The God Of Chaos - Hardcover

Bradby, Tom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593052676 ISBN 13: 9780593052679

Verlag: Bantam Press, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

Cairo, June 1942. A city blistering under the lash of a relentless summer and panicked by the implacable advance of Hitler's most talented general, Erwin Rommel. It is the worst possible time and place for the body of a senior British officer to be found in a rubbish bin, bathed in blood. His murder has been made to look like a political assassination by local extremists opposed to British rule, but former New York cop Joe Quinn isn't buying that. He senses more fundamental human emotions at play. For Quinn, it's like old times, a reminder of his past. One he doesn't want to revisit. Thrown out of the New York Police Department as a liability after the tragic death of his son, he probably shouldn't be a cop any longer, but maybe he's just what this case needs. The investigation leads him through the underbelly of an exotic, violent and seedy city to the heart of the Cairo's high command and the possibility that a highly placed spy is feeding the allies' most sensitive secrets to Rommel, waiting out in the desert. Only one woman has seen the killer - an American named Amy White. The trouble is Joe Quinn's already falling for her and if he doesn't stop the spy soon, then not just Amy

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

TOM BRADBY is a novelist, screenwriter and journalist. He has written ten previous novels, including top-ten bestselling Secret Service, which has been adapted for television by ITV. The Master of Rain was shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association Steel Dagger for Thriller of the Year, and both The White Russian and The God of Chaos for the CWA Historical Crime Novel of the Year. He adapted his first novel, Shadow Dancer, into a film, the script for which was nominated for Screenplay of the Year in the Evening Standard Film Awards.

As a broadcaster, he is best known as the current Anchor of ITV's News at Ten. In his first year in the job he was named Network Presenter of the Year by the Royal Television Society. He has been with ITN for thirty years and was successively Ireland Correspondent, Political Correspondent, Asia Correspondent (during which time he was shot and seriously injured whilst Covering a riot in Jakarta), Royal Correspondent, UK Editor and Political Editor- a job he held for a decade - before being made the Anchor of News at Ten in 2015.

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CHAPTER ONE

Cairo, June 1942

The Khamseen had blown all night, Rattling doors, slipping through keyholes and whistling down corridors, before burying its cargo deep in the skin. The Egyptians said the suffocatingly hot desert wind commemorated the period of fifty days during which Cain had carried the body of his brother Abel. It certainly felt like a punishment.

Quinn rubbed tired eyes, tugged at his shirt collar and tried to shift the grit from round his neck. He had not slept but, then, he had not expected to. This day had approached with grim inevitability.

'Sir?' Madden said.

'Yeah.'

'Are you awake?'

'Very funny.'

'Then what do you think?'

Quinn closed his eyes. Sure, they knew what he was really thinking. It was a day upon which any distraction was welcome, but none would hold his attention for more than a few moments.

What did he make of the issue at hand? What other conclusion was there? The document in front of him was stamped, 'MOST SECRET. Cairo, Evacuation Plans', and was an admission of failure that Allied chiefs dared not make but could not avoid much longer.

He glanced at the maps on the wall. The first depicted in pink the British Empire in Africa and the Middle East as it had been at the start of the war, stretching from Libya to Palestine. The second showed how fast it was shrinking. The waves of defensive line upon defensive line, drawn and redrawn in grease pencil, were moving closer to Cairo. The Desert Fox was no more than a day's drive away.

'Where's Rommel this morning?' Quinn asked. He no longer attended briefings. The British top brass had made it clear he wasn't welcome.

'It's still confused, but we appear to be massing here . . .' Madden placed his finger between the sea and the Qattara Depression. 'Just by the railway halt at El Alamein. They reckon it won't give him much room for manoeuvre.'

Quinn thought of the battle-weary troops he'd seen pouring in from the north at dawn. 'So this is the last stand? If Rommel breaks through to Alexandria, the way to Cairo is open?'

'I suppose so. You know what they're saying — that the Nazis can read our every move.'

As a rule, Quinn ignored gossip: if it was to be believed, the city was awash with Rommel's spies.

He listened to the sound of a train rattling into the station below and glanced out of the window. One of the city's scavenging kites hovered high in the hard blue sky. He wondered if Mae was up yet, imagined her dressing in front of the chipped gold mirror in the corner of their bedroom. She'd want to look her best today.

'That's what the unit commanders are saying in the field,' Madden said soberly.

