Ted Bell - Tsar

Get started on me?

“Sorry,” Hawke murmured, sipping. “Rum delivery man at the door.”

“Well?” Korsakova asked, impatience frosting the word.

“I’ll sleep on it.”

“Do that. I call you first thing in the morning.”

The line went dead.

“Bloody hell,” Hawke murmured to Pelham. “She wants to paint my picture.”

“So I inferred, sir.”

“Ridiculous. Absolute rubbish.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“Are you completely mad?”

Pelham’s bushy white eyebrows went straight up.

“Really, m’lord. One hundred smackers an hour is nothing to sniff one’s nose at. Pretty good gravy, in my view, sir.”

Hawke laughed aloud, threw his head back, and took another healthy swig of Pelham’s delicious concoction before padding off toward his bedroom to strap on the black tie and his Royal Navy dress uniform. It was Saturday night. Congreve had told him they still dressed for dinner at Shadowlands. A quaint practice, but, to Hawke, anyway, an agreeable one.

The muffled strains of the calypso song soon resumed from down the hall, his lordship singing at the top of his lungs, “Smarter than de man in every way!”

“Trouble in paradise.” Pelham sighed to himself, wiping clean the varnished bar and smiling at his reflection.

“Trouble in paradise,” echoed Sniper, Hawke’s pet parrot, who’d just flown from his perch and alighted on Pelham’s shoulder. Hawke had cared for the bird, a black hyacinth macaw, since childhood. Despite her name, her color was a glossy ultramarine blue. She was almost eighty years old, had a very sharp tongue, and would probably live to see one hundred.

“Oh, hush up,” Pelham said, and slipped the bird a few crackers from the bowl on the bar.

“Thanks for nothing, buster,” Sniper squawked.

“Do sod off, won’t you?” Pelham replied.

Paddy Strelnikov waltzed into the warden’s office at Little Miss Penitentiary at eleven o’clock. Sleet was rattling against the windowpanes. Stumpy’s midnight date with destiny, in a little more than an hour, was going to happen right down the hall. Hell, he’d seen them getting ready, coming up the stairs to the warden’s office.

The door at the end was open, and you could see inside to the pale green tile walls of the death chamber. Bright lights, like an operating room. Medical equipment. There was a lot of activity, and Paddy, catching a glimpse of the gurney, was curious about all of it. But he was on a mission.

It had taken Strelnikov ten minutes just to negotiate the Mustang through the mob scene of press and protesters at the gate. Then another twenty or so to get through the check points at Wing Block D, the maximum-security building at the rear of the Little Miss complex.

It was a long three-story building made entirely of concrete block with a guard tower rising at either end. In addition to the warden’s office, D Block was home to Death Row. Sixty-one inmates were awaiting execution, including some of the most notorious pedophiles, sexual sadists, and serial killers west of the Mississippi.

Little Miss had replaced Terre Haute Correctional Facility in Indiana as the federal government’s new special confinement unit for inmates serving federal death sentences. A couple of botched lethal injections (needles passing right through veins and injecting the sodium chlorate into the muscle) had led to public protests and the shutting down of the Indiana facility. Powerful lobbyists in Washington had made sure the new federal correctional complex ended up in North Dakota.

No one was ever quite sure who’d hired all of these expensive lobbyists, but no one much cared, either. In Washington, someone was always pulling the strings. Often, the true maestro went unseen and unnoticed. Like back in Russia.

Overhead, searchlights and TV lights lit the snowy skies like a Hollywood premiere. Lots of excitement when you pan-fry a guy as world-famous as Charles Edward Stump, when he walks that lonely last mile.

The warden, named Warren Garmadge, a short, wide toad of a man in a double-wide paisley tie, stood right up when the deputies escorted Paddy Strelnikov into his flag-bedecked office. He stuck out his meaty hand, a big smile on his face. He seemed to be having a good time, being on TV a lot recently. Interviews and all, CNN, Fox, all the biggies. Also, he saw the beautiful alligator carrying case in Paddy’s hand and figured it had his name on it.

He stuck his hand out, and Strelnikov shook it.

“Mr. Strelnikov, welcome to Little Missouri Prison. I’m honored you made time in your busy schedule to pay us a visit,” the warden said, showing off his white Chiclet-capped chompers. Guy was a real pol, you could tell that by the firm, slightly moist grip of his fat little hand.

“Exciting time to be here, Warden Garmadge,” Paddy said, taking one of the two red leather chairs facing the warden’s desk. He put the case on the floor beside him, casual like, no big deal. Make the guy wait for it.

“Everything’s going according to schedule, you’ll be glad to know,” Garmadge said, plopping down in his big executive swivel chair.

“A lot can happen in an hour,” Paddy said, lighting up a big Cuban stogie he’d been saving for this meeting. He had another sticking out of his breast pocket with his hankie, but he made a point of not offering it to the warden. What he did, he crossed his legs at the knee, lifting the material of his grey silk trousers so that it draped nice, and smiled, expelling a stream of fragrant smoke at the warden.

“So. We’re all right? We’re a go?” Paddy said.

“Yeah. Don’t worry. The governor has given me every assurance that there will be no last-minute surprises. As you know, the governor and I had a meeting of the minds on that subject one month ago.”

Paddy laughed. “Yeah, an expensive meeting, from our point of view. What’d we finally do for hizzoner the governor? Two-fifty large? Two-seventy-five?”

“I believe that was the number.”

“Which one?”

“The latter.”

“Yeah, the latter, that’s right.” When shitbirds like this guy used phrases like the latter , it made him want to punch their friggin’ lights out. Paddy looked casually around the office, one wall covered with photos of the warden with a lot of people nobody he knew had ever heard of. Local pols, police officials, et cetera. Martians.

“You ever witness an execution, Mr. Strelnikov?” Garmadge asked him.

“You mean other than the ones where I was personally pulling the trigger?”

The warden shifted in his chair, laughed uncomfortably, and said, “Yes, I mean a…court-ordered execution.”

“Just one. Allen Lee Davis back in 1999. You familiar with that one?”

“Old Sparky, down there in Starke, Florida.”

“Yeah. Starke was the only weenie roast I ever saw up close and personal. Soon as they flipped the switch, smoke and flames started to spurt out from Allen Lee’s head, must have been flames a foot long or more. Like blue lightning coming out from under the little metal yarmulke on his head. Burned his eyebrows and eyelashes right off. It was some shit to see, I’ll tell you. They shut the power down, then cranked it two more times before he finally fried. Must have taken him twenty minutes to check out, stick a fork in him, boys, he’s done.”

Garmadge was impressed, you could see it.

“Well, we pretty much got that all figured out now here at Little Miss. What happened down in Starke was, see, the saline-soaked sponge inside that little metal skullcap is meant to increase the flow of electricity to the head. In that case, the sponge was synthetic, which generated the problem. Starke uses only all-natural sponge now, and that solved that issue pretty much.”