Foretold by Thunder: A Thriller

by Edward M. Davey

  An elderly woman hobbled by pushing a pram full of shopping, a remnant of Cockney Islington. She was overtaken by a shaven-headed Hare Krisha devotee in orange robes, and Jenny waited for them to pass.

  “I wouldn’t exactly ‘seduce’ him,” she said. “That’s not the right word. But if he’s susceptible to my charms – it might give us an ‘in’.”

  “Well, you could try that I suppose …”

  Jenny glanced at Jake. Was that a flush of jealousy she spied on his cheeks? She smiled to herself, and not unkindly.

  *

  Waits made it through the one-way system to emerge at the southern end of Caledonian Road. Jake and Jenny were half a mile away, ambling towards the canal bridge.

  “Frank, my boy …” The spymaster’s voice was terse, like someone who knows vast erotic pleasure might be on the cards. “Where are you now, Frank?”

  “Still circling round,” Davis replied through gritted teeth. “Heading north, running parallel to you. I should come out ahead of the targets in forty-five seconds.”

  “Faster please, if you’d be so kind.”

  The request was answered by the roar of Davis’s engine, a cacophony of horns.

  *

  Jenny’s suggestion was not a palatable one. Jake recalled Tages’s tomb, that picnic where for one short hour they’d been able to forget about everything going on around them. It had only been a look from her – and he was inept at interpreting the signals of the fairer sex. Yet he could have sworn something was there, something so unlike Florence’s avaricious advances.

  Missed opportunities, always the missed opportunities.

  “I’m not going to sleep with him, for God’s sake,” said Jenny. “But it might give me a persuasive edge. Make him hear me out at least. I don’t deny it’s a high risk strategy.”

  Jake considered his time in Istanbul. Florence had led him on something chronic when she thought he was holding back Britton’s notes. And when the archaeologist’s wiles were at their height he’d have told her his innermost secrets and regrets.

  “How would it work?” he said.

  “First we’d need to arrange the bump.”

  “What’s a ‘bump’?”

  There was a lull in the traffic as they crossed the canal bridge. The flat was in sight.

  A Ford Transit pulled into the road ahead.

  75

  The van accelerated, blue lights flickering in its windscreen, airborne as it hit a speed bump. Jake heard the wail of pistons and the squeal of a turbocharger behind him; he turned to see that same BMW approaching at sixty miles per hour. Then he recognized the driver. There was nowhere to go, so they waited on the canal bridge like lemons as the claws of the pincer slid shut. The vehicles skidded to a halt in unison, penning them in against the barrier.

  “My old dears,” cried Waits, manoeuvring himself from the car with the grace of a sugar plum fairy. “Welcome back.”

  Davis grinned at Jake and raised his eyebrows. “Third time lucky, eh, fella?”

  The journalist peered over the bridge. It was a cold day and the surface of the water had an oily sheen to it.

  “Jennifer Frobisher, as I live and breathe,” said the spymaster, clapping his hands together. “Tut, tut, tut.”

  “Charlie,” she managed, and her voice was a rasp of fear. “I – I’m sorry, Charlie. I never meant …”

  “And Mr Wolsey,” Waits interrupted, fixing Jake with piggy black eyes. “We didn’t get the chance to do formal introductions in Rome.”

  Davis opened the slide door of the Transit; the interior was panelled in steel and Jake shivered suddenly.

  “What are you waiting for?” Davis gestured to the van with the barrel of a gun. “In you get, then.”

  By way of reply Jenny popped her backside onto the railing of the bridge and perched there for a moment. Then she toppled over backwards into space.

  For several seconds the three men looked at each other, unable to comprehend what had happened. Jake heard it first: the shout of annoyance, a chugging noise that emanated from under the bridge. Suddenly he understood. He threw himself over the edge too, tumbling into the narrowboat’s back cab as it cleared the crossing. The skipper was sent sprawling into the boat, his breath hot on Jake’s face as the pair disentangled themselves.

  “Just what the hell do you two think you’re playing at?”

