Hawke

“After you,” the general said, and Alex and Stoke started climbing.

At the top, they stood aside as the general pushed a number of buttons on a keypad mounted by the door. A green light flashed and the door swung open.

Hawke and Stoke were both struck dumb by what they saw.

The room they entered was circular. The walls and great domed ceiling were made entirely of glass. They revealed what was perhaps the most spectacular underwater view Hawke had ever seen. Huge underwater lights, all hidden, illuminated the scene beyond the glass. Tropical fish of every size and color swam by. Exotic vegetation swayed from the sandy floor.

Above their heads, a great white shark, some twenty feet in length, swam idly by, above the glass dome, followed by a school of barracuda.

“Man living at the bottom of an aquarium,” Stoke whispered. “Look up there.”

Higher above them, at least thirty feet above the glass ceiling, huge stalactites hung down and schools of brilliant fish darted through them. Stalagmites, too, rose from the bottom of the grotto, forming intricate cities of pink and white coral.

The glass room seemed to have been constructed on the sandy floor of some deep natural grotto, most likely fed by the river flowing out to the sea. At this river’s mouth, Hawke thought, the submarine pen where the Borzoi lay.

The tensile strength of the glass had to be enormous, because Alex could discern no seams, no visible means of support. And yet a massive bronze chandelier hung from a fixture at its very center. It provided the only light in the room other than the external underwater illumination. The fixture consisted of finely wrought rings of hammered brass and bronze, getting smaller toward the top.

The largest ring, the lowest, held at least fifty blazing candles, while the top ring held ten or so. It had to be suspended on some kind of hydraulic or electrically powered wire, Hawke thought, capable of being raised and lowered, otherwise, how could you manage to keep all these bloody candles lit? The effect was certainly dramatic, he had to admit.

“Some weird-smelling shit in here, boss,” Stoke said under his breath.

The air was filled with a stupefying sweetish stink, the smell of burning poppy seeds, Hawke realized. He’d walked into an underwater opium den.

“Well, well, well. Alex Hawke himself,” came a sugary voice from the center of the room. Directly beneath the chandelier was a massive oval desk. The owner of that velvet voice was unseen, seated at the desk but hidden by the back of a tall leather chair facing away from the new arrivals. “We finally meet,” the voice said, floating upwards on a cloud of pale opium smoke.

“A dream come true,” Hawke said.

“Let me get a look at this famous Hawke,” the voice said, and a tall, slender man rose serenely from the chair. He was naked from the waist up, his well-muscled back toward them. A long black ponytail reached halfway to his waist.

Hawke sucked down a quick gulp of air as he regarded the man.

There was a spider tattooed on the man’s shoulder. Black with a red spot on its belly.

Spiders were bad. Alex had been terrified of them ever since he’d awoken one night to find one crawling across his face. On his cheek. By his mouth. Had he not awoken, it would have crawled inside —

Hawke managed to let the shock of seeing and hearing this man wash over him without a trace of it registering on his face. By the time the man had pulled a dressing gown from the chair and turned to face him, Hawke had regained the same faintly amused smile he’d been wearing since entering the finca.

As Manso walked around the massive carved oval desk, Hawke eyed him evenly. The candlelight flickered darkly in those dead black eyes set in a face of decidedly feminine beauty. The long hair, still jet black, tied at the back. Too beautiful for a man. Too much raw brutality for a woman.

He was slipping his muscle-corded arms inside a long flowing robe of red Chinese silk trimmed at the neck and cuffs with black pearls.

“The night I first saw you,” Hawke said, “I thought you were a woman.”

“Really?” Manso said. “How very interesting. When was this?”

“It was a very long time ago,” Alex said. “I was just a boy.”

“We were both boys long ago, weren’t we, Seсor Hawke?” Manso smiled at the thought. “Something to drink? Or smoke? Our Chinese friends supply us with lovely opium.”

“No, thank you,” Hawke said.

“How about your friend? Who is he, by the way?”

“I can speak for myself. My name is Stokely Jones, United States Navy, retired. NYPD, retired. And I ain’t thirsty either,” Stoke said, dropping his hands from his head for the first time. When Hawke saw the Cubans had no reaction to this, he did the same.

“Shall we relax? Perhaps over there nearer the glass?” Manso said, and he indicated a grouping of mandarin opium beds arranged along one section of the glass wall.

He stretched out languorously on the largest of the beds, strewn with silk pillows of gold and black and red. He stretched, flexing the fingers of both hands.

There was something very odd and studied about the general’s movements, Alex thought. He moved like a fine athlete or dancer, with exaggerated elegance and drama, as if this were his stage and all that happened here was a performance. One whose significance only Manso understood.

Indeed, he and his brother seemed supremely indifferent to the explosive events that had so recently occurred within their own compound.

“Tequila, seсor?” General Juan de Herreras said, taking a swig before offering the opened bottle.

“Later, perhaps,” Alex said.

Alex suddenly understood the lack of activity in the big finca. The two de Herreras brothers had clearly just been woken up. One, Juanito, from an alcohol– and drug-induced sleep, the other, Manso, from some blissful dream here in this soundproofed room.

General Juan de Herreras, weaving slightly as he moved, waved his tequila bottle in the general direction of his brother Manso, indicating that they should all join him on the sofas. Alex and Stokely exchanged the briefest of looks, each of them right on the edge, waiting.

Something about the edge. Having worked together for so long, they both knew exactly where it was. All the time.

Alex sat on the corner of the sofa opposite Manso. Stoke remained on his feet, head darting back and forth, his eyes constantly monitoring the six Chinese whose weapons were unwaveringly trained on him.

“A lovely view, is it not, Mr. Hawke?” Manso said. “I modeled this room on a far more modest construction created by my mentor, el doctor. He’s the one who taught me to enjoy killing a man like you. You know of Escobar?”

“Enough to know that I wish I’d been the one to put a bullet in his head. Interesting room. But don’t threaten me. You know what they say about people who live in glass houses?” Alex said.

“A man with an arsenal of boulders, doesn’t worry about a man with mere rocks,” the general said, allowing himself a small giggle.

“This guy could go toe-to-toe with Jay Leno,” Stoke said, remaining on his feet. Hawke could see that Stokely’s patience was wearing thin. He wanted this done so they could confirm Vicky’s safety, Hawke imagined. He was having similar thoughts himself.

“Watch this,” the general suddenly said.

Reaching back beneath the pillows, Manso withdrew a gleaming sword. At first, Hawke thought it was a broadsword. Then he saw that, of course, it was a machete, polished to a lustrous silver, with precious stones embedded in the ebony handle.

Manso rapped the blade smartly three times on the glass above his head. A moment passed, and then three mermaids floated down through the crystal green layers of water and appeared at the window. There they hovered, naked, save for jeweled tiaras, and their long hair floated about their lovely faces as if blown by a light wind.