Foretold by Thunder: A Thriller

by Edward M. Davey

  “Where the hell were you?” Jake roared, spitting out blood. His shirt was a mass of scarlet and it looked as if a Doberman had been at his face.

  “I got distracted.”

  “Distracted? By what?”

  “I just got distracted, that’s all. Did you find anything?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  Florence’s face was a mask of frustration as they exited the chapel. Another crack of lightning illuminated the compound and the rain began to fall.

  42

  Jenny jerked the night-vision binoculars away and blinked in agony. The fifth-generation model was unavailable to the public, but the lightning had overloaded the device in a stream of ions. One moment her footage depicted Florence emerging from the chapel, a new streak of burst blood vessels in her eye; the next a pitching sea of rubble and a gallop of night sky.

  Jenny had accepted her orders and set off for Addis Ababa by Jeep that morning. But she had no intention of returning to the capital, and after fifteen miles she found a track striking out across the countryside. She drove in a grand circle around Axum, nosing between valleys and precipices before approaching the town from the north. The Jeep was deposited in a ravine, and then she scaled one of the peaks overlooking Axum. She chose a spot from which she could monitor Frank Davis’s hotel, Jake’s guesthouse and the church compound in a single sweep of night-vision goggles. If Waits was about to do something shameful it would be broadcast to the world. Once Jenny was in position she tuned in to the bug she’d attached to Guilherme’s jacket. It wasn’t long before she had heard a conversation that chilled her.

  “We’ll wait until they’ve moved on the church.” It was apparent from Davis’s languid tone that he’d assumed command. “We’ll take whatever they find there, and we’ll get the Istanbul inscription too.”

  “What if they won’t hand over the Istanbul inscription? The bastards might’ve hidden it.” Guilherme had assumed a tone of machismo to impress his new boss – pathetic – but Jenny could also detect nervousness. Last time he had tried his hand at hot work this man had taken a bullet.

  “Charlie’s authorized WB,” said Davis.

  The bug picked up the noise of Guilherme opening and closing his mouth.

  “WB? Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jenny couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  Waterboarding.

  “But I … I didn’t think we used that.”

  “We don’t.” A low laugh. “Officially, anyway. But in the real world it’s damn good at loosening tongues.”

  “You’ve done it before then, have you mate?”

  “Not personally, but I sat in on a session a few years back in Morocco. It was a hell of a lot rarer than the media made out, but it did go on. Are you ok with all this?”

  “Of course.”

  Jenny visualized Guilherme puffing up his chest. When he spoke again his voice had assumed a note of perverted curiosity, like a child about to tear the legs off a beetle.

  “How do we go about it then, mate?”

  “Piss easy,” began Davis. “You get some restraining cords …”

  As he explained the mechanics of waterboarding – the tethering down, the muslin cloth over the face, the instant submission – Jenny’s earliest memory popped into her to mind. Mum had dropped a load of eggs in Waitrose and burst into tears, an uncharacteristic display. Jenny had always assumed Mum must have had something else going on in her life at the time. Why had the recollection come to her now?

  Suddenly she saw it: her first memory was of vulnerability.

  Jenny tried to call Jake with her satellite phone. But she went straight to his voicemail – regular mobile phones couldn’t get signal up here. And suddenly it was too late. Jake and Florence had set off for the compound; there was no time for her to get down the mountain. All she could do was record what happened on the hard drive of her goggles and ensure Waits paid for this outrage with his liberty.

  *

  That was how Jenny Frobisher came to be perched on an Ethiopian mountain in the rain, eyes stinging from the night-vision flash. Tears ran down her cheeks and she wiped them away with her sleeve, determined not to miss a second. Slowly her vision returned. To the naked eye the compound was a halo of bulbs around a black oval, but when she put the goggles to her eyes the scene was thrown into clarity. The two MI6 men were lurking outside the perimeter wall. Frank leaned against the masonry, the bulge of a firearm tucked into his jeans. Guilherme presented a less indolent spectacle as he paced up and down, eyes fixed on his GPS scanner.

