Ted Bell - Tsar

“ Who does this X-Men flying machine belong to, Stokely?” Fancha asked him nervously as they rode the moving stairs up toward the hovering airship. There was a gleaming stainless-steel escalator extending out of the stern to the roof of the Miami Herald building. Apparently, they were the last guests to arrive, since everybody else seemed to be already aboard.

“That’s what I’m planning to find out on this trip,” Stoke said. “TSAR is a major Russian technology and energy conglomerate that owns the world’s third-largest oil company and this Miramar movie studio out in Hollywood, but who owns TSAR? Nobody seems to know.”

Girl looked a little peaked. She hated flying in general, and she sure as hell wasn’t thrilled about leaving the ground in something out of a damn comic book. But she was determined to go. A week had passed since their meeting at Elmo’s with Putov and Nikita, the two movie producers. Fancha’s phone had been ringing off the hook with calls from the studio about a possible movie deal, an action picture called Storm Front.

She’d agreed to a meeting with Miramar, and Nikita, a.k.a. Nick, had insisted they have it aboard the Russian spaceship. Some kind of flying press junket down to the Keys. They were going to love it, Nick said.

“C’mon, baby,” Stoke said as they stepped inside the ship. “Let’s go find Mr. Hollywood. See what he has to say for his bad self.”

“I guess,” she said, looking back as the stairs were retracted inside the fuselage.

“You do want this, don’t you, honey? Be a star, all that.”

“Baby, I want it so bad it hurts my heart.”

“Well, let’s go make it happen, girl. I wouldn’t take you up in this thing if I didn’t think it could fly.”

The main solarium of the ship was officially called the Icarus Lounge. It was big and luxurious and could easily accommodate the hundred or so guests who’d been invited on the short cruise down to the Keys. The arched ceiling at the nose was mostly glass and steel, and the room was filled with sunny morning light. Normally, it would be a great place to read or relax, have a cocktail in one of the red-velvet upholstered armchairs or chaises. Today, it had been set up for a press conference they’d obviously missed.

Fancha left Stokely’s side, wandered over to the nearest window, and looked down at blue Biscayne Bay. Up ahead, in the hazy distance, she could make out the outline of Key Largo.

Stoke noticed that there was an empty podium on the small stage. Next to it was a large model of another airship. It made the one they were flying in look like the entry-level model. It was sitting on a twelve-foot-long wooden table inside a glass case. It was all silver with gold trim. The word Pushkin stretched along its side.

Judging by the scale of the tiny model cars and little people on the ground holding the mooring lines, Stoke calculated the model airship to be at least five times bigger than Tsar. That would make Pushkin almost two thousand feet long. Behind the model, a flat-screen monitor was showing artists’ renderings of the airship’s luxurious interior. Staterooms, spas, movie theaters, the works.

“Sheldon, my man!” he heard somebody say, moving through the crowd with his hand in the air. Some little guy, Stoke couldn’t see his face for a second, but he knew who it had to be. His second-in-command, Luis Gonzales-Gonzales.

“Shark bait!” Stoke said. “You made it.”

“You think I’d miss this trip, Shel?” Sharkey said, holding out his fist for a pound. “This thing is freaking awesome, man.”

“You ready for this meeting, Shark? Fancha’s right over there if you want to wish her luck.”

“Luck is for losers, man. These guys won’t know who ate them for breakfast. Sharkman O. Selznick at your service,” the little Cuban said, tipping his hat.

Stoke laughed, assessing Shark’s get-up.

“You look good, little brother. I like this style on you, son. It says, ‘Gone Hollywood but got off the bus in Vegas to do some shopping first.’”

Luis was rocking what Stoke called his Frank Sinatra look, his straw hat cocked over one eye the way Frank used to do, with a pink blazer, white trousers, and his trademark white suede loafers. Kind of the ring-a-ding-ding outfit you might see on a Sinatra album cover from the fifties, with a TWA Super Constellation parked on the tarmac in the background.

Fancha saw Luis and came over to give him a peck on the cheek.

He said, “Do you guys believe this freaking batship? I’ve been all over this thing, man. Stem to stern, up and down. It’s just unbelievable.”

Stoke said, “You see our new pals from La-La Land?”

“Yeah. Nick is here, anyway. No sign of Putov. Nick was looking for you during the presentation. Dying to get with Fancha. He’s got a little meeting room all set up for us in a private lounge all the way in the back on the promenade deck. He said we should meet him there about fifteen minutes after we shove off. They’ve got lunch coming in.”

“Good, good,” Stoke said, looking at the model in the glass case. “Hey, Shark, what’s up with this model airship? Pushkin? Man, that big zeppelin is sick. Is it for real? I mean, they built it?”

“Damn right, it’s real. It’s being launched this week! Five times the size of this one. At least. Yeah, you missed the whole presentation, man. They had that guy from American Idol , Ryan Seacrest, up on the stage as emcee. It’s their new passenger liner. Biggest airship ever built, more than nineteen hundred feet long. Going to be the new standard in transoceanic travel, the Seacrest guy said. New York to London, Paris, whatever. Carries seven hundred passengers. Five restaurants. Staterooms, suites, the whole deal. Very deluxe, seriously.”

Suddenly, Fancha lurched and grabbed for Stoke’s arm, a look of terror on her face. “Baby, is that an earthquake?” Stoke felt light in his shoes, as if his heels were going to come right up out of his loafers. But it wasn’t any earthquake. He pulled her to him and gave her a hug.

“No, baby, we wouldn’t feel any earthquakes up here. Look out the window. We’re just lifting off, separating from the tower. Take it easy. Let’s go over to the window, and maybe we can see your house down there, huh? Relax, baby, stay cool.”

STOKE SIPPED HIS Diet Coke, listening to Nick schmooze Fancha. When they’d arrived at the meeting, Nick had said hello to Luis, nodded in Stoke’s general direction, and then proceeded to ignore the two men for fifteen minutes or so. But he was all over Fancha, practically spoon-feeding her caviar and refilling her glass with champagne. That was lunch. Caviar and Cristal, a lot of both.

Nobody had any bubbly except Fancha. Luis, who was at the far end of the table taking notes on the meeting, was drinking Perrier. Stoke had told Sharkey that for this meeting, he should let Stoke do all the talking.

But it seemed as if Nick was doing all the talking.

He said he’d seen the local dramatic production Fancha had done for Univision. She had everything, all the tools in the actor’s box. She could play sophisticated comedy, low comedy, straight drama, she could sing every possible kind of song, and she looked enchanting, the kind of face and body the camera would love. And Storm Front was sure to be a hit, with him, Nick, producing and Ed Zwick directing. It was going to be a period picture, set in the 1930s, about a handsome rumrunner who falls for this babe singing in some joint in Key West during the worst hurricane on record. Romantic but with a lot of action. All of this in his Hollywood schmooze voice with the Russian accent on top.