The Key s-2

by Simon Toyne

  Gabriel smiled. ‘I’m real,’ he said. He pulled a chair out for her and sat back down. ‘You want some breakfast?’ He said this as if they were on a weekend away with friends and she had slept in with a hangover.

  Plates of bread and apples, and pots of honey and butter were set out on the table, and her stomach growled at the sight. It would all have been quite pleasant if the circumstances had been different. Gabriel poured coffee from a jug and stirred in a big spoonful of honey. She drank the sweet liquid, savouring the way it scalded the back of her throat and hit her empty stomach with the combined force of caffeine and sugar.

  She looked down at the map on the table. It showed the eastern edge of Turkey and the brown expanse of Syria, Jordan and Iraq. ‘So where are we going?’ she asked.

  There was a moment of awkward silence.

  ‘We’re not entirely sure,’ Gabriel admitted. ‘I… didn’t find the Starmap. Someone else had got there first. The monk who helped me get inside the mountain, Athanasius, is going to check the archives and try to find out what happened to it.’

  Even though Gabriel’s words had mortal implications for her, Liv could hear the pain of disappointment in his voice and wanted only to reach out and tell him it was OK. ‘So we wait,’ she said brightly, trying to make it sound as if this was the best they could have hoped for.

  Another awkward silence stretched across the table. Dr Anata broke it.

  ‘We haven’t got time to wait,’ she said. ‘I’ve been going through some research papers on ancient maps and other documents that I thought might point us in the right direction.’ Her voice was low and measured in a way that disturbed Liv deeply. ‘I discovered something, a couple of things actually: one that may be of use and one that — is less helpful.’

  In her former life as a crime reporter, Liv had done a feature on what the police called ‘Death Notices’, the most hated part of any homicide detective’s job. It referred to the visits they had to make to victims’ families in order to break the painful news that someone they loved was never coming home again. In the course of her research, she had studied the specific changes in body language and the careful cadence of the voice as it shaped itself to deliver this most unwelcome of all news. Liv recognized those telltale signs now in Dr Anata.

  ‘We’d been working on the assumption that the countdown started when you released the Sacrament. But having read up on ancient systems of measuring time, I realize we were wrong.’ Dr Anata picked up the leather-bound book from the table and turned to the middle pages. ‘The Mirror Prophecy says you must follow the Starmap Home within the phase of the moon. So far we have applied our modern, fluid notions of time to this, and treated it as a relative measurement. For us, a specific period of time can start whenever we choose because we have clocks to measure it by. But the ancients only had the fixed rhythms of nature, so time for them was always expressed as an absolute. Therefore the phrase “Within the phase of a moon” does not refer to a twenty-eight-day period that started when you released the Sacrament. It refers to the fixed period of celestial time during which all of these events must happen.’

  Liv realized now why Dr Anata’s tone and behaviour had been so horribly familiar. Like those detectives she had followed to unsuspecting doors, Dr Anata had been carrying the burden of death with her. Only this time it wasn’t news of some victim in the morgue, it was the prognosis for her survival.

  ‘How long have I got?’

  ‘The current phase of the moon ends tomorrow night,’ Gabriel said, his voice tight and controlled. ‘We have two days to find the ancient site of Eden or the Sacrament will die inside you, you will die with it, and God alone knows what will happen to the rest of us.’

  Liv looked out through a dusty window to a uniform line of trees stretching away from the shack. Blossom drifted down from them like snow and above them, low on the horizon, she could see the partial moon, curling like a fingernail in the lightening sky.

  ‘You said you’d found two things,’ she said, watching it melt away, as it had in her dream, which now made a terrible kind of sense.

  Dr Anata reached over and turned the laptop round so Liv could see it. ‘I found this,’ she said.

  On the screen was a browser window with a picture of a cracked clay tablet.

  ‘This is the Imago Mundi, the oldest known map in the world, and part of the permanent collection of Babylonian artefacts in the British Museum. Imago Mundi literally means “map of the earth”, and many — myself included — believe it was inspired by the Starmap.’

  Liv leaned forward and studied the photograph. A section at the top of the tablet was crammed with strange symbols and below that were two perfect circles — one inside the other — containing another symbol that Liv recognized immediately as the Tau.

  ‘I came to the conclusion that, if this was inspired by the Starmap, then the two would exhibit similar characteristics and principles. Maps are always designed to be uniform and stick to certain rules so that as many people as possible can interpret them. Modern maps, for example, always have north at the top, and the oceans coloured blue. And the one thing about this map that is consistent with every other from the same period is this.’ She pointed at the T in the centre of the circle.

  ‘It’s always right in the middle and everything else is relative to it. In the past, scholars assumed it was the Tau and must refer to Ruin, because of the city’s long associations with the symbol. But when cuneiform started to be decoded in the nineteenth century they discovered their mistake. The upright actually represents a river and the crosspiece a city, under whose walls that river flowed.’ Dr Anata pointed to a symbol carved into the right-hand side of the crosspiece. ‘Babylon. At one time it was the greatest city on earth and the centre of the civilized world. So naturally the very first map-makers placed it at the centre of everything.’

