet dancer or acrobat. Crossing her long legs yoga-style before her, she opened the tote bag and withdrew a pack of Marlboro cigarettes. Then a slender gold lighter appeared in her hand. An old Dunhill, Hawke thought, adding rich girl to his meager knowledge base. She flicked it and lit up, expelling a thin stream of smoke.

  “Delicious. Want one?” she asked, looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

  He did, badly. “You must have missed the ‘No Smoking’ sign I’ve posted out there in the surf.”

  No response to that. She plucked one of the violently pink shells from her bag, dropped it onto the sand beside her, and began sketching it in a small spiral notebook. She began whistling softly as she drew and soon seemed to have forgotten all about him.

  Hawke, who felt that her skimpy white triangle of pelvic cloth gave her an unfair advantage, rolled over onto his stomach and rested his head on his forearm, facing the girl. In truth, he would have loved a cigarette. Anything to calm his now disturbed mental state. He found he could not take his eyes off her. She was leaning forward now, puffing away, elbows on her knees, her full, coral-tipped breasts jutting forward, rising and swaying slightly with each inhale and exhale of the cigarette.

  Watching her body move to adjust the shell or flick an ash, he felt his heart miss a beat, then continue, trip-hammering inside his ribcage. It seemed to ratchet, and each thud only wound him tighter.

  She smoked her cigarette, not bothering with him anymore, staring pensively out to sea every few moments, then plucking her pencil from the sand once more, resuming her sketch. Hawke, transfixed, was faintly aware that she seemed to be speaking again.

  “I come here every day,” she said casually over her shoulder. “Usually very early morning for the light. Today I am late, because…well, never mind why. Just because. You?”

  “I’m the afternoon shift.”

  “Ah. Who are you?”

  “An Englishman.”

  “Obviously. Tourist?”

  “Part-time resident.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “I’ve a small place. On the point by Hungry Bay.”

  “Really? I didn’t think anything lived out there but those nasty spider monkeys twittering in the wild banana trees.”

  “Just one small house still standing on the point. Teakettle Cottage. You know it?”

  “The old mill. Yes. I thought that ruin blew away three hurricanes ago.”

  “No, no. It survived,” Hawke said, feeling inexplicably defensive about his modest digs.

  “Squatter’s rights, I suppose. You’re lucky the police don’t rout you out. Bums and hoboes aren’t good for Bermuda’s tourist image.”

  Hawke let that one go. She was staring at him openly again, her eyes hungry and bright. He avoided those riveting emerald searchlights only by looking out to sea, scanning the horizon, looking for God knows what.

  “You’ve got an awful lot of scars for a beach bum. What do you do?”

  “Alligator wrestler? Wildcat wrangler?”

  The girl, unsmiling, said, “If you’re so damned uncomfortable, just go and get your swim trunks. I assure you I won’t watch.”

  “Most kind.” Hawke stayed put.

  “What’s your name?” she suddenly demanded.

  “Hawke.”

  “Hawke. I like that name. Short and to the point.”

  “What’s yours?”

  “Korsakova.”

  “Like the famous Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov.”

  “We’re better known for conquering Siberia.”

  “What’s your first name?”

  “Anastasia. But I am called Asia.”

  “Asia. Very continental.”

  “I’m sure that’s an amusing joke in your circles, Mr. Hawke.”

  “We try.”

  “Hmm. Well, here’s Hoodoo, my chauffeur. Right on time.”

  She pulled a tiny white bikini top from her magic bag and slipped herself into it, one pale and quivering breast at a time. Hawke, unable to stop himself from missing a second of this wondrous performance, found his mouth had gone dry and his breathing was shallow and rapid. Her rosy nipples were hard under the thin fabric, more erotic now that they were hidden.

  Hawke again felt the stirring below, suddenly acutely aware of his missing bathing trunks. He quickly turned his thoughts to a humiliating cricket match from long ago, Eton and Malvern at Lord’s, a match he’d lost spectacularly at age twelve. That painful memory had successfully obliterated ill-timed desire in the past, and he prayed it would not fail him now.

  Seemingly unaware of his agonizing predicament, she quickly gathered her things and leaped to her feet as a small center-console Zodiac nosed into the cove. At the helm was an elegant black man, lean and fit, with snow-white hair. Hoodoo was dressed in crisp whites, a short-sleeved shirt, and Bermuda shorts with traditional knee socks. He smiled and waved at the beautiful blond girl as he ran the bow up onto the sand. There were two big outboards on the stern. Must be four strokes, Hawke thought. They were so quiet he hadn’t even heard the small boat’s approach.

  Hoodoo hopped out of the inflatable and stood with the painter in his hand, waiting for his passenger. He looked, it occurred to Hawke, like a young Harry Belafonte whose hair had gone prematurely white.

  Asia Korsakova paused, looked down at Hawke carefully, and said, “Good eyes, too. An amazing blue. Like frozen pools of Arctic rain.”

  Hearing no response from him, she smiled and said, “Very nice to have met you, Mr. Hawke. Sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “Yes. Lovely to meet you, too, Asia,” was all Hawke could muster as he turned and lifted himself to say good-bye.

  “No, no, don’t get up, for God’s sake, don’t do that!” She laughed over her shoulder.

  Hawke smiled and watched her take Hoodoo’s hand, step gracefully into the bobbing Zodiac, and perch on the wooden thwart seat at the stern. Hawke saw the name Tsar stenciled on the curve of the bow and assumed this was a tender to a much larger yacht.

  “Good-bye,” Hawke called out as the small boat swung round, turned toward the open sea, and accelerated out of the cove.

  Whether she’d heard him or not, he wasn’t sure. But Anastasia Korsakova did not turn back to look at him, nor did she acknowledge his farewell. Having deeply resented her intrusion, was he now so sorry to see her go? He’d always been amazed at the way the face of a beautiful woman fits into a man’s mind and stays there,
though he could never tell you why.

  His eyes followed the little white Zodiac until even its wake had disappeared beyond the rocks.

  He stood up, brushed the sand from his naked body, and fetched his faded swimsuit. After donning it, he walked quickly into the clear blue water until it was knee high and then dove, his arms pulling powerfully for the first line of coral reefs and, beyond that, his little home on the hill above the sea.

  Mark Twain had said it best about Bermuda, Hawke thought as he swam.

  Near the end of his life, Twain had written from Bermuda to an elderly friend, “You go to heaven if you want to, I’d druther stay here.”

  Maybe this wasn’t heaven, but by God, it was close.

  3

  MOSCOW

  The Russian president’s helicopter flared up for a landing on the roof of the brand new GRU complex. GRU (the acronym is for the Main Intelligence Directorate, or Glavonoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie) was a source of some amusement to President Vladimir Rostov. The frequency with which each new regime changed the names and acronyms of various institutions was a holdover from the old Chekist days: secrets within secrets.

  Every breathing soul in Moscow knew this building for exactly what it was: KGB headquarters.

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Rostov was a lean, spare man, a head or more taller than most Russians, with a dour demeanor and a long, pointed nose like that of a Shakespearean clown. He walked with an odd stoop, like some faux act of courtesy, simultaneously genteel and insinuating, a walk much parodied behind his back in the hallways of the Kremlin.

  His moniker, the Grey Cardinal, spoke volumes.

  At this moment, gazing down at the gleaming grey streets of Moscow from the sleet-streaked window of his helicopter, he looked grey and tired. He was within a nose of entering his eighth decade. Although it would be political suicide to admit it, he was feeling every year in his bones as he arrived back in the capital at the end of a long journey. He was returning from naval maneuvers on the Barents Sea.