by Simon Toyne
He stamped on the last branch, poked through the dry splinters then added it to the pyre and stood staring into the flames. If anyone had asked, he would have explained away the tears in his eyes as smoke, but the truth was he loved the garden better than any person. He had tended it, nursed it and nourished it for over forty years, until his own name had been forgotten and he had become simply Brother Gardener.
And now it was dying, and he had no idea how he could stop it.
When dawn came the men would return and the surgery would begin. They would have to cut deep to make sure the disease could not spread. It was necessary, but no less painful for it. He imagined himself as a father on the eve of an operation where his child’s limb would be sacrificed to spare its life. But his children were many, and there were no guarantees that any would survive.
So he stood in the dark, with smoke in his eyes, catching a strange whiff of oranges every now and again like a taunting memory of the orchard when it was bursting with health. He watched the fire until the bell rang in the mountain calling everyone inside for Vespers. It was the moment when the Citadel went to sleep for the night, a night he wished would never end, for he feared what the new dawn would bring.
31
Arkadian had just stepped through the front door when his mobile phone rang inside his jacket pocket.
‘Do not answer that,’ his wife hollered from the kitchen.
‘Smells great,’ he called back. ‘What is it, Tocana?’
‘I made it specially for my poor invalid husband to build up his strength, so if you want to eat any of it I suggest you switch off that phone and start acting ill.’
He took the phone from his pocket and peered at the caller display. ‘It’s work.’
‘It’s always work.’
‘Arkadian,’ he said, trapping the phone under his chin and shrugging stiffly out of his jacket to try to speed things up as much as he could.
‘I have Gabriel Mann on the line,’ the operator said. ‘He insists on speaking to you. He says he wants to turn himself in.’
Arkadian snapped to attention, grabbing the phone and letting his jacket slide to the floor.
‘OK, run a trace on the call and have a squad car on standby in case we manage to pin him down.’
‘Already done, sir. Shall I put him through now?’
‘Yes.’ The line clicked and his ear flooded with the background sounds of a busy environment. Somewhere public, a bar probably. ‘This is Arkadian,’ he said. ‘How can I help?’
‘Sorry to ruin your evening.’
Arkadian glanced up at the empty kitchen doorway and heard angry stirring coming from beyond. ‘Don’t mention it. Where are you?’
‘Somewhere much safer than jail. Listen, I need to ask you something. Have you been to visit Liv or my mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘This afternoon.’
‘And while you were there, did you talk to Liv?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did she say anything about leaving?’
Arkadian frowned. ‘No. She’s not going anywhere. They’re keeping her in for observation.’
He heard a weary sigh on the end of the line. ‘She’s gone,’ Gabriel said. ‘She left shortly after your visit.’
‘She can’t have done. I’d have heard about it.’
‘Why? She wasn’t under arrest, and you’re on leave.’
Arkadian flashed back through his visit. He remembered how small and vulnerable she’d looked in the bed as he got up to go. Then he realized something. ‘I returned her bag to her,’ he said. ‘Forensics had finished with it, so I used it as an excuse to go and see how she was. It had her passport in it.’
‘How quickly can you get hold of passenger lists from the airport?’
‘I’d need a warrant.’
‘Oh, come on, we need information, not a robust chain of evidence. Can’t you pull some favours?’
‘If she wants to leave the country, that’s up to-’
‘She left the country because she’s in danger. I broke out of jail for the same reason. I was set up. There was someone waiting for me in a cell. I can give you a description, but I bet he’s not there now and I doubt he’ll show up on the roll call. The guard took me right to him. It was an inside job. The Citadel’s woken up. It’s making a move to silence us, which means Liv’s in danger and so’s my mother, just like before.’
Arkadian felt a twinge in his arm as he remembered the last time Gabriel had issued such a warning. He had been right then, and Arkadian had the bullet wound to prove it.
‘It’s up to you,’ Gabriel said. ‘Do what you think’s best. I’ll call you back in ten minutes.’
The sound of the bar cut off and Arkadian listened to dead air for a few seconds. From the kitchen he heard the sizzle of something juicy hitting a hot pan, then the phone clicked and he was automatically patched through to the tech guys. ‘Any luck?’
‘Not a chance. He was using an Internet phone. Very hard to trace, impossible to pin down quickly.’
‘He’s going to call back in ten minutes, might that help?’
‘Not really. He could use a different phone, a different server, a different IP. Even if he used exactly the same setup, you’d have to keep him talking for a couple of hours to give us even a fighting chance. Internet calls can be routed anywhere in the world.’
‘OK. Do it anyway.’ He hung up and stared down at his jacket lying crumpled and abandoned on the floor, a symbol of the nice evening he’d had planned. He thought of Liv and the way she had watched the priest during their meeting. He’d sensed her fear — and now he knew why.
He opened the contacts on his phone and scrolled down looking for the name Yun Haldin. Yun was an ex-partner of his from way back who had quit the force to start his own firm. He now employed a large number of former cops and had contracts to run perimeter security at both local airports.
