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edge of fear. Alex Hawke had a very reasonable expectation of being shot dead in a few short hours. He’d visualized it many times: The train screeches to a halt at the tiny station. He peers out the window. He steps down onto the icy platform. The grey men are there, waiting. The Dark Men. Guns drawn, huddled just beyond the pool of lamplight. The Englishman had murdered their Tsar. Now it was his turn to die in a volley of gunfire.
    Or not.
    This nameless dread of the unknowable was directly contrary to Alex Hawke’s staunch militaristic nature. He possessed a rigid backbone of considerable renown, both as a combat-hardened flyboy in the Royal Navy and now in the SIS, or Secret Service. He’d always had an appetite for war when it was necessary. One of his World War II great heroes, the outspoken American U.S. Army general George S. Patton, had said all there was to be said on the subject of the proper state of a man’s mind heading into battle. “The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his.”
    Hawke lit another cigarette, summoning the belligerent ghost of Patton and his pearl-handled pistols to his side, puffing furiously, working up a head of steam for whatever might lie ahead. He could scarcely believe the treacherous ease and facility with which he had set himself up: perfectly framed for calamity, or devastating heartbreak. Or, if he got very, very lucky, indescribable bliss.
    Because there was, of course, an alternative scenario. A possibility, admittedly an extraordinarily slim possibility, existed that Hawke might soon be reunited with the one woman he loved. A reunion he would have deemed an absolute impossibility just a short time ago. Was she really alive? He’d witnessed her death with his own eyes, had he not? Far more likely, he’d fallen prey to a cunning lie. It was, after all, the way his enemies traditionally worked. Bait. Switch. And kill.
    Yes. A well-baited trap laid for him by the Kremlin’s spymasters at the KGB. He was sure of only one thing: a fool’s death sentence should it prove he’d been stupid enough to take the Russians’ bait. Naive enough to let his much-vaunted common sense take a backseat to his grievously broken heart. He allowed himself a thin smile. Hell, it wasn’t like it hadn’t happened before. And he was still kicking.
    He inhaled deeply, the sharpness of cheap Russian tobacco taking its bite, telling himself this whole thing was just another hostage rescue, for God’s sake. Hardly out of the ordinary for one of MI6’s most reliable warriors. God knows, he had countless search-and-rescue operations successfully under his belt. Including a dicey affair involving Her Majesty the Queen the year prior. He had a few scars, like anyone in his line of work. More than a few. But, by God, he thought, taking another drag, he wasn’t dead yet. Still. Look at his hands shaking. Like an old woman who’s just seen a fleeting shadow on her bedroom wall.
    This time the rescue attempt was intensely personal. It had been three long years ago that he had flung himself into love like a suicide to the pavement.
    Her name was Anastasia. Closing his eyes, he could see her even now, see his beloved Asia standing on the platform of the tiny Russian rail station at Tvas, waiting for him, her cheeks aglow in the frosted air, golden ringlets peeking from beneath the white mink cowl that framed her lovely face, her wide-set green eyes gleaming in anticipation of his appearance. Dear God! How desperately he’d longed for that moment when he’d enfold her within the protection of his arms and never let go.
    But he had let her go, hadn’t he?
    No, not let her go.
    Under extenuating circumstances, granted, but the cold, hard fact remained:
    He had murdered his own true love in cold blood.
    Disconsolate, lost, Hawke pulled a torn and well-worn photograph from inside his leather jacket. A fading black-and-white snapshot of Anastasia Korsakova,