The Key s-2

by Simon Toyne

  Yet again the Citadel was pulling at her with its dark gravity. She had run as far away as she could and yet here she was, still shivering in the long shadow it cast, her destiny still tied up in the secrets it contained and now carried with her. Then a thought struck her. She reached for the sheet of paper, reread the note from Athanasius, then looked up at Gabriel and smiled. ‘I think I know how you can get into the Citadel,’ she said.

  59

  The elevator doors slid open and Dick stepped on to the blue-grey carpet of the seventh floor. He stood for a moment, scanning the long empty corridor, listening for any sounds through the early-morning quiet of the hotel. Turning right as the receptionist had instructed, and moving silently despite his size, he listened to each room as he went by.

  He passed a tray covered with the gnawed remains of a room-service order, a couple of doors with ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs dangling from their handles, but other than that the corridor appeared to be unoccupied.

  The hydraulic arm of a fire door hissed as he pushed through into the corridor furthest from the main stairwell. His own room was just inside, but he drifted past, drawn by sharp predatory instincts and the faint murmur of something at the end of the hallway. He followed the sound, barely more than a whisper, until he stood by the door it was coming from.

  Dick reached out and touched its surface with his fingertips, feeling the tiny vibrations coming from the other side. Then he leaned forward, and pressed his ear to the door. It was fire regulated, which meant it was solid and therefore an excellent conductor of sound waves. Inside the room he could hear a TV tuned to a news channel and beneath it, softer and less distinct, the sound of two people talking.

  He shifted his position, careful not to make any noise, and pressed his ear tighter to the surface. He had planned to improvise his way into her room under the guise of room service or housekeeping and break her neck the moment she opened the door. But another person put an entirely different complexion on things. He would have to wait a while longer.

  For a brief moment he thought about kicking the door in with one mighty blow and taking his chances. It was what his old self would have done. But that was not the way he worked any more. He had learned to contain his violent exuberance and form his feelings into words. Words gave him control, and the word for this situation was clear:

  Patience

  60

  Liv stood under the hot shower feeling the tension she had been carrying around for the last few weeks running off and swirling down the drain with the dirty water. She was surprised by how calm she felt following her conversation with Gabriel. In effect, she had been given two weeks to live, and a near impossible task to complete if she wanted to change that, and yet her overwhelming reaction was one of relief. She had read that soldiers often experienced similar feelings when they were finally faced with combat duty. There was something comforting about knowing that your fate was in your own hands, even if the odds were stacked against you. She shut off the water and grabbed a bathrobe and a couple of thin towels from the rail.

  The bedroom seemed particularly cold and gloomy after the glare of the bathroom and the steam followed her out like a vapour trail. Gabriel had told her to sit tight until he could work out the details of her transportation back to Ruin. From there she had no idea where they would go, but she would be with him, so that was something at least.

  She packed her belongings and laid some fresh clothes on the chair, but didn’t put them on. The travel arrangements were bound to take a while to sort out and she hadn’t slept for more than twenty-four hours. Until Gabriel called back, she was going to try to sleep. After towelling herself dry, she wrapped the smaller towel round her damp hair and squirmed into bed.

  The sheets were starchy and cool against her skin and the mattress was firm, but it felt like the finest feather down. Outside she could hear the growing hiss of the morning traffic as people made their way into work. It struck her as odd that, here she was, lying in a nondescript corporate hotel room in New Jersey, contemplating a journey that would ultimately take her to the Garden of Eden. The idea seemed absurd, like calling up a travel agent and trying to book a flight to Mordor. In her rather vague religious upbringing she had assumed that the creation story and the Garden of Eden were legends. It had never occurred to her that they might be real.

  She reached over to the nightstand and pulled open the drawer, curiosity outweighing her exhaustion. Sure enough, it contained a copy of the Gideon Bible, the only book you could find in every hotel room in America. She opened it to Genesis and scanned the first few pages, the onionskin paper feeling much too flimsy to carry the weight of the words printed on it. Then, in the tenth verse of the second chapter she came across something very interesting: And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Hav’ilah, where there is gold; And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hid’dekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphra’tes.

  This legendary story was actually peppered with the names of real, modern-day places: Ethiopia, Assyria, Euphrates. She had always seen the story of man’s fall as something of a parable, a metaphor for grander theological ideas. Now she read it straight, a true account of exile, a tale so rapid and terrible that man had already been banished from paradise before the end of the next chapter. Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every which way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

  Liv took her notebook and turned to a new page. She wrote down all the place names mentioned in Genesis that still existed, then studied the list. She added Al-Hillah, the place the tablet had been found, then Eden. She stared at what she had just written, still having difficulty comprehending that Eden might be a place every bit as real as the others. She added several question marks next to it before reading on, looking for further clues that might point her to where her destiny might lie. But in the end, the richness of the language and her own tiredness took hold. Halfway through chapter four, shortly after Cain slew Abel, her eyes drooped and the book slipped from her hand, her head full of columns of fire and modern rivers flowing out of an ancient land that was filled with gold and onyx.

