Ted Bell - Tsar

He decided to linger a moment, see if he could pick up anything interesting. A moment later, he heard the inebriated Russian president shout something in English. “The Americans will annihilate us for this insanity!”

For what insanity? Hawke wondered, but the shouting match had quickly reverted to Russian. What the hell had the Russians done now?

He looked down at his hand and saw a tumbler of good black rum. That’s a bloody waste , he said half aloud, quaffing it at one draught. The count and the president seemed to have moved deeper into the study, their voices no longer audible through the door. He looked left, then right. He realized he hadn’t the faintest notion how to get through this architectural wonderland to his bloody room.

To the right, he thought, lay the Great Hall, where he’d met the twins. He’d start there, if he could find it, and do a little exploring on his way to bed and Anastasia. Snooping, really, but then, he was a natural-born spy and couldn’t help himself. He had noticed a very large hangar out beyond the stables, a corrugated-aluminum structure that looked large enough to accommodate the real Hindenburg.

If this bloody snowstorm would just ease up a bit, and if he could find himself a warm fur coat and a pair of size-twelve Wellies in a mudroom somewhere, he thought he just might go out and poke around a bit.

He looked at his watch. No, he had more important things to do than snoop about the count’s hangar. With the time difference, he could still make a few calls via his sat phone. Yes, it was still early enough in London to catch C before he went to bed. He thought C would find the confrontation between Korsakov and an angry Rostov most interesting. He’d call Ambrose in Bermuda as well, bring him up to speed on recent developments.

Red Banner had a lot to talk about.

Harry Brock was waiting for him in Moscow, staying at the Hotel Metropol under an assumed name. Simon Weatherstone, as Harry’s passport now described him, was holding secret meetings around Moscow with the small cadre of newly recruited agents of Red Banner. Hawke decided he’d call Harry’s room at the Metropol first thing in the morning, rather than wake him in the middle of the night. Harry and his new Red Banner resources might come in handy in ferreting out the source of Rostov’s anger.

Insanity? American anger? What could that mean?

Count Ivan Korsakov stared in angry disbelief at the raving lunatic standing before his fireplace, pounding his fist on the wooden mantel, sending a few precious silver-framed family photographs crashing to the floor. He’d known Vladimir Rostov for many, many years and had never seen him so enraged. Such fury made his drunkenness almost incidental, comical, were it not so late in the evening and so much to be done by morning.

He glared at the Russian president, now stomping on broken glass.

“The Americans will annihilate us for this insanity!”

“Calm down, Volodya. Enough,” the count said, reverting to Russian. He listened in hostile silence to this calumny, his anger building.

“Enough? Have you lost your fucking mind?” Rostov bellowed, looking wildly around the room, as if answers to his shouted questions might be hiding in dark corners or floating up near the ceiling. His eyes were rolling around in his head like marbles.

“Now, you listen to me,” Korsakov said, as calmly as he could. “You are a guest in this house. I won’t be addressed in this manner. Sit down in that chair, and shut up until you can compose yourself.”

“Do you realize what you’ve done? Do you? Answer me! This leads to annihilation, I tell you! Annihilation!”

Korsakov, furious, came out of his chair, grabbed the irate man by his shoulders, shook him violently, and then wrestled him down onto a large leather sofa. He held him there, his hands around his throat, squeezing, until Rostov’s arms and legs stopped flailing.

The president lay back against the cushions, red-faced and breathing heavily, but he was no longer shouting at the top of his lungs.

“Are you quite finished with this outrageous behavior?” Korsakov snarled, removing his hands from the president’s reddened throat. He’d had countless men shot, poisoned, beheaded, and even impaled. But he had never killed a man with his bare hands before, and he could see the attraction.

“I asked you, are you finished?”

“Yes, yes. Just leave me alone for a moment.”

The count crossed the room and picked up the receiver of a telephone sitting on his desk. He whispered a few words into the mouthpiece and hung up. He looked angrily at the broken picture frames and shattered glass on the stone hearth floor, then collapsed into the same fireside chair where he’d been sitting earlier. After a few moments’ contemplation, he leaned forward with his hands on his knees and stared at the drunken president until he had his full attention.

“Now, in a slow, calm voice, I want you to tell me what in God’s name you are so incensed about. If you raise your voice, even slightly, I shall have the servants throw you out in the snow. Do we understand each other?”

“Damn it to hell,” Rostov said, sitting up and shakily pouring himself a drink from the decanter on the table. “Why wasn’t I informed of this decision? I’m still running this country, unless I missed a meeting.”

“I make a lot of decisions in a day. Which one are we speaking of?”

“What decision? Your decision to blow up an entire American town! Wipe it off the face of the fucking map! You know they will trace this back to us. Twenty-four hours. Maybe less. And then what? War? War with America? You know as well as I the number of American nuclear submarines even now prowling the Black Sea.”

“There will be no war with America, Volodya, I assure you.”

“No? You know the Americans have back-channeled the Syrians, the Iranians, and others. Told them that if any act of terror on American soil can be traced back to Damascus or Tehran, the capitals of those countries will cease to exist within twenty-four hours. You know that as well as I!”

“Syria and Iran are not Russia.”

“Thanks be to God. Jesus. We all want to go against the Americans. Every one of us. And we will. But, not now , Ivan. We’re not ready, damn it, we’re not even close!”

“I think we are ready. Destiny is an impatient mistress.”

“You don’t think repositioning our troops to the Baltic and East European borders is provocation enough? You don’t think we have already pushed the White House to the limit? Already they are making noises at the Security Council. You think the UN, pitiful and pathetic as it may be, will just look the other way? Or NATO? Really, it all defies belief. The Duma will have your head for this one, Ivan. That I can promise.”

“Or it may be that I will have the Duma’s heads, Volodya.”

Rostov stared at him in disbelief. This form of treachery far exceeded anything he’d thought possible. Even that lunatic Stalin had shown restraint when it came to-

They were interrupted by a knock at the door. A uniformed man strode through, shut the door, and locked it.

“Volodya, calm down. Look, here is your old friend General Kuragin, come to join our little party. Nikolai, bring my special carafe of vodka from the drinks table, and join us, won’t you?”

General Nikolai Kuragin, a longtime aide to Rostov, had for years been secretly the head of Korsakov’s own private army. He did as he was told and moved to the drinks table. A skeletal man who looked more Teutonic than Russian in his sharply tailored black uniform, he was utterly ruthless. There was a large black leather case in his right hand, attached to his wrist by a stainless-steel chain and bracelet.