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

‘And what channel did you say you were with?’

The line went silent for a moment.

‘Dr Anata, I’m not calling from a news channel … I’m part of the story,’ Liv said, before she had a chance to cut her off. ‘I’m … I’m the monk’s sister.’

Miriam paused, not sure if she’d heard right – not sure if she believed her.

‘I’ve seen his body,’ Liv continued, ‘or photos at least. He disappeared before I got to see him in person. There were some markings on him, some kind of ritual scars. I wonder if you could take a look at them and give me your expert opinion on what you think they might mean.’

Miriam felt light-headed at the mention of scars. ‘You have these photos?’ she whispered.

‘No,’ Liv said. ‘But I can show you what they look like. And there’s some other stuff as well. Stuff that might have something to do with the Sacrament.’

Miriam leaned heavily against the vending machine. ‘What stuff?’ she asked.

‘It’s probably easier if I show you.’

‘Of course.’

‘When are you free?’

‘I’m free right now. I’m in a TV studio, close to the city centre. Where are you?’

Liv paused, cautious of revealing her location to anyone. A cop friend had once told her the best place to hide was in a crowd. She needed somewhere public and busy and close by. She looked at the newspaper with the picture of Samuel standing on top of the most visited ancient attraction in the world. ‘I’ll meet you at the Citadel,’ she said.

88

Kutlar could still smell the garlic and sweat coming off the empty seat beside him. He blinked as the van emerged from the tunnel. A silhouetted figure walked down the alley between the car parks towards them.

Kutlar opened the notebook. He stared intently at the hourglass icon, watching the tiny black pixels tumbling inside it, virtual sand showing him how quickly his own time was running out.

Johann reached the van and swapped places with Cornelius as the street map on the screen reconfigured itself. An arrow pointed to the location of Liv’s phone. The hourglass reappeared momentarily then the map widened to show a second arrow, above and to the left of the first – their own position, traced through Cornelius’s signal.

They were close.

Cornelius watched the arrow at the centre of the screen jump a little further up the street. ‘She’s moving.’

Johann turned towards the ring-road.

The next time the screen refreshed itself the second arrow was moving too, circling the first one now, like a buzzard homing in on its prey.

Brother Samuel’s body had been stripped to the waist and arranged with his arms outstretched, echoing the shape that loomed from the altar at the far end of the chapel of the Sacrament. The Abbot cast his eyes across the ruined flesh, glowing bright and waxy against the stone floor, pierced repeatedly by broken bones, held together by rough sutures where the coroner had sliced it apart.

Could these remnants of a man really rise up and fulfil the prophecy?

The Abbot noticed the thin tendril of a blood vine curl around the altar. He followed it into the darkness until he found its root twisting up from one of the wet channels cut into the floor. He wrapped it around his hand and tugged hard until it tore free then stepped over to one of the large hemp-and-tallow torches and held the sinewy plant over the flame. It hissed in the heat, shrivelling away to nothing but blackened fibre and a smear of red sap on the Abbot’s hand.

The torch flame guttered as the door opened behind him. The Abbot turned, rubbing his hand against the rough wool of his cassock where the sap was starting to irritate his skin. Brother Septus, one of the monks who had helped bring Samuel up the mountain, hovered on the threshold.

‘We are ready for you, Brother Abbot,’ he said.

The Abbot nodded and followed him to another room in the upper chambers of the Citadel, one that had lain mostly silent since the time of the Great Inquisitions.

The door closed behind them, sealing Brother Samuel inside with the Sacrament. The candles flickered once again in the displaced air, and their light shimmered gently across his body.

For a moment it seemed as if he was moving.

89

Rodriguez was also looking at Samuel, standing on the famous bridge in Central Park, his arm draped over the shoulder of a girl who looked just like him. The photo was in a cheap clip frame that matched several others dotted across the wall of the apartment.

Breaking in had been easy enough. The girl lived on the ground floor of a purpose-built block close enough to the city centre to attract young professionals, and by the time he’d got there, everyone was out at work. He’d just had to hop into her tiny garden, with dense enough foliage to give plenty of cover, hold up his windcheater to deaden the noise and punch out a window. His brothers in Ruin would deal with the girl. He had to make sure she’d left no loose ends.

