Hawke: A Novel (6 page)

“Every new guest receives one,” Ling-Ling said. “It’s called Poison. Try it.”

“I love poison,” Gomez said, and took a sip. It was the best thing he’d ever tasted in his life.

“You make this stuff?” he asked the Chinaman. The little fellow giggled and scurried away. Probably doesn’t speak a word of English, Gomez thought, hardly surprised.

“This way,” Ling-Ling said. “My brother is probably at the bar in the casino.”

They walked around a pool about half the size of a football field that had a huge splashing fountain in the middle of it. The fountain had some guy with a giant pitchfork riding in some kind of Roman chariot pulled by a bunch of dolphins and whales. Guy had his arm around this mermaid. Biggest damn mermaid tits you ever saw. Solid gold? Had to be.

Gomez heard a shriek and saw a girl climb out of the pool, naked, and watched her get chased by this old fat guy into one of the cabanas that lined both sides of the pool. The girl was wearing the same kind of gold collar around her neck as Ling-Ling.

He noticed that a lot of the cabanas were occupied and most of them had the thick striped curtains closed. He also saw more beautiful girls wearing gold collars at the far end of the pool. He took another swig of his drink and tried not to stare too hard.

At the far end of a wide grassy strip lined with a double row of tall palms stood a big pink building with white shutters that had to be four stories high. Could have been a hotel at one time. Or some dictator’s house.

“I like this club,” Gomez said, following Ling-Ling into the cool shade of the main house.

She stopped and looked at him. “There is one rule,” she said. “There are many famous people here. If you recognize someone, you don’t look at them or speak to them. Okay?”

“Got it,” Gomez said, searching the faces at the roulette tables for someone he recognized. He saw one cat looked a lot like Bruce Willis, but he wasn’t a hundred percent sure because of the dark glasses.

They found her brother sitting at the far end of the long mahogany bar, talking quietly to some guy with a long black ponytail.
“Ciao,
Manso,” her brother said to him, and the ponytailed guy immediately stood up and turned away.

“Rodrigo,” Ling-Ling said. “This is
Señor
Gomez. He is someone I thought you would like to meet.”

Rodrigo stood and stuck out his hand to Gomez. Manso, the ponytailed guy he’d been talking to, wandered off through the casino. Probably famous, because he was careful not to show his face. Swishy walk, Gomez thought, watching the guy. Gay bar? No way. Too much stuff running around bare-ass naked.

“Buenas tardes,”
the man said. “A cordial welcome to Club Mao-Mao.” Smooth as silk, man.

Still, Gomez almost lost it.

The man’s eyes were completely colorless.

There was the normal white part. And then, in the middle, where the color usually is, they were totally transparent. Like the guy had a pair of clear marbles in his eye sockets.

“Do I frighten you,
señor?
Sorry. I sometimes have that effect on strangers.”

“No. I just—”

The guy was a piece of work all right. Tall and thin and movie-star handsome. Dressed in a white linen suit with a pale blue silk shirt. Thin gold chain around his neck. Had the same mocha latte skin as his sister. Same peroxide blond hair, too. But those eyes were out of some horror movie.

“What do you do,
Señor
Gomez?” Rodrigo asked. “If I may ask?”

“United States Navy. I’m a sailor. Stationed over at Guantánamo.”

“So, what brings you to our ancient capital?”

“A two-day pass. My mother, she’s, uh, in the hospital. She’s dying. Stomach cancer.”

“You are
cubano,
no?”

“Yes. My mother stayed here when my father took me from Mariel Harbor to Miami in eighty-one. He died last year at Dade County. Prostrate cancer.”

“Prostate.”

“What?”

“I believe the word is
prostate, señor.
In any case, I’m sorry to hear of his passing. Won’t you have another drink?” He signaled the bartender and another silver cup arrived.

“Thank you,” Gomez said. “These are great.” He was already feeling the first one, but what the hell. Stuff was frigging delicious.

“You had an unfortunate experience at the hospital, I understand,” Rodrigo said.

“Yeah, this goddamn American embargo. My mother is in such pain that—wait a minute, how’d you know about the hospital?”

“My sister. We talk on the phone all the time. You are opposed to the American policy?”

“You could say that.”

