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

Now he had gone missing.

As long as he was at liberty, the Sacrament was vulnerable.

‘Find him,’ the Abbot said. ‘Search the grounds again, dig them up if you have to, but find him.’

‘Yes, Brother Abbot.’

‘Unless a host of angels passed by and took pity on his wretched soul he must have fallen and he must have fallen nearby. And if he hasn’t fallen then he must be somewhere in the Citadel. So secure every exit and conduct a room-by-room sweep of every crumbling battlement and bricked-up oubliette until you find either Brother Samuel or Brother Samuel’s body. Do you understand me?’

He kicked the copper bowl into the fire. A cloud of steam erupted from its raging heart, filling the air with an unpleasant metallic tang. The monk continued to stare at the floor, desperate to be dismissed, but the Abbot’s mind was elsewhere.

As the hissing subsided and the fire settled, so it seemed did the Abbot’s mood.

‘He must have jumped,’ he said at length. ‘So his body has to be lying somewhere in the grounds. Maybe it got caught in a tree. Perhaps a strong wind carried it away from the mountain and it now lies somewhere we have not yet thought to look; but we need to find it before dawn brings the first coachload of gawping interlopers.’

‘As you wish.’

The monk bowed and made ready to leave, but a knock on the door startled him afresh. He looked up in time to see another monk sweep boldly into the room without waiting for the Abbot to bid him enter. The new arrival was small and slight, his sharp features and sunken eyes giving him a look of haunted intelligence, like he understood more than he was comfortable with; yet he exuded quiet authority, even though he wore the brown cassock of the Administrata, the lowliest of the guilds within the Citadel. It was the Abbot’s chamberlain, Athanasius, a man instantly recognizable throughout the mountain because, uniquely among the ritually long-haired and bearded men, he was totally bald due to the alopecia he had suffered since the age of seven. Athanasius glanced at the Abbot’s companion, saw the colour of his cassock and quickly averted his eyes. By the strict rules of the Citadel the green cloaks – the Sancti – were segregated. As the Abbot’s chamberlain, Athanasius very occasionally crossed paths with one, but any form of communication was expressly forbidden.

‘Forgive my intrusion, Brother Abbot,’ Athanasius said, running his hand slowly across his smooth scalp, as he did in times of stress. ‘But I beg to inform you that Brother Samuel has been found.’

The Abbot smiled and opened his arms expansively, as if preparing to warmly embrace the news.

‘There you are,’ he said. ‘All is well again. The secret is safe and our order is secure. Tell me, where did they find the body?’

The hand continued its slow journey across the pale skull. ‘There is no body,’ he paused. ‘Brother Samuel did not jump from the mountain. He climbed out. He is about four hundred feet up, on the eastern face.’

The Abbot’s arms dropped to his sides, his expression darkening once more.

In his mind he pictured the granite wall springing vertically from the glacial plain of the valley, making up one side of the holy fortress.

‘No matter.’ He gave a dismissive wave. ‘It is impossible to scale the eastern face, and there are still several hours till daybreak. He will tire well before then and fall to his death. And even if by some miracle he does manage to make it to the lower slopes, our brethren on the outside will apprehend him. He will be exhausted by such a climb. He will not offer them much resistance.’

‘Of course, Brother Abbot,’ Athanasius said. ‘Except …’ He continued to smooth down hair that had long since departed.

‘Except what?’ the Abbot snapped.

‘Except Brother Samuel is not climbing down the mountain.’ Athanasius’s palm finally separated itself from the top of his head. ‘He’s climbing up it.’

3

The black wind blew through the night, sliding across the high peaks and the glacier to the east of the city, sucking up its prehistoric chill with fragments of grit and moraine freed by the steady thaw.

It picked up speed as it dipped down into the sunken plain of Ruin, cupped like a huge bowl within an unbroken ring of jagged peaks. It whispered through the ancient vineyards, olive groves and pistachio orchards that clung to the lower slopes, and on towards the neon and sodium glow of the urban sprawl where it had once flapped the canvas and tugged at the red-and-gold sun flag of Alexander the Great and the Vexillum of the fourth Roman legion and all the standards of every frustrated army that had clustered in shivering siege round the tall dark mountain while their leaders stared up, coveting the secret it contained.

The wind swept on now, keening down the wide straight highway of the eastern boulevard, past the mosque built by Suleiman the Magnificent and across the stone balcony of the Hotel Napoleon where the great general had stood, listening to his army ransacking the city below while he stared up, surveying the carved stone battlements of the dark dagger mountain that would remain unconquered, piercing the flank of his incomplete empire and haunting his dreams as he later lay dying in exile.

The wind moaned onwards, cascading over the high walls of the old town, squeezing through streets built narrow to hamper the charge of armoured men, slipping past ancient houses filled to the beams with modern mementoes, and rattling tourist signs that now swung where the mouldering bodies of slaughtered enemies had once dangled.

Finally it leapt the embankment wall, soughed through grass where a black moat once flowed and slammed into the mountain where even it could gain no access until, swirling skywards, it found a lone figure in the dark green habit of an order not seen since the thirteenth century, moving slowly and inexorably up the frozen rock face.

4

Samuel had not climbed anything as challenging as the Citadel for a long, long time. Thousands of years of hail and sleet-filled wind had smoothed the surface of the mountain to an almost glassy finish, giving him virtually no hold as he worked his way painstakingly to its summit.

Then there was the cold.

The icy wind that had smoothed the rock over aeons had also chilled its heart. His skin froze to it on contact, giving him a few moments’ valuable traction, until he had to tear it free again, leaving his hands and knees bloody and raw. The wind gusted about him, tugging at his cassock with invisible fingers, trying to pluck him away and down to a dark death.