'Hmm.' Quinn took out a packet of Cape to Cairo cigarettes, lit one and threw the thin carton across the table. Madden helped himself and passed it on to Kate Mowbray. They smoked in silence. Quinn tapped the edge of a report Madden had typed on their previous case. He needed to sign it off this morning. 'What happened last night?' he asked. He'd driven them through the previous investigation until they were all hollow-eyed with tiredness.

'Seven arrests. Nothing to interest us.'

Quinn had left Madden on duty, but he ought to have been there himself. The city was edgy, fractious, tormented by the weather and the relentless nature of Rommel's advance.

'I walked across to the railway station,' Madden went on, 'just after midnight.'

'And?'

'Very crowded.'

'Panic?'

'Getting close to it. I saw the last train to Jerusalem pull out.'

'People fighting to get on?'

'Not fighting, but . . .' he shrugged '. . . it was crowded.' He stretched his long back. He was a tall man, the impression heightened by a gaunt frame and a thick mop of curly ginger hair. The desert sun had burnt his pale, freckled skin.

Quinn heard laughter in the next room. He stood up and saw, through the window in the partition door, that a woman was talking to one of his assistants, Sergeant Cohen. As she leant back in the chair, her long, dark brown hair cascaded over her shoulders. Cohen was laughing, too.

Quinn caught sight of Effatt, chief detective of the Cairo Police, who appeared to be sharing the joke. At least it was good to see him smiling. 'What'd you suppose Effatt's doing here at this time in the morning?' he asked. In theory, his friend dealt only with crimes among the local populace, Quinn exclusively with those involving the hundreds of thousands of soldiers circulating through the city. In practice, they often worked together.

Neither of his companions answered, so Quinn put his halffinished cigarette in the wooden ashtray on the desk and opened the door. The clock between the windows on the far wall showed just before eight. In the richer, more textured light of evening, you could make out the tips of the Pyramids from here, but for the rest of the day they were indistinguishable through the haze. 'Good mornin',' Quinn said.

Cohen stood alongside Effatt, but the woman remained seated. 'This is Mrs Amy White.'

'Sure, we've met.' Quinn offered his hand. She took it, her grip firm and palm dry. Cool green eyes scrutinized his. She wore a white silk scarf to shield her face from the dust outside, a brown jacket and cream trousers.

'You know one another?' Effatt asked.

'Mrs White is a volunteer at the same hospital as my wife.'

Effatt coughed. 'She came to my office a few minutes ago. She said she had heard a commotion in the apartment above her own but received no answer when she went up to check upon its cause.' Effatt spoke English with a faint American accent, the legacy of a year spent at the University of Michigan shortly before the war.

'Not really a matter for us,' Quinn said.

'Mrs White went up a second time. She found the apartment had been . . . disturbed. She believes the gentleman who occupies it works at GHQ.'

'What's his name?'

'Captain Rupert Durant,' Amy said.

Quinn nodded at the sergeant. 'Cohen, go get me-'

'Q Branch, sir. I've already checked. He works at Movement Control.'

Quinn frowned. Movement Control was a sensitive department, its staff processing detailed information on the deployment and fighting strength of every unit in the field. He waited for Amy White to continue, but she made no sign of intending to do so. 'Tell me, ma'am, what did you find inside?' he asked. He kept his tone formal. He'd met her a couple of times while he was waiting for Mae in the hallway, away from the stench of the wards.

'The apartment looked like a bomb had hit it,' she said. 'I didn't figure Durant as the untidy kind.'

'You knew him?'

'To exchange greetings.'

'How'd you know he worked at GHQ?'

'It was something I heard.'

'You aware of what he did there?'

'No.'

'You didn't know which branch he worked in?'

'No, Major, I did not.'

'When did you last see him?'

'Yesterday. Maybe the day before.'

'What about his sufragi? You—'

'He doesn't employ one.'

'He ain't got no servants?'

Ed Madden and Kate Mowbray were also frowning. For a British officer in Egypt, it was unusual.

'Not that I know of. You'd have to ask him.'

There was the sudden wail of an air-raid siren from the roof. Commonplace at night, it was rare in the day, but increasing in frequency. Quinn walked to the balcony and pushed open the doors. The siren howled against an empty, peerlessly blue sky. Quinn squinted, trying to make out the black dot of an aircraft, or the rumble of its engines, but he could hear only the bustle of traffic around Bab el Hadid. He watched the kites circling the tall spires of the Turkish mosque in Saladin's citadel, then looked across to the railway station. A...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Bantam Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593052676
• ISBN 13: 9780593052679
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 416
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar