The Key s-2

by Simon Toyne

  An American garrison was stationed there now, camped in the shadow of the once great walls in lines of temporary tents surrounding a section of ground that had once seen the triumphal procession of King Nebuchadnezzar and more recently been bulldozed flat to accommodate squadrons of Apache and Cobra helicopters. The ground crew were busily anchoring the aircraft to the deck with securing cables as they drove by, wrapping the engine cowls with heavy-duty covers against the worsening weather. Gabriel took note but said nothing. It didn’t matter how bad the weather got, they had no choice but to press on.

  A few kilometres further along the main road they had found a goat track running north into the desert and followed it until the read-out on the jeep’s sat-nav told Gabriel he had finally arrived at the coordinates where his father’s life had ended. He had memorized them twelve years ago, always knowing that he would end up here one day, often running through them in his head like a mantra or a spell to keep his father’s memory alive.

  He switched off the engine and stepped outside, surveying the flattened dish of desert. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t this. There were no graves to mark the site, no structures remaining to show there had ever been anything here other than rock and dust.

  He’d often wondered how he would feel when he eventually got here. He had thought that coming here might make sense of the anger and abandonment he’d felt for most of his adult life. But standing here now he felt nothing. If anything, it served to emphasize how powerless he was against the merciless flow of the universe. His father had died out here and Gabriel had not been there to save him; now he was here with someone else who needed saving and he had no idea how to do that either.

  Hearing the sound of the jeep door opening behind him, he turned away so Liv would not see the tears brimming in his eyes. He didn’t want her to show him any pity when he deserved none. He had failed once and was failing again.

  But instead of joining him, she walked away, up the bank of the wadi towards a spot on the horizon, her eyes looking up towards the stars.

  ‘Liv?’ he called out, but she didn’t answer. She kept walking, her gaze fixed on the sky. ‘Liv!’ He moved across the sand and stepped in front of her, grabbing her shoulders to snap her out of her trance.

  She blinked and looked at him as if she had just been shaken awake.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  She pointed up at a snaking line of stars hanging low in the sky. ‘The dragon,’ she said. ‘I was following the dragon.’

  Gabriel followed the line of her extended arm, recognizing the constellation she was pointing at. She was right — it was Draco, the dragon. The dragon was everywhere, it seemed: in the prophecy, in the madman’s account of how his father was killed — and now even in the sky.

  ‘Let’s get back to the jeep,’ he said, aware of how cold it was getting and how she was starting to tremble. ‘We can follow the dragon in that. It will be quicker.’

  ‘That way,’ she said, pointing back up at the sky.

  ‘Whichever way you want,’ he said, steering her back to the car. He was losing her, he could feel it. Things predicted in the prophecy were coming to pass.

  As he helped her into the passenger seat he heard a sound like a bird cheeping in the night. Gabriel climbed back in behind the wheel, slamming the door against the night wind. The noise had been his phone and he checked the caller ID before answering. It was Arkadian.

  ‘I think I’ve found something,’ he said before Gabriel even had a chance to speak. The detective revealed what he had discovered about the oil operation called Dragonfields, then supplied map coordinates. Gabriel fed the information directly into the sat-nav and set it to calculate a route.

  Another dragon, Gabriel thought. Coincidence or destiny?

  When the sat-nav finished its calculations, it answered the question for him. An arrow on the screen showed the direction the coordinates lay in, pointing in the exact direction Liv had been walking.

  The oil operation was less than thirty kilometres away, somewhere in the wastelands of the Syrian Desert, following the constellation of the Dragon.

  100

  Athanasius had always hated the dark. When he had given his life to God and first entered the Citadel it had never occurred to him that he was also consigning himself to a life of darkness. The tunnels had been vastly improved during his time there, with electric lighting now used throughout most of the mountain, but the forbidden upper sections he now stumbled through had changed little in hundreds of years. In his haste to get here he had not brought a torch and was having to use the glow from the phone screen to guide him. It struck him as apt in many ways that the bright photograph of the prophecy was lighting his path towards the one man trying to thwart it.

  He reached the upper section breathless and perspiring and held the screen to his chest to cut out the light. For a moment his eyes were blind, but as they slowly adjusted he could see a glow ahead of him. It was coming from one of the smaller tunnels to his left, not the one leading to the chapel of the Sacrament as he had expected. He followed the telltale light, keeping his own covered and feeling his way along the wall until he came to a forgotten, dusty corridor dotted with piles of rubble that showed how poorly it had been maintained. The glow was coming from a partially open door halfway along it. There was also a breeze, sweet-smelling after the trapped air of the stairwell, and it drew him towards the door.

  The source of the glow was a flambeau that had been slotted into a niche in the wall. It guttered in the night breeze that flowed through a loophole cut in the outer wall. In his mind, Athanasius had imagined he was at the heart of the mountain. It had not occurred to him that the higher he climbed, the narrower the mountain became and the closer to its edge he would be.