The rope belt wrapped around his right arm rubbed the skin from his wrist as he repeatedly threw it high and wide toward tiny outcrops that were otherwise beyond his reach. He pulled hard each time, closing the noose around whatever scant anchor he had snagged, willing it not to slip or break as he inched further up the unconquerable monolith.

The cell he had escaped from had been close to the chamber where the Sacrament was held, in the uppermost section of the Citadel. The higher he managed to get, the less he risked coming within reach of other cells where his captors might be waiting.

The rock which had up to this point been hard and glassy became suddenly jagged and brittle. He had crossed an ancient geological stratum to a softer layer that had been weakened and split by the cold that had tempered the granite below. There were deep fissures in its surface, making it easier to climb but infinitely more treacherous. Foot- and handholds crumbled without warning; fragments of stone tumbled down into the frozen darkness. In fear and desperation he jammed his hands and feet deep into the jagged crevices; they held his weight but were lacerated in the process.

As he moved higher and the wind strengthened, the cliff face began to arch back on itself. Gravity, which had previously aided his grip, now wrested him away from the mountain. Twice, when a sliver of rock broke away in his hand, the only thing that stopped him from plummeting a thousand feet was the rope bound to his wrist and the powerful conviction that the journey of his life was not yet over.

Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime of climbing, he reached up for his next handhold and felt only air. His hand fell forward on to a plateau across which the wind flowed freely into the night.

He gripped the edge and dragged himself up. He pushed against crumbling footholds with numb and shredded feet and heaved his body on to a stone platform as cold as death, felt the limits of the space with his outstretched hands and crawled to its centre, keeping low to avoid the worst of the buffeting wind. It was no bigger than the room he had so recently escaped, but whilst there he had been a helpless captive; up here he felt like he always had when he’d conquered an insurmountable peak – elated, ecstatic, and unutterably free.

5

The spring sun rose early and clear, casting long shadows down the valley. At this time of year it rose above the red Taurus peaks and shone directly down the great boulevard to the heart of the city where the road circling the Citadel picked out three other ancient thoroughfares, each marking a precise point of the compass.

With the dawn came the mournful sound of the muezzin from the mosque in the east of the city, calling those of a different faith to prayer as it had done since the Christian city had fallen to Arab armies in the seventh century. It also brought the first coach party of tourists, gathering by the portcullis, bleary-eyed and dyspeptic from their early starts and hurried breakfasts.

As they stood, yawning and waiting for their day of culture to begin, the muezzin’s cry ended, leaving behind a different, eerie sound that seemed to drift down the ancient streets beyond the heavy wooden gate. It was a sound that crept into each of them, picking at their private fears, forcing eyes wider and hands to pull coats and fleeces tighter round soft, vulnerable bodies that suddenly felt the penetrating chill of the morning. It sounded like a hive of insects waking in the hollow depths of the earth, or a great ship groaning as it broke and sank into the silence of a bottomless sea. A few exchanged nervous glances, shivering involuntarily as it swirled around them, until it finally took shape as the vibrating hum of hundreds of deep male voices intoning sacred words in a language few could make out and none could understand.

The huge portcullis suddenly shifted in its stone housing, making most of them jump, as electric motors began to lift it on reinforced steel cables hidden away in the stonework to preserve the appearance of antiquity. The drone of electric motors drowned out the incantations of the monks until, by the time the portcullis completed its upward journey and slammed into place, it had vanished, leaving the army of tourists to slowly invade the steep streets leading to the oldest fortress on earth in spooked silence.

They made their way through the complex maze of cobbled streets, trudging steadily upwards past the bath houses and spas, where the miraculous health-giving waters of Ruin had been enjoyed long before the Romans annexed the idea; past the armouries and smithies – now restaurants and gift shops selling souvenir grails, vials of spa water and holy crosses – until they arrived at the main square, bordered on one side by the immense public church, the only holy building in the entire complex they were allowed to enter.

Some of the dopier onlookers had been known to stop here, gaze up at its façade and complain to the stewards that the Citadel didn’t look anything like it did in the guidebooks. Redirected to an imposing stone gateway in the far corner of the square, they would turn a final bend and stop dead. Grey, monumental, immense, a tower of rock rose majestically before them, sculpted in places into ramparts and rough battlements, with the occasional stained-glass window – the only hint at the mountain’s sacred purpose – set into its face like jewels.

6

The same sun that shone down on this slowly advancing army of tourists now warmed Samuel, lying motionless more than a thousand feet above them.

The feeling crept back into his limbs as the heat returned, bringing with it a deep and crucifying pain. He reached out and pushed himself into a sitting position, staying that way for a moment, his eyes still closed, his ruined hands flat against the summit, soothed by the primordial chill from the ancient stone. Finally he opened them and gazed upon the city of Ruin stretched out far below him.

He began to pray, as he always did when he’d made it safely to a peak.

Dear God our Father …

But as his mouth began to form the words, an image surfaced in his mind. He faltered. After the hell he’d witnessed the previous night, the obscenity that had been perpetrated in His name, he realized he was no longer sure who or what he was praying to. He felt the cold rock beneath his fingers, the rock from which, somewhere below him, the room that held the Sacrament had been carved. He pictured it now, and what it contained, and felt wonder, and terror, and shame.

Tears welled up in his eyes and he searched his mind for something, anything, to replace the image that haunted him. The warm, rising air carried with it the smell of sun-toasted grass, stirring a memory; a picture began to form, of a girl, vague and indistinct at first, but sharpening as it took hold. A face both strange and familiar, a face full of love, pulled into focus from the blur of his past.