  Jenny panned right, the compound passing in a luminous smear of tree and rock. Jake and Florence were heading right into the trap. But a disagreement had broken out. Florence was tugging at his sleeve and urging him in the other direction; Jake was impervious to her appeals as he strode towards the waiting Landcruiser. Jenny swung the goggles left again. Her former colleagues were alert to Jake’s movement. Davis’s body was taut, a leopard scenting impala on the breeze.

  All hell broke loose.

  Florence was the catalyst for the violence, abandoning her protest and dashing for the far side of the compound. For now Davis and Guilherme remained in position, unaware of the archaeologist’s flight. Then Jake sprinted after her and Guilherme detected the movement on his scanner, starting for the ladder. At once the far side of the street was alive with muzzle flashes, the pop of gunfire reaching Jenny a half-second later.

  Guilherme was exposed. One bullet snapped his head to the side, tearing the jaw away. Two more hit him in the solar plexus, slamming him against the wall. Davis bounded towards the Toyota, running low and firing blind. The instant return of fire unsettled the shooters, buying him the dozen paces to his Toyota. He dived through the rear door – it had been left open for Jake – and a moment later the four-by-four was away in a screech of gravel. Tyres blew; glass shattered; the car’s bodywork became a colander of bullet holes. Davis was hit in the upper arm and the vehicle jerked with the impact, beads of red smattered across the windscreen. He kept on driving.

  Jake and Florence clambered out of the far side of the compound, heading for the mountains that encircled the town. Jenny focussed on her former colleague. Guilherme had slid down the wall to assume a foetal position, leaving a snail-track of gore on the masonry behind him. He was mutilated. A tongue dangled; a hand went to where his jaw had been. His fingers fluttered at the maw and went limp.

  43

  The scree was slippery in the wet, sliding downward with each step and sapping Jake’s energy. Rain fell from Florence’s hair in rivulets as she scrambled over boulders. The frozen rock numbed their fingers. When they were half-way to the top Jake paused, trying to plot a course up a mountain that grew only steeper.

  “How did you know they would be waiting for us?” he panted.

  “I had a bad feeling about it.” Florence was gasping for breath too. “That’s why I got distracted in the chapel. I … I can’t explain it better than that.”

  Beneath them flashing lights were winding into town. There was a body outside the compound and a crowd was gathering.

  “That’s twice,” he said. “Everywhere we go people start bloody well killing each other. Who the hell are they?”

  “Not now,” said Florence. “Let’s get over this peak and find somewhere to shelter – our body heat will stand out like a beacon here.”

  The path was impeded by rock-fall and they had to squeeze through gaps between the stone. At one point a boulder the size of a cottage blocked their way; it took ten minutes to retrace their steps. It was 3 a.m. when they reached the summit, to be blasted by a wind carried from the highlands, where ice and snow still lay. Florence collapsed beneath a mushroom-shaped rock protruding from the ridge. Jake slumped beside her, numbed by fatigue. She pressed into him, craving the body heat. Jake felt his eyelids droop …

  *

  He launched himself off the ridge, using the buoyancy of the dream-flier to thrust up through the atmo
sphere, seeking out the boundary between earth and the void. Curiously, pine branches encircled the world. Jake pushed through, emerging from the Narnian wardrobe. Only it wasn’t branches. It was his duvet. He laughed uproariously at the discovery. He had been scrabbling around in bed at his flat in Battersea, worrying his sheets downward.

  Wait.

  Something wasn’t right.

  He wasn’t in Battersea, he hadn’t been in England for ages. In that case where was he? Jake confronted the problem. London, Istanbul – where did they go next? Oh of course, Ethiopia. Addis Ababa – Axum – the Chapel of the Ark …

  Oh Jesus, I’m on the mountain.

  Jake opened his eyes to find rain driving into him horizontally. He didn’t know how long he’d been out – it could have been seconds or an hour. Florence’s head lolled on her neck and she whimpered as he shook her awake.