  Dragan was standing by the opening with his back to the door. At first Athanasius thought he must be praying, but then he turned and he saw the phone clutched in the black, leathery grip of his hand.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Athanasius asked, realizing from his own experience the significance of his position by the open window.

  Dragan snarled, his spare hand reaching for the wooden T-shaped crux in his belt. He pulled it clear, revealing the ceremonial dagger inside and lunged at him. Athanasius spun away, grabbing the burning torch from the wall and holding it out in front of him to keep him back. Dragan regained his footing and kicked the door shut, sealing the room. They circled each other, neither one advancing or retreating, clear in the knowledge that only one of them was going to leave here alive.

  ‘I am trying to put right all the things you have ruined,’ Dragan said, ‘by returning the Sacrament to the mountain. The moment it was removed, everything started to die: first the Sancti, then the garden, and now everybody else. The Lamentation will strike you too; do not think you will be spared. I am trying to save your life too by doing this.’

  ‘And what about the girl, what about her life? Is she an acceptable sacrifice?’

  Dragan scoffed. ‘The Bible is full of sacrifice made for the greater good. Christ himself sacrificed his own life.’

  ‘Christ gave his life for the benefit of everybody.’

  ‘And the restoration of the Sacrament to the Citadel will do the same. Look around you: earthquakes, disease… look at me — ’ He pulled up the arm of his cassock to reveal his withered, blackened arm. ‘All of this has come about since the Sacrament was released.’

  ‘Not true. There have always been earthquakes. There has always been famine, and drought and global epidemics. Shutting an innocent girl into a mediaeval cross full of needles to trap the divine spirit she carries inside her is nothing that we, as men of God, should be party to — whatever the cost to ourselves. I have read the Heretic Bible. I know the true history of the Sacrament and I know the true history of this mountain.’ He held out his own phone, showing the photograph of the Mirror Prophecy and placed it on the ground between them. ‘I know you believe in what you are doing. But there is anot
her way. We have a chance to put things right. Read what it says and see for yourself.’ He stepped back and put the flaming torch to one side.

  Dragan edged forward and picked up the phone.

  Athanasius watched him read the words of the Mirror Prophecy. ‘We have a chance here to restore balance to the world — but not by repeating our old mistakes.’

  Dragan shook his head. ‘You are wrong. All this does is prove the wisdom of what I seek to do. If the girl is carrying the Sacrament, then this is her home.’ He started rubbing at the material of his cassock. ‘She must return here or she will die anyway.’ The rubbing became more frenzied and his voice rose to a shrieking wail. ‘We will all die with her,’ he howled, as his scratching became frenzied and the Lamentation overwhelmed him as swiftly and powerfully as it had all the rest.

  101

  Gabriel had managed to cover twenty of the thirty kilometres towards the Dragonfields compound when the shamal hit. He had felt the wind steadily strengthening, battering the jeep with increasingly powerful gusts, but he had not been able to see the telltale mountain of dust until it swallowed the stars overhead, and the headlamps suddenly lit up a wall of sand moving along the riverbed to meet them.

  Moments later it enveloped them with a soft hiss as millions of particles of dust began to scour the outside of the jeep. Liv sat up in her seat, responding to the sound and to the sudden electro-static charge in the air that made the fine hairs on their skin stand up and the air around them crackle.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Gabriel said, laying his hand on hers and experiencing a small electric shock as his skin made contact. ‘We’re nearly there.’

  The hissing grew louder as the dust in the air thickened. Gabriel was having trouble seeing, the headlamps so smothered by dust that all they managed to do was create a ghostly glow in front of the jeep. He slowed his speed to little more than a crawl but still kept hitting the larger rocks he had previously been able to see and avoid. He checked the display on the sat-nav. The gentle curve of the wadi had turned them round and they were now heading in the wrong direction.

  ‘We’re going to have to stop,’ he said. ‘Keep a lookout and see if you can spot anywhere that might give us a bit of shelter. It won’t be for long, I promise: just until the worst of the storm passes.’

  They carried on for a few hundred metres, picking their way through the blinding dust cloud, flinching every time another rock banged against the bumper or scraped along the underside of the car. Gabriel knew if they stopped out in the open then microscopic dust could find its way into the engine, and it might not start again. Even a little bit of cover would help minimize the damage. They continued to crawl along, listening to the wind outside and the shushing sound of the sand punctuated by the spatter of grit carried by the stronger gusts.

  ‘There!’ Liv pointed at a large, dark patch of riverbank slipping through the gritty fog outside her window. Gabriel threw the wheel round and steered towards it, the headlights shaking free of the dust’s grip long enough to reveal the smooth walls of a sizable cave. He eased the jeep into it, as far as he could manage before the ceiling sloped down, halting their progress. The back half of the jeep was still sticking out into the wadi, but the engine block was sheltered. It was as good as they were going to get. Gabriel cut the ignition so as not to flood the cave with exhaust fumes and switched off the headlights to save the jeep’s battery.

