Foretold by Thunder

by Edward M. Davey

  “That one would’ve stood higher than the tallest obelisk in Egypt,” said Florence. “To this day nobody knows how they got it to stand vertical.”

  Jake channelled Shelley. “Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works and despair! Nothing remains.”

  “No nation lives forever,” said Florence quietly. “All that lives must die.”

  Jake leaned against the broken monolith and gave her a loaded look. “The imperial edifice?”

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  The sun had slouched low in the sky by the time they finished searching the stele field. Damp patches emanated from Jake’s armpits and the dust had turned his hair strawberry-blond. But not a trace of Etruscan could be found.

  “There’s nothing here,” said Florence.

  “Then let’s see what we came here to see.” Jake grinned, his teeth white behind the mask of dirt. “The Ark of the Covenant.”

  *

  All the wretchedness of humanity was awaiting them at Ethiopia’s holiest site. There was a man with no nose, a boy with no hands or feet, an elderly woman with mushroom-like protrusions on her face. A suspension of sweat and decomposition was in the air – the smell of poverty – and culture shock hit Jake like a breezeblock to the head. It was like nothing he’d ever seen before. Not in Addis; not even in India. Beggars clawed at his arms as he muscled through the press and there were shouts of ‘faranji’, foreigner. Jake looked at the ground, at the litter and the faeces. A phrase came to mind. In tatters. The worst of medieval London must have been like this. He offered the mushroom woman a banknote; her tongue glistened as she grasped for it and the general cry for money became more persistent. He batted a little hand away from his pocket as they made it to the gate.

  Inside the compound the noise fell away: the desperate were not allowed in. The trees were ablaze with violet blossom and a vermilion bird threaded its song around the trunks. The late afternoon sun cast the world orange and the air was warm and still. An elderly monk wearing saffron robes and a fez leaned on his prayer stick, one foot dangling above the ground as he regarded them through cataract-ridden eyes. At first Jake wondered if the holy man could see them. But when the reporter held his hands together as if in prayer the monk’s face contorted into a toothless smile. Then he mumbled something in Amharic and pointed at a man in a frayed suit who came skipping towards them.

  The newcomer beamed, revealing huge gums. “I am guide.”

  The pair were led to a church with battlements and irregular walls. Little light penetrated the interior, which was imbued with the smell of parchment and desiccated wood.

  “This place has to be a thousand years old if it’s a day,” said Florence.

  Wooden panels cordoned off the inner sanctum, a mural of three bearded men spread across the screen: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The faces glowered at Jake as if sensing his intentions.

  “The Ark is kept inside?” Florence’s words bounced about the basilica.

  But the guide shook his head, taking her by the elbow and leading her back into the sunlight. “Ark is here, madam.”

  Jake had to laugh. The purported inheritance of Solomon and David had been stashed in a tiny modern chapel, lime green with an egg-shell blue pimple of a dome perched on top. The garden was a riot of nature; weeds proliferated and a column of termites snaked towards their mound.

  “The Ark of the Covenant is kept there?” asked Florence.

  The guide nodded, emotion welling in his eyes.

  “It fits with Eusebius,” said Jake. “The Axumite steles are the imperial edifice – and the Ark would always have been kept in a ‘Church of God’.”

  Florence glanced around. “Only these two old-timers here,” she said. “Do we go for it?”

  Jake stroked the stubble on his cheeks as he considered it. “I don’t know. It feels wrong somehow – this is their sacred place.”

  “We’re not going to steal anything,” said Florence. “We’ll take a few photos and do a rubbing. And anyway … aren’t you curious? We may even find ourselves looking at the Ark of the Covenant. The chest that contains the tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed by God. Just think of it!”

  Jake felt a welt of excitement. “Ok, ok,” he said. “Of course we’re going in there. But I’m not going to just leg it through the door. The old boys will raise hell. We need to be cuter than that. It’s nearly full moon, right?”

  Florence frowned. “Not sure – why do you ask?”

