Fury

by Andy Maslen

  “I was chasing the enemy down a corridor. Urban environment, loads of civilians about. I didn’t have my gun with me, but I’d grabbed the nearest weapon off a wall. It was a Zulu lion spear. Somebody had sawn the shaft down to about four feet, but the blade was about eight inches long, double sided and very sharp. It was pitted with rust, or it may’ve been old blood. I’m not really sure.”

  Eli was leaning forward, eyes wide, lips parted slightly. “Then what?”

  “I was yelling as I ran after him. He was only a kid, really, probably only twelve or thirteen.”

  “Doesn’t matter. They can still be killers. Look at Vietnam. Look at the Palestinians.”

  “I know. I’m not sure this kid was, though. He may just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He ran into a room off the corridor and went to slam the door just as I drew level. The spear was horizontal, pointing at the door, and as he slammed it, the butt was jammed against the opposite wall. The force drove the tip of the spear, the kidon,” Eli grinned, “through the door. I heard a scream from the other side. I pulled the spear out and opened the door. He was standing there clutching his stomach. He took his hands away and I thought his guts were going to spill onto the floor, but it turned out all I’d done was carve a crescent-moon gash into the fleshy part of his palm.” Gabriel paused, wanting to get his timing right. “Luckily the school nurse was a good seamstress and she put a few stitches into his hand and that was that.”

  Eli’s mouth dropped all the way open. “The what?” Then she punched him on the chest. “Shit! You were at school yourself?”

  “Yup. I was thirteen. David Harries was always taunting me, so one day I decided to teach him a lesson.”

  “But you said you didn’t have your gun with you.”

  “That’s right, I didn’t. It was at home. A BSA .177 air pistol. I did take it in a few weeks later, though. Pigeons used to roost on the roof of the chapel block and I decided to help the chaplain out by shooting a few. All that happened was I got expelled. After that, I—”

  Gabriel’s explanation of his tutelage under Master Zhao would have to wait. The door to the office swung open and in walked “Sparrow” Hawke, dressed in black Levis, trainers, black T-shirt and grey marl hoodie.

  “Boss! You don’t look a day over forty!”

  The two men hugged, clapped each other on the back, then stood back from each other. But only for a second. Sparrow turned to Eli. “Captain Johnny Hawke, at your service ma’am.” He executed a graceful bow, then took her right hand in his and pressed her knuckles, briefly, to his lips.

  “Eli Schochat, at yours,” she replied, smiling. Then she turned to Gabriel. “Are they all as good looking as Sparrow here?”

  Gabriel smiled, then wondered at the instant pang of jealousy he felt as she praised Sparrow’s looks. In truth, he was a very handsome man. The extra years since they’d last met had been good to him. The scruffy blond hair was still all there – no shaved head to disguise a receding hairline for him. The blue eyes still had their piercing stare, though softened by fans of crow’s-feet spreading from the outer corners. His gaze had a wariness that hadn’t been there when he and Gabriel had served alongside each other. Yes, you had your second sight that allowed you to anticipate ambushes and booby traps before you blundered into them. But Sparrow had acquired that set of the jaw, that permanently watchful look that marks a man of action after a few years. A look those who pushed pens or flew desks never needed.

  “Oh, much better,” Gabriel said, mustering as much insouciance as he could manage. “We used to call him Quasimodo behind his back.”

  “Hey, boss,” Sparrow said. “There’s someone else I brought with me.”

  Clearly waiting for his cue, a second man rounded the edge of the door and stepped into the room. He was smiling broadly, showing large, even teeth. His face and hands were heavily tanned, and his sandy hair was tipped with almost-white peaks where the sun had bleached it.

  “Hello, boss,” he said, quietly.

  Gabriel looked, just for a second, then smiled. “Hello, Dusty. It’s good to see you again.”

  They embraced, and Gabriel felt a weight lifting from his shoulders. The last time they’d met had been at Smudge’s funeral. This time, at least, there was a chance they could avert any more deaths.

  The four drove into Hay-on-Wye and found a table in The Old Black Lion, a low-ceilinged pub with a flagstone floor, scrubbed wooden tables, and hunting scenes hanging from the walls between swags of dried hops. Their drinks ordered, and the small talk out of the way, the conversation turned to the reason for Eli and Gabriel’s visit.

