Tsar (17 page)

Stoke stuck his hand out, and the man instinctively took it. Stoke squeezed a second too long and caught the guy wincing. He was a seriously big guy, ex-military, no doubt about it. Had that unmistakable special-forces look about him.

“Who the fuck are you?” the man said, withdrawing his hand with some difficulty from Stoke’s bone cruncher. Boris’s black nylon windbreaker fell open, and Stoke saw a Mac-10 light machine gun hanging from a shoulder sling. Probably to keep the kids in line bobbing for apples or playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey later.

Stoke smiled at Boris again. “Levy, Sheldon Levy, Suncoast Artist Management. That ring a bell?”

No reply.

“We’re providing tonight’s entertainment.”

“What entertainment? The birthday singer?”

“Exactly. The singer. And look, Boris, here she is now.”

Fancha stepped out of the shadows of the boat’s main salon as if out of a dream. Her bold brown eyes, slightly uptilted at the corners, were shining beneath a fringe of silken black hair. She climbed two steps in her shimmering sequined red dress and stood on the bridge deck next to Stokely. He’d never seen her look so beautiful. He looked at the Russian.

“This is—”

“Fancha,” the security guy said, trying to keep his jaw off the deck. He looked as if he was going to dissolve into a puddle and just drip over the gunwales into the canal. He looked around at his buddies. “It’s Fancha,” Boris said, reverent, as if Madonna had suddenly popped out of a pumpkin.

Stoke looked at her and smiled. “Some dress, huh, Boris? Who’s that designer you’re wearing tonight, Fancha? Oscar? Lacroix? Zac Posen?”

“What a lovely house,” Fancha said, ignoring Stoke and smiling at the drooling security guy. “Sorry I’m late, gentlemen. I hope my band hasn’t been waiting too long for the sound check.”

“Oh, no, not at all,” the guy said, “They just got there. Here, I mean. Still setting up. I will escort you up there to the pool? I’m afraid the grass is a little wet still from the sprinklers, and it can be slippery. Please?”

“You’re so kind.”

Stoke rolled his eyes as Boris held out his hand to her. She took it and stepped lightly from the boat onto the dock, beaming at the good-looking Russian.

Stoke’s fists clenched involuntarily. He knew this guy. Didn’t really know him, of course, but knew his type, guessed who he was. One of the Kremlin’s storm troopers in a previous life. The Black Berets, they were called. Riot police, which, in the new post-Democratic Russia, meant they had the legal right to beat the crap out of anybody whose skin color they didn’t like. Namely, black.
Black
covered a lot of territory in Russia and included Chechens, Jews, and, of course, Africans and their cousins, African-Americans.

“And what’s your name?” Fancha asked the guy, smiling up at this dickhead as if he was freakin’ Dr. Zhivago.

“I am Yuri. Yuri Yurin.”

“I’m Fancha, Yuri,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”

“Let me give you my card,” Yuri said, pulling out a business card and handing it to her. Without even glancing at it, she handed it to her one-man entourage, Stokely, and started off across the grass, letting Yuri hold her by the damn arm the whole way.

Stoke turned the card over in his hand. It had a picture of a sleek offshore racing boat, a Magnum 60. Beneath was Yuri’s name, Yuri Yurin, and his office address over on Miami Beach. Something called the Miami Yacht Group Ltd. So, Yuri only moonlighted as security. His day job was yacht salesman. Fish where the fish are, Stoke thought. Russians were buying most of the big yachts these days. Yuri was probably getting rich, too.

“That’s pronounced ‘Yurin’ like in piss, right?” he called after the Russian, but he guessed Yurin hadn’t heard him, because there was no reaction.

Fancha paused to look back at Stoke, still holding onto the guy. “Oh, Sheldon?”

“Yes, my Fancha?” Stoke said, bowing slightly from the waist.

“My Fiji water?”

“We have Fiji at all the pool bars,” Yuri said, the little shit.

“She has her own Fiji,” Stokely told him, maybe a little too loudly. “Estate-bottled for her in Fiji personally by David and Jill Gilmour right at the spring on their property at Wakaya.”