  It was too late for the gunmen to jump, so they dashed for the tow path. The narrowboat ploughed on at three knots and Davis jogged alongside, weighing up the distance, preparing to leap.

  “Take out the engine,” Waits ordered.

  At once the air was full of gunshots, pummelling through the rear of the boat until black smoke began pouring from the engine. Jake scrambled into the cabin where Jenny cowered from the bombardment, white-faced and panting. A log stove cracked and tinkled.

  “What now?” shouted Jake.

  “Don’t ask me.”

  The chug of the engine had ceased but the boat’s momentum carried it on, and with no one at the tiller it veered to port, away from the towpath. Feet turned to inches; Jake realized what was about to happen moments before it did. The narrowboat crashed into the mooring with a boom, throwing Jenny onto her hands and knees. Every bulb in the boat flickered and sparks flew up the hull as it screeched along the concrete. The vessel came grinding to a halt. The smell of diesel filled the cabin. Davis’s crosshairs tracked back and forth across the portholes, straining for a glimpse of person.

  He felt a touch on his forearm.

  “I think you’d better put the gun away,” said Waits.

  “Why?” Davis panted. “I can wade …”

  Waits pointed at the glass-and-steel building under which the narrowboat had come to rest. Smartly-dressed people gathered at the windows, fumbling for mobiles.

  “That’s the offices of the Guardian,” he said. “I suggest we make ourselves scarce before they find someone with a decent camera …”

  Jake watched their pursuers turn and flee. At first he couldn’t work it out. But then a man with a notepad dashed along the bank and he realized where they were. He began to laugh.

  *

  As he strode through Hackney that evening Luke McDonagh was smiling. It had been a scary couple of days, but he felt safe enough. Nobody would really hurt them, not with a national newspaper on their side. And earlier Jake had paid him £2,500 – not bad, for what had been much less work than he’d let on. That explained his presence in east London. He was about to pick up an ounce of ‘skunk’ cannabis, and then he would stay up all night indulging the second of his vices: an online fantasy computer game. This single job would allow him to withdraw from the real world into his infinitely-preferable other life for several weeks.

  Footsteps interrupted McDonagh’s thoughts, approaching him from behind. The journalist glanced about, cursing his dealer’s nocturnal hours – he needed to watch his back around here, especially with a hundred and fifty pounds in his pocket. But when he saw the man who was following him he relaxed. The guy looked sporty and respectable; a PE teacher, perhaps. The patch of snow-white in the stranger’s hair shone orange in the streetlight. McDonagh’s thoughts returned to the night of gaming that lay ahead.

  A cord was around his throat.

  The journalist’s hands went to the garrotte, but his fingers were flabby and he couldn’t get any purchase. The cord tightened. He tried to shout but no air would come out. The cord tightened. Tightened again. McDonagh sank to his knees, eyes bulging. The cord tightened. Not a word had been said. The cord tightened again and now McDonagh felt a knee between his shoulder blades. He blacked out for a few seconds, then he was back in the road. The cord tightened once more and suddenly he saw whorls of red and blue, a kaleidoscope of colour brought to the boil.

  He realized he was dying.

  The last thing that went through Luke McDonagh’s mind was some abstract thought about the online game: it was like he’d been downloaded into it. Before his eyes the grap
hics became a million points of light, each linked to all the others by fronds of energy, the web shimmering all around him in a final display of phantasmagorical beauty.

  Then there was only darkness.

  *

  Davis hauled the corpse up from the pavement and heaved a dead arm over his shoulder, as if McDonagh was a drunk and he the Good Samaritan. He glanced at the watch on the stiff’s wrist. It would take half an hour to get to Epping Forest at this time; there was a shovel in the back of the van. He was doing it the old fashioned way. The East End way.

  He dumped his load in the vehicle and slid the door shut, the satiated smile of the hyena that has just dined spread across his face. One by one he was eliminating every tie between MI6 and the Disciplina Etrusca. He would finish up with the journalist and that beautiful bitch Frobisher. Then when the PM realized what the Disciplina could do he would be untouchable. There would be a bonus; perhaps he could retire. Then again, maybe not. Not while he was having such fun at the office.