“The
americanos
try to punish Cuba but they only hurt women and children. Do you like to gamble,
Señor
Gomez? Blackjack? Baccarat? Chemin de fer?”

“Twenty-one,” Gomez said. “Is that the same as Blackjack?”

“Exactamente,”
Rodrigo said. He opened a white marble box that was sitting on the bar. It was full of chips, one hundred–, five hundred–, one thousand–dollar chips. He counted out ten one thousand–dollar chips and stacked them in front of Gomez.

“Compliments of the house,” he said, flashing a big white smile. “Ling-Ling, would you introduce
Señor
Gomez to our head croupier? Make sure he’s well taken care of at the tables, darling.”

“Of course,” Ling-Ling said. “Won’t you come with me,
Señor
Gomez?”

“Love it,” Gomez said. “And, could I, uh, get one more of these poison things?”

Gomez followed Ling-Ling’s sashaying little spandex butt out toward the casino floor, thinking, have I absolutely died and gone to heaven here or what?

“Jack!” he said, passing a guy in a very sharp sharkskin suit who was rolling the bones. Guy had to be Nicholson. He recognized the haircut and shades from
People
magazine. “My man, what’s up?”

“Jesus Christ,” Ling-Ling hissed at him. “Didn’t you hear what I fucking told you?”

“Yeah, right. Sorry.”

Chick was pissed. All right, we can deal with that. How many times in his life is a guy going to rub elbows with Jack Goddamn Nicholson? A little slack here, Ling-Ling, please.

“Autograph out of the question, I guess,” he said, following her through the maze of tables.

“You got a pen?” the chick says, giving him a look over the shoulder. “I’ll autograph your dick if there’s enough space to write on.”

“Hey, ease up. I said I was sorry.”

“Here’s your table, sailor boy. This is Francisco. He will take care of you. Okay?
Bonne chance. Ciao.
Whatever.”

The chick started to walk away. He grabbed her arm.

“Hey. Question. What’s with your brother’s eyes?” Gomez asked her. “You don’t mind me asking.”

She turned and stared at him.

“My brother was imprisoned for twelve years,” Ling-Ling said. “He was kept in a small room with no light. None. No natural. No artificial. The lack of light just leaches all the color out.”

“Man. So, how did he get out? Seems to be doing okay now, I mean.”

“He said that if they’d let him out for just one day he would do anything. Literally anything they asked. They gave him something to do that was extremely—unpleasant. He was permanently released the following day. Now my brother and I are together again.”

*   *   *

He didn’t know where he was when he came to, but he was pretty damn sure that it wasn’t Hugh Hefner’s bedroom at the Playboy Mansion.

He was sitting in a hard wooden chair in a room with no other furniture. Nothing on the floors or the walls. Not even windows. His hands were duct-taped to the arms of the chair, his ankles bound to the chair’s legs. He didn’t know how long he had sat there with his head pounding before he heard a door open behind him.

“Ah,
Señor
Gomez,” he heard a familiar voice say. It was, what was his name, Rodrigo. “Did you have a nice siesta? You’ve slept for almost twenty-four hours.”

“What’s the—what’s the deal here? I thought you, uh, that you—” His tongue felt way too big for his mouth.

“The deal is this,
Señor
Gomez. You owe the Mao-Mao Club one hundred thousand dollars.”

The guy pulled out a piece of paper and held it in front of Gomez’s face. He tried to focus but everything was out of whack.

“There is the ten thousand I extended you as a courtesy. When you exhausted that, you indebted yourself to the house for another hundred thousand. At the bottom is your signature. I am forgiving you the ten, because it was a gift.”

“What’s the, uh, what do you—”

“You have exactly one week to repay. You must understand that I am not one who forgives his debtors as they forgive him.”

“I can’t…I don’t…how will I get the money?”

“That is hardly my concern,
señor.
Now, turn your left palm upwards.”

The man pulled a pair of nasty-looking silver scissors from his pocket and snipped the blades a couple of times.

“Hey, wait! What are you—”

“Two associates of mine will contact you in a few days. Tell you where to bring the money. I’m going to mark you now so that they will recognize you. Turn your left palm upwards, please.”

“I can’t…please…the tape is too tight.”

“Here, let me help you.”

Rodrigo slashed the tape that bound Gomez’s wrist, flipped his hand over, and crushed his left wrist to the arm of the chair.

