Thunder God

CHAPTER TWENTY

Eden’s private jet continued its climb until it hit thirty-five thousand feet and leveled out for the duration of the flight. Joe Hawke stretched his arms and yawned loudly, and then glanced at Han who was sleeping peacefully on the other side of the aircraft, holding a small box he had insisted on bringing with him. Han had said they already had the missing chapter, but like all the others, Hawke had no idea what that meant.

Since Poseidon he had learned to put his trust in others, but to Hawke, none of it made any sense at all. The murdered man in Paris, the stolen Tesla machine in the Pacific, the cryptic Shaolin monk beside him. Sometimes he thought all of this might be just one long dream that could turn into his worst nightmare at any moment.

He thought about Zaugg and now Sheng, desperately seeking the chance to cheat death and live forever. It was in defiance of everything nature stood for, yet the idea of it had intoxicated great men like Khan and many others through history like a lethal poison, warping their minds and driving them insane.

Nothing would ever change man’s capacity for evil, he thought, and it was up to the good people of the world to keep that evil at bay. How he had wound up at the center of it he didn’t really know, but maybe it had something to do with his feelings for Lea Donovan. He knew they were the real thing when Eden’s phone call woke him in the night and the old man had told him about her disappearance. He knew they were the real thing when he saw her again at Chan’s villa.

He watched the darkness below the small jet as they skirted the eastern borders of the Gobi Desert and made their way across the plains of Inner Mongolia. If he knew one thing for certain, it was that there had to be many more people than just Sheng Fang searching for such an awesome power, and the arrival of Bradley Karlsson proved it.

Beside him, Scarlet sighed. “Just what the hell did that monk mean when he said we already have the missing chapter, Joe?”

“I know everything you know,” he said and smiled. “I thought all you wanted to do was blast bollocks off? Don’t tell me you’re starting to actually care about other people?”

Scarlet ignored him. “Maybe it’s in Beijing with this Jenny Tsao woman?” She was referring to the person Han had told them about on their way to the plane.

“Han says we have what we need, and I for one trust him.”

She sighed again, long and deep. “When all this is over I think I want to retire.”

“Retirement’s for pussies.”

They turned to see Karlsson walking toward them from the rear of the plane. He was gripping a can of beer which looked comically small in his bear-like paw of a hand. Hawke’s instinct was to trust the man because he knew Eden had checked both him and his boss Kosinski out and given them the green light, but Karlsson’s personality made trust very hard, and liking him almost impossible.

“Who asked you?” Scarlet said.

“Waiting to be asked is for…”

“We know,” Lea said, rolling her eyes. “it’s for pussies, right?”

Karlsson laughed. “Yeah, maybe I was going to say that, maybe not. Listen, I know you guys are suspicious of me, but there’s no need.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Hawke said.

Lexi interrupted them. “You guys really think it’s possible to live forever?”

Scarlet shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t ask me, Bumblebee, I’m just a hired gun.”

“It’s Dragonfly, but gee, thanks for your considered response.”

“You’re more than welcome, darling.”

Lexi turned to Lea. “What about you?”

“Sure, I don’t see why not. Some conversations with Ryan can last forever so I don’t see why a person couldn’t.”

Hawke laughed and joined Karlsson by grabbing a cold beer from the fridge.

Lexi sidled up next him, causing Lea to raise an eyebrow. “And what about you, Joe? Do you really believe in all this or do you think something else is going on?”

“Like what?”

“Like we’re just being used and all of this is just a distraction.”

Hawke had considered that, but dismissed the thought. “No, I don’t think anything else is going on here. It can’t get any darker or crazier than the search for immortality, after all. When I started out on all this, back in London at the British Museum, my answer to your question would have been laughter and ridicule and a straight-forward no. But now, after all we’ve been through, I just can’t believe men like Zaugg and now Sheng would go to so much effort and expense for no reason.”

“Maybe they’re just deluded nuts, ever considered that?” Karlsson cupped a handful of peanuts into his large mouth and began loudly crunching them up with his mouth half-open.

“Obviously they’re insane,” Lea said, “but that doesn’t mean they’re delusional, Professor Freud. Two different things.”

“But what would you do if you could live forever?” asked Lexi. “If you could take a sip of magical water and never die?”

Bradley sat down and ran a hand over the stubble on his head. “Knowing Hawke here, he’d probably fall in the water and drown.”