  76

  Pace, pace, pace, pace. The paving slabs flew beneath de Clerk’s feet as he ratcheted up the tempo, smiling as his legs took the burn. He emerged by the Oval Cricket Ground. It was dawn and the sky behind the stadium was fractured into lilac and blue, like torn strips of paper pasted across the heavens. At this hour a few chancers lurked by the stadium, but they left the runner alone. Six miles so far, and he had barely broken a sweat.

  There wasn’t much in de Clerk’s life apart from work and computers, but he did have his fitness. It took discipline to shoehorn a jog into a twenty-hour working day; yet as he ran the spook felt a relaxation sleep could not achieve. His flat was nearby and it would be a short stroll to Vauxhall for his shift.

  A scream interrupted his trance.

  De Clerk paused, jogging on the spot. And there it was again, echoing from a nearby cul-de-sac. The shady characters had moved on; the council estate was impassive; the only witnesses were the seagulls, circling the Kennington gasworks.

  “Help me! Please! Somebody!”

  De Clerk was wearing running shorts. His phone was in the flat. He had to deal with this alone. He rounded the corner in a spurt of acceleration – to find himself in a row of graffiti-strewn lockups. There were no streetlights, but through the gloaming de Clerk could make out two men pinning a woman against a garage door. They were diminutive, teenagers perhaps. Youths stabbed each other on a daily basis in London; this was dangerous. But he had to do something.

  “Leave her alone,” he shouted.

  The assailants turned and de Clerk saw they were not teenagers, but Chinese guys in their thirties, tattooed and wiry and mean.

  Oh, flip.

  But when de Clerk looked at their victim his jaw dropped: it was Jenny Frobisher.

  “Edwin? Edwin! What are you doing here?”

  One of her assailants stepped forward. “You. Go!”

  De Clerk knew enough about the Etruscan operation to recognize this for what it was: a Chinese snatch squad.

  “Please …” begged Jenny. “Help me, Edwin.”

  His heart twanged to see her, but rather she was in a British jail than a prisoner of the Chinese Embassy. Jenny was a tough cookie, but de Clerk doubted she could withstand torture. She had gone rogue and it was his duty to bring her in.

  “Go,” the man commanded a second time. A dagger was in his hand; the blade shone dully in the immature light.

  De Clerk stood his ground. This was it.

  All those years of training and now it was really happening. He cut a nerdy figure with his pale skin and wispy hair, a bulbous head that somehow recalled a clove of garlic. But he was very fit. And like many MI6 officers he’d been trained in close combat – krav maga, the Israeli system. There were two of them, and they had a chance.

  The violence, when it came, was swift and invigorating.

  Both men advanced on de Clerk, daggers extended. Jenny saw her chance and charged one of the knifemen, leaping on his back and grabbing him by the throat. The pair went to ground, grappling for the blade – now de Clerk could fight one attacker alone. He had to defeat his opponent before Jenny was overpowered, before it was two on one again.

  The pair circled each other testily. The knifeman held his weapon pointing downwards, thumb on the hilt, jabbing out like a stinging insect. De Clerk assumed his knife stance. He stood sideways on, one elbow raised to protect the face and eyes, the other arm covering his exposed armpit, gateway to the chest. At each thrust of the blade de Clerk leaped backward; the evasions riled the knifeman and he hissed and spat. Suddenly he lunged for de Clerk’s throat with a downward motion, as if wielding an ice pick. It was the opening the spy had been waiting for. He sidestepped and grabbed the knifeman by the wrist. In the same movement he swung his left arm into his opponent’s jaw, hard, using the outside-lower forearm where the bone is shaped like the shaft of a hammer. He grabbed the knifeman by the hair, pulling his head in a downward arc. Then he kneed him in the face.