“Hey, you can’t—”

Rodrigo looked into Gomez’s face with his two colorless eyes as he slashed the sailor’s palm with the scissors blade. Gomez saw all the bright red blood spattering this guy Rodrigo’s white linen suit, and the lights went out again.

For a while, Gomez thought the angry red letters carved into his hand were
WW.
After a couple of days, he realized maybe he was looking at the letters upside down.

Maybe it was
MM
instead of
WW
.

Mickey Mouse? Marilyn Monroe?

The Mao-Mao Club?

Yeah.

Maybe it meant he was a member.

The Staniel Cay Yacht Club baked beneath a torpid afternoon sun. The old haunt had been built in the late forties, sometime just after the war and prior to the time in the fifties when, in Hawke’s view anyway, a vast majority of the world’s architects had gone completely off the rails.

The pink-hued British Colonial–style clubhouse had the faded façade and the boozy, sunburnt charm of a timeworn playboy. Little of the former glamour remained but, underneath it all, Hawke saw as he strode toward it down the long dock, good bones.

Still, to call it a yacht club was stretching things a bit.

Yachts? Certainly a few serious sport-fishing boats showed up from time to time, especially when the marlin were running. Most of the time, however, there were just small fishing gigs and dories bobbing in the clear blue waters around the docks.

It was a club only in that its membership shared a common partiality to lethal rum beverages, ice-cold Kalik beer, and fishing lies of an order of magnitude seldom found outside these parts of the Caribbean. The “president” of the club was whoever was sober enough to remain standing when the bar closed.

The faded club rules, mimeographed and tacked above the bar, stated that it was absolutely forbidden to sleep on the horseshoe bar. Still, in the very early morning, it was not uncommon to find a few members dozing peacefully atop it.

Suffice it to say, one didn’t stroll through these aged portals expecting limbo nights, cocktails with tiny umbrellas, or the quaint melody of “Yellowbird” wafting through the palms. Perhaps the club had seen better days. Perhaps, worse.

The music on the club’s PA system consisted of either reggae in the evenings, or, as now, scratchy recordings of early American bluesmen such as Son House or Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Amen Lillywhite, the club’s chief bartender, was all smiles when Hawke and Congreve walked in. He was an ancient blackbird of a man, tall and bare-chested with golden hoop earrings. His enormous white grin and a necklace of shark’s teeth had been a primary attraction at the club since the night it opened.

“Welcome, welcome, gentlemen!” he boomed. “What can I get for you two young fellows?”

“Two ice-cold beers would be lovely,” Congreve said.

News both good and bad traveled fast in Staniel Cay. Amen, presiding at his horseshoe bar, was at the very epicenter of information flow on the small island. News of the launch moored at the end of the dock reached his ears seconds after its arrival. His excitement grew when he learned the name
Blackhawke
was scribed in gold leaf on the launch’s transom. The famous yacht had arrived almost a week earlier, mooring in the deeper water offshore. This was the first time her launch had ventured into Staniel Cay.

It was dark and cool inside the bar where Hawke and Congreve stood waiting for the Russians. The two agents had finally arrived, but remained out on the docks, having a frightful row. Meanwhile, the two Englishmen, each sipping from a cold bottle of Kalik, were gazing up at a wall covered with faded snapshots, a kaleidoscopic jumble of sunny days and rum-soaked nights.

There was an eclectic mix of locals, charter skippers, international boat bums, rich American or British yachtsmen, and even a surprising number of movie stars. Everyone posing with his or her arms around Amen. Amen’s appearance changed with the passing decades, but he was the only constant.

“I’d say there are only three ways of getting one’s picture up on this wall, Constable,” Hawke said. “No doubt you have arrived at a similar conclusion, you being the famous bloodhound, after all?”

“Better hound than hare,” Congreve replied, rubbing his chin and perusing the photographs. “I would say that there are actually four.”

“Yes?”

“You’ve got to be rich, famous, or an alcoholic,” Ambrose declared.

“And the fourth?” Hawke asked, delighted.

“All of the above, of course.”

“Precisely,” Hawke said, looking at his friend with an admiring smile. “Ambrose Congreve, Scotland Yard’s own Demon of Deduction,” Hawke added.

