The Key (44 page)

He did not trust himself.

He kept riding north, the smell of oranges following him, until he disappeared into the desert.

Arkadian was back at his desk on the fourth floor of the police building. He knew that everything he had been working on would soon be public knowledge, so he saw little point in continued caution. He finished his report and read it through.

Gabriel’s email had provided all the missing links. He could now connect the Church with Dragonfields, the map with the ancient location of Eden and the timing of the huge loan to the Church that had underwritten the whole covert venture. They had been seeking buried treasure after all, but not the legendary hoards of Alexander the Great and King Croesus. They had been looking for more modern riches. All underground oil reserves start out as prehistoric trees and shrubs that decay over millions of years to become carbon-rich crude. Because of its size, its age, and the secrecy that had always surrounded its location, the Garden of Eden had become, over time, the largest, most enriched untapped oil reserve on earth. The Church had not been trying to locate Eden for any sacred reason but so that it could mine its past – everybody’s past – in order to safeguard its own future.

Arkadian attached the report to a mailing list he had prepared including the addresses of as many news outlets as he could find – large and small, local and international – as well as several independent political blogging sites. The list also included Interpol, the press offices of a number of governments – and the Vatican. He had left the addressees visible so that each one would know who else it had been sent to and those who were already compromised would realize a cover-up was impossible. It was his way of casting the seeds as widely as possible so they could take root wherever they found purchase. He liked the biblical implications of this.

Finally he emailed his report to the entire Ruin City Police Department, copied it on to a flash drive that he slipped into his pocket, then grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and went home to his wife.

And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth.

Revelation 12:16

She was in a dream of darkness, like before, but this time she did not fear it; this time she knew what the darkness contained. Waking from the dream, she reached out for Gabriel, as she had in the cave, expecting her hand to find his solid form, but he was not there.

Liv opened her eyes.

She was in some kind of medical room, but, though it was unfamiliar to her, she felt she belonged here, as if she was – home.

There was another bed. It was occupied by John Mann, resting at last. She could tell that he was dead, but she could also feel his peace. Slipping from her bed, she moved across to stand beside him, laying her hand on his. She felt anxious for Gabriel, wondering where he was and why he was not sitting vigil beside his father, whom he had found and lost again in the space of a few hours. Now he truly was alone in the world – like her. But he was not alone. He would never be alone. He had her, and she him.

Liv drifted out into a corridor, drawn by the noises from outside. The building seemed deserted, all sounds coming from the compound beyond. She moved down the corridor and spotted the door at the end with the splintered frame.

The Starmap was lying on the table where Gabriel had left it. Her eye traced the constellations marked on the surface, recognizing Draco, Taurus, and the Plough. She noticed an extra star in the last one, cut deeper than the rest, with a line drawn from it to a section of the text. There was no whispering sound to herald the arrival of a translation; this time she found she could just read it.

It was as if some of the substance of the Sacrament had permanently rubbed off on her. She picked up the heavy tablet and turned it over, hoping there might be more on the other side. What she found was a note.

My darling Liv,

Nothing is easy, but leaving you is the hardest thing I have ever done. I know now what pain my father must have felt when he had to leave us. I hope to return when I can. In the meantime, do not look for me, just know that I love you. And keep yourself safe – until I find you again.

Gabriel

Dr Harzan paced around the rim of the pit where the Sikorsky lay buried.

Most of the relics had now been retrieved and were ready to be shipped to Turkey where they would finally enter the great library, as they should have done twelve years earlier. The sense that this long-unfinished business was about to be resolved gave him huge satisfaction.

And yet …

They had all heard the distant gunfire coming from the direction of the compound. Since then he had been unable to raise anyone on the radio. All he got was a whispering static. It made him uneasy. Maybe their radio was faulty; the damned sand got into everything. His encounter with John Mann earlier had also unsettled him. It was a potent reminder that history could return to cause trouble, even when you were sure it was dead and buried. These relics, with their alternate telling of the stories enshrined in the Bible were solid proof of that. The sooner they were locked away, where no one else could get them, the better.

His head recoiled as the round hit him in the eye and took away most of the back of his head. He toppled over and slid to the bottom of the pit, coming to rest against the metal fuselage of the dead dragon just as the sound of the gunshot caught up with the M4 round then echoed away across the desert.

Cardinal Clementi was at his desk, staring at his computer screen. His phone was ringing but he didn’t seem to notice. He was slumped in his chair, his head sunk down almost to his chest, his shoulders loose and sloping as if the great bulk of his body was pulling everything down. A cigarette dangled from his marshmallow lips, almost an inch of ash hanging from the end. On the screen was an opened email sent by Pentangeli:

We are calling in our secured loans as of start of business on Wall Street tomorrow. Should you fail to honor these debts here is a facsimile of tomorrow’s city edition of the
Wall Street Journal
.

Beneath the text was a mock up of the front page with the splash headline:

CHURCH BANKRUPT

Through the constant sound of his ringing desk phone he heard footsteps approaching, hurrying towards him down the marble corridor, several people by the sound of it. The first arrived and started banging at the door. Clementi flinched at the sound and the ash finally fell from the end of his cigarette, spilling down the black expanse of his cardinal’s robes. The handle twisted but the door remained shut. At least he’d had the presence of mind to lock it. Not that it would keep them for long. It was designed for privacy not a siege. They would break through soon enough.

He reached forward and deleted the email, as if that might remove the news it contained, then levered himself out of his chair and walked over to the window.

There were already crowds gathering below in St Peter’s Square, looking towards the Apostolic Palace. But these were not crowds of the faithful, hoping to catch a glimpse of His Holiness, they were news crews, setting up cameras and equipment, ready to catch the breaking story – and this time they
were
looking for him.

