by Simon Toyne
‘That cop was no cop,’ he said, almost to himself.
‘I know. I checked him out. I’m trying to find out where he came from, but so far I’ve hit a dead end. I don’t know where you are, but you need to keep your head down.’
‘Why are you on my side all of a sudden?’
‘Because you were right; there’s something rotten at the heart of all this. I feel terrible that I didn’t do more to protect your mother. I should have realized the danger to her, to all of you. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’
‘What about Liv? The same people are looking for her too.’
Arkadian let out a long breath. ‘I think they may already have found her.’ Then he ran through the conversation he’d had with the New Jersey cop.
‘She’s not dead,’ Gabriel said when he’d finished. ‘If they wanted to kill her, then the cop would have found her body in that hotel room. They’re bringing her here. They must know that she’s carrying the Sacrament, and they want it back.’
He looked at his watch, calculating the time in New Jersey. ‘What time did you speak to this cop?’
‘About twenty minutes ago.’
‘And did he give any indication of how long she might have been missing?’
‘He said he picked her up from the airport then dropped her off at the hotel around four in the morning. He checked up on her again around nine, after she didn’t answer her phone. There’d been a fire alarm at the hotel just after seven. He wanted to see if she was OK, but she had already gone.’
‘The fire alarm was a decoy. That’s when they must have grabbed her.’
‘I think so too. I checked immigration for any record of her passport showing up on outbound flights, but so far there’s nothing.’
‘They won’t take her out under her own name. They’ll ship her through on a charter or a private flight with false papers.’
‘Then we need to intercept her this end.’
Gabriel’s mind raced through the logistics. The two airports that served Ruin processed hundreds of flights a day. The first time Liv had flown into Ruin he had watched one airport and Kathryn the other. Now his mother was dead and if he set foot within half a mile of either airport he would be picked up by the security teams in a flash.
‘Do you have anyone you can trust who could run a stakeout at the airports?’
Arkadian thought of Yun Haldin and his security company. He trusted Yun, but his operation was full of ex-cops and he couldn’t vouch for all of them. ‘Frankly, the way things stand, I don’t trust anyone. And if she comes in as freight anyone running surveillance won’t spot her anyway.’
Gabriel looked up at the TV screen, trying to think through their problem objectively. A reporter was standing by the Citadel, the caption beneath him read: WHERE ARE THE CITADEL SURVIVORS?
Then he realized he was staring at the solution. ‘We don’t need to stake out two airports,’ he said, ‘we just need to stake out the Citadel — that’s where they’ll be bringing her. Let’s say they grabbed her sometime between seven and nine in New Jersey, then we have a two-hour window to work forward from. A direct flight here would take twelve hours. What’s the time difference between Ruin and New Jersey?’
‘Seven hours.’
‘So, say she took off around nine. Add twelve hours — that makes it nine o’clock in the evening in the States. Four o’clock in the morning in Ruin.’
‘The perfect time to bring someone into the Citadel without being seen.’
‘Exactly. All we need to do is stake out the mountain in the small hours and ambush anyone who shows up.’
Gabriel frowned, suddenly realizing the flaw in this plan. He wouldn’t be able to stake out the Citadel tonight, he would hopefully already be inside it. He thought of Arkadian with his arm in a sling, standing vigil on his own. He needed to draft in some help, but knowing who to trust made that risky and difficult.
The picture on the TV cut to the mayor, standing at the base of the mountain behind a podium weighed down with microphones from all the major news networks. Gabriel smiled for the first time since he’d spoken to Liv.
‘I need you to make some calls,’ he said.
72
News of Brother Gardener’s breakdown swept through the Citadel, spreading like the virus everybody feared it might be. Rumours ignited in the refectories and deflected thoughts away from prayer and study, plucking at existing tensions and reawakening fears that, now the Sacrament had deserted the mountain, a biblical plague was about to descend upon them all.
Athanasius was in the Abbot’s study when he heard of it. Ever since the explosion he had spent several hours there every day, trying to stay on top of the numerous communiques, press clippings and memos that kept the Citadel informed of what was going on in the wider world outside. Lately they had made for gloomy reading.