“Estate-bottled Fiji water?” Yuri said, finding it hard to believe there was some luxury item on the planet he’d not yet heard of.

“Of course.”

“Sheldon? My water?”

“I’ll be right there with it.”

“Chilled, Sheldon?”

“Chilled to perfection, goddess.”

H
alf an hour later, Fancha was onstage, in the middle of her first set, singing her little heart out. Stoke was busy invoking Rule One of fancy cocktail soirees: Circulate. He was cruising the crowd like a hungry shark, using his nom de guerre, Sheldon Levy, talking to anyone and everyone who looked interesting, just seeing what itch he could scratch here and there.

Aboard
Fado,
Harry’s digital audio recorders were picking up everything he was hearing at the party, so Stoke didn’t pay too much attention to most of these drunks. Still, some of what they were saying would no doubt prove useful to some intel wonk at Langley down the line. Harry also had rigged an online feed to VICAM. He could send video stills of anyone who caught his eye to D.C., right from
Fado
, and get instant rap-sheet feedback, should any of these distinguished gentlemen have a criminal record.

Stoke was hoping to bump into Ramzan himself, but so far, the birthday boy hadn’t shown for his own gig. Wanted to be fashionably late, Stoke guessed, an old Chechen custom, maybe. The Russians he did meet were mostly big and noisy. Most of them were noisy in slurred English. Vodka, Stoli, Imperia, all headed down wide-open hatches by the gallon at various bar tables situated under the palms around the property.

Not a drinker, he’d passed on the vodka in favor of Diet Coke, but he’d put away about a pound of Beluga caviar so far and felt he could probably go for another. There were mountains of the delicious stuff everywhere, so you didn’t have to feel greedy spooning two tablespoons onto your toast points.

The women, he had to admit, were mostly beautiful. Lots of low-cut dresses, sequins, and major bling. A whole lot of very big blonde hair. You had a good cross-section of wives, trophy wives, girlfriends, and professionals. Some of them had to be imports from the Ukraine, some of them were clearly home-grown, and a few were right up there with South Florida’s finest.

Sharkey deserved a lot of credit and maybe a raise for the idea of using Fancha’s yacht as the surveil vehicle. Since the party was mostly on the back lawn around the pool, the docked boat was the only feasible way to cover this assignment. He had to laugh every time he looked out at
Fado
, thinking about the countless hours he’d spent staking out some dirtbag in Queens, munching doughnuts, freezing his tail off behind the wheel of some crummy Dodge Dart with a bad heater.

Down below in the cabin, positioned in front of his monitors and camera controls, Harry Brock was a busy boy. Every time a couple of guys or a group out on the lawn strayed anywhere near the boat, you’d see that portside outrigger come creeping around, dangling the little Skycam over their unsuspecting heads. He even had instant replay on the damn thing.

Harry had been right about the outrigger as a camera and boom mike. People were so deep into the cocktail hour now that nobody seemed to notice when the stray outrigger on the big sportfish did weird things, waving around over people’s heads like a magic wand.

Stoke decided to make his way inside the palazzo. People were coming and going, and it wouldn’t hurt to see what was going on indoors, beyond the camera’s reach. The house, mobbed with people, was pretty much what you’d expect, a style Stoke called Early Boca. Twenty-foot ceilings. A lot of heavily gilded furniture and artwork that was supposed to look as if it had come from some Italian castle. Big curving stairway with a huge bad portrait of the owner’s wife halfway up the curving wall. Chandeliers of melting icicles they’d maybe bought at Mickey’s Magic Castle Gift Shoppe over in Orlando.

He pushed his way into the foyer (
fwa-yay
, as his buddy Chief Inspector Ambrose Congreve would say) and stepped through the double front doors at the home’s grand entrance. There he paused to admire the steady stream of gleaming Bentleys, Rollers, Escalades, Rangers, and big black Hummers. None of them, of course, could hold a candle to his 1965 black raspberry GTO convertible, capable of a standing quarter-mile in less than eight seconds. Street legal.

The gleaming parade of pimped-up rides was coming through the ornate iron entrance gates and rolling to a stop under the portico where the valet boys waited. A bright red Ferrari Enzo rumbled up, and three valet guys converged on it as if somebody had just dropped a million-dollar bill on the pavement, which they probably had.