  With the engine noise gone, the howl of the storm seemed louder. Liv reached into the back and felt around for the desert survival pack Washington had bequeathed them. Inside she found the small Maglite used for map reading and signalling and twisted it on. She kept on twisting until the whole of the top came off, turning the focused, directional beam into a softer, general light that lit everything like a lamp. ‘Come on,’ she said, pulling the drawstring tight on the pack and slipping it over her shoulder, ‘let’s go and see how deep this cave is. The air inside will be cleaner to breathe.’

  Gabriel followed, marvelling at her spirit in the face of everything, and joined her in the main body of the cave. She linked her arm through his and they set off into the darkness.

  Like many of the caves that honeycombed the soft rock beneath the desert, the one they had found was deceptively large. It twisted through channels cut by the steady flow of water when the land around had been rich and fertile. The further they moved, the quieter the howl of the storm became until it disappeared entirely and all they could hear was the crunch of their own footsteps and the echoing whisper of their breathing. It reminded Liv of the rushing sound the Sacrament made inside her, though she hadn’t heard it since they had left Baghdad. The rapturous lightness it brought had also gone and she feared what that might mean. So far she had avoided thinking about the implications of not fulfilling the prophecy, but now, with time so short and nature having turned against them, she had to face facts. The wording of the prophecy was clear: if they didn’t find Eden before daybreak, she was going to die.

  Maybe she had been foolish to think that she alone could make a difference in the face of these immutable universal laws. She had always known she was going to die one day, just as she knew the world would end. Given enough time what once was green and living always ended up as dust. It was the way of things: everything had to die, everything had to end. Here was as good a place as any.

  She stopped walking and her arm slipped from Gabriel’s as she sank to the floor and felt the smooth rock against the palms of her hands. Gabriel dropped down beside her. ‘Are you OK?’

  She smiled at him. ‘I want to rest. There’s no point in going any further.’

  Gabriel glanced over his shoulder at the cave. ‘I guess not.’ He slumped down beside her and fished out a thermal blanket from the survival kit. He spread it over her and bunched up the bag for her to rest her head upon.

  She watched his face, pinched in concentration, and reached up to touch it. ‘I meant there’s no point in going any further on this trip. It’s over. Even if the storm ended now, we don’t know if we’re heading in the right direction or how far away it might be.’

  ‘It’s only ten more kilometres. The sat-nav will take us right there.’

  ‘Take us where though? To a place we’re only guessing might have something to do with any of this.’

  He opened his mouth to say something then stopped and looked away. She could feel the disappointment and pain, radiating off him like heat. She understood that he would never give up. He had lost his entire family in the pursuit of fulfilling this prophetic sequence and felt the burden of his responsibility probably even more than she did, who carried the weight of the Sacrament inside her. Her one regret, if death came to claim her, was that she had not had the chance to spend more time in the company of this strong, sweet man. They had both lost so much in the brief time they had been together, and shared so much, that it was as if a whole extraordinary lifetime had been distilled into a few weeks. And now their time together was running out.

  She sat up and took his face in her hands, turning it towards her and seeing the tears on his cheeks. She leaned forward and kissed them, tasting the salt of his sadness. Then she held his face in her hands and stared into his eyes. ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said. ‘You’ve done everything you could to try to bring me to safety; no one could have done more. And I’ve felt more secure with you these past couple of weeks, even with the constant threat of death hanging over me, than I have ever felt in my life before. You did that for me — and I will always love you for it.’

  Then she leaned in close and kissed his mouth. The static crackled in the air all around them as he kissed her back, their hands pulling urgently at each other’s clothes in their hunger for each other, never once breaking the kiss for fear of what would follow.

  VI

  And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.

  And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, a
nd did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.

  Revelation 12:3-4

  102

  The storm had lessened a little, but not by much, when the Ghost rode out from the compound at the head of his column of men. The dust still thickened the air and haloed the sliver of moon hanging low in the dirty night sky. Two armoured personnel carriers filled with security troops followed them out. Hyde was at the wheel of one of them with the giant frame of Dick filling the seat beside him. The combination of dust and darkness made it hard to see anything, but the Bedouin eyes of the Ghost and his men could see enough to ride by, and so they led the way. It had also been one of the Ghost’s outriders who had spotted the faint glow of a vehicle’s lights, moving stealthily across the desert to the south just before the dust cloud had swept over the land and obliterated everything.

  Hyde was happy for the Ghost to be on point. If the interlopers were the hostiles they were looking for, he was hoping that there might be a bit of armed resistance and the freaky-eyed, gravel-voiced asshole might catch a stray bullet. It might even come from Hyde’s own M4: stranger things had happened in the heat of battle.

  By the time they reached the mouth of the dry wadi the dust had thinned enough for the stars to reappear and the horizon to become visible to the north. The Ghost halted his caravan and rode up to Hyde’s vehicle.

  ‘You should let us go in alone,’ he said, his voice as dry as the desert air. ‘These trucks are loud enough to rouse the dead. They’ve probably heard us already and are busy loading rifles and lining up grenades.’