  Their words were masked by the ping and clatter of a nearby fruit machine, and the soft rock music issuing from a ceiling-mounted speaker. Gabriel spoke.

  “A friend of mine was murdered five days ago. Killed by a sniper.”

  “Where?” Dusty asked.

  “Salisbury. Our village.”

  “Shit!” Dusty and Sparrow said in unison. Then Sparrow continued. “A sniper? How do you know? I mean, why call it that when it was probably some farmer or hunter?”

  “Because,” Gabriel sighed, “I know the shooter. She’s an assassin. Freelance. She left her brass behind with a message on it for me.”

  “Bloody hell. Must have been a short message,” Dusty said.

  “It was. It said, ‘Fury is coming for you, Wolfe.’”

  Eli put her pint down. “Don’t forget the two kisses,” she said.

  “The what?” Sparrow asked.

  “She put two x’s at the end,” Gabriel said. “We’re working on the theory that she fancies me.”

  “Fuck off!” This was Dusty. “Only you, boss – and no offence – but only you would think a hired shooter had the hots for you.”

  Gabriel could feel his cheeks heating up. Nothing like having the piss ripped out of you by your comrades, past or present, to cut you down to size.

  “Either way,” he said, “that’s what she wrote. Carved it in with some sort of pointed tool.”

  “And that’s why we’re here,” Eli said. “If someone’s out to get Gabriel, we need to figure out who. And that message is all we have to go on. Gabriel said you’re the top man for solving puzzles, Sparrow. So what do you think?”

  Sparrow took a pull on his beer then wiped the froth away with the back of his hand.

  “So it said, ‘Fury is coming for you, Wolfe.’ And,” he winked at Eli, “two kisses.”

  “We looked up fury in the dictionary, but it didn’t tell us anything beyond the obvious,” Gabriel said. “Clearly, someone is pissed off at something I’ve done, but, I don’t know, why go to the trouble of writing it? It’s not as if I wouldn’t have worked it out for myself.”

  Sparrow scratched his chin. “It might not be fury as in anger. Or not directly. It might be a fury.”

  “What do you mean a fury? Is a fury a thing, then? Not just an emotion?”

  Falskog, Out

  LONDON

  THE sun was low in the sky, casting a dusty golden light over the cobbled street where Britta sat, still observing the men, vans and, occasionally, young women, arriving and leaving from Torossian’s lockup. Out of boredom as much as any genuine desire to be creative, she’d started paying closer attention to the painting in front of her. Each morning, she was given a new, half-finished artwork by an assistant at the MI5 headquarters building before heading over to Chelsea. The doors to the lockup had been closed for twenty minutes, and she was squinting over the top of the easel while simultaneously dabbing a few dots of burnt umber paint onto a sun-kissed wall in her painting.

  She leaned back to admire her latest brushstrokes – Not bad, Falskog, not exactly Jenny Nyström, but not bad. – when she heard breathing close behind her. She was just about to enter her well-rehearsed routine about being an amateur and wanting peace and quiet when a cold, hard, metal object was pushed, gently but firmly, into the nape of her neck. Freezing, she glanced down at her bag, where the Beretta
lay, tantalisingly out of reach.

  “Don’t even think about it,” a deep, phlegmy voice said. “Stand up.”

  The pistol muzzle was removed from her neck, and she heard the man step back. She stood, keeping her breathing slow and steady, readying herself.

  In her peripheral vision, she caught the blur of an arm reaching down towards her art box. One more second, she thought.

  As the arm withdrew, carrying with it the black shape of her pistol, she pivoted at the hips, leaning over forwards and at the same time kicking out backwards with the sole of her boot. She connected somewhere in the man’s midsection and heard an ooph as her foot knocked the wind out of him. Whirling to deal a disabling blow with the edge of her hand, she stopped mid-strike.

  Beyond the doubled-over assailant, a second man stood, pistol in hand, aimed at her head. Short, slim, dressed in a beautiful deep-blue silk suit and open-necked white shirt. Designer stubble cloaking a square jaw, brown eyes so dark she couldn’t discern the pupils. He smiled, revealing even, white teeth.