  61

  Badiyat al-Sham

  The Ghost followed the convoy across the desert at a safe distance, wary of the M60 and the heavily armed guards in the rear truck. It was easy to track them; the three vehicles kicked up enough dust to give away their position for miles and his horse was as swift over the rough ground as they were. After nearly an hour of driving the dust cloud disappeared, indicating that the convoy had stopped. He followed their tyre tracks until he felt he was getting close, then left his horse in the shade of a berm and covered the rest of the distance on foot. He had almost reached what he thought was their position when he heard the gunshot.

  He slid his AK-47 from his back, shouldering it as he hit the ground. Scanning the way ahead, he saw a wisp of dust rising like vapour in the distance. From the sound, it had been a shotgun he’d heard — a close-quarters weapon — so it seemed doubtful that it had been meant for him. Even so, the Ghost kept low as he moved closer.

  The trucks were parked in the shade of another spill pile, the byproduct of more hole-digging. One of the men in white overalls was crouched on the ground, de-rigging a broad tube that had been driven into the earth. It was part of a seismic refraction kit that fired a blank cartridge into the ground and measured the echo of the waves. Solid objects would reflect the waves back differently.

  The three civilians in charge were hunched over a laptop, studying the findings. They seemed agit
ated about something. After some discussion, they pointed at a spot close to where the Ghost was hiding and started walking towards him. The white-overalled workmen followed, bringing their picks and shovels with them. The guards remained by their jeep looking bored.

  The civilians reached a patch of ground about twenty metres away from the parked jeeps and pointed to the ground. Then they stood and watched as the workmen started hacking away at it. One of the bearded men pulled a bottle of water from a cool box and drank almost half of it in a single draught. Through his field glasses the Ghost could see the condensation on the side of the bottle and licked his own dry lips in response. The sun was only a third of its way up in the sky but was already starting to dry him out like a lizard on a rock. He needed to find better cover and take a drink himself, but the digging party was too close. His only option was to stay where he was until they got tired of digging their latest hole and moved on.

  But they didn’t.

  After five minutes, a clear sound rang out from the hole drawing everyone’s attention. The civilians rushed forward and the fattest of the three dropped down to clear away more earth with his hand. When he stood up he had a look of near exaltation on his face.

  ‘Radio base and tell them to get the earth movers here right now,’ he hollered over to the security detail. ‘And tell them we’ll need to set up a compound. We’ve found it!’ He climbed out of the hole, smacking the dust from his hands. ‘Praise God, we’ve found it.’

  62

  The Citadel

  Dragan experienced a moment of pure panic as he entered the chapel of the Sacrament and saw the door hanging open, the needles exposed, the cross empty.

  He fell to his knees before it, but not in any act of worship. After the exertions of his spectacular return to the Citadel he felt mortally weak. The single thing that had driven him on was his desire to be near the Sacrament again and resume the ritual of communion that suffused all those who partook of it with its sacred force and energy. Only the Sacrament could restore health and strength to himself and the mountain — but the Sacrament was gone.

  As he looked around the empty chapel he caught sight of himself reflected in one of the shining blades on the walls. How could God taunt him so? How could He ravage his body like this and offer him the chance of salvation, only to pull it away again? Then he shook his head and felt ashamed. This was not the work of God. It was the Devil’s doing he was witnessing here.

  Dragan reminded himself of Saint Job and the trials he had endured after God removed his protection. Satan had taken away his prosperity, his family and his health to test his faith and make him curse the Lord’s name. But Job had refused, cursing instead the day he was born. And had not Job been rewarded for this faith and ultimately been blessed with even greater prosperity and health than before? Dragan knew this was what he must do now. He had to keep his faith strong, though his body was weak and the way ahead uncertain. Only then would the Citadel be returned to its former strength.

  Bowing his head, he prayed to the empty cross, confessing the sins he had committed since last he had stood here. He asked forgiveness for his lack of faith and for the strength to do God’s bidding. Finally he said a prayer of remembrance for the departed soul of the priest who had been sent to take his life and had ended up losing his own. He believed that everything happened for a reason, that each step was preordained and each man merely an instrument of God’s greater will. As he thought now about the sequence of his own passage back to the Citadel, he began to see God’s work even in that.

  First he had sent him the nervous orderly, always in such a hurry to leave that one day he had left a scalpel behind. Then he had sent the priest who had died by the edge of that same blade as he tried to smother Dragan with a pillow. These things were not accidental; they had each been purposeful and ordained.

