Phantom

by Ted Bell

  Medvedev was met with stunned silence at the other end of the line.

  “Sir?” he said.

  “Yes, yes, I’m here. Who the hell is the captain of that fucking boat? I should know that, I know.”

  “Lyachin.”

  “Lyachin? He’s one of our best commanders. Has he gone rogue? Insane?”

  “Neither, it would seem, although I cannot vouch for his sanity. Naval Operations has been in radio communication with the sub, spoken with him at length. He claims absolutely no responsibility for this action. He says the ship was the victim of some kind of ‘force,’ an inexplicable takeover of all the boat’s systems, including weapons.”

  “A ‘force’? Whatever the hell that means, it was this ‘force,’ I suppose, that fired two torpedoes at an American flag vessel?”

  “It sounds crazy, I agree.”

  “Call Admiral Vysotsky. Tell him I want the Nevskiy to return to home port immediately. As soon as she arrives in port, I want her boarded and every member of the crew arrested and placed in a maximum-security lockdown for individual questioning by KGB political officers. I want Lyachin flown to Moscow for interrogation. A supernatural force took over his submarine? His excuse for this blunder is already reason enough to put him in front of a firing squad. Understood?”

  “Completely. Is there anything else I can do at this point, Prime Minister?”

  “Yes, Dmitry. Issue presidential orders to put the entire Russian military on a war footing. Highest state of alert. Some madman in Washington may look upon this catastrophe as his personal Lusitania, served up on a silver platter. At long last, a good excuse for a preemptive nuclear strike on the homeland. I’m not being paranoid. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility.”

  “Indeed not. Sorry to call with such bad news. Try to get some sleep.”

  “No. I have to call the American president and tell him the Russian government had nothing at all to do with the sinking of their ship. Do you think I can convince him? It will be difficult to explain because, so far, I have no goddamn explanation. Except, of course, Lyachin’s mysterious ‘force.’ ”

  Putin replaced the receiver, lay back against his pillow, and tried to figure out what the hell he was going to say to President McCloskey, a smart, leather-tough old cowboy from Montana.

  Fifteen

  Gloucestershire, England

  Turn off the Taplow Common Road, just after exiting the deep green forest that enfolds that highway, and you will come upon a magnificent set of black wrought-iron gates. If the guards recognize you, the imposing gates will swing wide and you will be traveling back in time to another England. You will be motoring at a snail’s pace along the wide curving drive that will eventually lead you to a place called Brixden House. A snail’s pace because you won’t want to miss anything—an extraordinary piece of classical sculpture perhaps, quite voluptuous.

  The macadam pathway meanders through countless acres of gardens and parklands. There are apple trees covered in blossoms, jardinières full of pelargoniums in great blocks of color, and greenhouses covered with walls of nectarines, all scattered hither and thither across the hills. The dapple of sunlight on the deep green croquet lawns, lakes, the flower beds, and splashing fountains give new meaning to the word picturesque.

  When you do finally catch sight of it, you will find the house imposing. Built originally in the mid-seventeenth century as a hunting lodge for royalty, the present Edwardian country house stands atop great chalk cliffs. Its countless windows overlook the rolling green Berkshire countryside. The main house, built in the classic Italian style, overlooks an idyllic bend in the Thames.

  Built in the 1920s, the enormous Brixden House was the very height of luxury. The Visitor’s Book was a veritable Who’s Who of the era. Playwright George Bernard Shaw made the first of many visits in 1926, Winston Churchill was an occasional guest, as were King George and Queen Mary, Charlie Chaplin, Ambassador Joe Kennedy, and the aviator Charles Lindbergh.

  This was the stately ancestral home of Lady Diana Mars. Her fiancé, the former chief inspector of Scotland Yard, was currently in the library having a chat with his oldest friend, Lord Alexander Hawke. The smell of beeswax and old leather books and furniture, the scents of spilled liquor and tobacco smoke, all hung in the air, so much so that it was a part of the room’s history that almost had weight.

