Read Online Phantom: An Alex Hawke Novel by Ted Bell - Free Book Online Page A

to Hawke’s side of the troika. Hawke held out his arms to receive his son, his heart beating with gratitude that at least he’d have a few precious hours to spend with him. The nurse spread the fur throw of white sable over Alex and the baby and wished them all a safe journey.
    “There’s a word the cowboys in America say,” Hawke whispered to his son. “You’ll learn what it means some day. Giddyup!”
    Anastasia flicked the reins and gave a shout to her three white chargers. The horses were arranged like a fan with one in the lead. Anastasia needed no whip to launch them into a breakneck speed down the lane toward the stand of birch trees and the great forests beyond; she spoke to them continuously, urging them on with either cheery encouragement or harsh invective.
    “You still have the same horses,” Hawke said, looking over at her lovely profile. “The noble white steeds.”
    “Yes. How kind of you to notice. Do you remember their names?”
    “I do. Storm, Lightning, and Smoke.”
    “My three gallant heroes.”
    “How lucky you are with heroes, Anastasia.”
    They were silent then. Hawke squeezed his sleeping son to his breast and held him tightly for the duration of the journey. The golden sleigh flew through the snowy hills and valleys like the wind. He put his head back and looked up through the trees at the blue sky, the crystalline air, the cottony white clouds drifting high above. He lulled himself into a kind of peace of mind, using these last few hours with his son and the woman he still loved to create a far, far different reality than the bleakness he was facing.
    H awke stood and studied the filigreed black hands of the tall station platform clock as they moved relentlessly toward twelve noon. In the distance, he could hear the approach of the onrushing train. Minutes later, he watched the sleek red-and-silver locomotive, a half mile away, come barreling down the steeply sloped incline, bulldozing a great white avalanche of snow before it.
    Anastasia, rocking Alexei in her arms, had been standing at Hawke’s side on the platform for an eternity. He had heard her weeping silently as the hands on the clock above her head continued their steady progress. Yet Hawke felt paralyzed, physically unable to speak or even make a move to comfort her; a hollow man, his unspoken words as dry and meaningless as wind in dry grass.
    An eternity later, he heard her say quietly, “This has been the saddest day of my life.”
    To which he solemnly replied, “Just this one?”
    At this, Anastasia stood frozen in place, a character finding herself in the final act of a tragic drama, unable to remember her lines or move about the stage, hitting her marks while delivering coherent dialogue.
    At last, as the long slash of the Red Arrow thundered into the tiny station, its noisy rumble shattering the unbearable impasse of their sadness, it was then that his arm found its way around Anastasia’s shoulders, gently pulling her toward him, his eyes offering hers what little comfort he had left in him to give.
    “Well,” Hawke said, “time to go.”
    He bent down to pick up his portmanteau and the red leather case. As he did he saw two men at the far end of the streamlined train step forward to board. They were dark men, dressed in dark suits, dark coats, dark hats. The doors hissed open and he watched them climb aboard, each carrying a thin dark case. Not large enough for clothing, he thought. Odd.
    “Time to go,” he said again, realizing how flat and trite his words were but unable to even begin to say what was in his heart.
    “Oh, Alex,” Anastasia said, turning her face up to him, the tears glistening on her rosy cheeks. “Won’t you at least kiss us each good-bye?”
    “Of course I will,” Hawke said.
    He put his hand on her shoulder and bent to put his lips to hers, ever so briefly, before turning to kiss his son, staring at him, his creamy pink cheeks, fresh from some past spring, and his enormous blue