Ted Bell - Phantom

“I am Alexei! And you’re my daddy.”

“Quite true. And who is this distinguished gentleman pulling your wagon?”

“That’s Uncle Ambrose. He’s not a gentleman, he’s my pony!”

“And who is this pretty lady here?”

“She’s Spooner. She’s my best friend in the whole world.”

Hawke smiled at his son’s pretty guardian. She seemed so at ease with Alexei, so motherly. If his son had to be deprived of his real mother, he was indeed fortunate to have found this surrogate, a woman thoroughly capable of being “overly protective” into the bargain.

Hawke had been deprived of his own mother’s love at an early age. How different his life might have been had he had someone like Nell Spooner nurturing him, teaching him, comforting him… he suddenly found himself gazing at her in a new light. She was truly a lovely woman, and she wore her beauty with a sunny nonchalance that Hawke found surprisingly appealing. Too appealing, perhaps, and he willed himself to suppress such inappropriate feelings.

“Well, I’m awfully glad to see all of you in such good form. Hello, Ambrose. Hello, Miss Spooner. It seems he’s been in very good hands while I was away. I hope he hasn’t been a bother to anyone.”

“Hardly, Alex,” Congreve said. “He’s been a joy and a blessing upon this house. You’re going to have a hard time convincing Diana to let you and Miss Spooner take him home to Hawkesmoor, I’m afraid.”

Fat drops of cold rain suddenly began spattering the courtyard as the black clouds Hawke had noticed swept in from the Cotswold Hills.

“Raindrops!” Alexei cried, holding out his hands and trying to catch them. Hawke smiled inwardly, seeing that his son would probably enjoy foul weather as much as his father. Apples and trees and all that, he supposed.

“We’d better get you inside, young man,” Miss Spooner said. “Shall I take him, sir?” she asked, reaching out for him.

“Yes, thank you. Here you go! Have I missed supper? I hope not. I’m famished.”

As Alexei and his guardian disappeared inside the main entrance, Hawke, moving with his friend under the porte cochere, put his arm round Congreve’s shoulder and said quietly, “Any trouble, Ambrose? I’m sure not, else you would have contacted me. But I must say I’ve not stopped worrying about him since I left.”

“Not a bit of it. He’s safe as houses here, with all the coppers wandering about the premises. Having a heavily armed nanny doesn’t hurt either.”

“I extracted some good information from Putin about the nature of the threats against his life. I’ll describe it in more detail after supper. Apparently, there is a secret sect that calls itself the Tsarist Society. Ex-KGB,

OMON death squad, and mafia types. Killers for hire, and informants, working for the Tsarists, not the Kremlin. We’ll need to get every scrap on them, and soon. Notify the Yard, MI5.”

“Yes. As quickly as possible. Now come inside before we both get soaked to the bone out here. You look like you could use a restorative cocktail. I know I could. Following that boy around all day long is exhausting.”

“Lead on,” Hawke said, and followed his old friend inside.

T hey were alone in the library, a fire going, awaiting the dinner gong. Congreve’s fiancee, Lady Mars, had floated in for a brief moment, just to give Hawke a kiss and a welcome to Brixden. She informed them that dinner would be served in one hour.

Hawke had then brought Congreve up to speed on his time with Putin, and at Lubyanka with the doomed Russian sub commander. He told him about the infamous Tsarist Society, the Russian sect Putin claimed was behind the threats to both Alex and his son.

“Yes, a bad lot all right,” Congreve said, “the very same chaps I still believe are responsible for the radioactive poisoning of that Russian expatriate living in London some years ago. Putin got the blame for that one because he, God knows why, refused to finger the real killers. He moves in mysterious ways.”

“You have no idea. At any rate, I’ll use our Red Banner assets in Moscow to full advantage. I’ve issued them orders to infiltrate this Tsarist Society and persuade these murderous bastards that further attempts at violence against my son and me are not in their best interests,” Hawke said.

“Who’s running our show in Moscow now?”

“I’ve put a good man in charge there, working undercover as a ‘military attache’ at the British Embassy. A former SAS man by the name of Concasseur. His tentacles extend deeply into the Russian criminal underground. And he is as mentally and physically tough as any man I’ve ever met, present company excluded, of course.”

Congreve nodded, puffing on his pipe, his mind clearly somewhere else.

“What the devil is going on, Alex?” Congreve asked after a brief silence, taking a contemplative sip of his single malt whiskey.

“Going on?” Hawke asked. “In what way?”

“This escalating series of seemingly linked events,” Ambrose said.

He leaned forward, his face now lit by the flickering firelight. Hawke saw by his companion’s expression that his attention had been keenly aroused. You could almost hear his renowned cranial wheels spinning and Hawke paid strict attention. The former chief inspector of Scotland Yard was perhaps the most perfect reasoning and observing machine he had ever known. You ignored him at your peril. Hawke said, “Linked, you say. How so?”

“Let’s begin with the tragedy at Disney World in Florida, shall we?” Congreve said.

“What? That was ages ago.”

“But never fully explained. I had a chat with the chaps involved over there.”

“And?”

“They say they still have no idea what went wrong. Many theories, of course. But no logical explanation for the disastrous events has ever been arrived at. They said that they just lost control of the entire park, one ride after another. I think that was an attack on America from external sources. The first one in a series.”

Hawke reflected a moment.

“Yes, I think you’re absolutely correct, Ambrose. Disney was the beginning. And then the Caribbean affair, the surreal attack on Air Force One by one of its own fighter escorts. And, finally, this truly bizarre matter in Alaska. UFOs, or God knows what, appearing to hover over an American ABM launching site and blowing up eight missiles in their silos?”

“Exactly the sequence of events I’m referring to.”

“And how are they linked?”

“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? In each case, complete control was wrenched from highly trained men operating complex electromechanical systems, amusement park computers, jets, submarines, missiles; and then that control was turned against them with catastrophic results. Surely you see the link, Alex? The methodology, the m.o., is exactly the same, in each case.”

“Now that you put it that way, yes. I see what you’re getting at.”

“These are not random, isolated events. This is only the beginning of the world’s first cyberwar. C-WI I’m calling it in my memorandums. I believe these cyberattacks to be the work of a single, malevolent entity, Alex. An individual, or perhaps a terror organization, or even an entire nation. I favor the latter. Matter of deduction, really. Science, at this level anyway, is indistinguishable from magic. I don’t think the individual exists who is capable of these extraordinary feats. Teams of brilliant scientists, working for years

… maybe… could create some form of supercomputer vastly more powerful than anything we’re aware of. Artificial intelligence more powerful than human intelligence is no longer science fiction, Alex. It’s science, and just a matter of time. But terrorist groups? I think not.”