Bestselling Conspiracy Thriller Trilogy: Sanctus, The Key, The Tower

‘And who are they?’

‘Because they lived in the Citadel, very little is known about them, but as they were only ever spotted high up on the mountain we assume they were an exalted order, possibly charged with protection of the Sacrament.’

The news anchor held a hand to his earpiece. ‘I think we can go live now to the Citadel.’

The picture cut to a new, clearer image of the monk, his cassock ruffling slightly in the morning breeze, his arms still stretched out, unwavering.

‘Yes,’ said the newsreader. ‘There he is, on top of the Citadel, making the sign of the cross with his body.’

‘Not a cross,’ Oscar whispered down the phoneline as the picture zoomed slowly out revealing the terrifying height of the mountain. ‘The sign he’s making is the Tau.’

In the gentle glow of firelight in his study in the western hills of Rio de Janeiro, Oscar de la Cruz sat with his eyes fixed to the TV image. His hair was pure white in contrast to his dark skin, which had been burnished to its current leathery state by more than a hundred summers. But despite his great age, his dark eyes were still bright and alert and his compact body still radiated restless energy and purpose, like a battlefield general shackled to a peacetime desk.

‘What do you think?’ his daughter’s voice whispered in his ear.

He considered her question. He had been waiting for most of his life for something like this to happen, had spent a large part of it trying to make it so, and now he didn’t quite know what to do.

He rose stiffly from his chair and padded across the floor towards French doors leading on to a tiled terrace that dimly reflected the moonlight.

‘It could mean nothing,’ he said finally.

He heard his daughter sigh heavily. ‘Do you really believe that?’ she asked with a directness that made him smile. He’d brought her up to question everything.

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘No, not really.’

‘So?’

He paused, almost frightened to form the thoughts in his head and the feelings in his heart into words. He looked across the basin toward the peak of Corcovado Mountain, where O Cristo Redentor, the statue of Christ the Redeemer, held out its arms and looked down benignly upon the still-sleeping citizens of Rio. He’d helped to build it, in the hope that it would herald the new era. It had indeed become as famous as he had hoped, but that was all. He thought now of the monk, standing on top of the Citadel, the gesture of one man carried around the world in less than a second by the world’s media, striking an almost identical pose to the one it had taken him nine years to construct from steel and concrete and sandstone. His hand reached up and ran round the high collar of the turtleneck sweater he always wore.

‘I think maybe the prophecy is coming true,’ he whispered. ‘I think we need to prepare.’

14

The sun was now bright over the city of Ruin. Samuel watched the shadows shorten along the eastern boulevard, all the way to the fringe of red mountains in the distance. He barely felt the pain burning in his shoulders despite the strain of holding up his already exhausted arms for so long.

For some time now he had been aware of the activity below, the gathering crowds, the arrival of TV crews. The murmur of their presence occasionally drifted up to him on the rising thermals, making them sound uncannily close. But he only thought about two things. The first was the Sacrament, the second, the face of the girl in his past. As his mind cleared of everything else, they seemed to merge into a single powerful image, one that soothed and calmed him.

He glanced now over the edge of the summit, past the overhang he’d had to scramble up what seemed like days ago. Way down to the empty moat, over a thousand feet below him.

He slipped his feet into the slits he had cut just above the hem of his cassock then hooked his thumbs through two similar loops cut in the ends of each sleeve. He shuffled his legs apart, felt the material of his habit stretch tightly across his body, felt his hands and his feet take the strain. He took one last look down. Felt the updraught from the thermals as the morning sun heated the land. Heard the babble of voices on the strengthening breeze. Focused on the spot he had picked out just past the wall where a group of tourists stood beside a tiny patch of grass.

He shifted his weight.

Tilted forward.

And launched himself.

It took him three seconds to fall the same distance it had taken him agonizing hours to climb the night before. Pain racked his exhausted arms and legs as they strained against the thick woollen material of his cassock, fighting to keep it taut against the relentless rush of air. He kept his eyes fixed on the patch of grass, willing himself towards it.

He could hear screams now through the howl of the wind in his ears and pushed down hard with both arms, increasing the resistance, trying to tilt his body upwards and correct his trajectory. He saw people scattering from the patch of ground he was heading for. It hurtled towards him. Closer now. Closer.