Behind him the door continued to rattle and the phone continued to ring, but Clementi carried on smoking his cigarette and stared out at the view, as if it were a normal day. Despite everything that had happened, he still believed it had been a good plan. If he had gone public with the discovery of the site of Eden, the Church would have just ended up with another shrine in the middle of a country that now worshipped a different religion. What good would that have done them? The oil was different. It was a fluid commodity that could have flowed into the withered veins of the Church and changed everything. It could have been God’s gift to His mission on earth; a modern miracle – a myth turned into money. But, for whatever reason, it was not to be.

Clementi took a final puff on his cigarette then placed it carefully in the marble ashtray, leaving it to burn down to the filter. He stepped up on to the high ledge of the windowsill and looked down at the gathering crowds, hearing the gasps as they spotted him. He thought of the monk who had climbed to the top of the Citadel, over two weeks ago now, and started the unravelling of everything. He held his arms out in the shape of a cross, just as he had, and stood like that, head bowed, until he heard the doorframe splinter behind him.

Only God will understand
, he thought as he tipped forward, his weight pulling him down to the marble courtyard four storeys below him.

And only God can forgive.

The sun began to rise over Ruin, casting the deep, dark shadow of the Citadel across the tables and chairs that were steadily spreading out from the cafés and restaurants lining the embankment. The tourists hadn’t arrived yet, but the bell in the public church was tolling, meaning the portcullises at the foot of the hill would now be raised and the pilgrims and sightseers were on their way.

Yunus clattered the last fold-out chair down on to the broad flagstones and resisted the urge to collapse on to it. He was sweating, despite the chilled morning air, and every muscle in his body ached. He’d been holding down two jobs for over a month now, salting away what cash he could to pay for his place at Gaziantep Üniversitesi, starting in September. He figured a solid summer season would pay for a big chunk of next year, provided he didn’t lose any more days to explosions or earthquakes or any of the other crazy stuff that had recently shut down the old town and kept paying customers away. At least the closures had given him a chance to catch up on lost sleep, so he supposed they hadn’t been all bad.

Stifling a yawn, he headed back inside the café where Auntie Elmas was pouring cardamom pods and coffee beans into the grinder.

‘You look tired,’ she said, her eyes still sharp in her weathered walnut face.

‘I’ll be OK – just need some coffee.’

He reached for one of the
khave
glasses stacked on the countertop, misjudged it and sent it tumbling to the wooden floor. It bounced and rolled away, miraculously not shattering.

‘Go lie down before you break something,’ she hissed, looking over her shoulder to check none of the other staff was listening. ‘I give you a shout when we get busy.’

Yunus began to protest, but thought better of it. Auntie Elmas wasn’t the sort of person whose mind was easily changed and right now he didn’t have the energy. Maybe a quick power nap was what he needed. He picked up the glass, placed it on the counter and ducked through the streamer curtain leading to the stairs up to his illegal lodgings.

It had been Auntie Elmas’s suggestion that he stay here after he had landed a job on one of the night clean-up crews. She clocked him out on the café staff sheet and his shift boss clocked him in so, on paper at least, he left the old town every night at the end of his shift and came back again in the morning. In truth he hadn’t set foot outside the old town for nearly a month now, even during the evacuations. He got meals as part of his café wage and there was a washroom on the first floor for all his other needs. It was perfect and saved him a fortune in travel. He also took pleasure in the notion that, apart from the monks of the mountain, he was possibly the first person to live here in over a hundred and fifty years. At the university he was going to study history and tourism, so things like that appealed to him.

Yunus reached the attic room at the top of the building and collapsed on the bedroll hidden behind a wall of cardboard boxes. His room was an eight feet square cell filled mostly with non-perishable café supplies. Above him was a skylight the size of a paperback that let in negligible amounts of air and light but also afforded a view of the Citadel, if he stood on tiptoe. Sometimes, in the dead of night, if the wind was in the right direction he could smell smoke coming from the mountain and hear sounds of life from inside. He liked that too, it made him feel part of something ancient and mysterious – though lately the noises he’d heard had been unsettling. They had sounded like tormented moans and wails of pain. He hadn’t liked that, all alone in the dark of the deserted old town.

Closing his eyes, Yunus tried to rest. It felt hotter than usual in the room. He generally slept between two and six, the coolest time of day, and the rest of the time he was working. He wondered how hot it would get in the height of summer. He could always move out if it got unbearable, or try sleeping on one of the lower floors. Until then, he’d stick it out and get some earplugs to block out the strange sounds in the night.

He breathed in the dusty smell of the ancient building mingling with aromas of food drifting up the stairs from the café. He could smell coffee being roasted and the scent of fresh oranges being squeezed, so strong it was as if they were in the room with him – which was impossible, because Auntie Elmas didn’t sell fresh orange juice in her café.

It must be coming from somewhere else, carried on the breeze through the tiny crack of the skylight; maybe it was coming from the Citadel …

If you read the acknowledgements for Sanctus you may recall how I described the whole process of writing a first book as being like throwing a huge party and having no idea if anyone will come. Well praise be and hallelujah people came, so firstly I’d like to bow deeply and doff my cap to all those who read Sanctus and occasionally lifted my day by contacting me on Twitter or Facebook to tell me how much they’d enjoyed it. In fact if you ever feel an urge to contact a writer and are feeling a little shy or worried that it might be an imposition, just do it. We spend much of the year locked up inside our heads in small rooms and so messages from readers are like chinks of sunlight in our dark, uncompromising prisons.