Foretold by Thunder: A Thriller Read online

  E.M. DAVEY

  FORETOLD BY THUNDER

  A THRILLER

  With “a tremendous talent for conjuring scene after scene with striking vivid prose” (Dean Crawford), E.M. Davey stakes his claim as a master of the historical thriller. In this powerful debut, journalist Jake Wolsey stumbles upon a declassified file showing Winston Churchill’s peculiar interest in the ancient, esoteric Etruscan civilization—but a series of deadly coincidences seems to surround the file and everyone who knows of its existence. Wolsey soon attracts the unlikely attention of alluring archaeologist Florence Chung—and that of MI6. As the journalist and archaeologist are pursued across Europe and Africa in search of a sacred Etruscan text, danger closes in and more questions than answers arise. Are there powers in the sky modern science has yet to understand? Could the ancients predict the future? And what really explains the rise of Rome, that of Nazi Germany, and the ebb and flow of history itself?

  In a thrilling race against time and enemies known and unknown, Wolsey fears the very survival of the West may depend on his ability to stay one step ahead of his adversaries. In this electrifying debut thriller brimming with detailed historical facts and unexpected twists, E.M. Davey delivers a page-turning tale of ancient intrigue and modern day peril.

  Copyright

  This edition first published in hardcover in the United States in 2016 by

  The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers Inc.

  141 Wooster Street

  New York, NY 10012

  www.overlookpress.com

  For bulk and special sales please contact [email protected], or write us at the above address.

  © 2015 E.M. Davey

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  ISBN 978-1-4683-1354-3

  For my parents

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Fate

  Part One. Squall

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Part Two. Tempest

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Part Three. Maelstrom

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Epilogue

  Timeline of Etruscan and Roman History

  Historical Note and Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Fate

  With domineering hand she moves the turning wheel,

  Like currents in a treacherous bay swept to and fro.

  Her ruthless will has just deposed once fearful kings,

  While trustless still, from low she lifts a conquered head;

  No cries of misery she hears, no tears she heeds,

  But, steely hearted, laughs at groans her deeds have wrung.

  Such is a game she plays, and so she tests her strength.

  Of mighty power she makes parade, when one short hour,

  Sees happiness from utter desolation grow.

  Boethius, Roman scholar, 480-524 AD

  Part One

  Squall

  It was by very accurately assessing their chances that the Romans conceived and carried out their plan to dominate the world.

  Polybius, Roman historian, 200-118 BC

  1

  The journalist had been his last hope. But now there could be no salvation, for the thunderclouds were already gathering. Professor Roger Britton slammed down the phone and buried his head in his hands; but for the heaving of his lungs he was still.

  The minute-hand of his clock moved onwards with a click.

  Britton stared at it for precisely three seconds, before leaping to his feet and peering from the window. Black taxis inched along beside the Thames. A white Ford Transit which had been parked in a bus lane awoke and ambled away eastwards. The professor scrutinized the traffic: no green Renault Laguna, no silver Ford Focus, no gunmetal BMW. The list of cars he had to keep track of was increasing.

  Was he going mad? He honestly didn’t know.

  Britton cancelled the morning’s lectures, flinching at the protest. “Quite unavoidable,” he insisted. “Last-minute preparations for the field trip.”

  The usual accusations ensued, but this time they were accompanied by threats of dismissal. Could he expect to find employment at another university as prestigious as King’s College London? When had this become his life? Suddenly Britton realized his boss was no longer talking.

  “Thank you,” he said, in the hope she had been saying she understood. “I knew you’d understand.”

  He peeped into the common room. Florence Chung was working on her PhD, and he felt a stab of guilt. She had been a first-class assistant. No, more than that – a rock. And she was always willing to listen to his theories, although he kept the most outlandish close to his chest. He had neglected her thesis; she deserved better. But more important things were at hand. He wondered if he would ever see her again.

  “Professor?” Florence’s eyes were wide. “Anything I can help with?”

  Britton nodded rapidly, exhaling through both nostrils. “Yes please
, Florence. I need some books. The Roman historians. Polybius, Livy, Tacitus, Cassius Dio. Anyone else? Ah yes … you’d better bring Caesar too.”

  Florence glanced at the bookcase. “The first editions?”

  Britton nodded grimly. Bugger them. Bugger them all.

