The Key s-2

by Simon Toyne

  He moved down the corridor and ducked through a door into a deserted ward room. Inside, the floor was littered with workmen’s tools and materials, scattered by the earthquake. He spotted a pair of heavy-duty gloves amongst the mess and picked them up as he made his way to the window. It was sealed by a single piece of board that split with a single, sharp kick.

  The cold night air hit him as he stepped on to the scaffold platform he had seen from the street. The whole thing rattled as if the earthquake had shaken it loose from the building. But now was not the time for caution.

  He unhooked one of the lengths of coiled rope from the scaffold and dropped it over the edge of the platform. It was too dark to see but he heard it patter on the pavement, four storeys down. The other end fed through a pulley and was secured to the platform. Gabriel leaned back on the rope to test it then stepped over it, feeding it round his right leg, over his back and round his left arm.

  Part of his special forces training had included hours of abseiling — down buildings, from helicopters, off bridges. Usually this was done with a full kit of harnesses and descenders, but he had also done it with just a rope, using his bodyweight as the brake. It wasn’t comfortable but it was effective, and right now it was all he had. He jammed the gloves on to his hands, leaned back to create tension, and stepped off the platform.

  The rope creaked and stretched as he started to descend. It was rough nylon cord, perfect for hauling up buckets of cement but not so great when it was digging into your flesh. With the correct gear he could rappel down four floors of a building in seconds, but if he tried that now he would take the skin off his hands, gloves or no gloves.

  Gabriel turned his mind back to the cop, trying to gauge where he would be. Probably at ground level by now. He continued his careful descent, feeding the rope round his body as quickly as he dared until he sensed the pavement was near. He let go of the rope and dropped the last couple of metres, landing in a controlled crouch. He shook himself free, flicking the end of the rope out to see how much he had to play with.

  Moving quickly to the ramp leading to the car park, he threw one end of the rope round the upright of the barrier-lifting mechanism and caught it with his free hand. He pulled it back across the space between the barrier and the wall, laying both lengths of rope flat to the ground and squatting by the outside wall where he couldn’t be seen from the car park. The whole thing had taken only a few seconds.

  Now he just had to wait.

  All around were the sounds of a city in distress: distant screams, raised voices, sirens of all kinds. He tried to zone it out and tune his hearing to the one specific thing he was seeking — the sound of someone running.

  He wrapped both lengths of rope tight round his forearms to improve his grip.

  Time stretched out. He thought of his mother lying alone in the dark, the poison spreading through her with every passing second. Leaving had been the only way to save her. He hoped to God he had made the right choice.

  There was the crash of a door bursting open in the darkness of the car park and the hollow sound of boots pounding the concrete floor and heading his way.

  Gabriel tensed. He replayed his own journey so he could judge the best moment to strike. He could picture the cop, his pace slowing slightly as he hit the upward slope of the ramp. He imagined his stride length. Gauged the number of steps it would take to reach the top.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  He yanked the rope upwards as a figure flashed into view. The cop’s legs hit the rope and he tipped forward, hitting the ground hard, his arms shooting forward just in time to stop his face from breaking his fall.

  Gabriel was already on him.

  He jumped on to the cop’s back, knees first, knocking the wind from him. Grabbing a handful of hair, Gabriel cracked his head down hard on the flagstones — too hard maybe — and had to stop himself from doing it again. Rage burned inside him now for what he had done to his mother, but he knew that killing the cop would be no kind of revenge: first he needed answers.

  He shifted position and drove his knee into the small of the cop’s back, grinding it against his spine until his hands reached back to stop him. Looping the rope round them, Gabriel pulled it tight then reached into his pocket and brought his mouth close to the cop’s ear.

  ‘You forgot something,’ he said, holding the syringe in front of his face so the cop could see it. ‘You want to live?’ He jabbed the needle into the cop’s neck, making sure it hurt, and pushed the plunger all the way in. ‘Tell me what this is and I’ll get you the antidote.’