  A John Singer Sargent portrait of Lady Mars’s great-grandmother Nancy hung imperiously above the yawning gape of the great hearth. A vast red velvet sofa faced the fire, big enough for several people to sleep in. An ebony grand piano dominated one corner of the room, though Hawke had never seen anyone lay a hand on it.

  It was late afternoon, and the setting sun’s rays slanted through the tall, mullioned windows, casting a lovely pattern across the worn Persian rugs and highly polished wooden floors. Shadows fled up the walls and across the high vaulted ceiling. Beyond the opened windows, only the sounds of rooks, cawing in the trees, the hum of drowsy bees, and an occasional bark from Diana’s dogs, sprawled lazily in the late afternoon sun.

  Hawke found Ambrose in the library, standing in the center of the room, trying to rip the cellophane from a fresh deck of playing cards decorated with Lady Mars’s family crest.

  “Good evening,” Hawke said.

  Congreve voiced his agreement with the sentiment.

  “Cards, is it, Constable?”

  “Hardly, Alex, it’s my new exercise program. Possibly not up to the standards of your daily Royal Navy regimen, but still, quite a tester.”

  “You exercise with a deck of cards?”

  “The latest thing, dear boy, the very latest. Observe and grow wise,” he said, and, with a dramatic flourish, flung the playing cards high into the air, scattering them all over the carpet. He then began scampering about the room, bending to pick each card up one by one and stuffing them carelessly into the side pockets of his green velvet smoking jacket.

  When he’d pocketed the last one, he straightened, a bit winded, and beamed at Hawke.

  “Well, then. What do you think of that?”

  “Most impressive.”

  “Want to have a go?”

  “Good Lord, no. I’m exhausted just watching you. I could use some air. Shall we have a nice walkabout on the grounds and then repair to the bar for a small beverage to celebrate?”

  After a long and tiring (for Ambrose Congreve) ramble about the hilly and sometimes rock-strewn grounds, the two old friends went to the small walnut-paneled bar for the restorative cocktail. Congreve sipped his single malt, Macallan; Hawke, his Gosling’s Black Seal rum, neat. The two deep leather chairs they sat in had served other gentlemen’s backsides well for innumerable generations.

  “How can you drink that stuff anyway?” Hawke asked Congreve. “Tastes like liquid smoke.”

  Ambrose bristled. “I’m a man, sir, who is simply fond of his scotch—the drink, mind, not the nationality.”

  Hawke smiled at this riposte, enormously glad to be back in dear old Blighty (as the Americans were wont to call it) again, and had been bringing Congreve up to speed on their mutual friend Stokely Jones, his almost deadly wedding in Florida, and his nearly catastrophic honeymoon.

  “Torpedoed, you say?” Congreve murmured, getting his pipe going. “Extraordinary.”

  “Hasn’t hit the media, but yes. Stokely saw the trails of two torpedoes moments before they struck the ship. He was lucky to get his new bride up to the muster station and into a lifeboat before the panic began. A lot of people ended up in the water, and a couple of lifeboats overturned in the heavy seas.”

  “Where is Stokely now?”

  “Back in Miami, trying to save his marriage, I imagine.”

  “No one has claimed responsibility for the sinking?”

  “No. But these torpedoes were sophisticated weapons. One of them, magnetic, exploded directly beneath
the big ship’s keel, breaking her back. It’s why she went down in less than forty-five minutes.”

  “Stokely say how many casualties?”

  “Bad, but he said it could have been far worse. Fortunately, an American sub was in the vicinity. She surfaced and picked up most of the survivors in the water.”

  “Extraordinary. C is joining us for dinner this evening, you know. I’m sure Sir David will have a great deal to say about this.”

  “How is the old bachelor? I haven’t seen him since my return from Russia. I know he’s been on holiday, believe it or not. Sardinia, I believe.”

  “Well, Alex, he was not at all pleased with you going off the reservation, I can tell you that much. Perhaps he’s had time to cool off a bit. All those lovely beaches and gorgeous Italian women work wonders.”