  What followed was a sight to make a Charing Cross bookseller weep. Chapters were torn free; cotton binding was ripped away; the room turned musty as dormant fibres took to the air. Britton’s biro trembled as he circled words and underlined sentences. He was aware that his behaviour was demented, but he was past caring.

  And it was important the journalist had everything.

  Britton blinked twice – as though remembering something vital – and from his desk produced a slim paperback which he added to the pile of eviscerated pages. His fingers lingered on the cover before he remembered himself, urgency returning to his movements. Finally he bundled up the lot in brown paper and scribbled down an address.

  The last thing Britton glimpsed before he departed was his wife, Wendy. The snap had been taken at a barbecue in Provence, before all this began. She looked happy. He pulled on his coat and rushed out.

  A mature student was malingering on the staircase. Odd place to wait, now Britton thought of it, and he couldn’t resist eye contact as he passed. His stomach slid instantly downward, adrenaline lancing through his thighs. He had seen this character before. Yesterday evening, in fact: at a bus stop near his home in Enfield. That snow-white spot in his hair was unmistakable. Coincidence? Britton fancied not.

  Now Britton abandoned pretence and fled, taking the stairs three at a time, heart banging against his ribcage. Two students were coming in the other direction – female, attractive. He jinked past them, an improbable sight in bad tweed with his hair on end. Mirth echoed in his wake. When he reached the third floor he paused, listening as the laughter grew fainter.

  It was penetrated by the patter of descending footsteps.

  The philosophy department beckoned. Britton knew this place, he was familiar with the lecturers; yet today the department offered no sanctuary. Bored students flickered past his vision as he ran, package clasped to his chest and shoes squeaking on the carpet. The post trolley reared up before him like an iceberg. Britton hit it at full speed; letters and parcels flew across the corridor and a Trinidadian porter roared with indignation.

  “Hey! Watch yourself, fool!”

  The professor was apologizing and piling the packages back onto the trolley when the inspiration struck. He buried his own bundle with them, and in its place he swiped another, already franked and ready for dispatch.

  The door behind him opened. It was the man from the bus stop. There could no longer be any doubt – the call to the journalist must have forced their hand. Britton was on his feet in an instant, offering the stranger a glimpse of brown paper in his arms. Then he was running for his life.

  Hundreds of students were pouring out onto the Strand, and the professor found his way blocked by the throng.

  “Oh God no,” he whispered, glancing over his shoulder. “Please no …”

  They meant to kill him.

  “You all right there, Professor?” Henry Buckingham was taking his course on ancient religion this year. Britton ignored the student, clawing his way into the press, feeling safer with every pace. He calculated his next move. If they grabbed him now the switch would be exposed. He needed to take the franked package off campus and get it posted – then they would chase the wrong parcel all the way to the sorting office. There was a post-box on the Embankment.

  A blast of winter air hit him in the face as he made it onto the street. A big trial was finishing at the Royal Courts of Justice and a phalanx of reporters rushed towards the famous arches. A blessing revealed itself: sightseers walking along the Thames, following their flag-waving leader like goslings behind a goose. Britton mingled with them, closing on the post-box. He was going to make it.

  But wait …

  A BMW had emerged, a gunmetal BMW, crawling along the opposite side of the street. Britton felt a fresh convulsion of anxiety. The driver was plump and in his late thirties. Glasses, wavy brown hair. Was it that man who’d taken such an interest in him at the staff bar last week?

  The shield of tourists parted. The professor slam-dunked the parcel into the post-box. At once the BMW zoomed away in a bark of highly-tuned engine.

  Professor Britton considered his options. Temple was close by – he could take the Circle Line to South Kensington and dash for Heathrow. Then he would get the next flight to Istanbul, whatever the price.

  Britton stopped dead. “Oh shit!”

  Two German tourists gave the professor a wide berth, taken aback at the expletive from the mild figure. Britton didn’t even notice. His mind shot back to the university, to his office, to the second drawer in his desk: where his passport still lay.

  “Oh shit, shit, shit!”

  There was a rumble overhead. The sky had turned overcast, a wash of grey that stretched from horizon to horizon. Directly above him the coming precipitation had been worked into a knot of black that twisted around itself in the sudden squall like the knuckles of a fist. Dark clouds streaked away to the north-west, their colour murderous. Tourists fumbled for umbrellas, but Britton was unmoved, staring into the heavens. A perplexed expression had come over his face – childlike, almost – and a pair of blueish lips mouthed something unheard. He followed the spoor of darker cloud to where it had emerged somewhere over Hampstead Heath. For several seconds he watched, as if seeking some hidden answer there. Then Professor Roger Britton was struck by lightning and killed instantly.

