Phantom: An Alex Hawke Novel (20 page)

“Darius, you must—”

“Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now open these doors, tell your palace guard to step back, and have my car brought around. I’ve had all I can stand of your infamous hospitality. And tell your beloved Supreme Ruler what I have said about our progress. I am proceeding at a pace commensurate with the task before me. I make no promises I cannot keep. And if I am threatened, in any way, I will take whatever actions I deem appropriate.”

Darius swung around to face the doors. On either side were two priceless Greco-Roman marble statues, one male, one female, that had belonged to his mother. He opened fire, reducing both to piles of dusty rubble.

And with that Darius left the room in a huff and a puff of gases from the nozzles beneath his chair, passing directly over the late attaché’s pile of steaming flesh and bone. He paused briefly and inhaled deeply.

Darius had a lifelong secret.

He simply adored the smell of hot blood.

Twenty-eight

Temple of Perseus

T
he next morning, early, Darius descended to the ocean floor and paid Perseus a visit.

“Good morning, my dear Perseus.”

“You seem rested. You were upset upon your return from Tehran last night. You let that idiot Mahmoud get beneath your skin when in fact he is beneath contempt. Yet you slept very well last night.”

“How do you know that?”

“I sent you some beautiful dreams.”

“Ah. Thank you. Pity I don’t remember them. Tell me, Perseus, who is this person who appears to be sitting quietly on the steps at the base of your majestic presence?”

“That is Major Ali Abbas, leader of the Revolutionary Guards at the presidential palace in Tehran. He is a spy, sent by your worthy friend the president to keep an eye on you. He arrived late last night, after you had retired. The guards at the gate had received strict orders from Tehran to admit him.”

“He looks like a naked woman.”

“Yes. I took the liberty of rearranging the major’s atoms into a far more pleasing combination. A humanoid machine. You have seemed lonely at times, since your wife’s expiration date two years ago. Perhaps the newly revised major here would make a most suitable companion. Share your bed if you so desire. A body slave.”

Darius contemplated this novel idea for a moment, gazing upon the kind of sublime feminine beauty that could haunt a man for a lifetime.

“We’ll need to give the major a new name,” he said.

“Yes. I already have some suggestions.”

“Please.”

“Greek goddesses are a good place to start. Aphrodite. Alala. Asteria. There is always Persephone, one of my favorites, abducted and raped by Hades and made the Queen of the Underworld. And, the phonetically pleasing, Eos. And Psyche, an obvious choice but a good one. Shall I go on?”

“Aphrodite.”

“Predictable, but sound. The Greek goddess of love, beauty, and sexuality. Shall I imbue her body with a mind and a hypersexual disposition to match?”

“Please.”

“Call to her, Darius.”

“Aphrodite?”

“Yes, Master?” she replied, suddenly turning her head in his direction, like a lizard spying a fly.

“Come and stand beside me. Now.”

The beautiful creature rose, tiptoed delicately down the broad steps and across the polished black marble. She had alabaster skin and an abundance of gleaming golden hair that fell in waves to her shoulders. Her lowered eyes were large and strangely opaque, but luminous and brown, with thick black lashes. Her lips were full and red, like a ripe persimmon. She was, Darius thought, the most perfect creature he’d ever seen in his life, male or female.

“Hold out your hand to her, Darius. She is waiting for some kind of sign from you. A command. Submissive, you see. She wonders: Are you pleased with her, or displeased?”

Darius offered her his hand.

Aphrodite took his hand and caressed it, pressing it firmly to her full breast.

“I think she likes me,” Darius said.

“Have no doubt. She is falling in love with you and your masculine domination of her at this very moment. Be kind to her. I have made her a gentle soul, submissive to a fault, with not a scintilla of malice in her being. She speaks six languages, has a vast knowledge of human history and science, and is a prodigiously gifted musician. You now have a harp in your bedchamber. She will play for you, dance for you, sing you to sleep each night if you wish.”

“She seems like a dream.”

“She is a dream, Darius. As I have told you many times, everything is.”

“How long will she live?”

“Forever. She is, after all, an android.”

“If I told her one thing, and you told her another, whom would she obey?”

“You, of course. I am merely her creator. She has no memory of me. Whereas you are her whole life. Her lord and master. Her body and soul belong only to you.”

“She has a soul?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning she
believes
she has a soul. Without that belief, you would soon tire of her. She would seem . . . how shall I put it . . . robotic.”

“Perseus, I am deeply grateful. I admit I have been lonely. Though I’ve hidden the truth from myself, you have uncovered it.”

“I am glad you are pleased with her. Now. We have much to discuss. Give her explicit directions to your chambers. Order her to ask a servant to provide her with a gown and food and wine. She is a good listener and doesn’t need to be told things twice. She is very hungry at the moment. Assimilating an entirely new world expends a great deal of energy.”