  The cop went limp, the fight gone from him. Gabriel hauled him on to his back.

  ‘Tell me what it is.’

  The cop stared up at him, his face a mask of confusion and fear. ‘Aconitine,’ he said. ‘One-way ticket. I hope you said goodbye to your mother.’

  Gabriel wanted to beat the cop’s head against the pavement until the brains spilled out, but it would be a waste of what little time he had left. His eyes swam as he looked up at the dark window on the fourth floor. He wanted to go back and sit with his mother, hold her hand, make sure she wasn’t alone. He knew he should get away now before the lights came back on and someone found the cop. That would be the smart thing to do. That was what his brain was telling him. Instead he got up and ran back down the slope into the underground car park, heading for the stairs.

  He couldn’t remember exactly how he made it up the five flights to his mother’s room. His legs were dead from the first run and his energy spent after the fight. He could feel the adrenalin curdling inside him, making him feel shaky and sick, but he kept reminding himself of the last thing he had said to his mother.

  I’ll be right back. I promise.

  Kathryn raised the gun as he stepped into the room, angling it up from where it lay on the bed, her arm too weak to lift it.

  ‘It’s me,’ Gabriel said, stepping towards her.

  He took the gun and held her hand, struggling to find words to tell her that there was nothing he could do, that he had failed. In the end he said nothing; he could see in her face that she already knew.

  ‘Under the mattress,’ she whispered. ‘There’s a book.’ Gabriel slid his hand underneath and found it. ‘It will show you the way. Your grandfather gave it to me in death; now, in death, I give it to you. You will know what it means. It’s in your hands now. All of it is in your hands.’ She took a deep breath that scraped in her throat, like a rope was tightening around it. ‘Don’t let them find you here. Take this knowledge and go — use it against them. Let that be your vengeance.’

  Another breath howled through her throat like a dry wind, then flowed back out again, long and deep. She stared into his face.

  ‘John,’ she said, her face lighting up with joy, ‘you came back. You came back for me.’

  Gabriel swallowed his emotion at the mention of his dead father’s name. ‘Yes,’ he said, going along with her hallucination, ‘I came back for you.’

  ‘I missed you, John,’ Kathryn said, her eyes losing focus and her voice doing the same. ‘I always wondered why you never said goodbye.’

  Gabriel tried to think of something to say, but realized he was too late. Kathryn’s eyes were still open but she could see nothing. He reached out with a nervous hand and pressed it into the still warm flesh of her neck.

  There was no pulse. She was gone.

  He felt a storm of anger rise up inside him again. The air flickered fitfully around him as if it was the raw power of his rage that was lighting up the night. The emergency lights had come back on again. In the golden glow of the low-wattage lighting his mother looked serene and beautiful, her dark hair framing her pale face, her skin smooth and unworried. The pain she had carried since his father’s death had gone now. Gabriel leaned down and kissed her, tears dripping from his eyes and on to her cheek. He reached out and rubbed them away with his thumb.

  Sounds drifted down the corridor. He took one last look at his
mother then turned and left the room, slipping the book into his pocket.

  Take this knowledge and use it against them, she had said.

  There would be time enough for grieving when all of this was over. Right now was the time for revenge.

  He moved across the hallway to the desk against the wall with the two empty chairs either side — one for the cop and one for the priest. The cop was down on the street dying or dead. The priest was still unaccounted for.

  He checked the signing-in sheet and noted all the room numbers that had been visited earlier in the day. He saw Arkadian’s name checked against room 410 — his mother’s room — and 406, which must have been Liv’s. The only other room number marked on the sheet was 400, the room where the last surviving Sanctus monk was being kept.

  Pulling the gun from his waistband, he headed to the end of the corridor, counting down the room numbers as he went. The door to room 400 was partially open. He reached it and pushed it further open with the muzzle of the gun. The room was dark but he could make out a figure lying still on the bed, lit up by the spill of light through the door. From the twisted sheets and position of the body it looked as though the monk had not died without a fight, but the amount of blood pooling on the upper part of the bed and dripping to the floor suggested he had died nevertheless.