  “You are Britta Falskog, and I claim my five pounds,” he said. Then he gestured down the road towards his unit with the pistol. “Over there. Get going.”

  She turned and walked away from her easel, wondering how her cover had been blown. Shit! Sasha Beck. She noticed a loose cobble in front of her and made a minute adjustment to her path so that she was walking straight towards it. Letting her leading toe catch against the raised lip of stone she stumbled and waited for the second gunman to close the gap between them. It was an instinctive reaction and ninety-nine people out of a hundred would act according to their instincts. Her captor was no exception: she heard his steps change rhythm. Judging her timing perfectly, she spun round, intending to close with him and disarm him. Surprise was always a powerful advantage and most shooters were no good with the pistols they carried.

  But Blue Suit had moved back, not forward. He stood there, laughing at her. Then he closed the gap between them and spoke.

  “Nice try.”

  He stepped in again and swung the gun towards her left temple.

  Goddess of the Underworld

  HEREFORD

  “TECHNICALLY, it’s Furies, plural,” Sparrow said. “Alecto, Tisiphone and Megaera. They were chthonic deities who—”

  “Wait,” Dusty said. “Kerthonick whats?”

  Sparrow smiled. Ever the patient teacher. “Chthonic means beneath. They were goddesses of the underworld. The Greek name for them is Erinyes.” He pronounced it e-rin-iz. “Picture a hag with bat’s wings and snakes for hair.”

  “Huh. Sounds like my mother-in-law.”

  Sparrow ignored the second interruption. “Mortals could call on them to avenge crimes committed by children against parents, or the young against the old. The worst punishment they inflicted was tormenting madness. It was reserved for people who had killed a parent. Perhaps whoever hired the shooter sees themselves as a Fury. Out to avenge a crime against authority of some kind.”

  “But I’ve always been authority,” Gabriel said. “At least, I’ve been the one acting on authority. Like you guys. Not committing crimes, going after the ones doing it.”

  “We know that. But this Fury character, he doesn’t see it like that. From where he’s sitting, he’s the innocent victim and, I don’t know why, but he sees you as the perpetrator. Is there anyone you can think of who might have that view of you, however warped?” Sparrow added.

  Gabriel frowned. “I’ve been through this. Not to put too fine a point on it, but anyone who I might’ve pissed off to that degree is dead.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t mean that at all, Sparrow,” Dusty said. “Maybe it’s just some sick bastard who likes to wind people up.”

  Gabriel shook his head. “I don’t think so, Dusty. I have a feeling this is personal. They also had the assassin do a number on my car.”

  “Oh fuck! Not the Maserati? Please tell me they didn’t fuck up that beautiful motor?”

  Gabriel finished his pint. “They did. Royally. Blew it to shit with an RPG.”

  Dusty put his palm to his eyes. “Jesus!” Then, as if realising the loss of his car might figure lower in Gabriel’s mind than that of his friend, he pulled it away again. “Sorry, mate. I mean, your friend was the real crime. It’s just—”

  Gabriel shook his head and smiled ruefully. “Forget it. It’s a fucking nightmare whichever way you look at it. Julia dead. The car. Someone’s out to send me the mother of all messages. If I could figure out who, I could start to do something about it.”

  “Can you tell us who you’ve been going up against recently?” Sparrow asked. “That might give us some sort of a clue.”

  “I wish I could. But I can’t. Simple as. Sorry. But the Fury thing, that he thinks he’s some kind of avenging spirit, that’s a start.”

  Eli spoke. “Hey! Hang on. You keep saying he. What if it’s a woman?”

  “It’s not a sexist thing, Eli,” Sparrow said. “But you play the percentages, don’t you?”

  “Maybe you do. But consider what we know already. Fury isn’t doing their own dirty work. They’re hiring somebody else. Percentages say that makes it more likely to be a woman.”

  “Not necessarily,” Sparrow said. “Could be a white-collar type. Some alpha-male, corporate guy. They’d go down the subcontracting route.”

