Thunder God

CHAPTER FOUR

The gang chased after them, emboldened by their new strength in numbers. They moved with their concealed blades deftly through the oblivious crowd of shoppers and tourists like sharks cutting through a shoal of guppies.

Ahead of them, Hawke and Scarlet Sloane had gone from hunters to hunted in a few short seconds and were now racing back along the city streets in a bid to find a place to hide from the armed men. It was at times like this Hawke regretted getting involved with the enigmatic Richard Eden, but in his view, being chased through foreign cities was better than watching paint dry, and he would go to the end of the earth if it meant saving Lea.

He glanced back over his shoulder when they reached the end of the road and saw the gang was gaining on them. They clearly wanted a silent and fast end to Joe Hawke and Scarlet Sloane, preferably in a quiet alley in the darker corners of the city.

“What now?” Scarlet asked.

Hawke’s mind raced. Ahead were just more shops and tatty market stalls, tourists milling about and casually looking at the cheap jewelry.

“We need some speed,” Hawke said.

“I never knew you were into that sort of thing.”

Hawke rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean, Cairo.”

Then the heavens opened.

“Bloody fantastic!”

The storm clouds unleashed a heavy subtropical monsoon onto them, and seconds later the sky was full of lightning and rainfall. A deep peal of thunder boomed above the city as Hawke spotted their chance. A young man was sliding off the saddle of an old Vespa and going inside a snack bar for shelter.

Hawke pointed at the dilapidated moped. “That’s our ride!”

“That thing?” Scarlet said with contempt. “I’d rather be dead than seen on that.”

“Which is very convenient because right now that’s exactly the choice you have.”

Behind them, the gang was closing in. Scarlet pursed her lips as she pretended to deliberate over the situation.

“Stop pissing about and get on the bike, Cairo!”

Scarlet gripped Hawke around his waist as he revved the Vespa and released the brake. The moped lurched forward and skidded out into the street, Hawke desperately trying to maintain control as the narrow wheels slipped about on the greasy road.

He watched the men in the small, cracked rearview mirror and saw two of them dragging a taxi driver from his cab and stab him. He fell to the floor in a heap while they jumped into his car and gave chase. Seconds later the cab’s headlights were just yards behind them, lighting the heavy rain in their yellow beams as the engine growled and revved in the background, the grille like a snarling jaw.

“Bloody hell, Joe — can’t you go any faster? They’re almost up my arse.”

“Well…”

“Don't even think about finishing that sentence or I swear I will throw you under the wheels of that cab.”

“Got it.”

Hawke made a sharp right turn, holding his leg out to stop the thing from tipping over. The new street was narrower than the last, but this didn’t stop the cab. They closed the gap and began firing at them. A second later a bullet ricocheted off the tin license plate on the rear of the Vespa. It made a comical pinging sound before flying off into the rain.

Scarlet pulled the Beretta from her pocket and with one arm looped tightly around Hawke’s waist, she coolly fired a shot into the windshield of the pursuing taxi. Through the torrential rain she made out the tell-tale sign of a bullet hole in the glass.

The car skidded and swerved in the narrow street, its right fender striking a low brick wall and sending a shower of golden sparks into the damp air, but they were soon on their tail again.

With a renewed sense of purpose, the taxi now pulled up close enough to hit the rear tire of the Vespa and seconds later Hawke was fighting to control the light-weight moped as it spun all over the slippery road, narrowly missing a line of garbage cans at the rear of a restaurant.

“Another shot please, Cairo!” he shouted. “And make this one count.”

Scarlet turned on the moped again and fired a second shot, but just as she squeezed the trigger the moped hit a pothole and the bullet fired off high, sailing above the cab and disappearing into the Kowloon night. “Damn it, Hawke! Can’t you drive?”

“Eh?”

“You ask me to take a shot that counts and then you drive right over the top of a fucking pothole.”

“You might have noticed that we’re in the middle of a damned monsoon, Cairo, and my vision is limited to about half an inch. Take another shot.”

“Only got one bullet left, Joe. No more potholes, all right darling?”

Hawke slowed down, allowing the cab to gain on them once again. Scarlet held on to Hawke again as she turned and aimed the Storm subcompact for a final time at the pursuing cab.

And fired.

This time the bullet went through the windshield again, but lower, and hit the intended target. The driver slumped forward and the engine revved wildly as the dead man’s foot pushed down on the throttle.

Hawke pushed the Vespa to the max in a bid to outrun the more powerful car, but just as it was about to ram into their rear tire once again, the narrow road came to an end and Hawke spun out to the left. Behind them the cab raced onward in a straight line and smashed head first into a giant billboard advertising a luxury gift store.

