Ted Bell - Warlord

"Alex, consider. How do we know what this man, or some IRA splinter group, has, or has not been, responsible for in the ensuing decades? Our family have had more than our share of tragedy since Uncle Dickie's murder in 1979."

"Point well taken."

"Another thing, Alex, the event that triggered this call. Just last evening I received another anonymous threat. But here's the staggering thing. The note was signed with the identical words 'THE PAWN.' Same childish scrawl as the first threat."

"Good Lord. What did the note say?"

"Pawn takes kings."

"Pawn takes kings. Small clue, there. Some intelligence, educated, not a mere thug. A chess player, obviously."

"Yes, but 'kings,' Alex. Plural. Meaning me, of course, but all heirs to the throne. My boys, Wills and Harry, as well."

"Signed 'The Pawn'? Handwriting?"

"I'm no expert. But the signature would appear identical to the first one. I've already turned it over to the MI5 cryptology section for handwriting analysis."

"Charles, I will be back in England as quickly as humanly possible. Hell or high water."

"Thank you, Alex. You are the only one on earth I honestly feel I can count on in something this…deeply surreptitious. Because I know in my heart you'll take it-personally, if that's not too presumptuous a word…considering your feelings for my family, I mean."

"It's exactly the right word, sir. Personally. See you soon then. Try not to worry. We'll find him, and we'll stop him. Please rest assured."

"I've another favor to ask, sorry to say."

"Not at all."

"Your brilliant friend, former Chief Inspector Ambrose Congreve of Scotland Yard. Retired, I hear, to Bermuda. Now back in London for a while. I know the two of you have worked together with extraordinary success in the past. If you could see your way to asking for his help, he could be invaluable in this case."

"Indeed he would be, sir. And he would certainly be honored to help in any way possible."

"Splendid. Come up to Highgrove for a long weekend, why don't you? Like the good old days. I'll ring up Sir David Trulove first thing tomorrow. Tell him you two are coming. MI6 and MI5 are already involved, of course. But, Alex, you and I will be working closely together. I'll make one thing very clear to Sir David: this is my show."

"Charles, stay safe, you and the boys. Everyone. Sorry I can't be there sooner."

"God only knows this may all be part of some elaborate ruse, I suppose. But I can't afford to take the chance. Not after those two British Army soldiers and a Northern Ireland police officer were murdered by a resurgent IRA paramilitary group in the last month alone. Sinn Fein denies any IRA responsibility, of course."

"No matter who it is, we need to get to the bottom of it at once."

"You're coming. That's what matters now."

"Good-bye, Charles."

"Good-bye, Alex. And God bless you."

Hawke thoughtfully replaced the receiver and looked over at Pelham, who was still pretending to be minding his own business, rearranging the bar glassware, polishing a small silver platter, adjusting a very old picture of a Teakettle houseguest, Howard Hughes, seated tipsily atop a stool at this very bar, hanging askew on the wall.

"Pelham?"

"Sir?" he said, looking up.

"What time is it? I mean right now?"

"Just past four in the morning."

"Set an alarm, will you? Six sharp."

"Yes, sir," Pelham said, unable to keep the smile out of his voice. "Will you be wanting breakfast?"

"Breakfast can wait. I'm swimming up to Bloody Bay and back first thing. Six miles. If I survive that without drowning, I'll have some papaya juice and dry toast. Get it?"

"Got it."

"Good."

THIRTY-FIVE HUNDRED MILES AWAY, the heir to the throne of England quietly replaced the receiver, laying his head back against the deep, worn leather of his favorite chair. He had been bone weary with worry these last weeks, but at last he felt something akin to relief. There was very real danger out there somewhere. But at least he would now have Alex Hawke at his side when he confronted it.

The Hawke family had been close to the Windsor family for generations. Charles had known young Hawke since Alex's schoolboy days, taking pity on him after the tragic loss of his beloved parents at age seven. Young Alex had spent many weekends at Sandringham and Windsor and had always joined the Royal Family at Balmoral Castle in Scotland for the summer holidays in August.

Hawke had always seemed to him a rather strange boy, Charles thought, remote, with no obvious need of other companionship beyond his faithful dog, Scoundrel. He lived in a world apart, wholly self-contained, his nose constantly in some book or newspaper or other.

He was reading at four and read insatiably ever afterward. He had an early fascination with medieval history, castles, architecture, and knights of the realm. He had, too, an abiding affection for the pirates of old, fierce, swashbuckling rogues like his own pirate ancestor, Sir John Black Hawke, or Blackhawke as that old rogue was known along the coast, hell-bent on terrorizing the Spanish Main.

One morning, Alex, about age ten, had appeared in the doorway of Charles's library at Balmoral with the Financial Times stock market pages in his hand. He said, "Sir, may I ask you what 'unch' means?" Charles had looked up, waved him in, and said, "Unchanged, I believe. Meaning the price of that specific equity remained the same at opening and closing of the market on the trading day."

"I thought that might be it. Thank you, sir."

He had his mother's startling blue eyes, raven black hair, and long thick lashes. His cheekbones were high and wide and he was the sort of beautiful boy who, quite unconscious of his beauty, was much discussed and courted when he arrived at Fettes, his boarding school in Edinburgh.

Pretty boys at school tended to be self-conscious. But Alex seemed wholly unconcerned with appearances, and it lent him a certain charm and distance that made him all the more alluring.

From the first, Charles had noticed, Alex had resisted convention. He had refused, for example, to acquiesce in the inflexible custom of school games: the very notion of winners and losers was anathema to him. Lose? Him? No. The love of play, which had never left him, continually bubbled up, but his joy at winning was far too individual for any organized sport or game, where the notions of "team" and "losing" came to the fore.

Even back then, there was a hint of an almost sinister side to his innate sense of his own power, his singular athletic prowess and mental toughness, a self-reliant feeling that negated any sense of team. Perhaps it was because, in any competitive team sport, he would feel obliged to play at humbly accepting defeat now and then. And that would have seemed false to him. Defeat? No. That would never do.

Hawke simply could not accept the concept of defeat; he would never give in to it. As he grew into young manhood, it was soon apparent that this was not necessarily a bad thing.

Alex Hawke, as it turned out, was naturally good at war. He'd been a decorated Royal Navy airman, flying Harrier jump jets over Baghdad in the first Gulf War, where he was shot down, imprisoned, and brutally tortured before he escaped and carried another gravely wounded man on his shoulders through the burning desert for days before being rescued.

His service record, however, was not unblemished.

Elated upon his escape and safely returned to his old squadron, he'd soon been reprimanded by his commander for "reprehensible conduct ill-befitting an officer." His first official "black mark."

Hawke, overcome with ennui while waiting to return to combat missions, had taken to staging afternoon martini parties with a few close comrades. Of course, there was absolutely no ice in the desert, so Hawke had conceived the notion of flying pitchers of martinis up to extremely high altitudes. The idea was to chill them before putting the aircraft into a nearly vertical dive to the airstrip and deliver them up to the lads before they'd "lost their chill."