The Overwhelming

By Joe Gill

"Then a single thought made my hair stand on end. Squires, who had just bought the building that had been blown up before my eyes, had switched our meeting this morning from the Cucumber to Freemasons Hall. My stomach turned. My mouth was dry. No one was going to convince me that this was just a coincidence. No one. How could such a thing be possible? If someone had suggested it to me, I would have laughed, but I knew it had happened and I wanted to know how and why and the blood on the pavement only yards from me made me certain that I would find out, somehow."

The story begins as thirtysomething journalist Nick Day is woken at 3.43am by foxes at play in his London garden, and ends several months later in the mountains of Kashmir, where he goes in search of Raj, the reluctant terrorist and ghost from Nick’s youth.

It should have been just another day at the office for Nick... until Raj, his online friend and chatroom jihadist, tells him another 9/11 is imminent. Nick's interview with billionaire tycoon John Squires, the new owner of London’s iconic Cucumber building, turns into a strange lunch at Freemasons Hall interrupted by a bomb exploding at nearby Buckingham Palace. Nick’s discoveries rapidly evolve into a dangerous investigation into murky property deals and foreign intelligence plots aimed at sparking war in the Middle East.

The novel explores themes of hidden links between terror groups, the intelligence agencies and high finance.

Erika Anderson of Canongate Books said of The Overwhelming: "The story is exciting, relevant and beautifully written..."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joe Gill
• Release date: Feb 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466056152

Joe Gill

A journalist for more than 15 years working for newspapers in the UK, US and Venezuela, (including Financial Times, Morning Star, Caracas Daily Journal), I also worked as a political researcher in the Houses of Commons. Since 2006 I've devoted myself to launching the quiz board game About Time which has gone on to sell over 35,000 copies in Europe, the USA and Australia. My passions are history, international politics, social justice and travel. My first novel was a historical fantasy called The Vanishing Shore. My latest novel is a contemporary thriller The Overwhelming. I studied Economics and History at Leeds University and took a MSc in International Political Economy at the London School of Economics. http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Overwhelming-ebook/dp/B006V2VR8U

Book preview

PART ONE

Chapter 1: Night, August 8th.

3.43AM. A strange cry wakes me. It’s early, not even light. Perhaps I could read into that strangulated, primal yelp a hint or foretelling of terrible things to come later that day; may be it was just such a premonition that made me imagine that I had heard a baby being murdered. A moment or two later, as my conscious mind ushers aside the wanderings of my id, I realise it is the foxes at play in the garden. Still, I cannot help find the mating cry of the fox to be uncomfortably like that of an infant in mortal distress.

I get out of bed and go over to the window to see if I can spy the night gypsies amusing themselves on the lawn. The moon is out and I can’t see the stars for clouds. Even if it was a clear, moonless night I would not be able to see more than a handful of stars because this is London, and the firmament of the city drowns out the light of the heavens. I point skyward and focus on the nail on my index finder, knowing that behind it lies 10,000 galaxies, each containing an average of 100 billion stars. These improbable, unimaginable numbers contain in them the facts of our insignificance – knowledge of which, once grasped, lifts a small part of my own self-absorption, and the hopeless fixation on the petty frustrations of my life. I find it comforting to think that, obscured by the blanket of electric light that we live under, there is a Universe teaming with countless stars and planets, in which all the light produced on our tiny and densely populated world is wholly invisible.

The vastness of space makes me remember that I am part of something far, far more majestic than my own brief and inconsequential existence. When the prophets of old looked up in the desert they saw a brilliant canopy, the face of God, but from my window that face is obscured by London’s brash fluorescence. Unlike the prophets, I do not perceive an intelligent creative force in the Universe, just the inkling of a mysterious beneficence. It sounds very New Age, and perhaps it is. I do not rule out the possibility of cruel fate coming along and crushing me without reason. I accept this as the will of the Universe, that there is an interstellar, quantum bus waiting for each of us. If you fall under it, it’s not your fault. And if you don’t, and several non-lethal ones come along instead, remember to thank the stars.

Looking down I see the fox’s reflective disks locking on to me. They are lit by some fierce inner power source, feral lasers that hold me in their unwavering gaze. Then something turns her head and she scampers into the undergrowth.