  “Wha … what? What’s going on?” She focused on him with difficulty. “Where are we?”

  “Come on, we can’t stay here.” Jake’s lips struggled to form the words. “We’ve got to keep moving.”

  As he hauled Florence up he thanked whatever recess of his subconscious had awoken him. They had come within an inch of death from exposure.

  44

  Jake guided Florence by the waist, the pair staggering along the ridge like competitors in a three-legged race. He prayed for a cave, a fissure, anywhere to provide shelter from the stream of frozen air. He’d never dreamed it could get so cold in Africa. They had no matches to light a fire, and he knew from far-off memories of Boy Scouts that rubbing sticks together was a waste of time.

  “Down there!” shouted Florence.

  On the far side of the mountain from Axum a flicker of yellow was visible through the rain.

  “Well spotted,” said Jake, with impressive understatement.

  The pair skidded down the slope, frantic for warmth. As they lost altitude the harshness of the upper reaches gave way to grass that glittered with dew. The village was like the Africa of childhood imagination: circular huts, mud walls and grass roofs. Flaming torches had been dotted about to ward off baboon and hyena, and vegetable gardens had been planted between the hovels. Jake saw nothing that would have been out of place in prehistory.

  There was an explosion of barks as six dogs shot from the enclosure – they were of one bloodline, wiry and longhaired with muzzles of black felt. The pack ran circles around Jake and Florence, howling in anger but unsure what to do. Children arrived next, shaven-headed tots in tartan shawls with knees too big for their legs. They were shocked to see faranji, and Jake was led by the hand into the largest hut.

  The interior had been landscaped into an amphitheatre of mud benches around a fire; the smoke wafted out through vents in the thatch. Faces peered at the newcomers in the flickering light. The women had braided hair and wore dresses of yellow cloth, a cross tattooed on each forehead in green ink. One of them pointed at Florence and circled her face with an open palm, cooing to her neighbour. The archaeologist was unaware of their interest. She stared numbly into the flames, steam rising from her knees.

  A woman in her twenties produced a shallow pan and a handful of red beans which she roasted in a little oil. She crushed them and placed the mulch inside a clay flask with some water. When she set it on the embers the smell of coffee began to fill the hut. As it came to the boil she lit a pinch of frankincense and the two aromas twirled around each other. Then she handed them cups of black coffee, hands darting back like a startled animal as each drink was received. Jake recognized this as an exquisite moment: backpackers spent a lifetime seeking this sort of cultural penetration. Their beds were strips of leather stretched across frames and he soon fell into a dreamless sleep.

  But the night’s events were not over.

  Something else was to happen before daybreak, something strange and elemental. At the stillest moment of the night Jake awoke. The rain was over, although thunder could be heard to the north. The fire had collapsed in on itself leaving a triangle of embers. Snores echoed through the hut – but beside him there was silence.

  Florence had gone.

  After half an hour Jake surrendered to chivalry and went to check on her, creeping out of the hut. He saw her at once: storm-watching again. The violence of the weather system had moved towards the Eritrean border and the horizon crackled with energy as the clouds smashed into each other. That was when the lightning hit, arcing to earth far away in the north-east and holding its form for three seconds, like some crooked finger pointing from the heavens. Jake had never seen lightning like it.

  Except …

  Except on a hillside in northern Italy, when the end of days was foretold by thunder. Florence was kneeling with the same reverence as those Etruscans of his imagination, fixated on the spot where the bolt had struck.

  That was when it hit Jake.

  Florence believes it too.

  45

  Niall Heston was wading through the two thousand emails which had arrived overnight. Had he known how much administration this job involved he might have reconsidered becoming news editor – sometimes it didn’t feel like being a real journalist. And it was rare that he could get his teeth into a story. That said, £200K was a fair old whack. He must be in the top percentile of the profession. A door knock interrupted his reflections.

  “Marvin! Come on in.”

