“Ah, that old classic.”
“Exactly, so he spent a lot of time on some pretty dusty internet forums, and…”
“Wait.”
“What?”
“Shouldn’t that be fora?”
“Well, yes, technically but… and you’re just messing with me, aren’t you?”
“It’s so easy, that’s all.” Sophie kissed him on the temple and asked him to continue.
“Hoffmann was certain that Lei Gong was real.”
“Where have I heard that before…”
“Right — but, Lei Gong was actually born a normal mortal human being thousands of years ago. At some point in his life he discovered a divine peach tree, and unfortunately he decided the best course of action was to eat one of the peaches and whammo — the next thing he knew he’d been turned into a god with all the bells and whistles — omnipotence, omniscience, the works. They even gave him a hammer that created thunder.”
“A peach tree? Whatever will they think of next?”
“Actually, in Chinese mythology the peach was strongly associated with — and you’re not going to like this — immortality.”
“I don’t like where all of this is going, Ryan. I thought we’d left this madness behind us in Switzerland.”
“My feelings exactly, but it looks like we’re not getting off the hook that easily. In this Chinese system of mythology the gods ate peaches because they conferred immortality upon them and this is an image which occurs again and again in ancient Chinese art and poetry. The Peach of Immortality was a sacred fruit.”
“And this is what happened to Lei Gong — he was a man who ate one of these peaches and became a god?”
“Yup — the God of Thunder, as I say. Lots of ancient cultures developed the concept of thunder gods and they were always very important in polytheistic systems. The thunder god usually was the top man, so to speak, so Zeus was a thunder god, and Thor in Norse mythology. Whoever is leaving Lei Gong’s name sprayed on the side of ships clearly thinks a lot of himself.”
“He sounds like a total maniac to me,” Sophie said.
“A total maniac with a god-complex and a top secret earthquake machine. Not exactly a match made in heaven.”
“But what was Hoffmann really looking for — the Tesla machine?”
“No — at least I don't think so,” Ryan said. “There is no mention in any of his papers about classified military projects or anything like that, neither did he ever talk about anything like it in his many trips to fora.”
Sophie smiled and playfully slapped his shoulder. “So what, then?”
“That’s what I'm here for,” he said, puffing his chest out. “But I haven’t had much luck in that department yet. The only thing I can find is that aside from Hoffmann’s obsession with Lei Gong and the thunder gods, he also spent a great deal of time looking into the concept of divine immortality.”
“And I thought earthquake machines were going to be trouble…”
“Felix Hoffmann’s fascination with Lei Gong seems to have led him to something called the Reichardt Papers.”
“The what?”
“Good question. I can find next to nothing about them on the internet except for the most cursory of references, usually tied into Hoffmann’s own research and enquiries. All I can gather is that they have something to do with the search for immortality.”
Sophie was starting to hate that word. A few weeks ago it had meant nothing more to her than any other word. It simply described an unobtainable fantasy that had gripped men and women for millennia, but now it brought a new, terrible meaning to her mind whenever she heard it.
Now it conjured horrific images of her adventures in Greece, being trapped in an underwater cave system and nearly blown into a thousand pieces in a boat explosion. To Ryan, it all seemed like a game, but she knew better. Back when she had worked for the French Secret Service her life was full of violence and deceit, so she knew better than anyone what people were capable of — the lengths they would go to take what they desired. And things had gotten even worse after she left the DGSE and started in her new job, the one she had told no one about, but this was no time to contemplate the path her life had taken.
“What is it with all these men and immortality?” she asked. “It always seems to be men — have you noticed that?”
“What do you mean?” Ryan continued tapping information into the computer as he spoke.
“I mean, why can’t men accept their fate in the way a woman can?”
“Ah!” Ryan exclaimed, not even hearing her last sentence. “Now this is interesting.”
Sophie leaned closer to the computer screen and placed her hand gently on his shoulder. “What have you found?”
“Some cracking stuff about Lei Gong. According to this, there was some kind of prophecy attributed to the Thunder God.”
Sophie watched Ryan as he flicked through page after page of text. He’d been on the case for several hours now but was still as alert and interested as the minute he’d turned on the computer. He’d been all over Chinese myths and legends, starting at Wikipedia and the occasional hacked document and digging his way down from there until hitting gold nearly every time.
Sophie looked at the latest screen he had found and started reading. There was very little about this prophecy Ryan had talked about — just a few references on the periphery of various texts in the form of endnotes, vague yet enticing. All she could gather was that there was some kind of prophecy attached to the Thunder God, largely unknown by modern academia, that referred in some way to immortality, the end of the world and some kind of glorious rebirth of humanity.
“It’s not very specific,” she said at last, and shrugged her shoulders.
“But it’s a start!” Ryan said. He sipped his coffee, his eyes ablaze with excitement and anticipation. “And if you have a start, it’s only a matter of time before you have an ending.”
Sophie smirked and kissed him on the head. “So what now?”
“We carry on cutting our way through all this and keep on with the research — there’s a reference to a missing manuscript I’m keen on looking into, for one thing. I’m going to need some more coffee.”
Sophie stretched her arms and agreed. More coffee was always a good idea, especially at times like this. That was what her father always said, at any rate. She missed him, but his words were always with her.
She watched Ryan open a new window on the laptop and start his search for the Thunder God prophecy, then she crossed the room and picked up the phone to order some more coffee.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lea turned in her seat and saw what Hawke was talking about — several of Sheng’s men had piled into a stolen Nissan GTR and were accelerating after them, hard and fast. In the front, Lexi Zhang floored the F-Pace and it raced forward, every one of them feeling its 3 liter supercharged V6 kick in with a startling lack of modesty.
“So this is nice,” Lea said. “You finally got your arses into gear, then?”
Scarlet gave her a cool but relieved look. “Glad you could make it, darling.”
Lea smiled and looked at Hawke. “What about you, Joe Hawke? Are you glad I could make it?”
Scarlet rolled her eyes and took a cigarette from her packet as Lexi accelerated the SUV.
Hawke smiled. “I was starting to think you’d gone AWOL,” he said, turning on the back seat and kissing her. “What the hell happened?”
“I was trailing Hoffmann but lost him on his way to the airport when those goons back there ambushed the cab. Don’t know much about why — they kept me blindfolded and never said much, but I do know I was being delivered as a kind of payment for something.”