Alex then looked out toward the docks, frowning. The Russians were still there, shouting. Arguing about just how much money they might gouge out of the rich Englishman, Hawke imagined. Bloody hell, he hated waiting.

“What the devil is keeping those two? And what are they going on about anyway?” Hawke asked. “Are we having this bloody meeting or are we not?”

“I’ve been eavesdropping. They’re fighting over a woman. Grigory came back to their boat last night and found Nikolai having a go at someone Grigory fancied. Not being very nice to her either, apparently. Someone named Gloria. A local girl from what I can make out.”

“Your Russian seems sound enough.”

“Flawless.”

“Here’s the thing. Go tell those bastards I’m walking out of here in fifteen seconds.”

“Right-ho,” Congreve said, and pushed through the screen doors and out into the sun.

Hawke looked around the ancient saloon. Every arched wall was festooned with fishing nets, buoys, giant mounted marlin and sailfish, conch shells, shark jaws, and endless strings of Christmas lights. Somehow, he thought to himself, it all worked.

Two or three “members” were seated at the bar, wholly absorbed in some kind of dice game, paying scant attention to Hawke or anyone else. The tables were all empty. Lunch crowd gone, cocktail crowd not yet arrived. Good.

The two crewmen from Hawke’s launch had scouted the yacht club yesterday and proclaimed it ideal. Now, both armed, they had stationed themselves none too discreetly on either side of the club’s front door.

The younger of the two, ex–U.S. Army sharpshooter Tommy Quick, was happily tossing fried bacon rinds into the waters surrounding the docks. In the gin-clear water, Tom could see literally dozens of large nurse and bull and sand sharks cruising over the white sandy bottom, instantly rising to snap up his treats as quickly as they hit the surface.

Hawke had met Sergeant Thomas Quick at the U.S. Army’s Sniper School at Fort Hood. Hawke had audited a course there one summer and successfully recruited the Army’s #1 sniper. Quick could easily see that working for Alex Hawke would be a far more exciting and lucrative career than anything the U.S. Army offered.

The world knew Hawke as one of the world’s most powerful businessmen and head of a massive conglomeration of diversified industries. A very select group of people knew that he frequently did highly secret freelance work for the governments of the United States and Great Britain.

Since joining Hawke, Inc., Quick had bought gold mines in South Africa, been in a room deep in the Kremlin while Hawke chatted with the Russian defense minister, and spent a long night helping Hawke attach limpet mines to the hulls of ships full of illegal weapons sitting in the bay off Bahrain. On the first anniversary of his employment, Quick had given Hawke a gift that the man still wore, an Army Sniper School T-shirt that read:

The older crewman, Ross Sutherland, who was actually on permanent loan to Hawke from the Yard’s Special Branch, kept one eye on the two bickering Russians and one hand inside his shirt, lightly gripping the nine-millimeter Glock he always wore strapped under his arm. These Russians didn’t look like much, but, in his years spent protecting Hawke, he’d learned the hard way never to go by appearances.

Sutherland was a man who’d think nothing of laying down his life for Alex Hawke. One night, in a makeshift prison some thirty miles south of Baghdad, Hawke had almost died saving Sutherland’s life. Somehow, Hawke managed to get the two of them safely out of the Iraqi hellhole where they’d been held for over two weeks after a SAM-7 brought their Tomcat fighter down. Ross had no memory of the escape. He’d literally been beaten senseless by the Iraqi guards.

Both men had been brutally mistreated, especially Sutherland. If they had not escaped that night, Hawke knew it was doubtful Ross could survive another day’s “interrogation.” As it happened, Hawke had killed two guards with his bare hands and they’d fled south across the desert, using the stars for navigation.

Ross had barely survived their endless trek across the scorching sands. For days and nights on end, Hawke had carried Sutherland on his back before an American tank command finally stumbled upon them. By this point, they were wandering in circles, staggering blindly up and down the endless sea of dunes.

The Russians continued their tiresome squabbling and Ross knew Hawke must have been getting impatient. Idly, he flicked the Glock’s safety up and down beneath his shirt. Not that Sutherland was expecting trouble. The night before, he’d reread the Russians’ dossiers. They were both former Black Sea Fleet officers. Both had originally served at the sub base at Vladivostok. They’d been classmates at the academy and were surviving the end of the Cold War by peddling what remained of the Soviet navy.