Stoke checked his watch. It was past nine o’clock, and Fancha was supposed to sing “Happy Birthday” at nine-thirty sharp, so a lot of people were eager to get back to the pool. Stoke thought half the guests had probably come because she was singing. Wouldn’t surprise him if it was more than half. Girl was climbing the charts.

The woman he maybe loved was maybe, just maybe, on her way to stardom, and it made him proud to catch her name whispered around the room.

Have you heard that beautiful girl sing? Fancha? Go! Go out there! You’ve got to hear her!

Something was going on out on the front lawn. There was a white bakery truck, looked like, motor still running, pulled over on the grass, and the driver was standing outside surrounded by a few of the black-shirt boys. Pretty tense situation. Stoke decided he had time to go check it out.

“Fuck you doing, coming in the main gate?” one guy was screaming at the driver. “You didn’t see the sign, ‘Service Entrance,’ around the side? Whaddya, blind, you dumb shit?”

The delivery guy, who looked like a big blond bear in white pajamas, wasn’t backing down. He’d didn’t look as if he’d back down from Mike Tyson, to tell the truth. He got up in the guy’s face quick.

“Listen up, pal, like I said, I got the freaking birthday cake in the back there. It won’t fit through the pantry door. So I’m bringing it around to bring it in the front door. Because it’s
wider
. Okay? Just like your caterers in the kitchen told me to do. Awright with you, you skinny fuck?”

The driver’s white outfit had the name “Happy” stitched over his breast pocket. It said “Happy’s Bake Shoppe” on the side of the white truck. This Happy character was a big guy, seriously large, and the security guys were having some second thoughts about messing with his ass too much.

“Is there a problem?” Stoke asked, pushing his way past two of the black-shirted Russian muscle boys.

“There was one. Now we have another one. You. Who the hell are you?”

Russians so full of attitude lately, you notice that? Still pissed about that Cold War thing, Stoke figured. And now that they were rich, well, you know how that goes. He smiled at the guy, stuck out his hand.

“Sheldon Levy. Suncoast Artist Management. I’m coordinating this evening’s entertainment for your employer, Mr. Lukov. I hate to interrupt this little scuffle, but the lovely Fancha is scheduled to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to the guest of honor in fifteen minutes. I’m afraid if we don’t get that cake through the door and out to the stage, all of our timing will go down the tubes. I don’t think Mr. Lukov would be very happy about that, do you gentlemen agree?”

Happy the Baker smiled at Stokely. “Finally, someone around here who makes some freaking sense.”

“Can I offer you a hand with the cake?” Stoke asked Happy.

“Nah, we’ll help him,” a black shirt said. “C’mon, guys, gimme a hand here with this freaking cake, all right?”

As the security team opened up the van and unloaded the huge white and pink cake, Stoke went over and offered Happy his hand. Something about the guy looked very familiar.

“Sheldon Levy,” he said.

“I’m Happy,” the baker said, pumping his hand. If he’d expected Stoke’s hand to be small and breakable, he was sorely disappointed.

“Yeah? You’re Happy, huh? Good thing your momma didn’t name you Gay, right?” Stoke laughed. The guy didn’t seem to get it.

“Have we met before?” Stoke said. He was sure he’d either met this guy or seen his picture fairly recently.

“The Steiner wedding?” Happy said. “Maybe that was it.”

“I missed that one. Didn’t make the cut, I guess. No, somewhere else, must be. C’mon out back, Happy, I’ll introduce you to Fancha.”

“You know Fancha?”

“Know her? I’m her manager. C’mon, we’ll make sure they don’t drop your cake going through the house. Cake like that, what does that beauty go for, Happy?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Hundred?”

“Thousand.”

“For a cake? You got Celine Dion in there? Well, it’s a work of art. I’m sure it will be a huge surprise for the guest of honor.”

“Oh, you’re right about that, Mr. Levy. A huge surprise.”

Happy looked happy as he saw his masterpiece being paraded through the crowded house above everyone’s head and lofted out toward the stage overlooking the deep end of the pool.