  “I’ve just had a bit of an idea …”

  39

  Jenny had been to “proper” Africa twice. In Nigeria she had bribed an informant in the Islamist group Boko Haram, and she had been briefly deployed to Somalia on account of the Al-Shabab insurgency. Ethiopia was an altogether more peaceful undertaking, and Jenny smiled as she took in the pace of the life from her hotel balcony. Dawn had brought a blanket of cloud to Axum; the rains were supposed to be months away and there was palpable excitement at a drink for the crops. For the first time in days she began to relax.

  There was a knock on her door. Frank Davis was the replacement for Medcalf, whose body had just been released to her family in Belfast. Davis’s face was handsome and hard with a suggestion of acne scarring, his hair steely-black but for a white pebble. Jenny could tell he was seasoned. That morning a hessian sack blowing down the street had briefly caught her attention. Davis had his back turned to the bag, but he’d noticed her eye-movement. He was facing the sack at once, one hand already in his jacket. Yet it was more of a drift than a jerk, a natural motion. The reflex had been entirely subconscious and he’d resumed conversation without missing a beat.

  “I thought you should know they’re up to something,” Davis said. “Wolsey just told Chung they’ll wait until 2 a.m. before going back to that chapel they were in earlier.”

  “Not your standard sightseeing hour, is it?”

  Davis looked away, unsmiling. “Will you tell Charlie or shall I?”

  There was something familiar in the way he pronounced her handler’s name that troubled Jenny.

  “Leave it to me,” she said, reaching for her phone.

  Waits clucked as he considered the development. “Are you sure they don’t mean 2 a.m. by the Ethiopian clock? That would be a perfectly normal time to visit.”

  Trust him to be informed about the detail on the ground. Ethiopians count the hours from sunrise rather than midnight – so 2 a.m. by the Abyssinian reading of the hands was 8 a.m. to everyone else.

  “They’ve been working by the European clock,” said Jenny. “Don’t worry, we’ll be there. I’ll let you know what happens right away.”

  Waits cleared his throat. “No, you won’t, actually.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I said, no, you won’t. You’re coming back to London.”

  Jenny’s lips parted. “But I’ve only just got here.”

  “Unfortunately Angela wants you back on the Nottingham AQ case. Terrible nuisance, but it can’t be helped.”

  He was lying, she was certain of it. Angela would be informed of her need for Jennifer Frobisher within the hour.

  “You’re in demand, my dear,” Waits was cooing. “You should be flattered …”

  *

  Waits hung up and inspected his telephone, as if the device itself displeased him.

  “More problems?” said Evelyn Parr.

  “Frobisher was the wrong choice,” he said. “We misjudged her, I’m afraid. She’s proved to have a few too many scruples. And she’s thinking too much.”

  Parr ran a hand through silvery hair. “It’s going to be tough for Frank and Alexander with her gone,” she said. “And we’re not getting anyone else involved. In all the years SIS have been across this there have never been more than three of us on the case. Now it’s me, you, Frank of course – plus Jenny, Edwin and Alexander.” She ticked the names off on her fingers; Medcalf was not enumerated. “I know they’re all discreet, but really, Char
lie, I’m getting jumpy.”

  “In all these years we’ve never had such a fluid situation,” he said. “The moment Britton blabbed to Wolsey we had an unprecedented scenario on our hands. There was no choice but to widen the cabal.” He sighed. “Anyway, tonight we put a stop to this charade. It’s time to do what we should’ve done a long time ago.”

  “What we should’ve done a long time ago was bring Wolsey into the fold,” said Parr. “Sign him up or pay him off. As it is we’ve got one agent dead, another so worked up she’s unsafe and a stinking mess left behind in Istanbul. Plus there’s an entirely new inscription out there in God-knows-who’s hands. Because it’s certainly not in ours.”

  “Frank will extract the Istanbul inscription tonight,” said Waits in a reasonable voice. “By hook or by crook. And Alexander Guilherme’s a good boy. I should think he’s got the ruthless streak too, when it comes to it.”