  Marvin Whyte was a short South African with a magician’s goatee who’d risen to be the best-connected security correspondent in the country. He was valuable to the newspaper and he knew it; the last salary negotiation had been a gladiatorial haggle worthy of an Arab merchant, complete with several pretend walkouts.

  “You’re going to like this, boss,” Whyte began. “Jeez, you’re going to like this. I just got tipped off that another MI6 agent has been killed abroad.”

  Heston started forward. “Who gave you the heads-up?”

  The smile of a crocodile whose dinner is assured crept across the reporter’s face. “The Foreign Secretary. We can quote him as a ‘highly placed government source’. The minister is hopping mad – he’s supposed to authorize all overseas interventions. Well, MI6 just went ahead and did whatever it is they wanted to do without asking. And it’s ended in another fatality.” Whyte paused, revelling in the scoop. “The minister dragged the chief of MI6 in for a bollocking, but apparently he denied all knowledge. So at best, we’ve got the head of MI6 losing control of his own organization. At worst – Jeez, Niall, I don’t even know what it means at worst.”

  “Is the killing linked to Medcalf’s death?” Despite her family’s pleas for a private funeral, the church had been surrounded by a host of television cameras.

  “The minister swears he doesn’t know. I for one believe him.”

  “In Istanbul again?”

  “No – Ethiopia, of all places.”

  Heston turned sickly. “Ethiopia?”

  “Yep. Why?”

  “Jake Wolsey’s there. Against my better judgement I let him take a couple of week’s holiday. But he was using it to stand up a hunch about what went down in Istanbul. Bit of a coincidence, no?” Heston exhaled, tapping his forehead with the tips of his fingers. “We need to get Jake on the phone as soon as possible. Check he’s all right. Get him back here, discreetly. And I think we need to give some serious thought to all these wild theories he’s been coming up with.”

  “What’s going on here, boss?”

  “I don’t know for certain. But I’m beginning to suspect Jake might be onto something more sensational than anything this newspaper’s had for a very long time indeed.”

  *

  Two children were keeping watch when the sleeping journalist awoke and sneezed. The youngsters burst into giggles and fled. Sunlight was streaming through the door of the hut, catching on particulate air; from outside came the rhythmic ‘thunk, thunk, thunk’ of cassava being smashed into powder with a staff. Jake’s head was pounding too – it felt like he had nailed a bottle of gin. Yet confusingly,
for the first time in months, he hadn’t touched a drop. He yawned and his lips split open, the reason for his headache coming back to him at once. Gingerly he explored the gash across his temple. His hair was matted with blood. He needed a dentist. Then he stepped outside and thoughts of his injuries vanished.

  The air was clear and he could see for fifty miles. The heavens above seemed huge, a blue dome to humble the skies of England. A cataclysmic landscape fell away beneath his feet: mountain, precipice, escarpment and plateau, each jousting to be highest. The abysses beneath their feet boiled with foliage, mysterious places where waterfalls flowed.

  The woman who had made coffee for them gestured for Jake to sit. She had a bowl of water and began dabbing at his forehead, cajoling him in her high voice.

  “Amesegenallo,” said Jake. ‘Thank you’ was one of the few words he had learned in Amharic. The woman was delighted to hear her own language and she set about her work with new tenderness.

  When Florence ambled out of the hut to join them, Jake did a double take.

  “Your eye!” he exclaimed. “It’s happened again.”

  Another twist of blood vessels had burst to the left of the pupil; Florence caressed her eye socket with her fingertips as she studied her reflection.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,” Jake said. “People get them from time to time …”

  He was interrupted as the woman began jabbering in Amharic and pointing down the hillside, where an Ethiopian man in western clothes was approaching.

  The newcomer questioned the woman in businesslike tones. Then he said to Jake in English, “Bad place to get lost. You were lucky to find this village, I think. Big storm.”

  It transpired the newcomer was a health worker who made a circuit of remote villages treating basic ailments and advising on sanitation. He had been educated in Cairo and spoke English well. The medic put three stitches in Jake’s temple and gave them both a shot of antibiotics.