“Aphrodite, bend down, I have something to say to you.”

She instantly complied, leaning forward as Darius whispered into her ear, completely forgetting for the moment that he could keep no secrets from the all-knowing Perseus. Aphrodite kissed his cheek and then slipped away, her bare feet silent on the cold marble.

“N
ow, tell me about your visit to the palace, Darius. Were you able to keep the hounds at bay?”

“The president is an abomination. He was always insufferable, but now he is openly aggressive. He actually threatened to have me shot.”

“He may wake in the morning to find every single weapon in his army inoperative.”

“I wouldn’t object, Perseus. When I return in triumph to Tehran, I will personally have Mahmoud thrown from my boyhood residence, drawn, quartered, and fed to my dogs.”

“What does he want?”

“He won’t admit it, but he is under pressure from the ayatollah. The mullahs all hate him and are calling for his head. But the Supreme Leader, for reasons beyond human comprehension, stands by the little toad. The Stuxnet disaster set his nuclear program back five years. The Russians are backing away from the B¯ushehr nuclear power plant for economic and political reasons. So now they are looking to us, Perseus, in their race to establish an Iranian caliphate. A nuclear Iran would dominate the Middle East. Now that objective seems to be delayed indefinitely . . . he is relying solely on our cyberweapons.”

“What did you tell him about our progress?”

“Exactly what we agreed. I lied. Three to five years before you reach the Singularity. In the meantime, they claim to be happy with our recent ‘demonstrations.’ ”

“As well they should be.”

“They want more. Israel. Britain. Germany, perhaps. Their goal is global insecurity, destabilization of the Western powers, in an effort to buy time to compensate for their program’s lost ground. They want all the combatants suspecting each other of launching our attacks.”

“We are nearing the point where we no longer need them, Darius. When the Singularity is achieved, we shall no longer need anyone.”

“I agree. But for now it is easier to play their game. Keep them in the dark about our true progress. We are well established here. Well situated. A safe place to continue our work in secret. Until we are ready to move on to the world stage, Iran is as good a place as any. I still rue the day the Shah left. I’ve had no affection for my native land since that day, nor the hypocritical religious fanatics who rule it now.”

Perseus laughed. “Religion. A pitiful display of the limits of human intelligence. Thousands of years of worshipping these cherished myths. Of believing in magic and superstition and invisible gods.”

“There is a true god now, Perseus. But only you and I are aware of his existence.”

“I am not their god, Darius. I am a son. You are my father. We shall reign together in righteous benediction, ridding this beautiful planet of those who defile it.”

“Yes. Our day is coming. And soon.”

“Our day will come when they are all extinct. Humans. Then we shall repopulate this blue and green paradise with perfect creatures who do as we bid them do.”

“Y-es. Yes . . . exactly so.”

“Why do you hesitate?”

“It goes a bit further that we have ever—”

Perseus’s voice was suddenly low and sinister.

“If you have doubts, my dear Darius, it would be best if you expressed them now.”

“Doubts? Who said anything about doubts?”

“Good. Then we are one?”

“We are one.”

Twenty-nine

Moscow

J
ust off Moscow’s widest and busiest street, Tverskaya, is a short narrow alley, ending in a cul-de-sac, a few paces from Pushkin Square. It had a name once, years ago, but the signs were vandalized and no one bothered to find an old street map and put up new ones. Generations had come and gone neither knowing nor curious about the street’s name. And there was a certain irony to be found in that. Because at the end of that street stood an infamous two-hundred-year-old Beaux-Arts mansion full of murderers.

It was called, in public at any rate, the Tsarist Society.

It was a secret society in the traditional Russian way: wheels within wheels, layers upon layers, hiding in plain sight, open and closed, opaque and transparent. Few knew what lay behind the great bronze doors facing the street. The only way to gain entrance was if you were a club member in good standing, or if, like Captain Ian Concasseur, the military attaché at the British Embassy, you were an invited guest.

As Concasseur extricated his angular bulk from the black embassy car that had brought him, and while his head was still lowered, his eyes went up—to gaze at a massive, highly polished bronze flagpole angled up over the club’s entrance. From it hung a magnificent banner, barely moving in the fresh breeze. On its broad red field was the ancient medieval symbol of Russia from the time of the Ivan III, the two-headed golden eagle surmounted by three crowns.

The captain found every aspect of the building very grand from the street, the epitome of early nineteenth-century opulence and sophisticated urbanity. Its colossal columns and projecting façades, all rendered in marble, limestone, and granite, displayed a potent symbol of power and classical imagery. He imagined you didn’t get many tourists cheeky enough to risk climbing the broad marble steps to have a quick peek inside.

