Ted Bell - Tsar

“Do you like it?” he heard Anastasia whisper softly, leaning into him.

He tore his eyes away from the stage, from Nasimova flying above Swan Lake, to look at his lover’s beautiful face. She was especially radiant tonight, a glittering diamond tiara in her golden hair and tiny waterfalls of diamonds suspended from each earlobe. She wore a dark blue silk gown with a plunging neckline, the silk contrasting with her full pale bosom, her whole being luminous in the soft blue artificial moonlight streaming from the stage.

“I can never thank you enough for this, Asia,” he said, kissing her lips. “I didn’t know there could be anything so beautiful.”

“My love,” she said, her eyes shining with a depth of feeling he had never seen.

“What is it?” he asked, falling into her eyes. All day, he’d felt she had something to tell him and that she’d been waiting for this moment.

“There is…something else I must tell you. But I am-afraid. I know I love you. I must have loved you from the moment I saw you. And I think you have feelings for me, too. But now, something has happened. Something that may make you run from me. The timing, you know, it’s just too soon for you, and now I am so afraid you will go away, and all this joy will end for me.”

“How beautiful you are…what is it, darling? Don’t be afraid. Tell me.”

“Something more beautiful than one woman could ever be.”

“Tell me.”

“We are making a baby, darling Alex. I am pregnant with your child.”

Hawke looked at her, saw the tears well up and begin to roll down her cheeks and all the questions and hope in her eyes. He wiped her tears away and kissed her mouth, mixed emotions racing through his mind so rapidly that he had no time to think, and so he just said what was in his heart.

“How wonderful, darling. How absolutely marvelous.”

“You are happy? You won’t run?”

“Deliriously happy,” he said, kissing her eyes, her cheeks, her lips.

“We made our baby during that storm over Bermuda, darling. I know it. That magnificent storm. He will be magnificent, too. Thunder in his heart and lightning in his veins. Just as you are.”

“Are you sure it’s a boy?”

“As sure as I can ever be. I know in my heart.”

TWO HOURS LATER, they emerged from the theater, both of them still glowing with the ballet’s lingering beauty and the bright promise of her news. Hawke had his arm around Anastasia, holding her close to him, protecting her and his child as they made their way through the bustling crowd streaming down the staircase toward the exit.

It had begun snowing, heavily. A warm front from the Mediterranean had brought high winds, colliding with a cold front from Siberia. A serious storm, exhilarating.

Storms and babies, he thought, smiling down at her, and he felt as happy as perhaps he had ever been. That a life marred by so much tragedy as his could have moments like this one made it all seem worthwhile. The whole night lay before them, and their lives would be forever entwined and filled with limitless wonder and possibility. He realized at that very moment that he truly loved this woman. And that his badly broken heart had at long last healed enough to take her inside.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” he said, looking out at the frosted city.

Moscow looked its best under a blanket of white. The city was made for snowy nights like this one, and he was eager to make his way to the Pushkin Café, just five or six blocks from the Bolshoi, where he had booked a cozy table in the Library on the second floor. There they would drink champagne and plan their future together.

He was halfway down the steps when he felt the sharp pain in his ribs. He looked down and saw that a short, squat man in a black overcoat had thrust his hand inside Hawke’s own coat. It was the muzzle of a gun, he could feel it now, pushing between two ribs.

“You’re under arrest,” the man said, not even looking up, just jamming the gun harder into his ribcage.

Hawke made two moves at once. With his right hand, he gently pushed Anastasia out of harm’s way. His left hand he brought down hard, palm flat, on the back of the man’s thick neck, driving his head down, only to meet Hawke’s right knee coming up under his chin, breaking his jaw. The move sent the little fellow flying.

“Alex!” Asia cried. “What is-”

Hawke never had time to reply.

Instantly, he was surrounded by five more men similarly dressed in black overcoats, but these were big men, burly types. They were all armed, and they pressed in close, letting him see the pistols they carried.

“Come with us,” one of them hissed in his ear.

“Where?”

“You’ll know soon enough.”

They had his arms now and were moving him quickly out into the snowy street. He didn’t have to wonder where the KGB thugs were taking him. He knew.

Lubyanka Prison.

Hawke twisted his head around, looking for Anastasia. She was standing where he’d left her on the steps, looking down at him, both hands to her face, terror in her eyes.

“Find the American!” Hawke cried out to her. “The one I told you about at the Metropol!”

He felt a blow to the back of his head and then nothing more. His last thought before he went out was that on the airship, he’d managed to give Anastasia the assumed name Harry Brock had registered under at his hotel.

Harry would find him. Help him.

Maybe.

Fancha was singing when the lights went out. She was singing “A Minha Vida,” her biggest hit from the Green Island Girl album, which had just gone platinum. The dinner crowd was really with her, she could feel it, and so she went ahead with the beautiful song, singing in the dark, thinking this lighting thing was just some kind of a dramatic flourish by the very flamboyant Russian stage director named Igor. She’d seen him backstage before the show started, sipping vodka from a flask with one of the musicians.

Or maybe it was just a temporary power outage aboard the giant airship?

They were sailing far out over the Atlantic now, just north of Bermuda, she thought. Past the point of no return, like in her favorite John Wayne movie, The High and the Mighty. She’d been afraid of flying ever since she’d seen it, but she still loved it, still found herself whistling the haunting theme song now and then.

When she ended the song, there was a lot of applause and even shouts of “Brava! Brava!” from some of the French and Italian people onboard. Had to be the smartest audience she’d ever performed for, most of them Nobel Prize winners, after all. And Vice President McCloskey’s wife, Bonnie, was sitting right up front by the little stage, clapping louder than anybody.

She took a deep bow, even though nobody could see her.

The sudden darkness was startling and complete. It was a moonless night, and even though there were big windows in the ship’s ballroom, she couldn’t see much other than the silhouettes of the three hundred or so people in the audience. They were mostly all seated at tables of four or more, but a large number of couples were still circling the dance floor, the small band onstage behind her going into an unfamiliar riff.

Dancing in the dark?

People just kept clapping, probably thinking, lights go on, lights go off. Happens all the time on shipboard, right? A lot of liquor had been consumed at the cocktail reception and a lot of wine at dinner. She didn’t drink herself, but later, she’d remember that she still wasn’t scared at that point, thinking it was all sort of fun.

“If someone will light a candle, I’ll sing another song,” she said to a ripple of nervous laughter.