“Immortality gags, eh, Bradley?” Lea said. “They never get old, right?”

“Oh, you’re a funny one,” Karlsson said flatly. “I can see that now. I couldn’t before, but I can see it now that you’ve had more time to be funny like that.”

“The fact you make jokes about this tells me you are not ready for this fight,” Han said, waking from his sleep. “This is no joking matter. I am entrusted with the most ancient of secrets, and I take it very seriously.”

“Talking of which,” Karlsson said, “What’s in that little box — the manuscript? Is that what you’re going to show your buddy in Beijing?”

“Dr Jenny Tsao is not my buddy, she is now the only person in the world who can read the code, and I am the only man in the world who knows how to access the code. It has always been this way — two Keepers of the Truth — for hundreds of years.”

There was a long silence and then Hawke turned his head back to the window and closed his eyes. He had no idea when he might get the next chance to grab a few minutes of sleep.

Ryan Bale was in his element, knee-deep in earthquake research and anything else he could find on Tesla and the various conspiracy theories attached to him. Now he was going through a file of documents General McShain had emailed over to him on the subject. They were heavily encrypted but McShain had given Ryan access to the decryption matrix.

“Not that I needed it,” Ryan boasted.

“Yeah, right…” Sophie said as she studied the Tesla research for a moment.

Ryan smiled. “For all its beauty I don’t think this is a particularly complex code.”

Sophie smiled. She could fall in love with this man. “That’s what I was thinking. If you look here at the first line it’s pretty obvious they’re using a rudimentary substitution system.”

“Yes, exactly, and… you’re messing with me, right?”

She nodded. “It’s just so easy. I don’t know why you can’t admit that you needed McShain’s matrix to read the files, c’est tout…”

“And… wait — what have we here?”

“What is it?”

“It's Victor Li in Hong Kong — he’s making a phone call, and thanks to when I put the tracking software in his phone we’re about to hear every word.”

“You can do that?” Hart asked.

Sophie shrugged casually. “Sure, there are hundreds of well-documented security holes in the Apple operating system. It’s easily done.”

“No, I meant you can do that, Ryan?”

Ryan ignored her and opened up the app on his laptop which he was using to track Victor Li’s phone calls. “I’m sure McShain’s files are very fascinating, but something tells me we’ll get more juice out of this.”

Seconds later they were listening to the gentle trill of a ringing cell phone.

“You think he’s calling Sheng?”

“Doubtful, but maybe one of this goons.”

Then two men began speaking in rapid Chinese.

“That’s about as helpful as a chocolate teacup, Ryan,” Hart said. “How are we supposed to know what’s going on. They could be talking about their favourite bloody noodle bar for all we know.”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” he said, and activated a real-time translator. Moments later they were reading English subtitles running along the bottom of the app, translating Li’s words from Chinese into English in real-time.

“I don’t know who they are…” Li said in answer to a question. “But they’re trouble. Big trouble. They humiliated me in my club and really went to town on me, and if I ever get my hands on any of them…”

“He’s not happy with you,” said a woman’s voice. “I would leave China if I were you.”

“For how long?”

“Until you die.”

“Is that a threat? If that’s a threat maybe I’ll go to the embassy and tell them all about your plans with the stolen American hardware.”

“Now it sounds like you are threatening us. A big mistake. You heard about what happened to Johnny Chan?”

A long silence. “I’m sorry. I can be trusted to keep silent, of course. Is the Russian in China yet?”

“What do you know about the Russian?”

“Nothing. I just thought I could show him some Chinese hospitality.”

“I would concentrate more on staying alive. Don’t call me again.”

Then the line went dead.

“So what do we make of that?” Hart asked.

“Not much…” Ryan said, and sighed. “This Russian guy might be worth looking into, and then there’s the reference to the embassy. I’m guessing that means the Tesla device is no longer in China and that they intend to destroy a foreign city with it.”

“It could be anywhere!” Sophie said.

“Tell Hawke,” was all Hart said. “I need to clear my head.” She picked up her jacket and stepped out of the room.

Ryan emailed the information to Hawke and breathed a sigh of relief.

Sophie pulled her hair-tie out and unbuttoned her top. She began to massage Ryan’s shoulders. “I think maybe we need some down-time after all that hard work. “C’est une bonne idée, non?”

In the mirror, Ryan saw her glance at the bed.

He grinned. “Now you’re speaking my language!”