“Who the living hell was that?” Harry Brock asked Hawke. Harry was leaning back in the ultramodern leather and steel Eames chair. His feet, shod in wildly inappropriate flip-flops, were propped up on the black leather ottoman covered with newspapers, sailing and motorcycle magazines, a few shipping trade papers, and copies of Tatler and The Spectator.
“That?” Hawke said, affecting an air of boredom. “That, Harry, was Pippa Guinness. Why do you ask?”
“Why do I ask? Are you kidding me? That is the single most gorgeous piece of ass on the big blue planet, and you are asking me why?”
“She has her good points.”
“Two at the very least. That is one tasty little creampuff, boss.”
“A creampuff made on a welding machine,” Hawke replied, skimming through his folder for the upcoming meeting.
“What’s she do around here, anyway? And don’t tell me that’s your secretary. I will have you killed, m’lord.”
“She runs the joint, actually.”
“I thought you ran the joint.”
“I do. Off the books. But Pippa is the acting chief of station. I plan to travel a lot, as you know. She’ll mind the store while we’re in Russia. Ambrose, when he recovers enough to leave his wheelchair, will pitch in as well.”
Harry clasped his interlocking fingers behind his head and started singing, “Back in the U.S.S.R., boys, you don’t know how lucky you are, boys,” he said, almost getting the Beatles tune right.
“Yeah. It’s been a while for me. I’m guessing Moscow has changed a bit.”
Harry laughed out loud.
“You will not believe your eyes, comrade. The Communist Party World Headquarters is now a dilapidated two-story dump on a side street. They serve warm champagne in the lobby, trying to get people to come inside. Read all the fascinating Stalin, Lenin, and Trotsky FAQ brochures.”
“I wonder what the most frequently asked question about Trotsky might be.”
“As if anyone had any questions at all anymore.” Harry laughed. “Right across the street is the new Ferrari-Maserati dealership. Much better brochures over there, believe me.”
Hawke smiled and got to his feet, glancing at his watch.
“How’s Stoke doing down in Miami, Harry? Happy?”
“Over the moon. His fiancée just got this big movie deal, but I’m not so sure about the two guys she’s signing with. The fucking Russian oligarchs bought the whole Miramar motion-picture studio with cash and are signing every beauteous babe in Miami, Vegas, and La-La.”
“Have they actually made a movie yet?”
“Hell no. But she’s signed on to do some singing gig on an airship. Flying with a bunch of celebs across the Atlantic. Something to do with the Nobel Prize, I think.”
“Airship?”
“Yeah. Called Pushkin. Carries seven hundred passengers. Most amazing damn thing you ever saw.”
Hawke looked at Brock but didn’t say anything. Airship?
“Let’s go, Harry. Doesn’t pay to keep the king waiting.” Hawke slipped into the grey and white seersucker blazer that he’d hung on the back of the door.
“The king? Is there a problem between you and your boss I should know about?”
“Yeah. Pippa. She’s driving me crazy. Always looking over my shoulder. But I can’t do a damn thing about it right now. C wants her here to keep an eye on things. Which means keep an eye on me, basically.”
“Want me to take her off your hands?”
“How would you do that, Harry?”
“Offer her a glamorous new life as the new Mrs. Harry Brock. Take her away from all this.”
“I thought you were already married.”
“My divorce finally came through. Only took seven years. It’s high time I married somebody else I hate and gave her a house.”
“But you were obviously in love with the Brazilian special forces woman we met in the Amazon. Saladin’s sister, Caparina. Now, there was a woman, Harry.”
“I am in love with her. Love is exponential, Alex. You should know that at your age.”
“Let’s go, Harry.”
THE TANK WAS the secure conference room on the second floor. It was in the very middle of the building, accessible only from the third floor by a single private elevator. The lift had a keypad and required a retinal scan to operate. Outside the secure room were cubby holes for all cell phones and BlackBerrys. There was a metal detector at the door and two Royal Marines standing guard on either side. This single room was probably the most secure place on the Atlantic Ocean, Hawke imagined.
C looked up as Harry and Hawke entered. He smiled, got to his feet, and shook hands, first with Alex, then with Brock. Hawke noticed three other men at the table, plus, of course, Pippa Guinness. He’d also noticed Sir David’s black eye, courtesy of the Jamaicans on Nonsuch Island. It seemed better today but was still visible. Ambrose had been in bed ever since that night, but he was recovering nicely.
“Welcome, gentlemen. Would you like any coffee? Tea?” Sir David said.
Brock and Hawke both declined and took the last two seats available at the round table in the center of the small, completely sound-insulated room.
“I’d like to introduce our friend Professor Stefanovich Halter, just arrived from Moscow,” C said, smiling at a tall, portly man who immediately stood up and shook hands with Hawke and Brock. His face was handsome in a classical way, strong-boned, with sharp, dark eyes. “He’s here to brief you on the current political situation in Moscow and offer further assistance to Red Banner as we redouble our intelligence efforts there.”
“Please, call me Stefan,” the Russian said, in a pitch-perfect rendition of the upper-crust Oxbridge English accent. Hawke found it impossible not to notice his tattered tweed blazer and the old school tie, unusual here on Bermuda.
Professor Halter was known to Hawke only by reputation, but the man was legendary inside the British service. Twice posted to England by the KGB on long, deep-cover assignments in London and, later, teaching at Cambridge University, the elegant Russian spy had been recruited by MI-6 whilst at Cambridge. He was now a double agent on C’s payroll and had been working both sides of the aisle ever since, currently serving as a mole deep inside the KGB. When not operating inside Russia, he was a teaching fellow at Cambridge, with several doctoral candidates in Western studies under his tutelage.
Despite a number of incredibly close scrapes, this large, perfectly urbane and charming fellow had managed not only to survive but to play the most dangerous game at a level even few in it could understand.
He was currently working for President Vladimir Rostov’s new KGB in a far less esteemed job, having been caught in a compromising position with the wife of a high-ranking KGB officer. He’d been temporarily removed from the operational work he so loved and remanded to the analytical division, where he spent long hours developing and refining reports no one ever read.
Still, he was a treasured MI-6 asset inside the Kremlin and had been generous in helping Red Banner as it began to re-build a network in that savage city. Many of the former Russian agents who’d secretly played for England’s side were now dead, either of natural or other causes.
“Can’t help but admire your tie, Professor Halter,” Hawke said with a smile. It had a dark blue background and diagonal light blue stripes with the Eton College heraldic shields between the stripes.
“Old Etonian, are you?” Halter replied.
“Not me, my father. But I’m delighted to meet you. My father, in his unfinished memoir, speaks very highly of you.”
“Thank you, Alex,” the Russian said. “As it happens, I was deeply involved in one of your father’s rather ticklish adventures. That single-handed raid of his on the Arctic Soviet SOFAR installation during the Cuban missile crisis. It is still the stuff of legend, you know. How he survived that dreadful business, no one knows to this day.”