Jenny jerked the night-vision binoculars away and blinked in agony. The fifth-generation model was unavailable to the public, but the lightning had overloaded the device in a stream of ions. One moment her footage depicted Florence emerging from the chapel, a new streak of burst blood vessels in her eye; the next a pitching sea of rubble and a gallop of night sky.
Jenny had accepted her orders and set off for Addis Ababa by Jeep that morning. But she had no intention of returning to the capital, and after fifteen miles she found a track striking out across the countryside. She drove in a grand circle around Axum, nosing between valleys and precipices before approaching the town from the north. The Jeep was deposited in a ravine, and then she scaled one of the peaks overlooking Axum. She chose a spot from which she could monitor Frank Davis’s hotel, Jake’s guesthouse and the church compound in a single sweep of night-vision goggles. If Waits was about to do something shameful it would be broadcast to the world. Once Jenny was in position she tuned in to the bug she’d attached to Guilherme’s jacket. It wasn’t long before she had heard a conversation that chilled her.
“We’ll wait until they’ve moved on the church.” It was apparent from Davis’s languid tone that he’d assumed command. “We’ll take whatever they find there, and we’ll get the Istanbul inscription too.”
“What if they won’t hand over the Istanbul inscription? The bastards might’ve hidden it.” Guilherme had assumed a tone of machismo to impress his new boss – pathetic – but Jenny could also detect nervousness. Last time he had tried his hand at hot work this man had taken a bullet.
“Charlie’s authorized WB,” said Davis.
The bug picked up the noise of Guilherme opening and closing his mouth.
“WB? Really?”
“Yeah.”
Jenny couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
Waterboarding.
“But I … I didn’t think we used that.”
“We don’t.” A low laugh. “Officially, anyway. But in the real world it’s damn good at loosening tongues.”
“You’ve done it before then, have you mate?”
“Not personally, but I sat in on a session a few years back in Morocco. It was a hell of a lot rarer than the media made out, but it did go on. Are you ok with all this?”
“Of course.”
Jenny visualized Guilherme puffing up his chest. When he spoke again his voice had assumed a note of perverted curiosity, like a child about to tear the legs off a beetle.
“How do we go about it then, mate?”
“Piss easy,” began Davis. “You get some restraining cords …”
As he explained the mechanics of waterboarding – the tethering down, the muslin cloth over the face, the instant submission – Jenny’s earliest memory popped into her to mind. Mum had dropped a load of eggs in Waitrose and burst into tears, an uncharacteristic display. Jenny had always assumed Mum must have had something else going on in her life at the time. Why had the recollection come to her now?
Suddenly she saw it: her first memory was of vulnerability.
Jenny tried to call Jake with her satellite phone. But she went straight to his voicemail – regular mobile phones couldn’t get signal up here. And suddenly it was too late. Jake and Florence had set off for the compound; there was no time for her to get down the mountain. All she could do was record what happened on the hard drive of her goggles and ensure Waits paid for this outrage with his liberty.
*
That was how Jenny Frobisher came to be perched on an Ethiopian mountain in the rain, eyes stinging from the night-vision flash. Tears ran down her cheeks and she wiped them away with her sleeve, determined not to miss a second. Slowly her vision returned. To the naked eye the compound was a halo of bulbs around a black oval, but when she put the goggles to her eyes the scene was thrown into clarity. The two MI6 men were lurking outside the perimeter wall. Frank leaned against the masonry, the bulge of a firearm tucked into his jeans. Guilherme presented a less indolent spectacle as he paced up and down, eyes fixed on his GPS scanner.
Jenny panned right, the compound passing in a luminous smear of tree and rock. Jake and Florence were heading right into the trap. But a disagreement had broken out. Florence was tugging at his sleeve and urging him in the other direction; Jake was impervious to her appeals as he strode towards the waiting Landcruiser. Jenny swung the goggles left again. Her former colleagues were alert to Jake’s movement. Davis’s body was taut, a leopard scenting impala on the breeze.
All hell broke loose.
Florence was the catalyst for the violence, abandoning her protest and dashing for the far side of the compound. For now Davis and Guilherme remained in position, unaware of the archaeologist’s flight. Then Jake sprinted after her and Guilherme detected the movement on his scanner, starting for the ladder. At once the far side of the street was alive with muzzle flashes, the pop of gunfire reaching Jenny a half-second later.
Guilherme was exposed. One bullet snapped his head to the side, tearing the jaw away. Two more hit him in the solar plexus, slamming him against the wall. Davis bounded towards the Toyota, running low and firing blind. The instant return of fire unsettled the shooters, buying him the dozen paces to his Toyota. He dived through the rear door – it had been left open for Jake – and a moment later the four-by-four was away in a screech of gravel. Tyres blew; glass shattered; the car’s bodywork became a colander of bullet holes. Davis was hit in the upper arm and the vehicle jerked with the impact, beads of red smattered across the windscreen. He kept on driving.
Jake and Florence clambered out of the far side of the compound, heading for the mountains that encircled the town. Jenny focussed on her former colleague. Guilherme had slid down the wall to assume a foetal position, leaving a snail-track of gore on the masonry behind him. He was mutilated. A tongue dangled; a hand went to where his jaw had been. His fingers fluttered at the maw and went limp.