Ted Bell - Tsar

“Hands off de bike, mon!”

“Who’s paying you to follow me?”

“I just out for a ride, mon. It’s a beautiful mawnin’, like you say. Why you get so all excited? Having a little fun, dat’s all, huh? And take de hand off my bike before you lose it.”

“Lose it?”

Desmond lifted the jersey so Hawke could see the cane knife stuck in a scabbard on his wide leather belt. A sawed-off machete, razor-sharp on both sides.

“Desmond, listen carefully. I want you to turn this bike around and go back to wherever you came from. Tell whomever you’re working for that following me is a very bad idea. I’m a very private person. I’m here for a quiet holiday. Someone spoils my vacation, they will wish they hadn’t. All right? We understand each other?”

Desmond spat in the dirt and looked up at Hawke with his reddened eyes blazing. He was seriously baked on marijuana, Hawke realized. But the thug didn’t say anything, just showed his gold teeth once more and reached for the knife.

The Jamaican was vaguely aware of blurred movement. Hawke had seized Desmond’s wrist in a compromising position before his fingers ever reached the knife handle.

“I will break it, Desmond, I promise,” Hawke said. “Right now, I’m applying pressure directly to the scaphoid, the small carpal bone at the base of the thumb. It’s the one easiest to break, also with the most painful result.”

“Shit, mon, you ain’t going to break it.”

“No? Who paid you to follow me?”

“Fuck you, mon.”

“Your place or mine?”

The kid spat, barely missing Hawke’s left foot.

“Last chance?”

Desmond glared, wincing at the pain, saying nothing.

“No more joy rides for a while, Desmond,” Hawke said, smiling at the man as he deftly snapped his wrist, eliciting a howl of pain.

Hawke’s hand blurred again, moving for the ignition switch atop the fuel tank. In an instant, Hawke had plucked the key from the ignition and flung it out into the scrub brush on the hill beside the road.

“What you-aw, fuck, mon, now I going to have to-”

“Desmond, you’re no good at this. Surveillance is a highly sophisticated art form. Go back to dealing ganja. Street dealers have a much longer life expectancy than people stupid enough to get involved with me.”

Hawke turned his back on him and crossed the dusty road. He climbed back into his car, and Stubbs turned it around and headed back to the South Road. Desmond remained on his bike, too proud to let Hawke see him searching for his keys.

“You see all those gold teeth, Cap?” Stubbs said, looking at Hawke in the rearview mirror, waiting to rejoin the flow of traffic on the South Road.

“Hard to miss.”

“Disciples of Judah. That’s their trademark, replace all their teeth with gold. A Rasta sect, immigrated from the Blue Mountains of Jamaica many years ago to work in the banana plantations. They went bad. Drugs, sir. Cocaine, marijuana, heroin, you name it, the Disciples deal it. The big boss is a man named Samuel Coale. Call him King Coale. He was extradited to the U.S. a few years ago under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Act. We heard he was back on island. That boy you just talking to?”

“Yes?”

“He say his name?”

“Desmond.”

“I thought that was him. He’s the favorite son. The son of King Coale. Calls himself the Prince of Darkness. You see his graffiti tags all over the place you visit Skanktown on St. David’s Island.”

“He’s a fighter, is he? Boxer?”

“How’d you know that?”

“Sometimes you can tell.”

“Yes. Fought under the name of Prince back in Jamaica. Fought his way to the top, won the Golden Gloves in the Caribbean, and then went to the Olympics on the Jamaican boxing team. He won the gold medal at Athens in 2004.”

“All downhill from there, it looks like.”

“Couldn’t handle the success, sir. The fame went to his young head, swole it up.”

“Where can I find his father, this King Coale?”

“Hard to say, Cap. These boys move around a lot. There’s a rumor they have an offshore compound out on Nonsuch Island down by St. David’s. Illegal because it’s a wildlife sanctuary. But that’s what I hear. Squatters’ rights.”

“How long to the Naval Dockyard?”

“We’ll be there in twenty minutes, sir.”

“Could you make that ten?”

“I’d be delighted to try, sir,” Wooten said, as he pulled a red flasher out of the glove box and stuck it on the dashboard.

Hawke sat back in his seat and gazed out the window, lost in thoughts that led straight to Anastasia Korsakova’s door. She had called him at some ungodly hour that morning. He’d stumbled half-asleep to the bar and reached blindly for the phone. He had a vague memory of agreeing to come to her house that afternoon at five. He felt peace slipping away from his grasp. What with C’s proposal and the appearance of the lovely Miss Korsakova, the halcyon days of idle bliss seemed to be waning.

“HALLOWED GROUND ON your right, Cap,” Stubbs Wooten said, interrupting Hawke’s reverie ten minutes later.

They were approaching the Dockyard compound. The mostly empty early-nineteenth-century buildings and facilities had not seen use since the Cold War. They were still lovely, though. Especially the twin spires of the Dockyard Clocks in the distance.

During that era, the Cold War, the Royal Navy had conducted clandestine air and submarine surveillance operations to keep the Soviets from regarding the Atlantic as their ocean. At that time, Bermuda was a principal naval base in defending the United States from Soviet attack. The Royal Navy still maintained a minimal presence here. Although it was minor now, with C’s new operation, the old Dockyard might soon become more fully operational.

Hawke looked to his right and saw the hallowed ground. A lovely old cemetery nestled in a gently sloping valley between the growths of tall Australian pine trees on either hilltop.

“Royal Navy?” Hawke asked.

“Yes, sir. First consecrated in 1812 when the Dockyard was still being built. See that big stone spire, grass grown up all around? Many men from the British Army and Royal Navy buried there, mostly died of the yellow fever. But some of the newer headstones there are the final resting place for the seamen who died on their ships off Bermuda in actions against German pocket battleships and U-boats.”

“I had no idea,” Hawke said as they passed through the narrow entrance gates. They rode in silence as they passed the abandoned docks to their right and the Dockyard Clock spires on their left.

“See that building on the high hilltop over there? That’s where your meeting is, sir. The Commissioner’s Building. Will you be needing me to wait?”

“I’d very much appreciate that, Stubbs. I’ve an appointment later this afternoon out at St. George’s. If you could take me out there?”

“Pleasure’s all mine, sir.”

“Place called Powder Hill. Do you know it?”

Stubbs turned around in his seat. “That’s a private island, sir. You have to go by boat. Very tight security. Don’t let anyone near that place.”

“They’re expecting me.”

“Ah, well, you’re fine, then.”

Hawke smiled as the car came to a stop, popped the door open, and climbed out of the back. The structure itself was a lovely old three-story British Colonial building, somewhat the worse for wear, built on a hill overlooking the sea. It was just inside the fortress walls and surrounded on all sides by bastions with cannons still in place. A wide verandah graced the two topmost floors, with shuttered doors on all sides.

He could see Sir David waiting in the shade at the covered entrance. As Hawke got closer, he saw that C was wearing old white duck trousers with a Spanish flare, a striped Riviera sweater, straw shoes, and an ancient Mexican hat.