6.30 AM. I get up after failing, as predicted, to get back to sleep. I take a shower. I consider masturbation but decide against it as time is limited and I wish to preserve my chi. My catalogue of ex-girlfriends and the various girls who’ve given me the ‘look’ – it’s not a long list - seems to have dwindled down to Ex Numero 3, Claudette, and I am tired of having to share the shower and my empty bed with her. She has been good to me since we parted ways two years ago but she does need a rest from her conjugal duties. True, I am lonely. It is a loneliness of the body and spirit. It is strange, really, that the more people there are around you, the more lonely you feel. I think of loneliness, and its bedfellow anxiety, as my most loyal companions in the city. The lonely are many here. The crowdedness, the relentless pace, the fierce battle for time and space and social status, the struggle to get from place to place, to make appointments, to make enough money to live, all these things conspire against companionship, and those precious moments of care-free happiness. London is a great big sucking machine, it hulks over and feeds off its inhabitants, as if a giant invisible space vampire has landed here to feed on a hapless army of millions, which it voraciously turns into zombies.

7.0 AM. Before leaving, I listen to the news and hear that the Icelandic volcano is spewing out a huge cloud of gas, which northerly winds are bringing our way. Flights will be disrupted and civilisation as we know it perhaps brought to a shuddering halt. Nature’s little reminder of who’s boss. I quickly compute all the people I know who are currently out of the country and might be caught up in this ash crisis. The figures are alarmingly high. How is it that at least half the people that matter to me in my life are spread across the world? I must be part of the jet set, even if it is more like the Economy Set. Perhaps that is how it is now in this rich nation of ours, more and more of us are no longer living on earth, but are suspended in flying tubes eating reheated and overpriced bacon rolls; at least until the ash comes along like a divine clamping unit and grounds us.

7.26 AM. Arrive at Oasis Swimming Pool, Covent Garden, for morning swim. Swimming allows me to think and to meditate. The changing area is predictably cramped and busy. This means getting up close and personal with a range of nationalities and body types. Just as breasts come in an infinite variety of shapes and forms, so do the intimate parts of the male anatomy. A well endowed man with an athletic figure and receding hairline swaggers naked around the changing area, hands on hips unmistakably pointing to his manhood, the thing that gives him his power. He takes an inordinate amount of time getting changed, nodding and smiling at fellow gym users, displaying his assets and establishing his physical superiority amongst this group of higher primates.

Then there is the muscular Russian gangster type who, although only in underpants, cannot put down his mobile phone. He takes one call then makes another and he does not cut any of these conversations short. They obviously are all very important and best conducted in tight pants. The Russian speaks gruffly, preening in the mirror and flexing his overgrown muscles. When I look in the mirror I see a scrawny figure, arm muscles barely discernable, my chest of the pigeon variety. I can see a few of my ribs, which at least means I am not overweight, but there is no sign of a washboard. My mousey straight hair on my head needs a cut and there are signs of receding in the corners of the temple where the parting lines end. I cover these over with a brush of my hand. Despite awareness of how puny I seem compared to my Russian friend, like most men I still harbour pretensions of masculinity, even if I have neglected it in my desk- and sofa-bound existence.

In the water I am just getting into my stride, using the middle lane, when somebody cuts me up on my inside to overtake me. In central London there are a lot of global professionals, part of the new ethnographic and economic life of the city. Some of them treat the pool like an exchange floor without the pinstripes. At the end of one length I turned to begin the next, moving into the anticlockwise lane, when I collide with someone. I stand up and see the swimmer turn and stare at me, if you can stare when you are wearing goggles and speedos.

Watch out, stay in your own lane, he says. I stand speechless. If you cannot see someone’s eyes then you cannot gauge enough about them to make a judgement call on how to gauge your own response. Having made his point, he shrugs and, before I can say anything, turns and continues swimming. I felt like an unwanted guest in this upstart’s private pool. The anger rises up inside but I have nowhere to put it, and besides, swimmers look very alike with hair cap and goggles.

