Read Phantom: An Alex Hawke Novel for Free Online

patiently at his torturer. The smile was a very effective little trick he’d learned in the desert outside Baghdad. It increased severity but decreased duration. Eventually, they got bored with you and moved on to more entertaining victims. That trick was the only reason he’d survived long enough to escape.
    Hawke said, “That is the truth, you stupid dolt. I’m here to see General Nikolai Kuragin.”
    “What makes you think such a person exists?”
    “I’ve met him. In person.”
    “You’ve met him. And where did you meet him?”
    “We took tea together once. At the Savoy Grill in London as I recall.” This earned him a blow to the side of his head. He saw stars for a moment but managed to shake it off and give the man an even warmer smile. Anger and frustration blazed in his interrogator’s eyes. A pushover, Hawke thought, gratefully. He could be out of here inside of an hour.
    “What makes you think that this person, if he exists, can be found here?” the KGB man snarled. He had produced a small hammer and brought it down on each of the five fingers of Hawke’s left hand. Hawk flinched involuntarily but gave away nothing with his eyes.
    “I was told that he lived here.”
    “Told? Told by whom?”
    “By a little bird, actually.”
    “A little what?”
    “Bird. You know. Wings? Flapping like mad?”
    There was a sudden crackle of static from a hidden speaker, and then Hawke heard a familiar voice fill the room.
    “It wasn’t a nightingale that sang by any chance?” the disembodied voice said with a chuckle. “In Berkeley Square?”
    Hawke immediately recognized the laugh. The interrogator turned and stared at the “mirror,” completely baffled at this interruption coming from someone behind it. And that someone was General Nikolai Kuragin.
    “Yes,” Hawke replied cheerfully. “And the moon that lingered over Londontown? Poor puzzled moon he wore a frown?”
    Laughter and then, “Good morning, Lord Alex Hawke.”
    “A very good morning to you, General Kuragin.”
    “Sorry about all this dreadful unpleasantness. And the rather uncouth reception you received from my gallant centurions at the gates. A little advance warning, perhaps?”
    “Ah. Should have done. Frightfully rude. It was a last-minute thing, actually.”
    The door swung open and Kuragin was standing there with a smile on his face. He’d not changed much. He was a skeletal figure of a man in his eighties, dressed in his customary sharply tailored black uniform. Made him look like a Nazi SS man, Hawke thought. He had sallow skin, almost yellow, and heavy-lidded deep-set eyes. “I’ve summoned a doctor down to take a look at those ribs. When he’s through with you, someone will escort you up to the library. It’s my office now. We’ll get you some breakfast served there. What would you like?”
    “I could eat a horse, but I’ll settle for caviar. And toast.”
    H alf an hour later, Hawke, his ribs taped up and Percocet or some other splendid painkiller flowing mercifully through his veins, found himself seated in the same beautifully appointed room where, three years earlier, he’d first met Anastasia’s father, the late Tsar of Russia.
    The high-ceilinged walnut-paneled library was filled with books, art, and military mementos from the last three centuries. A magnificent equestrian portrait of Peter the Great in battle hung above the mantel. A roaring fire lent the high-ceilinged room a cozy intimacy, and the two men sitting on either side of the cavernous stone hearth were speaking quietly.
    “Just out of curiosity, how long would you have let that interrogation go on?” Hawke asked Kuragin, a mildly curious expression on his face.
    “Until I found out what I wanted to know, of course. What else would you expect? Having you appear out of thin air like you did. I don’t get a lot of visitors out here as you can well imagine. And the ones who do come from Moscow arrive by helicopter, not on foot.”
    “And what exactly