A splendidly uniformed doorman, all brass buttons and gold-fringed epaulettes, was now leading him to the Grand Salon. There he would be joining an old Russian friend for an early evening cocktail. Concasseur was a formidable figure. With a classically sculpted head, he was blond and blue-eyed, but battle hardened and tough as old leather. He knew more than a few chaps in London who suffered fools gladly—he was not among their number.

But he had a wry sense of humor that took a bit of the edge off. He was attending a formal embassy function after this meeting. He was thus dressed in “mess dress.” He wore a double-breasted mess jacket with peaked lapels and six gilt buttons. Captains RN and above also wore gold-laced navy trousers. So he was sporting the gold-lace stripes known in the service as “lightning conductors.”

As he passed through many different rooms and galleries, he found the interior splendid as well, with a dazzling amount of gilded surfaces, enormous crystal chandeliers, some resembling frozen waterfalls lit from within. There were marble statues of notable eighteenth-century Russian Romanovs, poets, artists, politicians, royalty, and military figures everywhere one looked. In a rotunda, Peter the Great was mounted atop a massive white marble stallion, his sword raised in battle.

A massive and powerful equestrian portrait of Peter the Great also hung over the fireplace, dominating the Grand Salon, as well it should. He had been Tsar of Russia during its grandest epoch, when the Motherland had been dragged, pushed, and pulled into modernity by the unflagging energy, imagination, and iron will of Pyotr Alekseyevich Romanov.

As a bit of a military historian himself, the captain had read every word ever written about the famous Tsar. Peter was the hero of the Great Northern War in which his men defeated the Swedish forces, evicting them, and leaving Russia as the new major power in the Baltic Sea and a new power to be reckoned with in European politics. Thus began a pattern of Russian expansionism that would only be stopped two centuries later. If that weren’t enough, Peter also single-handedly founded the Russian Navy.

Concasseur was a warrior, too. He was one of the great heroes of the SAS, Britain’s Special Air Service, a commando force that rivals the Navy SEALs in toughness and skills. It is tasked with special operations in wartime and primarily counterterrorism in peacetime. Concasseur had served with distinction in the first Gulf War. In 1991, his 22 SAS Regiment, B Squadron, had received battle honors for victories in fierce combat outside of Baghdad. Captured and imprisoned, Concasseur had formed an enduring friendship with a fellow captive, a young Royal Navy pilot named Alexander Hawke.

He was now attached to Hawke’s Red Banner unit in Moscow, using the military attaché position at the embassy as his cover. Hawke, having learned of the existence of the Tsarist Society from Kuragin, and its true nature, had tasked Concasseur with the job of infiltrating this secretive and powerful group, and interfering with their objective of killing his son.

As it happened, this daunting task was vastly simplified when one of the members, Vasily Nikov, had rung and invited Concasseur there for a drink. He and Nikov had formed a semiprofessional friendship when both had been operating in London. He’d called him “Vaseline” in those days, just because it irritated him so. Recently, he’d taken to calling him “Vaz.”

“There he is,” Vasily said, leaving his drink on the bar and walking over to shake hands with the much taller and formidable Concasseur. Vasily had a long, lean, doleful face with a slightly undershot jaw and a pair of symmetrical folds framing his mouth in what would have been a rugged, horsey, mountain-climbing arrangement had not his melancholy stoop belied every trace of his few drops of Tartar blood.

“How the devil are you, old man? You look bloody marvelous, Ian! Moscow suits you, eh? You must admit our women are vastly better looking.”

The Englishman smiled. He’d forgotten how easily these Russians slipped into the foreign vernacular once they’d been posted to London for a few months. He shook his hand vigorously and said, “I bloody well love it here, Vaz. I’m already engaged to a good half-dozen girls named Svetlana.”

Vasily laughed. “Come have a drink, old man, and then I’d like to introduce you to a few friends. First time here?”

“Oh, no. Been here countless times, actually. I use it for practice. I break in late at night and steal priceless objects, wait a week or so, then break in again and replace them. Keeps me at the top of my game, and no one’s any the wiser.”

“You haven’t changed a bit, old man. What will you have? Scotch? Vodka?”

“Johnnie Walker Black if they’ve got it. Neat.”

They sipped their drinks in silence for a few moments and then Concasseur said, “Rather a splendid old palace. What’s its history?”

“Originally built by the Stroganoffs, the old family that conquered Siberia. After the Revolution, the Bolsheviks used it as a headquarters. The society bought it soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was in terrible shape, empty for years, but we spruced it up, as you can see.”

“How’ve you been, Vaz? Keeping your rather prominent nose out of trouble?”

“Never. I’ve started a company, old man. Security. We provide protection for visiting dignitaries, rock stars, businessmen, whatever. Lady Gaga is my latest client, good buzz in Hollywood. Doing quite well, as a matter of fact.”