A young male lifeguard interjects: Wow, it’s getting hot in here this morning. People just need to chill. He smiles at me and I smile back. The spiritual path means not rising to all the provocations that life throws at you. I use the swim to exorcise the tension that the incident had burnished in me. Why should I care? London is full of testosterone-breathing, SUV-driving, dick-swinging geezers who came to the city to make ‘bizniz’ and act like they are Scarface or Gordon Geckov from Novosibirsk, buying up properties in Chelsea and building swimming pools in the basement. This ugliness is the logical conclusion of a culture that embraces the global moneymen and spivs without prejudice, like a blank-faced Berwick Street whore (she too was recently imported, globalised flesh). In the West End there was no sign of a new spirit of modesty or accommodation to the sensitivities of others. The swimming pool was not for the real money anyway; it was a public pool for people who could not afford to join the swish private gym next door. These were just wannabes. But they acted like they were money. The recession had not changed that. If anything, it had just injected a note of desperation into proceedings. I imagined seizing my pool companion by the ears and smashing his skull into the smooth ceramic edge of the pool. Momentarily I felt better.

Chapter 2: The Banker

7.55AM. Catch Tube at Holborn. I notice a higher than usual preponderance of very pretty East Asian and East European girls using iPods or MP3 players. My Law of Good-looking-Girls-Will-Have-iPods is once again reaffirmed. The iPod is a piece of armoury used by attractive younger women to ward off unwanted and random advances. It is the modern western equivalent of the veil. It makes the wearer more aloof and remote and who can blame them? On my own discreet audio device I am listening to Rousseau’s Confessions as read by Gerard Depardieu. My French is not what it used to be but the effect is pleasing. I look across at a girl, perhaps Finnish or Icelandic – her hair is ash blonde and her features pointy and vaguely Asiatic despite her snow-like complexion. She is the ash princess. While listening to Gerard I imagine myself in wig, ruffle and waistcoat, in an altogether different kind of carriage, with only Olga and myself being thrown from side to side and the sound of tube on tracks replaced by wheels clattering on cobbles. I put Gerard on pause temporarily and above the din of the moving tube can just about perceive that Olga is listening to some kind of thrash metal, which in hindsight should have been obvious considering her all-black designer punk attire and cool to moody frozen expression. Just the kind of girl I doubt I could ever fuck, and all the more suited to my harmless attention. I imagine us together flying into the volcano with Wagner blasting on her headphones. She is the daughter of Vulcan, and he has been a metal fan since at least the Vikings.

8.43AM Arrive at Fenchurch Street and make my way to the office. The digital news screen at the station shows pictures of the volcano, followed by images from a crime scene with American police milling around, and a mug shot of an infamous banker, Harvey Magdoff, chairman of Moneybank. ‘Bank chief shot, critical’, says the headline. I am surprised it has taken this long. Magdoff was the most notorious banker in a nest of notorious bankers. I once worked for the magazine The Financier as a junior reporter, in the days before the Great Crash. I used to interview people like Magdoff, and write fawning profiles on overpaid suits who worked in huge glass towers in the City, and lived in big Georgian houses in the country or in those Thames-side apartments built in the 1980s. Magdoff had been charged with financial fraud along with his firm a few months back for doing something that was considered perfectly legitimate only a couple of years back. The official investigation was due to begin this week, with a Congressional panel calling witnesses to give testimony, including Magdoff himself. Who had shot him was not clear. What was clear was that the investigation and any subsequent trial would have to be postponed, perhaps indefinitely.

This had little to do with me, except indirectly, in that I had lost several thousand pounds in the crash after foolishly trying my hand at playing the markets. And my flat in Holloway was worth something less than the price I paid for it since the subprime crisis burst the property bubble like a naughty child with a balloon and a pin. I had at times fantasised about shooting bankers, but the only gun I had ever fired was in a computer game called Grand Theft Auto IV. In truth, I preferred games with swords or rusty Colt 45s than the usual shoot’em ups, and I had sold my Xbox as part of my economy drive and my efforts to start living a purer, simpler life.

8.58AM. Buy an Americano at Leo’s. It’s not actually called Leo’s but I call it that, as Leo, a Romanian who pretends to be Italian, is the main reason I go there. Leo makes out like we are lovers, and is relentlessly playful and cheeky. He always makes pointed references to my editor, Max, by suggesting he is sexually attracted to me. I play along and allow him to rib me. When I first encountered Leo, I did not appreciate his game and became defensive. I realised later this was futile and, as long as you played along, it was actually quite enjoyable. Leo’s attitude to life seemed to be psychologically very healthy. He did his job well, and he did not take life too seriously. His boss was a tiresome, humourless nag, but Leo did not let it get to him, being subtly subversive in a way that his boss was too boneheaded to register. I had much to learn from Leo. I could see how his juvenile innuendos at the expense of his regulars were an act of love; they forced us out of our protective shells and compelled us to engage with his banter. All were equal under Leo’s deprecating fire and only fools would take umbrage when he asked you, smirking with eyebrows raised, if you would like a sausage with your egg mayo bagel.

