Crash Dive

A fastidiously moustachioed waiter was suddenly hovering above the candlelit table, bowing and smiling solicitously at Hawke.

“Monsieur?” he said, preposterously, in French.

Alexei suddenly looked up at the waiter and said in a loud voice, “Watch out! I’m the birthday boy!”

“Ah, mais oui,” he replied bowing his head slightly. “Bon a

“Good evening,” Hawke said, looking up from his menu. “I’ll have a glass of Krug Grande Cuvee and the cold borscht to start. And the rack of lamb, please. Rare. And decant a bottle of the 1959 Petrus if you’d be so kind.”

“Very well, monsieur. And for the young gentleman?”

“Bananas? I have no idea. Do you have any suggestions?”

“Well, I—I mean it’s difficult to—c’est très difficile—”

Hawke said, “Quite right. Difficult. Mashed potatoes? Of course. Alexei, do you like mashed potatoes? Everyone does.”

“No potatoes! No!”

“Peas?”

“No peas! No! No!”

“Carrots, then?”

“No carrots!”

“Perhaps the saute foie gras, monsieur?” the waiter said, inexplicably.

Hawke returned the ornate menu and said, “Everything. He’ll have one of everything on the menu.”

“Everything, monsieur? But surely you don’t mean—”

“Yes, yes. Just bring us one of everything on the menu. Let him lead us through the jungle. We’ll soon find out precisely what he likes and doesn’t like. It’s the only way we’ll get to the bottom of this, don’t you agree?”

The waiter shrugged his shoulders in that very French way and said, “Mais ouis, monsieur. Mais certainement. Le rôti d’agneau pour monsieur. One of everything on the menu for the young gentleman. Merci beaucoup.” He bowed and disappeared toward the rear of the car, shaking his head and probably murmuring ooh-la-la or oomph, or something of that ilk.

Ten minutes later, a platoon of waiters in wine-red livery appeared, streaming down the aisle to arrive at Hawke’s table, all bearing large silver platters filled with every possible kind of food. This of course caused a great deal of amusement among the other diners, all of them turning in their seats and peering at the little boy, his uncomfortable father, and the enormous amount of food they had ordered.

What Alexei liked to eat was immediately apparent. Hawke was busily preparing a large plate with a small sampling of all the dishes when Alexei made his decision. Ignoring Hawke’s offering entirely, Alexei stood in his high chair and reached for the ornate silver salver with a central crystal bowl containing a healthy dollop of Beluga caviar, surrounded by mounds of small warm buttered pancakes called blinis.

Grabbing a fistful of blinis, he stuffed them into his mouth, polishing them all off in little more than a minute.

Then he scooped up a small handful of caviar, tried it, gurgled with delight, and messily downed the remainder. “More! More!” he cried.

So. Caviar. The apple had not fallen far from the tree.

Hawke called to the waiter who had all the extraneous food removed and quickly summoned another waiter bearing more caviar and pancakes. It was at that moment that Hawke saw the two heavyset men who had climbed aboard the train at Tvas, the two men in the long black overcoats, enter the dining car at the far end.

They made their way toward Hawke and took an empty table on the opposite side of the car about three tables away. Neither man made eye contact with Alex, but he knew that meant nothing. Once they were seated and had ordered a bottle of vodka, the one facing Hawke looked up, caught his eye, and smiled. Hawke, sipping a small flute of Krug champagne, raised his glass and smiled back. He also signaled for his check.

As he was signing it, he noticed one of the men approach, clearly headed his way. The man stopped at their table, smiled at Hawke, and said in heavily accented English, “I am just admiring your handsome boy. Is he your son?”

“No. I am his bodyguard,” Hawke said in a low voice. “You’ll excuse us. We’re leaving.”

As Hawke gathered his son into his arms, the man leaned across the table and reached out to ruffle Alexei’s hair. His jacket fell open. The assassin had a Vostok Margolin .22LR pistol with a built-in silencer holstered under his arm. The standard concealed weapon of the KGB officer. Hawke shot his right hand out and grasped the man’s thick wrist in midair before he could touch a hair on Alexei’s head. He then leaned forward and whispered fiercely into the man’s ear.

“I said I’m his bodyguard. That includes his hair. Understand me?”

Hawke applied increasingly severe pressure to the base of the man’s thumb until he grimaced in pain and nodded his head. The Russian rose to his full height, rubbed his wrist vigorously, smiled down at Hawke, and said, “It’s a long trip, you know, here to St. Petersburg. I’m sure we shall all meet again.” Then he turned on his heel and returned to his table.

Hawke rose with Alexei in his arms and quickly but somewhat discreetly left the dining car. He needed to return the child safely to their locked compartment. Given the presence of two KGB assassins aboard the Red Arrow, it promised to be a very long night. Two killers on a train. Like an Agatha Christie novel, except you already knew who the true villains were.

But who was the intended victim?

Surely there were many inside Russia, the so-called Tsarists, who wanted Hawke dead.

But both Anastasia and Kuragin had said there was a price on Alexei’s head. People in power who didn’t like the idea of a tsar’s descendant waiting in the wings to take the throne at some future moment.

It hit him like a lightning strike to the heart.

These two thugs weren’t aboard the Red Arrow to kill him.

They meant to murder the heir to the crown. The child of the Tsarina.

They meant to kill his son.

Eight

Hawke sat in the darkened compartment, smoking incessantly to stay alert. He’d bought a few packs of Sobranie Black Russians in the rail station at St. Petersburg. Despite the black wrapper with its fancy gold tip, they were foul, but effective. The rhythmic click-clack on the tracks threatened to hypnotize him, and he fought it with nicotine. He was seated on one of the small, upholstered chairs in the center of the compartment’s sitting room.

In the adjoining room, mercifully, Alexei was sleeping peacefully on the lower berth, his teddy bear clutched tightly. Hawke had rocked him to sleep and kissed his warm cheek before tucking him in. He’d then propped a sturdy wooden chair against the bedroom door to the train’s corridor, feeling only slightly more secure. He’d left the sliding door between their two rooms open and could hear the reassuring sound of his son snoring softly. It was a sound like no other he’d ever heard.

The only light in Hawke’s tiny room came from a dim violet-blue nightlight, a spiritlike apparition near the floor that gave the small sitting room a rather eerie, stage-set feeling. Like a bad horror film, Hawke thought, some kind of Hammer Films vampire movie.

In his right hand, Hawke held his SIG .45 pistol, a hollow-point round already in the chamber. He’d positioned his chair to one side and in the shadows, so as to be out of the line of fire of someone forcefully entering the room. But he would have a clear shot at anyone coming through that door without an invitation.

He would shoot to kill if, indeed, circumstances warranted it.

For a man expecting a pair of KGB or criminal thugs to burst through his door with guns blazing, Alex Hawke was surprisingly relaxed. He was not the type of man who could be prodded into deciding what he might or might not do under any possible circumstances. And this was certainly not due to bravery, or coolness, or any especially sublime confidence in his own physical prowess or power. It was a powerful instinct to go with his gut and it hadn’t failed him yet.