He hadn’t known Samuel that well inside the Citadel so seeing fragments of his previous life frozen on his sister’s wall was a strange experience. There was another shot of him looking much younger, sitting in a rowing boat with an equally fresh-faced version of the girl, both squinting against the sunlight. He’d spotted the photos by the phone, partially hidden by the tendrils of one of the many plants that covered practically every horizontal surface.

Rodriguez pressed the flashing message button and listened to the playback while he piled all the paper he could find in the middle of the living-room floor. There were two calls, both from what sounded like her boss, bawling her out for skipping town without filing copy.

He dragged her duvet off the unmade bed and added it to the heap, remembering a film he’d seen as a kid about some guy who was obsessed with aliens and filled his house with a mountain of junk like this.

He felt like an alien now.

When he’d gathered enough flammable material in the living room he went through the rest of the apartment splashing gasoline over the bed, the carpets, the couch. He didn’t have time to check the place thoroughly so he needed to make sure everything would be destroyed.

He went back out the way he’d come in, then tossed a lit match through the broken pane, heard the other windows crack with the pressure wave as the gas fumes caught. He didn’t stop to watch it burn, though he’d have liked that a lot. He had two more stops to make before he could fly away from here for ever.

He was doing God’s work. There was no time for pleasure.

90

Liv didn’t need the map to find the Citadel. All she’d had to do was head in its general direction until the main flow of tourist traffic picked her up and swept her along, all the way past the ticket stands, through the gates and up the narrow streets towards the most famous mountain in the world.

She had never really appreciated how ancient the place was until she entered this, the oldest part of it. The streets here were cobbled, but it was the buildings on either side that really brought it home. They were all tiny, with miniature windows and low doors, built for people with bad diets and hard lives who seldom lived beyond thirty. They were also constructed and repaired from various bits of material salvaged from throughout the city’s long history. Roman pillars emerged from medieval walls with the gaps between filled with oak beams and wattle and daub. She passed a partially opened door with an iron hand of Fatima curling downwards from its centre, a reminder of the long Moorish occupation of the city during the time of the Crusades. Beyond it lay a small courtyard surrounded by scalloped arches and bursting with assorted greenery, lemon trees in blossom, and banana plants unfurling their long scrolled leaves, all spilling out over elaborately mosaiced walls and floor. The next house along looked like an eighteenth-century Italian townhouse; the one next to that half Ancient Greek villa, half Napoleonic fort. Occasionally a gap would open up between the mis-matched houses and she would see modern buildings on the plains below, stretching away in the distance, clear to the red-rocked, serrated edge of the mountains that enclosed the city on all sides.

A breeze tumbled down the narrow street bringing warm air and a smell of food, which reminded her how hungry she was. She drifted upwards, drawn to the stall from which the tempting aromas had come. It sold flat breads and dips, another reminder of how the city had sucked up different influences over the centuries. For all the bloody history that had swirled around the Citadel, and all the religious wars that had been waged in its shadow, all that now remained of those lost empires were the solid staples of architecture and good food.

Liv fished a banknote out of the petty cash envelope and exchanged it for a triangular piece of bread, studded with seeds, and a tub of baba ghanoush. She scooped up the thick paste and shovelled it into her mouth. It was smoky and garlicky, a mixture of toasted sesame oil, roasted aubergine, and cumin with some other spices dancing around in the background. It was the most delicious thing she had ever eaten. She dipped the bread back in the pot, and had just loaded it up again when her phone rang in her pocket. She stuffed the bread in her mouth and reached for it.

‘Hello,’ she said through a mouthful of food.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Rawls yelled down the phone. Liv groaned inwardly. She’d turned her phone on when she’d left the newspaper offices so the Ruinologist could contact her; she’d forgotten all about Rawls.

‘I’m worried sick over here,’ he hollered. ‘I just saw you on CNN getting bundled into the back of a police cruiser. What the hell’s going on over there?’

‘Don’t worry,’ Liv replied through a mouthful of food. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah.’