Ted Bell - Tsar

“Go!” Stoke yelled up at Brock, “Hit it! Get us out of here!”

Stoke was in a crouch, moving with Fancha toward the door to the main salon, when the whole world was rocked on its side. The night sky lit with a white flash and then an intense blossoming orange glow that was blinding. Stoke, still cradling Fancha in his arms, dropped to the deck as the shockwave of the massive explosion slammed the big yacht, rolling her over onto her side, nearly broaching her completely. Stoke and Fancha slid down the deck, crashing against the gunwale. He protected her as best he could, but both of them were stunned.

Fado righted herself, rolling violently. At the top of the tower, Harry, clinging desperately to the wildly careening helm station, managed to hold on and speed away from the scene of horrible death and destruction behind them. Fado -intact, it seemed-roared out into the blackness of the empty bay. Stoke lifted his head and looked back at her wildly foaming white wake. In the distance, he could see the point of land protruding into the bay. No lights on, either around the pool or what was left of the house. No one moving, small fires blazing everywhere.

Where the pool had been, nothing but a large black hole. The whole backside of the house was gone, and you could look into the interior rooms of the Russian’s flaming mansion as if it was some kind of oversized, burnt-out dollhouse.

He looked down at Fancha, her head in his lap, staring up at him with those great big beautiful wide-open eyes.

“You okay, sugar? You hurt anywhere?”

“I thought you’d lost your mind, Stoke, grabbing me off that stage.”

“I was just trying not to lose you.”

“Oh, baby. I never saw somebody move so fast. I didn’t know anybody could run like that.”

“You watch me run to you next time you call my name.”

She reached up and brushed his cheek with the back of her hand.

“Stokely Jones Jr., I don’t know how to-”

“Shh. You thank me later. I’ve got to go see if Harry and Sharkey are okay, jump on the horn, tell my clients in D.C. what just happened to Comrade Ramzan.”

“Love you, baby.”

“Love you more.”

Stoke shrugged out of his jacket, folded it, and put it beneath Fancha’s head. Then he started climbing the stainless ladder to the top of the tower, moving fast.

Harry Brock was up there, staring at something in the sky through his binoculars.

“Holy shit. Will you look at that?”

“What?”

“Over there. To the west, just coming up over the Miami Herald building. Some kind of fuckin’ UFO or something.”

Stoke looked at the thing. “Damn.”

“What the hell is that thing, Stoke?”

“Some kind of new airship, I guess. Doesn’t look like any blimp I ever saw. Military, maybe, looking for go-fast drug boats coming up from the Keys.”

It was massive, whatever the hell it was. Stoke stared at the great silver ship floating over the Miami skyline toward him, a giant round opening where the nose should be. Weird-looking. Scary-looking, almost.

Make that definitely scary-looking.

Hawke, arriving at Shadowlands, found Ambrose Congreve standing at the front door, dressed to the nines, but adamantly refusing to get into the automobile Hawke had shown up in.

“Some car, isn’t it?” Hawke said, grinning. “Absolutely ripping.”

“I simply won’t ride into town in that contraption, Alex,” Congreve said. “I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Look at it. It’s a deathtrap, for one thing. No doors, no roof. It’s utterly ridiculous.”

“It has a delightful roof. A daffodil surrey roof of fringed canvas, I’ll grant you, and the fringe is a bit outré, but a roof all the same.”

Congreve disdainfully tapped one of the tiny moon-shaped wheel covers with the tip of his walking stick, making a hollow, tinny sound. He looked at Hawke and did not bother to disguise his sigh of frustration.

“Frankly, Alex, I find it astounding that you can transit this island in such a conveyance and keep a straight face. This…car, if one can call it such, looks as if it formerly belonged to a circus clown.”

“Mind your tongue, Constable. And get in the damn thing. C is waiting, and we’re already late.”

“Yes, and this is quite a serious meeting he’s invited us to. We’re taking on the dreaded Russians again, Alex. If Sir David happens to be standing outside the club when we arrive, he’ll think he’s invited the bloody Ringling Brothers to help him save Western civilization.”

Hawke tried not to laugh out loud.

Because of traffic congestion on the small island, every residence on Bermuda was allotted only one vehicle per household. Hawke was driving the car that had come along with his cottage. This tiny vehicle by the noble Italian design house of Pininfarina, was a 1958 Fiat 600 Jolly, and he’d somehow acquired it when he signed his lease for Teakettle Cottage.

It was an odd duck, to be honest, bright sunshine yellow, with seats made, improbably enough, of wicker.

But Hawke thought it quite sporting, and certainly Pelham enjoyed squiring the Jolly around town on his market runs each week. Besides, Congreve was right, there were few places on earth where a man could drive such an outrageous automobile and maintain a straight face. But Bermuda was one of those places.

Congreve sighed one of his immense sighs and settled his rather large person into the wicker armchair bolted after a fashion to the floor. He was shocked to discover that even the dashboard was wicker. He looked at Hawke with dismay. He felt as if he were riding in a ladies’ sewing basket.

He put his smart straw hat firmly on his head and prepared for the worst.

“Not even an airbag?” Congreve said, running his fingers along the wicker dash.

“Oh, I daresay it’s got one now,” Hawke said, engaging first gear. “On the passenger side at any rate.”

“Go, go, go,” the detective said, searching in vain for a seatbelt. “Let’s get this Mad Hatter’s wild ride over with.”

Hawke laughed, popped the clutch, and started off along the gently winding drive that traversed the shaded narrow length of Lady Mars’s Shadowlands estate. They drove the first few minutes in silence, the famous detective somehow maintaining an immutable scowl despite his deceptively innocent baby blue eyes and rakish mustache.

“Looking rather gay for our luncheon with C,” Hawke said finally, glancing over at his friend’s natty attire. Congreve was wearing lime-green Bermuda shorts with navy-blue knee socks, a Navy blazer, a pink shirt, and a pink and white madras bow tie. Tortoiseshell sunglasses completed the look. On his head was a straw boater.

“ Gay ? Really, Alex, you do push me to the brink.”

“As in festive, Ambrose. It was meant as a simple compliment. Shorts are a bit nancy for my taste, but what do I know?”

“De gustibus non est disputandum.”

“Exactly.”

Hawke turned left out of Shadowlands’ bougainvillea-covered stone portals and onto the South Road. They were heading east past the Spittal Pond Nature Reserve on their left. It was another perfect day in paradise, Hawke thought, brightly colored birds darting about flowering woods and tropical gardens on either side of the road. When he came to Trimingham Road, he whipped the little yellow buggy around to the right, coming to the first of two roundabouts that would lead him to the town of Hamilton proper.

Two cruise ships were moored along Front Street, and the charming old town was crowded with automobile traffic, motor scooters, and pedestrians. He looked at his watch. They were already ten minutes late, and C did not like to be kept waiting. He’d sounded very serious when he’d called, wanting Hawke and Ambrose to join him at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club at noon sharp. He wanted to discuss the status of Red Banner and hear their thoughts on getting the thing up and running.