She stood, composed herself, and made a more deliberate scan of the departing crowd. The big man in black was nowhere in sight. Where was Lord Hawke? She started moving forward, pushing people aside as she ran toward the oak tree, not knowing why but thinking that would be where he would wait for her to find him when she finally emerged from the church.

Yes! Hawke was there! He was seated on the same bench, talking quietly with the CIA man, Brock, who’d last been seen leaving the church holding the child’s hand. But no Alexei. Where was he? Surely they wouldn’t have just let him—

The man in black?

Yes. A large figure behind the wheel of a dark sedan parked about two hundred yards from the oak tree. It was one of the few remaining cars and at least three hundred yards away. But the glare of sunlight off the windshield was so strong she couldn’t make positive identification. Couldn’t see the face at all. Just a hazy silhouette. But every instinct said run for the car. Now.

She angled for it, circling slightly so she’d approach it from the side and rear. She got within fifty feet of the driver’s-side door and saw that it was him. He had his back to her, elbows up, staring through binoculars at Hawke and Brock.

She crept up silently in the thick grass.

He bent down, grabbing something from the floor, pulling it up by the stock.

A rifle with a large telescopic sight.

It was then that she caught a glimpse of some movement in the tree beyond, and her heart caught in her throat. Just a small dangling foot, swinging to and fro just above Hawke’s head.

Alexei was sitting astride the low-hanging branch just above his father’s head. Hawke kept looking up, his arms outstretched, ready to catch the boy should he jump or fall.

The man jammed the stock of the rifle into his shoulder and welded the gun to his cheek. He put his eye to the scope, raising the barrel upward and into the tree.

He was going to shoot Alexei!

“Drop the gun NOW!” she screamed. “Do it now or you’re dead!”

The man laughed at the sound of her voice. “Go away, little nanny. I’ve got business to do here.”

She racked the slide on the SIG P226 pistol she’d pulled from her purse as she ran toward the car.

He froze at the metallic sound, then craned his face around.

“Fuck. A gun, she says to me. Wot is a nice girl like you doing with a gun?”

“Drop the rifle, asshole. Now.”

“Sure, sure, lady, please, is no problem.” He pulled the gun back inside and let it fall to his feet. Then he turned to face her, the smile still on his face. His right hand moving inside his suit jacket as he said, “Just relax, okay. I’m just getting my cigarettes.”

“Sure you are,” Nell Spooner replied and put a ragged black hole in the middle of his forehead. He pitched forward, dead.

Nell Spooner expelled a deep sigh of relief, resting her head for a moment against the roof of the car. Then she looked up and headed toward the tree where Hawke and Harry Brock still sat, the little boy happily overhead on his branch, swinging his legs back and forth.

“Spooner!” he cried out. “Look at me!”

At the sight of the pistol still hanging loosely at her side, Hawke jumped up and raced to her, putting his hands on her trembling shoulders. She was clearly in a slight state of shock.

“My God, what happened?” he asked.

“Man in that dark blue car. Had a rifle. About to take a shot. I shot him first.”

“A shot? Me?”

“No, sir. He was aiming at Alexei on the branch above you. You may well have been next, I imagine.”

Hawke took a deep breath, looked back over at his son, now in the arms of Harry Brock, a gun in one hand, checking the perimeter. Hawke said something unprintable and then gently squeezed her shoulders. “Thank you, Sergeant Spooner, thank you for saving my boy’s life. I had no idea it would come to this so quickly.”

“The commissioner of Scotland Yard did the right thing in loaning me out, sir. Your fears were well founded. I’ll be more alert now. I won’t let anyone ever get this close again.”

Hawke looked around. “There may be more of them. Probably not, but I suggest we all get into the van as quickly as possible and get out of here.”

Hawke added, “Harry, please call 911 and get an ambulance out here. Also the Collier County Police and the FBI.”

“You’ll find a tattoo on the back of his neck, Agent Brock,” Spooner said. “The Blue Scorpion. It’s a highly organized group of retired KGB officers. All highly trained killers available for a fee. I was involved in a case in London when one of them showed up dead.”

“Thanks, Nellie,” Brock said, speed-dialing a number on his mobile and flashing his cunning grin. “You sure don’t look like a cop, by the way. You look like Scarlett Johansson. Anybody ever tell you that?”

Harry, getting no reply, shrugged his shoulders and made his phone calls.

Sergeant Nell Spooner, who was a member of London’s Trident Operational Command Unit of the Metropolitan Police Service, a team designed to investigate and prevent any gun-related activity within London’s communities, put her service pistol back into her purse. She could feel her heart rate slowing for the first time since she’d become aware of the man in the next pew.

She’d been granted a leave of absence by the Met to take a temporary position. She had been assigned to Six counterterrorist operative Lord Alexander Hawke, specifically to protect his child. Hawke’s child was a known target of Russian agents. As the grandson of Russia’s only modern Tsar, now dead, he posed a political threat to the Kremlin.

Spooner had walked away from the group at the oak tree and wandered to the edge of a small pond. She needed a little time to collect herself. Her hands were trembling violently, and she stuffed them into the pockets of her rose-colored linen jacket.

She had never fired a gun in anger before in her life.

Now she had. It was not a pleasant experience, taking a human life.

But her young charge, a boy whom she’d come to feel an almost motherly affection for in these few short months, was still alive because of her actions.

“Spooner!” Alexei said. “Look what I found!”

He opened his hand.

It was a tiny blue speck, a fragment of a robin’s egg, a relic of spring.

Twelve

At Sea, Aboard K-550 Aleksandr Nevskiy

There is a problem, sir,” the Russian submarine’s starpom, or executive officer, said, approaching and saluting his captain. The man, Aleksandr Ivanov-Pavlov, was ramrod straight, inside and out, and it had served him well over the years.

“Problem, Aleksandr? No! Aboard this vessel? Tell me it’s not true.”

The Central Command Post (CCP) men and officers nearby smiled at their skipper’s infamous sarcasm. It was one of the reasons they not only respected him, but liked him.

The captain smiled his famously enigmatic smile, his teeth white in his full salt-and-pepper beard. A career submariner, the oldest-serving skipper in the Russian Navy, the barrel-chested, white-haired Sergei Petrovich Lyachin, had recently been honored with command of the Nevskiy, Russia’s newest nuclear ballistic submarine. It had been a decidedly mixed blessing.

The new boat had cost a billion dollars. She could dive to a depth of six hundred meters and run at a maximum speed of thirty knots on the surface, twenty-eight knots submerged, all official numbers only, of course. Her real performance parameters were highly classified. In addition to powerful antiship torpedoes, her armament included sixteen Bulava SLBM ballistic missiles and six SS-N-15 cruise missiles. Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov, commander in chief of the Russian Navy, had described the Nevskiy as the most effective multipurpose submarine in the world.