  “OK, I’ll concede that. But also, the shooter’s a woman. Would a corporate silverback hire a woman over a man? But anyway, that’s not my point. My point is, you said the Furies were female deities. Despite the snakes and weird animal body parts. I think it’s very unlikely that a man, especially a crazy one, would identify with a female character. Much more likely he’d call himself, I don’t know, Samson or Beowulf or Spartacus. You know, some righteous dude with a sword and leather underpants.”

  “Blimey, Sparrow,” Dusty said. “Looks like you got yourself a rival for Squadron brainiac.”

  Eli tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “My mum’s a professor of psychology at the University of Tel Aviv. She read the classics to me for my bedtime stories. She’d be pissed off with me for not spotting the Fury link.”

  “I think you’re both right,” Gabriel said. “I think Fury is a woman. And I think she sees herself as punishing me for some imagined transgression against the established order of things.”

  While Gabriel, Eli, Dusty and Sparrow debated the possible identity of Fury, Sasha Beck lay back in a deep bubble bath at a nearby hotel. The water smelled of rose petals, courtesy of a few drops from a bottle labelled Attar of Roses that stood on the corner of the claw-foot tub. Her phone lay on a cork-topped bench seat by the side of the bath. Next to it was a cut-glass tumbler of gin and tonic, garnished with five, blue-black juniper berries, two slices of lime, and a single kaffir lime leaf.

  The phone was set to speaker and as she sipped her drink, she cocked her head towards it, the better to hear the conversation in The Old Black Lion.

  Through the bathroom door she could, if she so chose, see her weapon for the contract. It was leaning against the wardrobe, an antique tallboy in dark, smoke-stained wood with a mirror inside the door. The rest of her kit was laid out on the desk between the desk phone and the wooden stand of complimentary stationery emblazoned with the hotel’s logo.

  The drinkers in the pub were getting up to leave. She heard Gabriel say he was going to think about who might fit the crude profile of Fury they’d concocted.

  “Good luck with that, darling,” she said to the phone; then she laughed. “You could try for a million years and you wouldn’t even come close.”

  She was probably right to feel superior. After all, she was working for a dead woman.

  She drained her drink, straining out the ice and the various bits and pieces of vegetation with her small, neat, front teeth. Her skin was pink from the hot water, and slippery with rose-scented foam.

  Over the years, she had assumed a variety of identities for her contracts, but the outfit she’d laid out on
the bed for this one had very little to do with the camouflage or the all-black, ninja-style rigs she usually favoured. But given the target, she thought it would work perfectly. She dressed carefully, as always, then checked her weapons.

  At the base, after the thirty-minute stroll back, Gabriel and Eli shook hands with the two SAS men.

  “What are you up to now?” Sparrow asked Dusty. “Want to hit the gym?”

  “Nah, mate. Going to my room to chill out. I’m working on a new tune.”

  Sasha Beck smiled as she listened in to the quartet saying their goodbyes, then switched off the app monitoring Gabriel’s phone.

  The boiler suit she was wearing was breathable, but still felt hot over her costume. It was a readily available item more often purchased by painters and decorators. She was crouching in a patch of scrub on the northwestern tip of the base, looking up at the ten-foot chain-link fence and its spiral topping of razor wire. As she wasn’t planning on going over, but through, the wire was merely interesting rather than challenging.

  First, though, she needed to meet her first date of the evening. A man she had not been commissioned to remove, but who stood, literally, between her and her intended target.

  He was attached to the military police who patrolled the base. His name was Matt Reynolds, though he was known on base as Baskerville. On meeting him on his rounds, or at the kennels, it wasn’t hard to see the origins of his nickname.

  In a nondescript blockhouse backing onto the guard house, with a concrete floor and play breeze-block walls, lived his dogs: Molly, Kika, Hengist, and Horsa, who were brothers, Bondi, Sheba, Tiny (who wasn’t), and Duke. Apart from Duke, a Doberman pinscher, and Kika, a Rottweiler, the dogs were all German shepherds. They would be unlikely to win prizes at the local dog show, having none of the charm or striking black-and-tan colour schemes of their more domesticated cousins. These were war dogs, pure and simple. They’d all done stints on the battlefield, but had found a permanent home at Credenhill, protecting and serving the men and women who worked there.