  A sudden volley of voices echoing in the corridor snatched his attention. Someone was coming.

  Don’t let them find you here, his mother had said.

  He turned and ran towards the voices, ducking back into the deserted ward just as a group of orderlies rounded the corner, making for the rooms where the dead awaited.

  Gabriel stepped out on to the scaffold platform and wound the rope around his leg, back and arm. Already the city was returning to life: streets were starting to re-emerge from the blanket of darkness where the power had come back on in random sections. Soon the whole city would be lit up and the cop would be discovered on the street below. He needed to get away while he still had darkness and confusion on his side and before his grief overwhelmed him.

  In the distance the rising moon sketched the outline of the Citadel against the sky. It had reached out tonight with its dark tentacles, but had only succeeded in finding two of the four people it had sought to silence. He had escaped and so had Liv. And he vowed, as he stared at the mountain, that they would not get a second chance. He felt the hard edge of the book digging into him where he had tucked it into his waistband.

  He would find Liv and then he would wreak his revenge. But for now he had to get away and he had to stay safe.

  A scream in the corridor told him that the bloody remains of the monk had been found. He stepped off the platform and dropped down into the dark.

  41

  Flight TK 7121

  The soft cabin light and subtly raised temperature conspired with the hum of the engines to send the passengers on Flight TK 7121 to sleep. All the airlines employed the same tactic: feed them quick then dim the lights and whack up the temperature. But Liv didn’t trust herself to sleep. She was scared that her nightmare would return and she didn’t relish the thought of waking up panicked and screaming at thirty thousand feet; so she drank coffee, and she read.

  She began working through the book, searching for any other illustrations that matched the symbols she had written on her hand. The symbols on the Sumerian cylinder seal that had prompted her to buy the book were close, but not an exact match. She was hoping there might be further examples in the book, ones closer to the word she had heard. She wasn’t quite sure what she would do with this knowledge if she found it, but she was used to dealing with facts, so facts were what she was seeking.

  She found what she was looking for in the middle of a chapter called ‘Lost Languages’.

  It was on a page showing fragments of recovered stones from the ruins of various ancient libraries. Halfway down, tucked into the fold, was a picture of a broken tablet. Only the top half was visible, just three lines of swooping symbols. The very first ones jumped out at her. She held her hand flat against the page, comparing what she had written with the ones on the tablet.

  They were identical.

  She took her pen and carefully underlined the symbols on the photograph and wrote ‘ the key? ’ in the margin next to it.

  The caption told her the tablet was written in the same proto-cuneiform script that had first drawn her to the book. It had been found at the site of the ruined Library of Ashurbanipal in a place called Al-Hillah in modern-day Iraq. She underlined this too then turned to the beginning of the chapter and started scanning the text until she found further mention of the language. Proto-cuneiform script is the oldest recorded form of writing and the precursor of all modern forms of written text. Sometimes referred to as ‘Malan’, after the tribe that originated it, or ‘the lost language of the gods’ because the ancients believed it was a gift to mankind from the gods themselves, it was used only by the high priests of ancient Sumerian society as a means of recording the most sacred of events. This restricted its spread and usage and ultimately proved to be its undoing. During the Elamite invasions around 2000 BC the Sumerian temples were destroyed and the priests put to death. Knowledge of the language perished with them and what few texts remain have proved insufficient to attempt any kind of comparative reconstruction of its meaning. Progress has further been hindered by the centuries-old system of acquiring and archiving many possibly useful examples of proto-cuneiform by the Institute of Ancient Writings based in the Citadel in the historic city of Ruin.