Ross allowed himself a smile at the sight of Congreve barging into the middle of the heated argument, barking at them in Russian. After a moment of stunned silence, the two nodded their heads. Ross opened the screen door and the two men meekly followed his colleague from Scotland Yard back inside.

“Well, isn’t this cozy?” Hawke asked when they’d all been seated. “Refreshments? Vodka, I’d imagine. Get everyone in a festive mood.” He signaled to a waitress lingering in the doorway to the kitchen.

“I think perhaps beer might be a better choice,” Congreve said, giving Alex a meaningful kick to the shin under the table. Hawke understood immediately that the Russians’ vodka quota for the day had already been met and nodded his head.

Ambrose was yammering away with the Russkies, so Hawke leaned back in his chair and took their measure.

These two legionnaires of the former evil empire were bleary-eyed and a sickly gray beneath their suntanned exteriors. The heavy one had salt-and-pepper hair, cut short in the old Soviet military style. Steel-rimmed glasses completed the look. Long, greasy dark hair, tied loosely at the back, a pair of shiny black marbles for eyes, and a rather uncooperative black beard on the other chap. He bore, Hawke observed, an uncanny resemblance to the notorious Russian “Mad Monk,” Rasputin.

Unlike the woolen suits Hawke had pictured them wearing, they were casually dressed in bathing suits, sandals, and sport shirts depicting multicolored billfish leaping gaily about.

Looking at them, Hawke felt a twinge of pity. At one time, these two cold warriors had surely been formidable men, accustomed to a sense of purpose, power, and command. Now they had a dissolute air about them, stemming no doubt from too much sun, too much rum, too little self-respect. It was more than a little humbling, Hawke imagined, to be peddling the arsenal of your once vaingloriously evil empire.

“Well,” Hawke said, suddenly restless. “I’m Alexander Hawke. My esteemed colleague, Mr. Ambrose Congreve, whom you’ve met, will be handling the translations. Ambrose, you have the floor.”

As Congreve translated this bit, the waitress approached Hawke. Her flashing eyes and body language indicated that she was not in the best of moods. Surprising, since he’d heard so much about the sunny disposition of the people in these islands. This singular exception to that rule presented herself at the table.

“Hello,” Hawke said, though his smile went unreturned. “Four Kaliks should do it, thanks.”
Blackhawke’
s crew drank nothing but the local Bahamian beer, and that was good enough for Alex. The girl nodded grimly and headed for the bar. Her walk did lovely things to the back of her shift.

Congreve coughed discreetly to get Hawke’s attention.

“May I present Mr. Nikolai Golgolkin and Mr. Grigory Bolkonski,” Congreve said to Hawke. “Golgolkin, the Russian bear with the steel glasses, seems to be the one in charge. The chap on the left, who is a dead ringer for Rasputin, is a former submarine designer and weapons expert from the Severodvinsk shipyard on the Kola Peninsula. Both are very pleased to meet the famous Hawke.”

The little “mad monk” didn’t seem all that pleased. He turned his black eyes on Congreve, anger suffusing his face. He’d clearly heard the Rasputin reference and was not amused.

“Lovely,” Hawke said, smiling.

“They apologize for their rudeness in keeping you waiting and beg forgiveness. It seems they are uncomfortable having this discussion in such a public place, but they have brought a gift. Vodka.”

“They certainly have a gift for drinking the stuff, judging by appearances,” Hawke said.

Golgolkin produced a small, rectangular red velvet box, which he placed in front of Hawke. Hawke opened it and smiled. It was Moskoya Private Label. Quite rare. Bloody marvelous stuff after a few hours in the freezer.

“Very kind,” Hawke said, looking from one Russian to the other. “A most generous gift. Let’s get to it. According to our mutual Syrian friend in Abu Kamal, they will have a portfolio of their wares with them, correct?”

Congreve began translating and soon they were all chattering again in what was, to Hawke’s ear, still a most unlovely language.

The waitress arrived with a tray and placed a sweating bottle of Kalik in front of each man. Her angry eyes avoided those of the two Russians and her volcanic mood sent tremors to her fingers as she served them. Such a pretty girl, Hawke thought. Pity she was so unhappy.