“That’s them all wrapped up then,” Hawke said.

Scarlet sighed. “For fuck’s sake.”

“What?”

“Just enough with the nasty one-liners, all right?”

“Sure, if you say so, but…”

“What is it? Why are you slowing down?”

Hawke came to a stop and switched off the engine. “We’ve got company.”

He pointed to a long, black car parked in front of them. Leaning against the hood was a man holding a shiny black pistol as casually as if it were a banana.

“Inside the car please,” said the man, and pointed the gun at them.

The car was a stretched Mercedes limousine and a second later the rear door opened.

“In here!” Hawke didn’t recognize the voice, but then the driver held a tiny paper dragonfly out of the window for him to see. “It’s this or die, Mr Hawke.”

“How does he know your name? Who are these people, Joe?”

Hawke sighed. Of all the people to be rescued by, it had to be her.

“Come on,” he said. “This car will take us where we need to go.”

They climbed inside and shut the heavy door on the rain. The man with the gun sat opposite them, gun raised at their chests. Without another word being spoken, the driver pulled away. They drove through the city for an hour and finally pulled up outside a seedy-looking strip club. Inside they were shown up a flight of stairs and they entered a semi-lit room.

The woman’s voice was cool and slightly husky.

“It’s been a long time, Joe.”

Hawke peered into the shadows where the figure of a lithe, young woman emerged into the room. He recognized her perfume — orchids and vanilla.

“Dragonfly,” Hawke said, putting his gun away.

“Always and forever,” said the woman. She blew him a kiss.

Zhang Xiaolu moved forward and offered the Englishman an ambiguous smile. She was wearing mostly black and her lips seemed impossibly red in the half-light. She held a Type 84 loosely in her hand, but slid it artfully into a shoulder holster as she stepped into the warm glow of the lamp.

“You look good, Joe,” she said.

Known in the West as Lexi Zhang, the woman was a card-carrying member of staff in the Ministry of State Security, the intelligence agency of the People’s Republic of China. Hawke never took his eyes off her, and not just because he didn’t trust her. The good news was that the phrase smoking hot was invented for Lexi Zhang, the bad news was that she knew it. “Too bad I didn’t break into your bed as well as your hotel room back in Geneva. You looked so peaceful when you were sleeping. I had the urge to… ruffle your hair.”

Hawke smiled. “But we all know what to do with urges, don’t we, Lexi?”

“Yeah,” Scarlet said, stepping forward. “And I am actually in the room with you two right now, you realize that?”

Her words startled Hawke, who had apparently forgotten she was actually in the room with him and the beautiful Chinese agent.

“Sorry,” he mumbled unapologetically. “Lexi, this is Cairo Sloane, Cairo — meet Lexi Zhang, otherwise known as Dragonfly. She recently broke into my hotel room in search of information relating to Poseidon…”

“Pleased to meet you,” Lexi said.

“Likewise, and it’s Scarlet,” she said, frowning at Hawke. “No one calls me Cairo anymore. Now we’ve got that out the way, perhaps we can get to business?”

“Business?” Lexi said, turning to Hawke. “And here I was thinking you had flown to Hong Kong for pleasure.” She ran a gentle finger up the length of his arm all the way to his shoulder.

Hawke frowned. “Sorry Lexi, but this time it really is business.”

“This time?” Scarlet said, raising an eyebrow.

Lexi smiled. “Joe and I go way back. We met in Zambia where… well, let’s just say our interests collided.”

“Oh, God,” Scarlet said. “Is there a drink around here?”

Lexi glared at Scarlet for a second and then turned to a drinks cabinet. She poured three glasses of iced vodka with mint and handed them to the others. They sat down and Hawke tried hard not to notice the flash of her tights in the lamplight as she crossed her legs.

“Why did you kill Felix Hoffmann, Lexi?” Hawke was blunt and to the point.

Scarlet shot a glance at Hawke. “What are you talking about, Joe?”

”Let her answer.”

Lexi was unfazed. She sipped her drink and took a moment to watch the gentle whirring of the ceiling fan which cooled them silently from above.

“What makes you think I killed him?” she asked.

“Come off it, Lexi. A friend of mine sent me the Paris Métro CCTV — it has him being chased off a platform and into a tunnel by what is pretty obviously a woman of your height and build. Not only that, a policeman found a tiny origami dragonfly blowing along the tracks.”

“It looks bad, I know,” Lexi said. “But you know me, Joe. If I had killed him and wanted the fact to remain unknown then I would not have done those things.”

“Maybe, or maybe you just can't help yourself. The thrill of the hunt and all that.”