He felt a sharp tug at his right hand as the loop ripped apart. The sudden lack of resistance twisted and threw him into a forward spin. He reached for the flapping sleeve, pulled it taut again. The wind immediately ripped it free. He was too weak. It was too late. The spin worsened. The ground was too close. He flipped on to his back.

And landed with a sickening crump five feet past the moat wall, just short of the patch of grass, arms still outstretched, eyes staring upwards at the clear blue sky. The screams that had started as soon as he stepped off the summit now swept through the crowd. Those closest to him either turned away or looked on in fascinated horror as dark blood blossomed beneath his body, running in rivulets down fresh cracks in the sun-bleached flagstones, soaking through the green cloth of his tattered cassock, turning it a dark and sinister shade.

15

Kathryn Mann gasped as she watched it happen, live on TV. One moment the monk was standing firmly on top of the Citadel; the next he was gone. The picture jerked downwards as the cameraman tried to follow his fall then cut back to the studio where the flustered anchorman fiddled with his earpiece, struggling to fill the dead air as the shock started to register. Kathryn was already across the room, raising the binoculars to her eyes. The starkly magnified view of the empty summit and the distant wail of sirens gave her all the confirmation she needed.

She ducked back inside and grabbed the phone from the sofa, stabbing the redial button as numbness closed round her. The answer machine cut in; her father’s deep, comforting voice asked her to leave a message. She speed-dialled his mobile, wondering where he could have gone so suddenly. Mariella was obviously with him or she’d have picked up instead. The mobile connected. Cut straight to voicemail.

‘The monk has fallen,’ she said simply.

As she hung up, she realized she had tears in her eyes. She had watched and waited for the sign for so long, like generations of sentries before her. Now it seemed as if this too was just another false dawn. She took one last look at the empty summit then replaced the binoculars in the concealed cupboard and tapped a fifteen-digit sequence into the keyboard on the front of her safe. After a few seconds there was a hollow click.

A box the size of a laptop computer and about three times as thick lay behind the blast-proof titanium door, encased in moulded grey foam. Kathryn slid it free then carried it to the ottoman in front of the sofa.

The incredibly tough polycarbonate resin looked and felt like stone. She released the hidden catches holding the lid in place. Two fragments of slate lay inside, one above the other, each with faint markings etched on its surface. She looked down at the familiar pieces, carefully split from a seam by a prehistoric hand. All that remained of an ancient book, the carved symbols predated those of the Old Testament and could only hint at what else it might have contained. Its language was known as Malan, of the ancient tribe of Mala – Kathryn Mann’s ancestors. In the gloom she looked at the familiar shape the lines made.

It was the sacred shape of the Tau, adopted by the Greeks as their letter ‘T’ but older than language, symbol of the sun and the most ancient of gods. To the Sumerians it was Tammuz; the Romans called it Mithras, to the Greeks it was Attis. It was a symbol so sacred it had been placed on the lips of Egyptian kings as they were initiated into the mysteries. It symbolized life, resurrection and blood sacrifice. It was the shape the monk had formed with his body as he stood on top of the Citadel for all the world to see.

She read the words now, translating them in her head, matching their meaning with the heady symbolism and the events of the past few hours.

The one true cross will appear on earth

All will see it in a single moment – all will wonder

The cross will fall

The cross will rise

To unlock the Sacrament

And bring forth a new age

Beneath this last line she could see the tips of other beheaded symbols but the jagged edge of the broken slate drew an uneven line across them, preventing further knowledge of what they might have said.

The first two lines were easy enough to reconcile.

The true sign of the cross was the sign of the Tau, older by far than the Christian cross, and it had appeared on earth the moment the monk had spread his arms.

All had seen it in a single moment via the international news networks. All had wondered because it was extraordinary and unprecedented, and no one knew what it meant.

Then she faltered. She knew the text was incomplete, but she could not see a way past what remained.

The cross had indeed fallen, as the prophecy had foretold; but the cross had been a man.

She looked beyond the window. The Citadel was about eleven hundred feet from base to peak, and he had fallen down the sheer eastern face.