Thunder God

CHAPTER THREE

Hawke knew when he was being followed, and now was one of those times. He and Scarlet Sloane had been in Hong Kong less than one hour and already there was someone tailing them. For all he knew, they could have been watching him on the plane from London — the first flight to leave London for Hong Kong after Sir Richard Eden had woken him to tell him about Lea’s disappearance.

They cut through an alley and entered the Temple Street Night Market in a bid to lose their pursuer. Years ago, Hawke was stationed in the city as a commando in the British Forces Overseas Hong Kong. The Royal Marines had been stationed in the city since the very first days of British colonization, and it was a great posting loved by most of the military who went there.

But as Hawke looked for a way to lose the tail, he saw things had changed. For one thing, the night market was different. Once it offered excellent food, a great atmosphere, singers on the sidewalks — but now not so much. It looked tacky and tired, the singers had disappeared into the cool, subtropical night and the food was cheap and salty.

And the man was still behind them.

The tourists in the market grew in number as the night grew older and the familiar smell of fried meat and plum sauce filled the air. All around them people laughed and took selfies of their night in the exotic city.

They passed some prostitutes outside a noodle bar and moved deeper into the crowd to consider their situation. Only one person knew they were in Hong Kong — Sir Richard Eden. Hawke knew he would never betray him.

They crossed Saigon Street. Red bunting flapped in the wind and a man was arguing with a fortune teller, raising his voice to be heard over the noise of a nearby karaoke bar.

News of Hugo Zaugg’s death less than two weeks ago had been presented to the world as a tragic suicide, but how many knew the truth outside of Eden’s official circle and certain elements of the American Government was unknown.

When he’d landed in Hong Kong things had gotten even worse. Eden had contacted him to brief him about another murder. A private researcher in Paris who was somehow linked to Lea’s disappearance was killed shortly after Eden’s first phone call to Hawke, and of grave concern to Eden was the simple fact that Lea had been tasked with putting this particular man under surveillance while he was recently in Hong Kong.

Hawke wondered if the death of Felix Hoffmann and now his new friend a few hundred yards behind him were connected to the Zaugg affair, but instantly put it out of his mind. He was in Hong Kong to find Lea and now work out the Hoffmann connection, and he knew where he had to start.

“Check out the guy in the black shirt.” Hawke jabbed his thumb over his shoulder.

“We’re being tailed?”

“Pretty sure we are, yeah. He’s been keeping around a hundred yards behind us since we turned into the market.”

Scarlet turned slowly and pretended to look at a passing 747 as it climbed into the orange clouds above the city. It looked like it could rain at any minute, and as she followed the path of the aircraft she covertly surveyed the street.

“Black jeans and shades on his head?” she asked.

“That’s the chap.”

“If it’s a tail he’s not very good,” she said dismissively. “Could be anyone.”

“Or he could be someone,” Hawke said.

“So, make him sing for his supper, darling.”

They stopped walking and pretended to check the menu in the window of a Nepalese restaurant.

“Definitely a tail,” Hawke said, watching the man’s reflection in the window. “He’s pulled up outside that jewelry store on the other side of the street. If he’s half as smart as he should be, he’s looking at us in the reflection of that window the same way we’re using this one.”

A moped puttered down the street, weaving in and out of shoppers and tourists as it spewed a cloud of filthy blue smoke into the air behind it. People were going about their business in the early evening like any other night in the city.

Scarlet sighed. “So what now?”

“Let’s have a word with him,” Hawke said coolly.

“He’s probably armed.”

He turned to her with a sarcastic smirk on his lips. “Yeah, but I’ve got you.”

They turned from the restaurant and aimed for the man, but before they could even step into the street their pursuer knew he’d been rumbled and immediately pulled a gun from his pocket. He fired it twice at them in what looked to Hawke like a dangerous piece of improvisation.

They both ducked and jumped behind a food stall for cover as the bullets smashed the restaurant window and exploded a shower of glass splinters all over the people inside.

People across the market screamed and ran for whatever cover they could find. A man in a down-market barbershop picked up his phone and made a call, presumably to the police. Then a young security guard in a nearby jewelry store ran into the street. He pulled a Glock 19 from his hip holster and aimed it at Hawke and Scarlet.

“Arms up and don’t move,” he shouted in stilted English.

Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “Well, which one do you want me to do, darling?”

Hawke watched powerless as the man in the black shirt turned and fled into the market crowd.

“We haven’t got time for this…” he said.

“You do arms up, now!” shouted the security guard. “You try and rob store!”

Before the security guard knew what day it was, Scarlet knocked the Glock from his hand with a ferocious Krav Maga slap kick and sent it flying into the road with a metallic smack. Hawke retrieved it and the guard immediately raised his eyebrows and then, a second later, his hands. “Please, don’t shoot!”

“Look at it this way — you’re still breathing,” Hawke said to the guard. “That means she likes you.”

Then without wasting another second, they gave chase to the fleeing man.