‘You finished, or you going to go hungry?’ his wife called from the kitchen, where the sweet-and-sour aroma of garlicky stew floated out.
Arkadian’s stomach growled loudly in answer to his wife’s question.
He found Yun’s number and pressed the call button.
32
Gabriel exited the Skype application and Googled a travel comparison site. He entered details for flights from Ruin-Gaziantep (any) to New York (any) then looked around at the evening crowd as he waited for the information to load. He was sitting at a large table next to a group of tourists with his body angled to give the impression he was with them.
He swept his eyes across the room, looking for anything or anyone out of the ordinary. There were so many people tapping away on phones it was no wonder the Internet was slow in here. His eyes lit upon a TV screen in the corner of the bar broadcasting CNN with the sound muted. On screen a reporter was standing outside Ruin police headquarters. The picture cut and he found himself staring straight at his own mugshot.
He rose quickly from the table, scrutinizing his phone as an excuse to keep his head down as he moved towards the exit. Hardly anyone in the bar was watching the TV, but they could easily be getting the same news and photo on their phones. He’d make the morning papers for sure, perhaps the evening editions of the local ones. He had hoped for a little more time.
He stepped out of the main door on to the rain-glossed street and pulled a baseball cap from his pocket, jamming it on to his head and pulling the brim down low over his eyes while the flight comparison page finished loading.
There were plenty of flights from both airports. Too many. There would be no point in heading out to try to intercept Liv on the off chance he might pick the right one. He needed Arkadian and his contacts, but it was too soon to call him back.
He started to move away down the street and opened another app that located free Wi-Fi spots. The reception was even slower now he had left the building’s Internet footprint and it took a while for a map to appear on the screen. A blue dot pulsed at
the centre showing his own location, then other icons started popping up around it. There was a hotspot in the direction he was heading, about two streets away, close to the hospital. He slipped the phone in his pocket and increased his pace. He wanted to be in position when the time came to call Arkadian. He also wanted to be nearer his mother. He knew it was the first place the authorities would look for him, which was why he had stayed away, but until he could figure out a way to ensure her safety he’d feel better being close — just in case anything happened.
33
It took Arkadian seven of the ten minutes he’d been given to get hold of his old partner and tell him what he needed. The rest was easy — too easy.
‘She’s on Cyprus Turkish Airline TK 7121 to Newark,’ Yun said.
‘What time’s takeoff?’
‘Five minutes ago.’
Arkadian felt oddly relieved. Maybe it was for the best. Liv had wanted to go home after all. ‘Thanks anyway,’ he said.
‘No problem. The information was right there on the system the moment I accessed the database.’
Arkadian frowned. ‘Why would that be?’
‘Could be coincidence. More likely someone else had already put in the request.’
Arkadian’s mind lit up with the implications. ‘Is there any way you can find out who called up the information first?’
‘Sure, hold on.’ He heard the clatter of a keyboard and the background noise of planes. He wondered if one of them was Liv’s. ‘It’s just showing a guest user ID,’ Yun said. ‘It came through on the blue channel though.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The pre-authorized account for the Ruin Police Department. It would have come from one of the dedicated data terminals in your records office. Someone there will be able to tell you who asked for the info.’
It was an inside job.
The phone started beeping in his ear. ‘Listen, Yun, I’ve got another call coming in. I owe you for this.’
‘Just come work for me when you’ve finally had enough of the hours and the grief.’
‘I’ll do that.’ He ended the call and returned the phone to his ear. ‘Gabriel?’
‘Any luck?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘Meaning?’
‘You were right, and we have a big problem.’
34
Flight TK 7121
The thrust of the engines pressed Liv into her seat and made the raindrops slip from the window as the plane picked up speed. Beyond the lights of the airport she could see the broken peaks of the Taurus mountains rising up against an inky sky. She watched them until the cabin tilted backwards and the wheels lifted off the tarmac with a bump. At the same moment she felt a tightening in her stomach, as though something inside her was connected to the ground and was now being pulled unbearably tight as the plane accelerated away from it. She gasped at the sensation, doubling over and struggling to breathe. She was aware of the passenger next to her leaning forward, his face clouded with concern. The tightening increased until she felt that it might pull her through the floor of the plane; then something seemed to snap and she gulped air. A wave of nausea followed, along with the same intense pins-and-needles feeling over her entire body she had felt in the departure hall. The mild G-forces of the climbing plane didn’t help. She turned and forced a smile for the person next to her, muttering something about nerves then closed her eyes and breathed deeply and slowly. She was really getting tired of all this. It was as if someone had a voodoo doll of her and was randomly sticking pins in it.
The plane started to bank and the delicate feelings inside her rolled with the movement. She continued to breathe until the sick feeling melted away and she felt safe enough to open her eyes again.
Outside she could see the stars beginning to prick the darkening sky and below them, shining like a bright stain, the lights of Ruin, nestling in the foothills of the mountain. She imagined each light as a person and one of them was Gabriel.
If you get the chance, then go, he had said, as far from the Citadel as you can. Keep yourself safe — until I find you.