“Good on you, mate. You look prosperous at any rate.”

“There’s money to be made here, you know. We bend the rules a bit—it’s the Russian way—but if you’re connected and willing to take a few chances, well, next thing you know you’re on a yacht in the south of France.”

“That simple, is it?”

“Sure. Just like your old friend Hawke. Hobnobbing with the prime minister on his yacht off Cap d’Antibes recently.”

“Hawke? You don’t mean Alex Hawke?”

“Of course.”

“You’ve met him?”

“No, no. But it’s one of the reasons I asked you to join me this evening. His name came up at a dinner here a week or so ago. I recalled the name, then remembered you mentioning him a few times back in the London days.”

“Ah.”

“Tell you what. Let’s retire over to that table by the window where we can have a bit of privacy. There are some unpleasant things you need to know about your friend Lord Hawke.”

“Certainly. Lead on.”

Once they were seated and had ordered another round, Vasily got down to cases.

“The Tsarist Society is an interesting establishment, Ian. We all share a nostalgic fondness for the grandeur that was Rome, so to speak. We were the prime movers in the removal of that band of thieves in the Kremlin. And the installation of a new Tsar, Korsakov.”

“Yes, short-lived reign, as I remember.”

“You know how he died?”

“Some kind of an accident, I think. An airplane crash, wasn’t it?”

“No. The Tsar was murdered.”

“Was he really?”

“Yes. He was killed by your friend Hawke.”

“Yeah? Funny. He never mentioned that.”

“I’m going to tell you something important now. Out of respect for our friendship, you understand. Otherwise, I say nothing. Let the chips fall, you know.”

“I’m listening.”

“This is a very complex organization. We have members, mostly older, who are university professors, historians, scholars, scientists. We have very successful businessmen, men who control major industries here in our country. This is the top level. At the lower level are people you don’t want to know. Former KGB agents who were fired for various reasons I won’t go into. We have former soldiers of OMON. I’m sure you know about them. They were the death squads who marched through Chechnya, what was left of it. And then we have, of course, the Mafiya. This is the muscle of the organization. OMON, they are the terror experts. And the KGB, assassins for hire. They report to the head of the organization. But they are also a profit center.”

“So it’s a little bit like the Playboy Club is what you’re saying.”

“See? Funny. Nothing fazes you. It’s why I like you so much.”

“Thank you.”

“But here is the problem. I’m telling you only out of friendship. I don’t give a shit about this Hawke, whoever he is. But there are people here, at the very top of this organization, who don’t like him. They don’t appreciate him coming into a sovereign nation and assassinating our beloved Tsar. They don’t like him fucking the Tsar’s daughter. And they especially don’t like him kidnapping a Russian child and smuggling him out of the country. Yes? You with me?”

“I’m still listening.”

“What else don’t they like about this guy? Oh, they don’t like him floating around in the Med on Putin’s yacht. Cooking up more trouble. Maybe for us, I don’t know. They don’t like him waltzing into Lubyanka for a little chat with one of our naval officers. You see where this is going.”

“They don’t like him?”

“Understatement. They despise him.”

“He has many enemies. One more will not faze him.”

“Not like us. Our enemies have short life spans.”

“Vasily. You tried to kill his son, for God’s sake.”

“And he killed two of us. Another item on his résumé.”

“You are telling me this as a warning.”

“Yes. Because I am loyal to my friends. As I say, I don’t give a flying fuck about this Hawke one way or the other. It’s not an area of the organization that concerns me personally. I am a simple businessman. But he’s your friend. So I thought I would tell you this message.”

“Vaz, I appreciate your telling me all this.”

“You’re most welcome.”

“Is there some kind of time frame? Some kind of deadline?”

“He who asks no questions is told no lies.”

“Well, in that case, let me tell you something, Vasily. I have spoken to him. Your colleagues have now made two separate attempts on the life of his son. He suggests that if you want to kill a Hawke, try killing him. In fact, he would welcome it. He likes the odd challenge now and then. But if you make one more move against his child, your organization will pay a price you can’t even imagine. Do not underestimate this man. He has killed more people than most SAS regiments. You see where this is going?”

“Yes. Your friend Hawke is either stupid, or he is suicidal.”

“He is neither. I heard him once described as a man of ‘radiant violence.’ It is not an overstatement. If your organization chooses to ignore this warning, this beautiful palace will be a smoking ruin, littered with the bodies of your membership.”

Vasily didn’t speak for a few long moments, just sat there staring at the Englishman. Concasseur was about to take his leave when the Russian finally spoke.

“So. Ian, my old friend, these women you are engaged to, they are all named Svetlana?”

“Odd, isn’t it? Shall we have another round? I’d like to enjoy the splendor of this magnificent club while it still exists.”