Pirate: A Thriller (Alex Hawke) - Softcover

Buch 3 von 14: Alexander Hawke

Bell, Ted

 
9781668077405: Pirate: A Thriller (Alex Hawke)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 166807740X ISBN 13: 9781668077405
Verlag: Pocket Books, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

In this third of the “brilliant” (Bookreporter) Alexander Hawke series, intrepid intelligence operative Alex Hawke must thwart a deadly alliance between China and France before they annihilate everything and everyone in their rush toward world domination.

Aboard a ship in the south of France, an American spy faces certain death for the vital, explosive intelligence he possesses. In Paris, a ruthless and powerful descendant of Napoleon has forged an unholy alliance with China for its growing nuclear arsenal, poised to send the world to the brink of a gut-wrenching showdown. Now, in a maelstrom of razor’s-edge danger, Alex Hawke must enter the nightmare visions of madmen to defuse an axis of evil no one could have predicted—and no living soul would survive.

Packed with unrelenting action, glamour, and high style, Pirate is a spellbinding thriller. Be prepared for Alex Hawke’s most daunting and heart-pounding mission yet.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ted Bell was the former vice-chairman of the board and creative director of Young & Rubicam, one of the world’s largest advertising agencies. He was the New York Times bestselling author of the Alex Hawke series. Ted Bell passed away in 2023.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One Chapter One
Le Côte d’Azur

AN ILL WIND LAY SIEGE to the port. hard off the sea it blew, steady and relentless. For days the strange weather had spooked the ancient harbor town of Cannes, driving everyone indoors. You could hear the icy wind whistling up the narrow cobbled streets and round the old houses and shops that clung to the hills overlooking the bay; you could feel it stealing down chimneypots, seeping under window sashes, rattling doors and the inhabitants sealed behind them.

All along this southern coast, dust devils and dried leaves, desiccated by the unseasonably cold wind, swirled around the grande dames standing shoulder to shoulder as they faced the sea. Le Majestic, Le Martinez, and the legendary Hotel Carlton. The nor’westerly worried, rattled, and shook acres of expensive hotel glass, the seaward windows of perhaps the most glamorous stretch of real estate in the world, the Côte d’Azur.

Le mistral, the locals called this foul sea wind, wrinkling their noses in a Gallic gesture of disgust. There was no stench, not really, but still it seemed a frigid plague upon the land, and the man in the street, if you could find one about, kept his collar up and his head down. This wind carried the kind of relentless chill that worked its way deep into the marrow.

Some seventy kilometers to the west of this meteorological malaise, however, the warm Mediterranean sun was smiling down upon a singularly happy Englishman.

The cheerful fellow behind the wheel of the old green roadster was Alexander Hawke. Lord Hawke, to be completely accurate, though you’d best not be caught using that title. Only Pelham, an ancient family retainer, was allowed use of “m’lord” in Hawke’s presence. And that was only because once, long ago, he’d threatened to resign over the matter.

Hawke was a good-looking enough sort, something over six feet, trim and extraordinarily fit. He was still fairly young, in his early thirties, with a square, slightly cleft jaw, unruly black hair, and rather startling arctic-blue eyes. His overall appearance was one of determination and resolution. It was his smile that belied the tough exterior. It could be cruel when he was crossed or took offense, but it could also betray a casual amusement at what life threw his way, both the good and the bad.

Women seemed attracted to, rather than put off by, Alex Hawke’s rather bemused and detached views on romance, the war between the sexes, and life in general. Because he was quite wealthy, his liaisons with the fair sex were varied and well documented in the British tabloids. He had ventured down the matrimonial aisle just once. That had ended in horror and sorrow when his wife was murdered at the very outset of the marriage.

A goodly number of men seemed to find him reasonably companionable as well. He was athletic enough to compete seriously when he cared to, and he enjoyed strong drink and a good story. However, most of the truly interesting Hawke stories were known only to a few. He never spoke of his childhood. Unspeakable tragedy had struck the boy at age seven. It didn’t kill, or even cripple him. It made him strong.