Once she’d returned to Newark, got her head straight and her memory back, she would call him; then they could talk. She had so many questions, about what had happened in the Citadel, but also about him. She hardly knew him and yet, in the midst of all the darkness and strangeness of the past few weeks, it was to him that her mind had constantly returned. He shone through it all, like the lights she now looked down upon.
The plane shuddered slightly as the higher winds caught it and below her those same lights started to disappear, winking out one by one, as though the city was being switched off a block at a time.
She turned on her reading light. It made the dark symbols on her hand stand out against her pale flesh, mocking her again with their mystery. She pulled the book from the seat pocket in front of her and looked at the cover. It was called The Mystery of Lost Languages. Maybe she would find some answers in here.
Eight rows back a large man in a business suit sat jammed in an economy seat built for someone half his size. His eyes were fixed on Liv’s blonde hair, glowing in the gloom of the cabin. She was looking down at something, reading. He wondered what it was. He liked books. They were full of words, and words were a kind of magic to him. It was how he had got his nickname during his first spell in prison: Dick, short for Dictionary. Sometimes people tried to make fun of his name, as if it meant something dirty, but not for long. He could tell which people said it properly and those who were calling him something else — a prick, a cock, a penis. That was the problem with language. It had such power, but it was slippery. You had to focus on the words and use them correctly to convey what you wanted. That’s why he liked strong words. Pure words. Words that only had one meaning. The word he was currently savouring was one of these:
Ser-en-dip-ity
When the jailhouse hit had gone wrong, he’d been told his mission was over. Not his fault, just one of those things. He was too recognizable and the witness had got away. So he had been reassigned.
He’d gone to his hotel room, picked up his stuff and put on the baggy business suit that covered up all his tattoos and was specifically tailored to disguise his shape. Then he’d neatly combed his hair and headed off to the airport looking like any other nondescript, out-of-shape businessman on his way to who knows where. But God had known. He had made all this happen so that Dick ended up in exactly the right place at the right time. The perfect solution had presented itself, as if by accident.
Ser-en-dip-ity
If everything had gone to plan in the cell block he wouldn’t have been at the airport and the girl would have got away. And she was the most important of the three targets. The girl was the most dangerous to the Church and needed to be silenced. And silence was the greatest power anyone could have over another person, the ability to take away their words. He’d learned that in prison. Whenever they had wanted to punish him, they had taken his books. But they could never take away the words in his head. Not unless they killed him. And he had such words inside him, the best words. They had been given to him by Isaiah — the name of a prophet and also of the old trustee who had wheeled the library cart round the corridors of E Wing.
‘You like words,’ he’d said one time as he’d shuffled past his cell. ‘Well, take a look at this. All the words you’ll ever need.’
Dick had never read the Bible before. It had never occurred to him. But he’d read it now, hundreds of times, until the words flowed through him like the blood in his veins. He had even scratched some of the more powerful ones on to his own skin, so he was like a book himself, anointed with spells to ward off evil when he was asleep and his tongue was still.
Deu-ter-on-om-y
Re-ve-la-tion
Ne-pha-lim
That’s what he was — a Nephalim — one of the giants of legend, mentioned in Genesis. A creature of God. A watcher.
He was watching now in the dimness of the cabin, as the arm
rests dug into his legs and his knees rubbed against the seat in front. Once the girl was home, she would feel safe; and that was when he would strike.
That was when he would take away her words and silence her for ever.
35
Gabriel sprinted headlong down the street towards the hospital. The moment Arkadian had told him the passenger manifest had already been searched he knew. The Church’s dark forces were making a coordinated move to tidy up their loose ends: first him, then Liv — next his mother.
He concentrated on the rhythm of his feet pounding the tarmac, driving him closer, step by step. He reached a corner and turned into Asklepios Street. Running through the streets like this wasn’t the safest thing to do now his picture had appeared on the news, but he had to balance caution with haste. He reached a turning a third of the way down and rounded it, keeping tight to the houses. Ahead of him the street ended at a junction where the new extension block of the hospital rose up, shining with rain and reflected light. He scanned the upper windows, slowing as he neared the junction, wary of breaking cover into a main road that might have police patrols stationed on it. He stopped a few metres short and looked up from the safety of the shadows.
The main hospital building stretched along the full length of the street. At one end it joined the stone walls of the original building and at the other a covered walkway connected it to a smaller stone building that resembled a castle. This was the old psychiatric wing where the receptionist had said his mother was being kept.
A car swished past and he used the hiss of its tyres to mask his own splashing steps as he dashed to the other side of the street. The ground-floor windows were all boarded up along with a large doorway that had once served as the entrance. High up on the side of the building a scaffold platform jutted out. It was the sort of thing workmen used to hoist materials on to, but there were no ropes hanging down that might help him gain access, they were all curled up and secured to the scaffold poles. The windows to the side of the platform were mostly dark — but not all. Two glowed with light — one in the middle of the row and another at the very end — both on the fourth floor. The hospital receptionist had said his mother was being kept in room 410. His money was on the middle window. He continued to gulp air, relaxing slightly now he had at least located his mother.