They sprinted into the crowd, darting through the busy night market as fast as they could, but seconds later Hawke stumbled over a crate of cheap bracelets beside a stall and sent them flying all over the place. The stall owner shouted and waved his finger, but Hawke and Scarlet left him in their wake and continued in pursuit of the man.

Suddenly, Hawke’s plan had changed from tracking down Lea and now Hoffmann’s killer for Eden, to chasing an unknown assailant through the Hong Kong night. For all he knew, the three were connected, and now he had to find out how.

“Come on, Joe!” Scarlet shouted. “We’ll never get him with you falling all over the place like a drunken twat. If only Lea could see you now…”

Lea. In the two weeks since Zaugg had met his maker, Hawke and Lea hadn’t seen much of each other, but now she was missing he wished they had. After they returned to London from Geneva, they had spent a few days together before Lea went alone to Ireland to see family.

She surfaced only once to text Hawke and ask him when they should meet again. She told him she was at home, and he guessed the west coast because she had spoken to him that night in Zermatt about a cottage she owned there. But now Eden’s call in the middle of the night to tell him she had gone missing had come like a sledgehammer.

But Hawke had been busy too. The affair at the British Museum had not exactly helped his reputation in the world of private security, and while his resolution of that problem would have won him endless contracts, he had no choice but to keep the whole business to himself. So he had divided his time between looking for work and improving his parkour across the London skyline.

Until, that is, this latest nightmare had arrived on his doorstep. First Lea’s disappearance and then when he landed, the news of Hoffmann’s murder. The briefest of briefings had sketched a rough picture of a private German researcher who had dedicated his life to the discovery of something described by Eden only as the Reichardt Papers. He was a loose associate of Eden until they found him garroted to death on the Paris underground.

Now, their man had left the market and was sprinting for his life down a smaller side street. Hawke was certain the man probably knew the city like the back of his hand and if he let him out of his sight he would vanish into the night forever. But his parkour training meant there was little chance of the man getting away in an urban environment.

Away from the main drag, Scarlet fired a shot at the man with her Beretta Storm, a nifty little subcompact pocket pistol she packed when she was going away to enjoy herself. The sound of the gunshot melted away fast in the busy night. The hunted man ducked down instinctively to avoid being struck so she fired five more, deliberately high. These shots were louder, and followed by the sound of people screaming behind them in the market.

“That’s just fantastic,” Hawke said, sighing. “Every cop in the city will be here in five minutes.”

“So let’s get on with it then.”

Hawke was beginning to regret asking Cairo Sloane to lend him a hand, but once again, her assistance was heavily recommended by Sir Richard himself. Clearly they had a complex relationship — neither had decided it was time to tell him what was going on but with Lea missing he would take whatever help he could get his hands on.

The man now scarpered to the end of the side street and ran around the corner but Hawke and Scarlet were closing on him. In the next street a few seconds later, Hawke squinted in the brightness of the neon shop signs — no one was running any more.

Scarlet caught up with him a second later. “Anything?”

“He’s slowed to a walk to blend into the crowd.”

Then, the sound of police sirens. Hawke looked over his shoulder and saw a Mercedes Sprinter van in police markings cut along the end of the street behind them. They too were on the hunt tonight.

“Looks like the plods are out to spoil our fun,” Scarlet said.

“And we need to get to our little friend before they do,” Hawke said, surveying the crowd. “There! He’s stepping through the crowd again — I see him trying to get away down an alley.”

They chased after him once again, pushing their way violently through the crowd of shoppers and tourists as the police sirens closed in around them.

“He’s getting away, Joe!”

“Not if I can help it.”

“He’s disappeared again!”

“Damn it!” Hawke muttered, and climbed halfway up a traffic sign for a better view. Seconds later he saw the man weaving slowly in and out of a group of people watching a street performer playing a guitar and singing through a cheap sound system.

“There he is!”

The man glanced back and saw Hawke up the stop sign. He immediately darted into the next alleyway and was gone from sight once again.

“It’s now or never,” Hawke said. “I think this guy’s going to disappear into the night if we’re not careful.”

“And for all we know he’s our only lead to Lea or maybe Hoffmann’s killer.”

Hawke and Scarlet raced into the alley and allowed a second for their eyes to adjust to the darker atmosphere away from the neon brightness of the main drag. Then they saw their man, but now he was no longer alone, and he was no longer running away from them, but toward them.

“Bastard must have called for back-up,” Scarlet said. “They’re mob-handed now — must be at least eight of them.”

“I don’t fancy our chances,” Hawke said. “Not with so many members of the public all over the place.”

The men approached, and Hawke saw the flash of a blade in one of their hands.

Scarlet looked at the Beretta. “Only three left in here, Joe.”

“But they don’t know that.”

She sighed. “As much as I want to kick their balls in, I think eight versus two, and their having the home advantage too, means maybe it’s time for a tactical retreat, no?”

Hawke agreed.

Reluctantly.