Chapter 3: The Jihadist

My laboratory is a cramped office with its atmosphere made stale by air conditioning and the perspiration and perfume of hundreds of sedentary human beings, and their packed lunches which they eat at their computers because there is no canteen. Some bring in curries or sandwiches from M&S. Cleaners from Colombia, Peru and Somalia come round in the early hours and at dusk to clean the carpets and empty the bins. The windows are mostly sealed shut. Those that are not, such as in the men’s toilets, carry warning notices declaring: DO NOT OPEN THE WINDOWS. If you did open the windows, you could hear the traffic and the police sirens of the City, the relentless hum of a metropolis in constant movement. That movement was required so that the circulation of capital could continue. If it were ever to stop, perhaps because of some natural or man-made catastrophe, the consequences would be unimaginable. The noise and the movement were as essential as the buzzing of insects and the munching of leaves and the tearing of flesh in nature. This was our own man-made jungle. Of course, we believed we were different to the beasts and the insects, we had evolved toward freedom and consciousness. We lived in the age of market democracy, each masters of our own destiny. But how could that possibly be true? Sons of politicians became politicians, daughters of monarchs became monarchs, sons of rock stars became rock stars, sons of lawyers became lawyers and sons of labourers became drug dealers.

Unlike the queen, worker and soldier ants, we did not look obviously different from one another and we were genetically indistinguishable. But to each other we were subtly but unmistakably divided into discreet species, living parallel, separate lives. As it was before, so it is now. Our parents bought their houses when they were cheap. We waited until they died so that we could get our hands on their money and property, or we married someone who had the good fortune to inherit early. Or we got onto a council house waiting list. As it was before, so it is now. Freedom is to choose supermarkets and TV channels. True freedom – from bosses, the state, banks and landlords -- that belongs to the very rich and the very poor. The rest of us are like the moths buzzing around a light bulb, all the while failing to realise that the hot blinding glass is not, as we imagine, a gateway to freedom, but a dead end, a false moon. Like the moth we are genetically programmed to keep flapping our wings and bouncing against the smooth, impenetrable glass. To stop would mean madness or death.

When I started out as a budding reporter, I believed that I could use my position to expose injustice and reveal the truth to the world. I was given the opportunity when a few years back I had been assigned to investigate a dodgy financial services company. It all went well, and my story pleased the editor very much. I held the front page and imagined the financial sector trembling as they picked up their copy of The Financier. Even the chief executive of our publishing house dropped me a complementary email on my sterling work. I could feel the laurels caressing my scalp, that is, until the real-life subject of the articles read them and issued a threat of legal action. One small error in my front-page expose undid me. I was always a little bit too eager to file my copy, and I sometimes found all the checking of the details both tiresome and overwhelming. This was my Achilles’ heel – except I was no Achilles. The financial director who I had exposed as a crook, who cheated his clients and his employees, had found the flaw in my copy he needed to undo me and the rest of my work. My editor decided to print an apology and hang me out to dry. That was the end of my dream of being an intrepid investigative reporter. From now on I would play it safe and stick to harmless business profiles and press release rewrites.

There were two kinds of really good reporters that I had encountered in my time – first, the weasel, of which Nina was a good example. The weasel snuffled around in the garbage of his or her beat, searching for small morsels of information. They often had sharp features, a snout-like face and tended to be shortsighted from spending so much time peering into dark corners. They were relentless and determined and no detail was too dull for them to pick apart for tasty morsels or first-to-the-wire scoops.

Then there was the heroic correspondent, the warrior for truth. I had met one investigative journalist who lived up to this archetype. His speciality was police corruption. He was rugged with an untidy frontiersman’s beard and the aura of one driven by a Quixotic belief in the pursuit of justice in a world where it barely existed. He had soldierly virtues, being brave and combative. He was most at ease in the company of soldiers, policeman and criminals, and happiest of all reporting from a war zone or drinking beer and whisky in the company of one of his informants.