Lexi smiled. “You are such a cynic, Joe! But I’m being serious — I did not touch Hoffmann, I swear it. I would admit it easily enough if I had. You know me, Joe.”

“You mean you’re not exactly backward in coming forward?”

Lexi shrugged her shoulders and finished her drink. “I swear to you, Joe. I did not kill Hoffmann.”

Hawke evaluated her for a moment, using his NLP training to check for any small sign she was lying.

Lexi spoke next. “This friend of yours is Sir Richard Eden, right?”

Hawke nodded. “You know it is.”

“And he sent you after me, right?”

“No. He sent me here to find a missing friend. After I arrived he told me Hoffmann was murdered just after we spoke and I thought of you. He was chased out of a nightclub in Paris in the middle of the night and tried to flee into the Métro.”

“And I was here in Hong Kong the whole time. How could I have killed him?”

“Easy enough with a private plane at your disposal.”

Lexi said nothing, and sipped her drink.

“Well?”

“Obviously, someone framed me — presumably the same people who were tailing you in the city tonight. When Lao briefed me about Hoffmann’s death he told me he wants to know who’s behind all this as much as you and your boss. Tell me, how is the enigmatic Sir Richard these days?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Hawke said. “He’s not my boss.”

Scarlet leaned forward and joined the conversation. “You could say Hawke’s on probation, darling.”

Now it was Hawke who shot Scarlet the glance.

Scarlet ignored it. “Now, do tell us what you know about this poor Hoffmann chap, and why I was dragged from my bed in Dubai to fly to Hong Kong in the middle of the night.”

“Oh, I don't think I like you at all,” Lexi said, and turned to Hawke. “We’ve been watching Hoffmann for some time.”

Scarlet raised her eyebrow and sank back into the chair.

“And by ‘we’ you mean the Chinese Ministry of State Security?” Hawke asked.

“Many agencies were watching Hoffmann due to the nature of his research. He left a trail of flagged keywords behind him like a line of bread crumbs — he was probably oblivious to the attention he was drawing to himself.”

“And what were these keywords, my dear?” Scarlet purred.

Lexi continued talking only to Hawke, never taking her eyes off him for a moment and not once acknowledging Scarlet. “Mr Hoffmann was a private researcher of limited funds, and it was obvious someone else with considerable means was funding his research, Joe. He used those funds to fuel a lifelong obsession with ancient Chinese mythology.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” Hawke asked flatly.

“Nothing… and everything.”

“Explain.”

“You see, Felix Hoffmann started digging too deep into something that has concerned certain — how shall I put it — powerful agencies here in China for a very long time.”

“Like who?” Hawke finally felt as if he were getting somewhere for the first time since landing in the city.

“My boss will explain more in the morning.”

“And what about Lea Donovan?” he asked firmly. “Have you heard anything about her?”

“Sorry, no. I didn't even know she was in Hong Kong.”

Hawke frowned and absent-mindedly scratched the back of his neck. He found this hard to believe, but either way it was another dead end for now.

“Like I said, you need to talk to my boss.” Lexi handed them a business card. “Be there on time.”

Outside, Scarlet lit a cigarette and exhaled a cloud into the warm air. “Interesting woman. If I could ask her, what would your little Nightingale friend tell me about the Dragonfly?”

“She would tell you that Lexi Zhang is a ruthless assassin working mostly for the Chinese Ministry of State Security but not above private contracts. Oxford-educated at Christ Church College, fluent in several Chinese dialects, Japanese and English. Family history unknown, at least to Western intelligence agencies. Probably responsible for the death of at least three presidents in the last five years.”

Scarlet nodded her head appreciatively. “And you think she’s the one who killed this Hoffmann guy?”

“Maybe. I know she protested her innocence, but Lexi Zhang could lie her way out of quicksand.”

“I have no trouble believing that. Listen, Joe…”

Hawke watched a wave of doubt cross Scarlet’s face — not an emotion that spent a lot of time bothering Cairo Sloane. “What’s the matter?”

“There’s something you need to know.”

“Don’t tell me… something about Sir Richard Eden?”

Scarlet looked at him sharply for a moment. “Why would you say that?”

“Just a crazy hunch…”

“Well yes, there is something you don’t know about Eden. In fact there’s something you don’t know about any of this, but I’m not authorized to tell you. It’s just that with Lea missing I think it’s important you know the truth.”

“Well?”

She stopped herself. He sensed something powerful was preventing her from going any further. “I really can’t. I shouldn’t have brought it up. That was very unlike me. Talk to Eden about it if it’s really stressing your nuts off.”

Hawke sighed. So near and yet so far. “What I love about you most is your finesse.”