  2

  The historian’s final telephone call had been to a reporter. Jake Wolsey was accustomed to fielding enquiries from the deranged, on whom newspapers seem to exert a magnetic pull – but his conversation with Roger Britton that morning stood out from a crowded field.

  “I think I might have a story for you,” the academic began.

  Jake took a sip of coffee, brewed so strong it was masochistic. “Well fire away then, matey.”

  The news meeting was nigh and once again the reporter had nothing to bring to the table. He should be scrabbling for leads, not fobbing off some history wonk with a book to sell.

  “I read your article today, Mr Wolsey.”

  Jake’s gaze fell to that morning’s paper – it lay open at page thirty-nine. His efforts had been subbed down to a measly hundred and fifty words, but at least they’d given him a byline for once.

  “And I think I know why Winston Churchill was interested in the ancient Etruscans,” Britton finished.

  The journalist was paying attention now. He had thought it an intriguing tale, even if his editor disagreed. The genesis of the story was a single-line memo he’d spotted in a batch of newly-declassified Second World War documents. In darkest 1941, Churchill had scheduled a meeting with the head of MI6 on a topic described as ‘the ancient Etruscan matter’. And that was it: four little words, marooned by history, their explanation closed up and washed away by time. Jake’s requests for elaboration from MI6 had been batted away – there would be no further disclosure. When his attempts to flesh out the story into a page lead had come to nothing it had gone in as a news-in-brief.

  “Actually …,” and the professor paused, breath febrile on the receiver. “I think you may have stumbled across something rather big.”

  The reporter felt a tingle of editorial excitement in his stomach, though numbed by his hangover. “I’m listening.”

  In the next cubicle Thom Ellis pricked up his ears.

  “Can we meet in person?” Britton asked. “I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.”

  “Er, what? Why?”

  “It’s not safe.”

  Jake laughed. “What do you mean, not safe? We’re talking ancient history here.”

  The journalist tucked long blond hair behind his ears and looked at his watch. This was starting to sound like a prank call.

  “I can�
��t,” said Britton. “Sorry.”

  “At least give me a taster,” said Jake. “We’re fighting off the timewasters here.”

  He heard the ‘glock’ of an Adam’s apple rising and falling as the professor mulled it over.

  “Very well,” Britton said at last. “How much do you know about the ancient Etruscans?”

  “Only what I’ve mugged up on since I got hold of the file. They were the precursors to the Romans – a hill people who lived in modern-day Tuscany. At the height of their powers around, oh, 600 BC or something. Then they got swallowed up by the Roman Empire and the rest is, well, history.”

  “And what do you know of their religion?”

  Jake leaned back in his chair to consider the question. He had a strong jaw and high cheekbones, but it was a lived-in face – dark bags hung under his eyes and the arc of his spine was a chiropractor’s despair.

  “I haven’t got the foggiest. I’m guessing they worshipped bearded, bonking, Brian Blessed types?” Jake’s accent was rather posh, but his voice had a warm timbre.

  “I suggest you do some more reading then,” Britton replied. “Because it was to discuss religion that Mr Churchill met with his counterpart at MI6. Of that I am certain.”

  Jake’s decision was made. “Look mate, thanks for your time,” he said. “But I’m not sure it’s one for us.”

  Protestations surged from the receiver. Then, with a click, Britton was gone.

  “Nutter alert?” Ellis’s eyes were alive with mockery.

  Jake nodded. “Sad really. He was calling about my Churchill story this morning. You read it?”

  “Not yet, not yet,” muttered the big Mancunian, shuffling the newspaper. “Was just getting to it actually …”

  Jake massaged his eyelids with fingertips that trembled slightly. None of the staff bothered reading his work anymore – not since he’d been biffed downwards in the last reshuffle.

  “No bother,” he said. “The gist of it is that when Churchill should’ve been working out how to clobber Hitler he was wasting his time chin-wagging with MI6 about some ancient civilization.”

  Ellis’s head moved from side to side as he weighed up the story. “Not a bad little story I suppose,” he mused. “What’s our man’s take?”