  ‘And you think the Starmap will do the same?’

  Dr Anata nodded. ‘The route back to Eden will undoubtedly begin where all ancient journeys did, at the site where Babylon once stood.’ She pointed a silver-ringed finger at a spot on the map. ‘Al-Hillah — in the province of Babil, south central Iraq.’

  Liv looked across at Gabriel, his face pinched in painful memory as he stared down at the point on the map marking the place where his father had been killed.

  ‘We should load up the jeep and get going,’ he said, rising from his chair. ‘The border’s a good few hours away. We don’t have much time.’

  V

  And the Temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God… and no man was able to enter into the Temple,

  till the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled.

  Revelation 15:8

  86

  Vatican City

  Clementi put the phone down and tapped his password into the secure server. He had been talking to Harzan for almost an hour, learning first hand everything they had found, and though the news had made him feel elated, he had ended the conversation feeling slightly anxious. It was more urgent than ever that the thorn in his side that had been bothering him since the explosion in the Citadel must be removed. For his grand scheme to be compromised by the inopportune investigations of a few terrorists would be tragic. Pentangeli’s words kept echoing in his head:

  … throw everything you have at finding these people, before they stumble on to something that could really do some damage.

  During his lengthy conversation with Harzan, a new email had arrived. Clementi opened it now, eager for more good news.

  It was a field report, filed by the one remaining active agent. Clementi skimmed through it. The agent confirmed what the news footage had already shown him: the girl had got away. There was no new information as to where she had gone. In the agent’s opinion, the escape effort had been coordinated by the other survivor, Gabriel Mann, and the two of them were now on the run together.

  Attached to the report were several photo files showing images of items found in the girl’s lugga
ge; her passport, the ruined Bible, and various pages from her notebook. One of the pages contained a list of place names: Ethiopia Assyria Euphrates Al-Hillah Eden????

  Clementi stared at the last three names.

  They were getting close, much too close for comfort. If they managed to find the compound out in the desert then…

  He paused.

  Then what? Two people facing down a small, private army. He smiled. Pentangeli had it the wrong way round. Clementi didn’t need to ‘throw everything he had’ at finding these people; they were clearly already on their way to find him, or the sacred spot in the desert at least.

  He reached over, picked up the phone and dialled Harzan’s number from memory. There would be no need to send out a search party — all he had to do was set a trap.

  87

  Babil Province, Western Iraq

  Hyde stared out of his window at the brightening sky. He had already been up since a couple of hours before dawn, organizing the security and construction detail for the new site out in the desert. Outside he could hear the noise of trucks and other vehicles revving up ready to move out. He’d been all set to go with them, but now Dr Harzan had dropped this in his lap.

  Sometimes he felt like a raw recruit, being handed all the crappy jobs no one else wanted. At least in the army there had only been one chain of command, so you knew who was above you and therefore which way the shit flowed. He remembered what the Ghost had said when he’d brokered the exchange for the relic.

  These people may come here searching for something. If they come, let me know.

  At the time he’d thought hell would ice over before he’d ask the Ghost for help. But with the three wise men draining his resources out in the desert, he figured he should swallow his pride and do the pragmatic thing. He would pay the man for his help, establish a power structure of master and servant. It wasn’t his money after all.

  He unlocked the lower drawer of his desk, pulled out the newspaper and dialled the number written in the margin. This time the Ghost answered.

  ‘You have news for me?’

  Hyde shook his head, already exhausted by the day. ‘Would a simple “Hello” kill you?’

  The Ghost said nothing.

  Hyde pinched the space between his eyes, trying to massage away his headache. ‘OK, let’s cut the small talk then. Those people you spoke about, the ones you said would be coming to search for something in the desert? They’re on their way.’

  ‘How old is this news?’

  ‘Fresh off the press, as far as I’m aware. I’ve been asked to find them quickly and you said you could help. You remember that?’

  The Ghost said nothing.

  Hyde continued to work at the spot on his forehead. ‘Listen, if you’re busy-’

  ‘I can help you,’ the Ghost said, then the phone went dead.

  88

  It hadn’t taken much to convert the reading room into a makeshift infirmary. The desks had been moved aside to create space for four beds and the shelves that were normally packed with books were now crammed with boxes of syringes, sterile gloves, masks and strong sedatives. Another shelf was entirely filled with canvas straps, lying in readiness to restrain those who showed symptoms of what everyone was now calling ‘the Lamentation’.

  Axel was pacing, fuelled by frustration and fear, settling on his bed only fitfully before starting his circuit of the room again. Athanasius felt sorry for him. As captain of the guards, Axel was clearly feeling the stress and indignity of this incarceration more than the rest of them. He had also seen his life’s ambition snatched away for a second time. He must have thought his elevation to Sanctus was guaranteed with the arrival back in the Citadel of Brother Dragan; then this had happened.