  Now De Clerk had him by the hair with one hand, by the wrist with his other – like he was riding a Harley Davidson. The arm with the knife was turned inside out, elbow skyward. His attacker was bent double, dazed, facing the ground. The move had gone exactly as it did in training and de Clerk experienced an instant of wonder that krav maga worked in real life. He let go of the man’s head and struck him just above the elbow, where the nerves are exposed. Again he used the bone of the forearm, clenching his fist to increase the power. It must have been agony – but still the knifeman clung on to his weapon. De Clerk began to pull the man’s wrist upward, applying pressure on the spot above the elbow. He was the stronger man, he could feel it; the knifeman was yielding, yelping in pain. He increased the pressure. Much more of this and the arm would break at the elbow.

  Bang!

  De Clerk saw points of light that vanished when he tried to focus on them. He had been hooked in the jaw. Somehow he kept the knife locked. The points of light dissipated. His attacker tried another hook. De Clerk blocked, just about. Another hook, another block. It was stalemate.

  The pair rotated on the spot like Siamese twins at the tango, the blade trembling in its vice.

  De Clerk saw how he could win.

  He had to outman his opponent, use his superior strength and size. He leaned into the arm-lock, straining every sinew to it, his opponent’s wrist bent to breaking point.

  “Aaaaah,” said the knifeman. “Aaaaah ….”

  The dagger tinkled across the tarmac. The Chinese agent tore himself from de Clerk’s lock, diving after the weapon. His fingers closed on the hilt. But he had misjudged the distance between them; de Clerk was closing in fast. The knifeman’s head turned and there was panic in his eyes as he realized he was about to be kicked in the face. De Clerk gave it everything. The knifeman was knocked into oblivion, flying flat on his back with his lips twitching. The second agent prepared to charge. Jenny was slumped behind him. De Clerk seized the abandoned blade, and for the second time he danced that wary dance.

  I’m going to have to kill this man.

  The realization flooded through de Clerk’s brain, drowning out the cold morning air and the cries of the seagulls above. The only thing left was the face of his foe – bobbing up and down, isolated in his vision, as though a high aperture lens had blurred the world around it.

  There was movement behind the knifeman.

  Jenny was on her feet – bloodied but closing on her intended victim with alacrity – and before he could react she brought a brick down on his head with a dismal crack. The agent’s eyes rolled back into his skull, he fell to the ground and was still.

  “There may be more of them,” Jenny gasped. “We need to get off the street.”

  “My place,” de Clerk said. “It’s round the next corner. We can shelter there while we” – and the realization he had to detain her throbbed in his head – “while we work out what to do.”

  They dashed up the path of his flat, de Clerk fumbled a key into the lock
and the door closed behind them, shutting out the pale blue world and all the imagined enemies flitting through it.

  *

  For the men de Clerk fought weren’t Chinese agents. They were the managers of the Camden martial arts club where Jenny studied wing chun. When she offered them a grand each for their assistance they were happy to play along with her deception. Jenny knew de Clerk was a jogger, she knew where he lived, and she knew he was a creature of routine. She had staked out his house until she learned his route and then chosen a spot for the theatrics. One of the people loitering by The Oval had been Jake, on the phone to Jenny to tell her when to scream. The daggers were blunt. And the two martial artists could control the ebb and flow of a fight as if turning a tap. For authenticity de Clerk got a blow to the head, but they had let him triumph, as a kitten overpowers a human hand. Jenny felt a touch of professional pride at her chicanery as she was led into de Clerk’s flat.

  ‘The bump’ had gone perfectly.

  77

  The key to socially engineering people is to get them on your side. Make them like you, and if they can help you they might, even when it flies against reason. With de Clerk that battle was half-won before it began. But Jenny was up against years of training and role-play. That was why the bump was necessary: his ‘saving’ her had nurtured the fertility of the emotional ground exponentially.

  Jenny could see how effective it had been as de Clerk bumbled around his kitchen, looking for something to occupy himself with. Like a sommelier of human sentiment she identified his emotions. Longing, protectiveness, and … now, what was that last essence? Pride, perhaps. Yes, that was it: vanity at this newfound machismo. The wave of emotion she had unleashed broke against the walls of training and duty.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “And I won’t try and talk you out of it – you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. But before I start running can we call a truce for a few minutes. My nose …”