Fancha was just finishing up one of the hit songs from
Green Island Girl,
one that might go gold called “
A Minha Vida
,” when the cake arrived onstage with her.

She looked at the six-foot-high frosted monstrosity and said softly into the mike, “Isn’t that beautiful? A symbol of one life lived. You know the word
fado
itself means fate, destiny, and—oh, here’s the birthday boy himself! Let’s give him a big round of applause, shall we?”

A thin, clean-shaven man, with dark, deep-set eyes beneath fierce black brows, stepped up to the microphone. It was Ramzan, all right, although in the pictures in his dossier, he’d had a luxuriant beard. He was swaying a little bit and had a kind of goofy grin plastered on his face for a fierce Chechen warlord. Miami got to people, Stoke thought, that’s all there was to it. Ramzan looked out at the crowd and spoke, sounding like that Ali G guy in that
Borat
movie, but that was just Stoke’s opinion.

“I want to thank my dear friend Vlad for having this wonderful excitement party. And all of you coming. I am very happy we can take time out from our struggle and come together in such a joyful party time.”

That was the wonderful excitement speech, and then Fancha took the mike off the stand. The crowd got quiet fast as she sang the opening lyrics with the voice of an unreachable angel. Behind her, they were lighting the candles on the cake, waiters standing on stepladders. The candles lit up like sparklers, and the crowd cheered as Fancha lit up the whole night with her voice.

“Happy birthday to you…happy birthday…”

Stoke smiled at her and then looked around at Happy standing a few feet behind him. He had a funny look on his face. A little nervous, maybe. Nervous? About what? His cake was a hit.

A big surprise.

Stoke raised his sleeve to his lips and whispered, “Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“You getting this?”

“You bet.”

“Zoom in on the baker in the white suit. Big gorilla. A few feet behind me. Wait, he’s moving away. You got him?”

“Yeah, I got him. Let me get a close-up.”

“Does he look familiar to—”

“Oh, shit.”

“What?”

“Stoke! Get the hell out of there! Now! Grab Fancha and run…”

“What? What is it?”

A big surprise.

“That’s the Omnibomber! The guy the FBI thinks blew up that prison a few weeks ago. Little Miss. The Death Row Bomber. I saw the prison security-camera shots just yesterday. It’s him, all right.”

“Oh, shit. The cake.”

“Yeah, the cake. Gotta be. Come on, Stoke. You gotta move. Get out now, Stoke! I mean it. Those candles, those are probably fuses or somebody’s got a remote detonator, one or the other. Go! Go!”

Stoke looked around. Fancha was still singing her birthday song, her eyes on Ramzan, making it just for him. The baker was gone, melted into the crowd and probably headed for his truck. He looked at the candles, spewing fiery sparks. They’d burned almost all the way down to the icing on the cake. Time to go.

He stepped up onto the stage, right behind Fancha, swept her up into his arms, and leaned into the microphone. Fancha was squirming, trying to finish her song, looking at him as if he’d lost his mind.

Stoke said, “Isn’t she fabulous, ladies and gentlemen? The lovely Fancha! We’ll be taking a short break while the guest of honor blows out all those candles, but don’t worry, folks, she’ll be back for an encore!”

With that, Stoke stepped off the stage, Fancha twisting in his arms, and started pushing his way through the crowd headed toward the dock. He could see Sharkey on the bow, already heaving the bow line ashore, and Stoke heard the muffled roar of
Fado
’s big diesels coming to life.

He saw Harry at the top of the tower, screaming at him to hurry, hurry, and the crowd finally had thinned to the point where he could break into a full-tilt run across the sloping lawn toward the dock.

Sharkey was on the stern, heaving the line, and the big Viking’s props were churning now. She was beginning to edge away from the dock.

Two of the black shirts saw him coming and stepped in front of him. Stoke just ran right through them, flinging them to either side, and they sprawled to the ground. He had maybe twenty yards to reach the dock. The distance between the boat and the dock was opening up fast. Three feet, four…he sprinted that last bit, took a running jump off the dock, and leaped across the widening gap, landing hard on the deck in the aft cockpit. He managed to keep his balance and hold tightly to Fancha at the same time.