  Father Malachi was dealing with the quarantine in a different way. He sat at one of the workstations, his face bathed in the green glow of a terminal screen, zoning everything out so he could disappear into his work. Unbeknown to the outside world, the vast majority of the millions of books and documents in the great library had been digitized and Malachi and his staff had been cataloguing and cross-referencing them for over a year. He therefore had enough to keep him busy for years to come, so long as he remained connected to his beloved library and unaffected by the disease.

  Athanasius and Father Thomas crowded round the only other workstation in the room, tapping messages to each other on a blank document so that Axel and Malachi could not discover what they were discussing. Athanasius finished a summary of his fruitless search in the ossuary ending in the crucial question he hoped Thomas, architect of the library’s database, could now help him with.› Can you access the library inventory immediately following the ossuary renovations and see if anything was added?

  Father Thomas nodded, took over the keyboard and started tapping away. First he called up a general diary program and found the exact dates the ossuary had been renovated. It was listed in the general maintenance log over eight years previously. He copied the dates into a search facility on the main cataloguing program and hit return.

  Pages of results filled the screen.

  Athanasius felt weary just looking at them all. The Citadel was voracious in its acquisition of every publication, research paper or book that had anything remotely to do with the Sacrament. The number of new additions listed, even limiting the search to the weeks immediately following the restorations, ran into thousands. Sorting through them was going to take hours — days, maybe — and the inventory was far from detailed. Athanasius took possession of the keyboard again. › Can you refine the search and look for anything archaeological — specifically anything etched on stone?

  Thomas returned to the search window and tapped in a string of codes that meant nothing to Athanasius but clearly made sense to the program. This time only two items came back.

  The results were laid out in a grid of four columns with a unique number on the left, a brief description of the item, a column detailing where it came from and a final column showing where it was now.

  The first entry was described as a clay tablet written in proto-cuneiform script and incorporating Tau symbols in its design. It had come from Iraq after being acquired on behalf of the Citadel and was now stored in the Babylonian section of the library, along with several thousand similar examples acquired over nearly as many years.

  The second item was more of a mystery.

  It was described simply as a stone tablet with markings. The column showing where it had come from contained a dash and the final one, indicating where it was now stored had the letters ASV written in it, the number 2, and a date from three years ago. Athanasius assumed it must be more computer jargon, but when he pointed at it Thomas shrugged and shook his head, clearly as baffled as he was. He glanced up at the hunched figure across the room. ‘Brother Malachi,’ he called out. The librarian looked up in shock as if he’d forgotten there was anyone else in the room. ‘I’m running some systems tests on the inventory database and I’ve found an anomaly. Could you take a look at it for me?’

  Malachi rose unwillingly from his seat and shuffled towards them. ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked, standing as far back as he could, as if fearful he might catch the Lamentation from being near them.

  ‘This entry seems to have been corrupted in some way. Does it make any sense to you?’

  Malachi peered through his thick glasses and huffed. ‘It’s not corrupted,’ he said. ‘The dash means it didn’t come from outside the mountain. It will most likely have been transferred from a different department in the library, so there’s no acquisition information to fill in.’

  Thomas nodded. ‘And the destination code?’

  ‘That means it is no longer here.’ He pointed at the letters ASV. ‘That stands for Archivum Secretum Vaticanum and the date indicates when it was transferred there.’

  Athanasius was shocked by the information almost as much as he was by the matter-of-fact way in which it had been delivered. ‘But I thought nothing ever left the mountai
n.’

  ‘It is rare, but it does happen. There were four transfers last century, for example — all to the Vatican Secret Archives.’

  ‘And the number two,’ he asked, pointing at the one part Malachi had not explained, ‘what does that stand for?’

  ‘It identifies the position of the person who made the request. Only the most senior clerics in the Vatican can authorize the transfer of material from our library and each of them is assigned a number. Number one refers to the Pope and number two is his second in command. This transfer was ordered by the Cardinal Secretary of State, Cardinal Clementi.’

  89

  Gabriel had done the journey to the border many times before, driving supplies down to the charity’s various projects in Iraq. He told Liv about some of them as they drove — the schools they were building, the wetlands in the south they were re-flooding after Saddam Hussein had drained them to drive out the marsh Arabs who’d lived there for thousands of years. Gabriel talked and Liv listened, stoking the fire of his conversation with the occasional question while she leaned against the hot window and watched the dry, rocky countryside slide past.

  The further they got, the more the green vanished and the desert took over. It reflected how she was feeling — as if some vital part of her was disappearing and slowly being replaced by dry dust. At first she tried to convince herself that it was just the residual effects of the sedative; but as the miles wore on and the feeling of emptying out grew stronger she started to think it might be something else. Two days, Gabriel had said; forty-eight hours — and they were going to spend at least half of it travelling, with no guarantees they were even heading in the right direction.