  “Nude beaches there, I’ve heard.”

  “Ha! You know who goes to nude beaches?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “People who should never go to nude beaches.”

  Hawke laughed and sipped his drink. He was looking forward to dinner. C was a crusty old bastard but he was smarter than any man Hawke knew, save present company. A monument of unaging intellect. And Diana always served rack of lamb when he was invited, and something very old and delicious from the vast cellars of Brixden House.

  “And speaking of nude beaches, how was your month in the south of France?”

  “Cannes? Diana was bored to tears. Ennui, you know.”

  “Really? France? That mighty horde, formed of two tribes, the Bores and the Bored?”

  “Don’t even think you get credit for that one, Alex.”

  “No? Who does, then?”

  “A certain poet named Lord Byron.”

  “Whatever. If you say ‘ennui’ one more time, I shall throttle you within an inch of your Francophilic life.”

  “One must credit the French for coining a word for that awful yawn that sleep cannot abate.”

  “If you insist.”

  Congreve, who seemed to have paused in his own conversation, reached into his breast pocket, withdrawing a small rectangular package, wrapped in gold foil and tied with a royal-blue ribbon.

  “Almost forgot something,” he said, handing the thing over to his friend. “A little something I picked up for you in town the other day. You’re going to love it.”

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t ask. Open,” the man said, twirling the waxed tips of his moustache.

  “Nothing’s going to pop out at me, is it? Or explode white powder in my face?”

  “Alex, do try to show a little appreciation for my thoughtfulness. I know this doesn’t come naturally to you, but give it a decent shot anyway.”

  “You’ll recall that the last Christmas gift you gave me was that yellow golf sweater with all the red golf tees on it.”

  “Yes, the one I caught you red-handed with, trying to rid yourself of it at the Harrods Returns window.”

  “I don’t play golf. If I gave you a red Ferrari baseball cap to wear about town, would you do it?”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “The defense rests.”

  Hawke untied the ribbon and removed the wrapping. It was a black box emblazoned with the name of a shop in the Burlington Arcade that he vaguely remembered. He lifted the lid.

  “Ah! How awfully kind of you, old hound. What is it?”

  “What is it? Just the latest thing, that’s all.”

  Hawke pulled the latest thing out and examined it more closely. “I never know what the latest thing is, Ambrose, so, please, just tell me.”

  “It’s an electronic cigarette.”

  “Ah! An electronic cigarette! Splendid, why didn’t you say so!” he said, leaning forward with an arm on his knee, just like a picture of a cowboy he’d once seen as a child. He twirled the white tube between thumb and forefinger and added, “What does it do, precisely?”

  “Do? Why, you smoke it, of course.”

  “Smoke it? It’s plastic. Have you ever smelled burning plastic, Constable? Seriously.”

  “You don’t light it, Alex, you flip that little switch. Then you can smoke it.”

  “Like this?” Hawke said, following instructions. He took a pull, felt something moist and vaguely disgusting filling his mouth, and quickly expelled it, trying not to retch.

  “Lovely.”

  “You like it?”

  “Love it.”

  “So . . . now you just smoke that instead of all those bloody Sobranie black-lung cigarettes you brought back from Russia.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes! Of course you do! All of the flavor, none of the carcinogens. Ideal, really, for someone like you. An addict.”

  “I’m touched, really quite touched, Ambrose. Thank you.”

  “Pleasure.”

  “You mean to say you actually see me, oh, say at the Long Bar at Black’s, pulling out a fake plastic cigarette, a battery-powered cigarette, and, saying, ‘Look here, lads, it’s the latest thing! Have a puff, you’ll taste the difference.’ Could be an ad campaign, that. ‘Have a puff, you’ll taste the difference!’ ”

  “It’s your life, dear boy,” Ambrose huffed, and sipped his drink, sulking. “Do what you bloody well like with it.”

  Hawke slipped the damn thing into his breast pocket, deep within the folds of his handkerchief. He was about to return to the far more serious topic they’d been discussing when Miss Spooner appeared in the doorway with little Alexei in her arms, who was gurgling in delight at the sight of his father.