  When he had finished his prayers he bent forward, lying full length on the cold stone of the chapel floor. He stretched his arms out either side, making the sign of the Tau with his body, abasing himself before the altar in an act of total subjugation and humility. He lay like this for a long while, praying that God might show him a sign to guide him further, until his aching body could stand it no more and a coughing fit forced him upright.

  He stood stiffly, using his hands to brush away the dust that had collected on his cassock. A long, thin strand of gold twisted away in the air, caught by the flickering candlelight. He reached out and caught it in his hand, the fine gold thread standing out starkly against his blackened skin. He was surprised that such a thing was present in the chapel. Unlike the high church beyond the walls of the mountain, the holy men of the Citadel wore no ceremonial gowns of gold or silk. Even the Abbot and the Prelate wore the same rough cassocks as everyone else, so it was a mystery how a gold thread could find its way in here.

  He held it up to the light, stretching it out to get a better look, then realized what it was. It was not a golden thread but a long strand of blonde hair, lighter at the tip and darker at the root. Bleached hair — female hair. He thought back to the woman who had been evacuated from the Citadel. He had seen her image on the news, even glimpsed her himself when they had first been admitted to hospital. Her hair was blonde too, the same colour and length as the strand he now held in his hand. She must have been here, inside the chapel. And she was a woman, a sacred vessel with the power to carry living things inside her.

  Dragan turned and left the chapel with a renewed sense of purpose. He moved swiftly along the tunnel towards the top of the stairs then turned right into one of the ancillary passageways. A set of narrower steps carried him down a few levels to one of the deserted sections of the mountain where a series of abandoned cells fed off from the main tunnel. He entered the first door and saw what he was looking for, carved into the wall opposite. It was a loophole, a narrow window cut into the rock of the outer wall of the mountain; beyond it was a clear uninterrupted view of the sprawling city of Ruin.

  He hurried over, reaching into the pocket of his cassock to pull out the mobile phone he had taken from the dead priest. Ordinarily, entrance by the Ascension Cave involved each new arrival stripping naked; a symbolic rebirth, but also a practical measure to ensure nothing from the outside world could be smuggled into the mountain. In the unusual circumstances of his own re-entry these customs had been ignored and the phone had remained undetected in his pocket.

  He turned it on and the display lit up. As he had hoped, his elevated position and clear view provided him with a full-strength signal. His stiff black fingers moved over the keys as he navigated his way through the menu until he found the caller logs. There was only one number listed, with several calls in and out over the last few days. Text messages had also been received from the same number. He read through them, smiling as he came across the one that had ordered his own death. He selected the number it had come from and pressed the call-back button.

  As he looked out over Ruin, waiting for the phone to connect, it struck him that he was standing in the same cell Brother Samuel had been taken to after he had failed his initiation. This was where he had escaped from and started the chain reaction that had led the Citadel to its current crisis. How sweetly ironic it would be if his sister’s return completed the circle and put things back as they were. She must have carried the Sacrament out of the mountain. Only she could bring it back again.

  The phone rang.

  Dragan waited.

  Then, just as God had ordained it, someone picked up.

  63

  Vatican City

  Clementi had been pacing in his office, waiting for confirmation of his earlier order, when the phone rang in his pocket. He stubbed out his cigarette and answered it. ‘You have news?’

  ‘Yes.’ The voice was thickly accented and unfamiliar. ‘I have news from beyond the grave.’

  Clementi said nothing, fearing a trap.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the voice continued, ‘I am not angry that you ordered me killed. I understand better than
most the need for these rules of absolute secrecy. I am only surprised you did not try it sooner. Unfortunately, the priest you sent did not manage to bring death to me, rather the other way round. By God’s grace I am now back where I belong, inside the Citadel.’

  He sounded Slavic. The personnel records Clementi had read indicated that the last Sanctus was a Serbian monk. It could be him, but he needed to be sure. He moved over to his desk and opened the top drawer where he kept the files relating to the crisis in Ruin. ‘Tell me your name,’ he said.

  ‘I am Dragan Ruja. Born in the city of Banja Luka on the twenty-fourth of October 1964. I entered the Citadel in 1995 following the death of my family during the Bosnian War.’

  It was him. No question. The facts checked out. ‘I am glad you have found your way home safely,’ Clementi said, a slight shudder running through him as he realized he was talking to someone actually inside the Citadel.

  ‘Thank you for your concern. However I have returned here only to discover there has been a theft. Tell me, do you know where Liv Adamsen is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. I presume you have issued a similar silencing order regarding her.’

  Clementi didn’t reply.

  ‘You must cancel it immediately. She is not to be killed. She is to be brought here to the Citadel as quickly as possible. She is to be brought here alive.’

  ‘I’m not sure that will be possible.’

  ‘This is not a request, this is an order. You are familiar with the Constantinian decree of 374, ceding the Church’s power to Rome?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then you know that the Prelate of Ruin remains de facto head of the Church, even though the Pope is its public and temporal figurehead.’