  “I worry about Frobisher. She’s not stable. Latest reports from the hospital are that her mother’s on the way out too. What if she does something rash?”

  “Oh, don’t be so silly,” said Waits. “She’s proved a bit more, ah, passionate than we’d hoped. But she’s a professional. Her record’s intact, officially. She’s got a whole career to lose.”

  *

  Jenny’s mind churned over the phone call. Her bag remained unpacked. Something she had just told Waits had precipitated this.

  “You all right there?” Guilherme had returned from watching duties, one shoulder enlarged by the bandages under his jacket.

  “They’re sending me back to London.”

  “No!” His outrage was convincing. “Why?”

  “Apparently I’m needed on another case.”

  Guilherme looked appropriately shocked. “I just want you to know, I think you’ve played a blinder on this operation, Jenny. I’ll say as much to Charlie.”

  “Thanks.” She hesitated. “Alexander?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is there anything you’re not telling me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is Charlie planning something tonight?”

  There was a jolt. A widening of the eyes, though he recovered in a second.

  “Not that I know about,” he said, looking her straight in the eye.

  “Right. Well … I’d better get packing.”

  Jenny felt nauseous as she piled her possessions into a suitcase. Something evil was happening, she could sense it. Two faces came to her then. First Jess Medcalf, grinning through the streaked make-up.

  When this job’s over let’s go on the lash. Just me and you.

  The second was that of her mother.

  Jenny remembered their last conversation. “Do you remember when I was a little girl?” she’d asked. “How you were always trying to get me interested in painting and art? But all I wanted to do was play cops and robbers.”

  Mum had smiled.

  You only wanted to be one of the goodies …

  A third face came to her then: Wolsey. No, not ‘Wolsey’: Jake. Call him by his first name, for Christ’s sake. She recalled him in the Agya Sophia. Taking the photos, rushing to return that mitten. At the time she’d thought the journalist gormless, but thinking back it was a kind gesture. Having followed him for three weeks she was sure of it. Jake was a good man.

  The sports bag they’d collected from the Addis embassy was under the bed. From inside she selected three objects: a pair of night-vision goggles, an automatic pistol and a pinhead bug which could be subtly attached to a man’s coat. After a moment’s thought she replaced the gun. That was going too far. Then she went to say her goodbyes.

  40

  The old monk stirred in his bed. He had lived a long life, praise be, but the Lord was testing him in his dotage. It hurt when he moved nowadays, darts of agony pinging in his joints. And tonight they were playing up more than usual. There was only one thing for it: a slug of the sweet Gonder wine that was his only indulgence. The monk grinned and licked his lips.

  Then he forgot about the wine.

  The window of the chapel was illuminated. But this was no torchlight – there was something unsullied about the luminosity. The holy man strained to make sense of the vision; curse it, the world grew more blurred with every day. An American woman had told him there was something growing on his eyes that could be fixed by doctors. Yet the cure would cost more than he received as alms in five years, and besides, he knew the truth. He had been given a trial of faith, and this he would overcome. Even as the monk watched, the evanescence faded. He heaved himself up with a prayer stick, chuckling at his own senility.

  Yet this was no figment of his imagination. The radiance was back, stronger this time, the window dappled with falling starlight. The holy man glanced at the holy of holies and began a series of obeisances – bowing and crossing himself, lifting one leg, murmuring in Ge’ez. Then he hobbled to the door of the chapel and peered outside. The light enveloped his eyes completely, cascading down upon him in waves. It occurred to him that he had died. Or, praise be, it was a miracle.

  The eyes of the blind shall be opened.

  The ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.

  The starlight dissipated and with disappointment the monk realized the world was still filmy, as if impure glass separated him from the night. Then he saw the patch of light hovering between his feet. But when he looked at it the light zoomed off across the dirt, eddying away towards the ancient church. The holy man cried out, dropping his prayer stick and hobbling after it. The beam reached the church, rose up the walls, came to rest on the Messiah himself. Blood dripped from Christ’s feet, oozed from the wound in his side, trickled from both hands. The monk threw himself to earth.