Unfortunately, I was neither of these. I was now your classic corporate reporter, the third and least admirable breed of hack. I was on friendly terms with the subjects, the PRs and generally good at quaffing the wine and eating the freebie breakfasts and flirting with the PAs. I belonged in the trade press, where 90% of journalists lived a life of unglamorous desk-bound toil. This middling sort did not resemble the legendary reporters known to screen and fiction, since their subjects were too dull for a writer of fiction to bother with. I suffered the frailties of both sorts and enjoyed the virtues of neither, being somewhat weasel-like in appearance, with a growing realisation that I was shortsighted and needed to wear glasses. I was more Clark Kent than Superman. Of course, at times I considered myself an Adonis and lady killer, as long as I stayed away from mirrors and listened to my mother when she had had a drink or two and was feeling affectionate towards me.

Through lack of dedication and seriousness, we workaday corporate hacks were perhaps stumbling and failing to spot magnificent scoops on corporate malfeasance every day. Ever so occasionally, a genuinely interesting story would come to us, by pure accident or because somebody decided to do you a favour and use you to get to someone else, to make you their tribune for truth even though you were nothing of the sort. Even then, the truly mediocre reporter might miss the huge steaming turd of a story that had been handed to them. Perhaps today, one of those bits of rank good fortune would come my way.

9.06AM. Check MyFace to see if my jihadi friend Ibn Khattab, more of whom later, has dropped me a line. He has.

Msg from Ibn Khattab to Nick Day: Good morning Nick. Today is a good day, my friend. It appears that both God and the Devil are taking revenge on the unbelievers. First the volcano, then the righteous blow against the Jewish Banking Thief. Believe me, this is just the beginning….

9.11AM Me to IK: Well, I wouldn’t read too much into it. Remember, capitalism survived the credit crunch and it will definitely survive the absence of Mr Magdoff. As for the volcano, that could be serious but I don’t think God or the Devil has anything to do with it. Iceland is like the spout of a teapot that is constantly boiling. It’s always letting off steam. To think it’s got anything to do with Magdoff getting shot is a fairy story. Your team lost last night I see – and against Fulham – was that also the work of God?

9.13AM Ibn Khattab: Be careful what you say friend – your immortal soul is at stake. The true Muslims are like that volcano, we are at one with God and his mysteries, and when the servants of God are attacked, God will show His anger in different ways. We are the living volcano, the instrument of His wrath. And we have cause. The Muslims are fighting the crusaders because it is their duty to defend their fellow Muslims against years of aggression by the west. We will take the fight to him, as the crusader has taken it to us in our lands and homes, among our women and children.

9.21AM Nick to Ibn Khattab: Thank you for your concern for my soul, but I’ll take my chances. I think I am certain to go to hell anyway – I hear they throw the best parties, even if virgins are in short supply. You know, I am not a supporter of the Middle East wars. I did not support the invasion of Iraq even though Saddam was a world-class bastard who deserved to be brought down. Bush and his cronies were almost as bad. At least Saddam had the excuse that he was a psychopath – the neocons just did it for the money and Bush so he could prove to his Dad he wasn’t a pussy. Still this argument is tired and has been rehearsed over and over again. Can’t we talk about something else?

9.22AM. IK to Nick: Did you watch Z List last night? What a bunch of talentless, desperate idiots. I voted for Smudge - at least they had a few good moves. Keep watching the news bro.

9.23AM. Nick to IK: No I didn’t watch Z List. I always watch the news my friend.

Ibn Khattab is a jihadi I ‘met’ in a forum on the Whatreallyhappenedon911.com website. I say jihadi, but to be honest I don’t really know who he is other than he claims to be a Kashmiri who was born in Lahore and moved to Britain when he was eight. For all I know he is just a sad fantasist, although he does seem to know quite a lot about explosives, aircraft technology and Pakistani politics. He introduced me to the struggle in Kashmir, which I knew nothing about. India has killed 80,000 people in Kashmir but somehow that doesn’t count because Kashmiris are just Muslims. If only we were Buddhists, like in Tibet, then the world would do something about it.

I started looking at jihadi