  “There’s our big boy,” Ambrose cried, turning in his chair to smile at him. “There’s our little Superman!”

  Hawke leaped from his chair and ran to his son, taking him into his arms. Alexei laughed as his father threw him high into the air, caught him, and threw him again and again.

  “What did you do this afternoon, young man?” Hawke asked, tickling him under the chin.

  “We read a book,” Spooner said, “didn’t we, Alexei?”

  “A book?” Hawke said. “Well, we certainly approve of books around here. Which one?”

  “One of yours. He picked it out himself. We brought it along from Hawkesmoor. Goodnight Moon.”

  “Ah, one of my favorites. Did you like it, too, Alexei?”

  “We read it five times, sir. I’d say yes.”

  “I liked it very much, Daddy,” Alexei said.

  Hawke smiled and kissed his boy’s forehead, whispering to him, “I see the moon, the moon sees me. The moon sees the somebody I’d like to see. God bless the moon and God bless me. God bless the somebody I’d like to see!”

  Alexei smiled with delight.

  Spooner said, “Time to say good night, I’m afraid. He’s had his supper and his bath and now it’s his bedtime.”

  “Good night, little hero,” Hawke said, kissing his cheek and handing him back to Spooner.

  “Yes, good night indeed,” Ambrose called from his chair. “Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite!”

  Alexei stared over Spooner’s shoulder, gazing at his father all the way down the long hallway to the foot of the staircase where he disappeared.

  “Time for dinner, I should think,” Hawke said, turning to Ambrose and wiping something from the corner of his eye.

  Bang on the hour of eight all the house clocks struck, chiming in unison. Moments later the dinner gong sounded, and a rich bass note reverberated throughout the house. The two old friends made their way down the hallway toward the white-and-gold-paneled dining room, a room imported lock, stock, and barrel from Madame de Pompadour’s dining room at Château d’Asnières.

  Sixteen

  Lady Diana Mars, emerging into the hall from the drawing room, intercepted Hawke and Congreve making a beeline for the dining room. She was radiant. All emerald si
lk, bare white shoulders, and diamonds, her lustrous auburn hair swept up and held in place with jeweled combs. She was beautiful as always and Hawke told her so. He took her hand to kiss it, happy to see that the engagement ring Ambrose had given her was still in place. Hawke had a vested interest in that ring. He’d almost died diving a wreck off Bermuda trying to find it.

  “Alex, you darling boy, listen,” she said. “Sir David arrived about ten minutes ago. He seems a bit . . . agitated. Clearly something on his mind. He’s out on the terrace now, smoking his cigar. He asked if he might have a quick word in private before we go into dinner. Do you mind awfully?”

  “Would it matter?” Hawke smiled. “I’m still in his employ, last time I checked.”

  “The old seafarer’s just out there, through the drawing room door. I’ll call off the turtle soup until you two guests of honor arrive at the table.”

  Hawke strode through the room and pushed through the tall door out into the cool evening. Trulove had his back to him, standing stiffly at the low granite balustrade that overlooked the formal gardens and the Thames below, a ribbon of silver in the moonlight.

  “Sir David,” Alex said quietly as he approached, not wanting to startle the man.

  The director of MI6 turned and regarded him with a smile, not a warm smile exactly, but certainly friendly enough under the circumstances. Trulove, whom Hawke considered one of nature’s immutable forces, was a former Royal Navy admiral and a great hero of the Falklands War. He was a tall, well-built fellow, imposing with his close-cropped white hair and weather-beaten face. His intense blue eyes were clear, seeming to have escaped all the wind and salt and rain earned during decades on the bridges of various Royal Navy warships.

  “Alex, good of you to come out here. I felt what I had to say was best said in private.”

  “Indeed, sir. I—”

  “I may owe you an apology. I was utterly beside myself when you went AWOL without a word to me. But . . . now that I have an inkling of your reasons, it’s becoming rather clear to me that you felt you had no choice but to act as you did.”