  Liv felt a chill despite the superheated cabin. Even now, as she was flying away from the place at more than six hundred miles an hour, it seemed she still could not escape its influence. She flipped to the index and looked up ‘The Institute of Ancient Writings’. There was a whole chapter devoted to it. She turned to it and speed-read, hungry for the knowledge it contained. The Institute of Ancient Writings was set up by the monks of Ruin in the fourth century BC, its origins coinciding with the first writing systems emerging from the ancient lands of Mesopotamia — ‘the land between two rivers’.

  An illustration on the opposite page showed a modern map over which the boundaries of Mesopotamia had been drawn. It stretched between the rivers Tigris and the Euphrates all the way up through Iraq and northern Syria to southeastern Turkey and the foothills of the Taurus mountains where the Citadel had stood even then. The Institute’s original mandate was to gather and collate all written knowledge so that it could be studied and preserved. The belief was that this knowledge, passed down by storytellers through the oral tradition, had been gleaned by those closer to creation — and therefore closer to God — so its preservation was seen as a sacred duty. As time moved on, however, and other ancient civilizations grew and prospered, they too wished to preserve knowledge as well as study and copy the works that had already been preserved. But the Citadel, ever known for its secrecy and silence, denied all access. In response, the great emerging civilizations built their own libraries, starting with the Library of Ashurbanipal and progressing through the Royal Library at Alexandria, and the Library of Pergamum (see separate chapters). For a time these libraries grew and prospered, but as the civilizations that supported them crumbled and fell, so the libraries were either destroyed, looted by invading armies, or — in an ironic twist of fate — their contents acquired and transported back to the one library that still remained intact: the great library of Ruin.

  Liv turned the page and discovered an eighteenth-century engraving depicting the Citadel’s great library. It showed dark caves and tunnels lined with books and tablets stretching away while monks holding candles wove between stalagmites to study the things no one else was allowed to. Beneath the engraving was a quote from a Dr Parnesius, an eighteenth-century Oxford historian, quipping that ‘while all roads lead to Rome, all books are read in Ruin’. In modern times, as museums have become richer and the competition to house rare items has grown, the Guggenheims and Gettys have set up their own archaeologica
l archive departments. As a result a competitive black market in ancient texts has flourished, enabling such treasures as the Dead Sea Scrolls to come to light and remain in it rather than be locked away in the mountain fortress of Ruin. And while these discoveries have helped broaden our understanding of our prehistoric past, the oldest languages, such as proto-cuneiform, and the knowledge they contain remain unsolved. The only hope of decoding them would be the discovery of a key.

  Liv stared at this last word. Coincidence or omen? Ordinarily, she wasn’t a strong believer in either, but nothing about her current circumstances could be described as ‘ordinary’. She put it to the back of her mind and did what she always did — she followed the evidence.

  Turning again to the index, she scanned the ‘K’ section. There were several page references for ‘Key’. She turned to the main one. The most famous ‘Key’ in the history of ancient languages is the Rosetta Stone. Prior to its discovery in 1799 by Napoleon’s Commission des Sciences et des Arts our understanding of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics had faded from knowledge. Originally displayed within a temple, the stone was inscribed with a decree clearly intended to be read by all who passed. Carved in around 196 BC at a time when language was starting to proliferate, the decree was written in the three most commonly used languages of the time: Ancient Greek, Demotic script and Egyptian hieroglyphs. By comparing the known Greek it was therefore possible to work out the meaning of the other two ‘lost’ languages. The discovery of these ‘key’ stones — carved on the cusp of changing world history — are now considered to be the holy grail of archaeological orthography. The most sought after being the so called Star-stone, or Imago Astrum, mentioned in the dynastic history of Ancient Babylon as being the key to understanding all ancient knowledge and whose loss to the world is believed to be referenced in the story of the Tower of Babel. As the stone was lost, so was our ability to understand the earliest of languages. Many believe the Imago Astrum found its way into the vast collection of the Institute of Ancient Writings in Ruin. Some even believe it may refer to the legendary Sacrament itself.