  Stigmata.

  In that moment the aged one knew true beauty.

  *

  The moon seemed bigger up here in the mountains and the air was thin, with fewer particles to adulterate its glow. Jake and Florence had mirrors angled to the lunar surface, and the distillation of moonlight they had brewed converged on the statue in a nimbus of white. The monk was in ecstasies, pressing his forehead into the earth, jabbering in that arcane language. By Jake’s side lay two empty bottles: wine that had become the blood of Christ. The journalist left Florence to maintain the illuminations and stole towards the chapel.

  It was a dreamlike moment, dashing up the overgrown path and heaving the door aside to enter the forbidden place. The room was clogged with the holy man’s personal effects – rags, empty wine bottles, a dozen prayer sticks leaning against the wall. Jake felt a shadow of guilt. They had played a shabby trick on an old man.

  The chapel was bisected by a wooden wall, diabolic imagery swarming across it. A purple devil whipped a naked man strung up by his hands; another demon led a white-clad figure into the desert by the chin. The angels above were winged heads with Afro-style hair, peeping down at the hellions in their frozen dance. A velvet curtain hung over a door in the partition, and Jake paused to compose himself. Through that wooden screen might lie the Book of Thunder, guarded for more than a thousand years. Or the Ark of the Covenant, though it was insane to think it.

  As Jake squeezed through the aperture his throat tightened.

  A stone chest stood in the middle of the chamber.

  41

  Jake was not a religious man, but the enormity of what he was looking at affected him more than he had anticipated. He took two steps towards the chest – and the wonder evaporated. The chest was inscribed in Ge’ez, and the stylized angels were identical to those in the murals outside. The Ark was a medieval fraud. But when Jake heaved open the lid he saw gold. There were emerald-studded crucifixes, bejewelled goblets, a gold-handled scimitar and an umbrella of purple felt with gold brocade worked across it. The artefacts sat on a sea of coinage sourced from across the breadth of the Old World. Jake recognized a Tudor sovereign of Henry VII – these went for £25,000 at Sotheby’s. This was the treasure of the House of Selassie, dumped here with one senile monk stand
ing guard. It boggled the mind. Jake scoured the hoard for Etruscan, vainly seeking a foreign character amid the Ge’ez inscribed upon the chest. He was too engrossed to hear the far-off peal of thunder.

  Nor did he hear the door open.

  The guardian was back inside the chapel; Jake registered him too late. The holy man flew at the journalist with astonishing speed, smiting him across the face with a prayer stick. Jake’s lips exploded. He heard a tooth splinter. In his panic he had become wedged in the doorway, and as he struggled the monk seized another prayer stick, taking aim again. The old man’s arthritis was forgotten – every muscle from his deltoid to his dorsi was working towards destruction. Jake took the second blow on his forehead with a crack that made the room shudder. But mercy had deserted the monk. He was filled only with righteous fury at this infidel who had dared gaze upon the Ark. The holy man reached for a brass crucifix, sending it zinging across the chapel like a Frisbee. The projectile struck Jake’s temple and a flap of skin fell open. Florence appeared in the antechamber and the monk flew at her like a bat, sinking his teeth into her throat.

  “Get him off me!” she shrieked. “Please get him off me!”

  But the monk’s rage had imparted him a wiry strength, and Florence was unable to claw him away. The holy man had clenched his jaw shut, tendons protruding from his neck. Jake used the hiatus in his assault to wriggle free of the door. He crossed the room in two strides and plucked the monk off Florence – the old man was light as a wishbone. The monk’s legs pedalled the air as Jake held him by the armpits and he clawed at the journalist’s face.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he shouted.

  “But what are we going to do with him?”

  Jake’s answer was to bundle the old man through the wooden screen, slam the door shut and wedge it with a prayer stick. At once a beating arose from the holy of holies, accompanied by a litany of curses.

  “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.