All in all, the sorrows of his past notwithstanding, Alexander Hawke remained an improbably cheery fellow.

If you were to ask Hawke to describe what he did for a living, he’d be hard-pressed for an honest answer. He was the titular head of a large family business—a sizable conglomeration of banking and industrial entities—but that job required only a light hand on the tiller. He had carefully chosen able commanders to helm his various enterprises and he wisely let them command.

As for himself, Hawke did the occasional deeply private favor for HM Government. When his particular skill set was required, he also did odd jobs for the United States government. Among his fellow Royal Navy aviators, it was said of him that he was good at war.

There was never anything on paper. No buccaneer’s letter of marque. He was simply called in whenever they needed someone who didn’t mind getting his hands dirty. And someone who could keep his mouth shut afterward. He was, in fact, rather like one of those seafaring eighteenth-century scoundrels from whom he was directly descended, adventurers who plundered ship and shore in the name of the king. Hawke was, in short, nothing more nor less than a twenty-first-century privateer.

Gunning his Jaguar eastward along the French coast toward the old city of Cannes, Hawke felt like a schoolboy sprung for Christmas. It was, after all, just another unexceptionally beautiful spring day on the Côte d’Azur. The wide-open road that hugged the shoreline, curving high above the blue Mediterranean, beckoned, and Hawke hungrily ate it up, one hundred miles of it every hour or so. Gibraltar had long since receded in his rearview mirror. And good riddance, too, he thought, to that monkey-infested rock.

And, while he was at it, good riddance to the stuffed-shirt navy as well.

Hawke was the kind of man to prefer bread, water, and solitary confinement to just about any kind of organized meeting. He had just suffered through two solid days of DNI briefings at British Naval Headquarters on the Rock. CIA Director Patrick Brickhouse Kelly, the guest of honor, had given a sobering presentation on the final day. He had identified another serious crisis brewing in the Gulf. The nub of it was, Red Chinese warships were headed into the Indian Ocean for a rendezvous with the French navy.

China and France? An unlikely alliance on the surface. But one with grave implications for stability in the Gulf region. And thus, the world.

No one in Washington was exactly sure when, or even if, this much-ballyhooed naval exercise would occur. But all of the blue-suit Royal Navy boys at Gibraltar were quite exercised about it. The very concept stirred their blood. Not a few of them were fantasizing a replay of Nelson’s great victory at Trafalgar, Hawke thought. And Blinker Godfrey had provided more than enough charts, facts, figures, sat photos, and mind-numbing reports to whet their brass whistles. Endless stuff.

Why? Hawke had wondered, squirming in his chair. It was not a difficult concept to comprehend: France and Red China, sailing jointly into the Indian Ocean. You can actually express that notion in one sentence. Maybe ten words. Most situations Commander Hawke dealt with were like that. Straightforward and not irreducible. In Royal Navy parlance, however, that one sentence had translated into forty-eight hours of squirming around in a smoke-filled room trying to find comfort on a hard wooden chair.

British Naval Intelligence, Gibraltar Station, had an especially nasty habit of providing far too much unnecessary detail. This tendency was personified in one Admiral Sir Alan “Blinker” Godfrey, a pompous chap who never should have been let anywhere near a PowerPoint computer presentation. Even back in the day, when the old walrus had his antiquated overhead slides to present, he simply didn’t know how to sit down and shut up. More than once he’d caught Hawke at the back of the briefing room fingering his BlackBerry and made unpleasant remarks about it.

So, overbriefed and underslept, Hawke finally escaped. He cleared the Spanish border checkpoint at the Rock and headed out along the sad and condo-ruined coast of Spain. As he wound up the C Type’s rev counter, he found himself turning...

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Verlag
Pocket Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2025
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
166807740X
ISBN 13 
9781668077405
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
640
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV, GPSR Europäische Union
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
AA Utrecht
3584
Niederlande

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ISBN 10:  1416510796 ISBN 13:  9781416510796
Verlag: Pocket Star, 2006
Softcover