He threw most of the cuttings away, balling them up as soon as he had read them and dropping them into a basket by his side that served the large fire that had stood cold since the old Abbot’s death. He only came here for privacy. The basket was almost full and he made a mental note to tell the cooks to come and help themselves, as they always needed kindling for the refectory fires. He screwed up the last clipping and was about to rise and venture back into the mountain when a light tap on the door announced the arrival of today’s dispatches.
The monk who brought them was Brother Osgood, a slight, nervy, rodenty monk who had only recently been promoted out of the grey cloaks of the novitiate to the brown cloaks of the Administrata. He crossed the room in silence, the muscles in his jaw tight with tension, and laid the stack of documents, bound with a single dark green ribbon, on the desk. Athanasius spotted the letter on top. It was handwritten and addressed to ‘Brother Peacock’. He reached for it instinctively, eager to see what it contained, but stopped himself as he realized Osgood was still hovering.
‘Something the matter?’
‘Brother Gardener has been taken ill,’ Osgood replied, one hand scratching the back of the other. ‘Some say it is a form of plague that attacks the skin. He has been taken to the infirmary.’
‘Thank you. I will go and see him when I have finished here.’
Osgood nodded but made no move to leave. He cleared his throat and stared down at his clasped hands. ‘Do you think it could be? Plague, I mean. Only, with the blight in the garden and what happened to the Sancti, people are beginning to wonder.’
‘What are they beginning to wonder?’
‘They’re beginning to wonder if we have displeased God in some way and are now being punished for it.’
Athanasius thought back to all that he had witnessed high in the chapel at the top of the mountain. ‘Maybe we have.’ He looked up and saw fear flit across Osgood’s face. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Brother Gardener is exhausted and deeply distressed about the blight. I’m sure whatever ails him has more to do with that than with God’s displeasure. And I’m sure it isn’t catching.’ He nodded at Osgood’s fingers, still nervously scratching. ‘When others talk of fleas, one is apt to scratch. Go back to your duties and do not let gossip and rumour drive away your good sense. Here — ’ he nodded at the basket full of discarded paper — ‘take this to the kitchen and give it to the hearth master. Never forget that today’s news soon becomes tomorrow’s firelighters.’
Osgood smiled, picked up the basket and hurried from the room. The moment the door closed, Athanasius grabbed the envelope and ripped it open, moving across to the fireplace as he read the contents. Then he screwed it up, dropped it in the cold grate and set light to it, watching as the flame turned the dangerous words to ashes in the grate, before brushing them to dust with his hand.
Tonight the note had said.
He stood and quickly left the room, thinking about everything else it had said as he wiped the ash from his hand and headed to the infirmary.
73
Athanasius heard Brother Gardener before he saw him.
The sound of his low lamenting echoed along the hushed corridor leading down to the isolated caves of the hospital. There was something about the noise that made him want to cover his ears and flee, as if the moans of some poor, damned soul had leaked out of hell. It was a sound of torment and madness and it drilled into the most primal part of his brain where his deepest fears lived.
He reached the corridor where the wards and isolation rooms were located and found the right room simply by following the sound. Then he took a breath, swallowed drily and pushed open the heavy wooden door.
The first thing he saw was the ghostly figure of an Apothecaria standing vigil. Beyond him, the naked figure of Brother Gardener lay writhing on a bed. He had been stripped to his loincloth and bound to the metal frame by thick canvas straps the colour of bleached bone stained brown by something wet and oozing. His skin bubbled with boils and there were deep gouges and angry welts where he had clawed at them with such violence that it looked as though he’d been attacked by an animal. Even now his fists clenched and unclenched as if craving to scratch the terrible itch that drew the awful lament from his foam-flecked mouth.
The Apothecaria turned as Athanasius made to enter and held up a surgically gloved hand to stop him from coming further. As Athanasius withdrew to the corridor, he stepped forward to join him, closing the door and shutting out the worst of the noise. Only then did he remove his mask. It was Brother Simenon, one of the more senior of the medical practitioners. He pushed past without saying a word and started walking up the corridor.
‘What ails him?’ Athanasius asked, falling in step behind him.
‘We don’t know. At first I thought it might be the same thing that struck down the Sancti, but that was more like haemorrhagic fever. This is something different entirely. We’ve taken blood and samples of the discharged fluid from the pustules, but so far none of the tests have proved positive for any known diseases. There are symptomatic similarities with smallpox, which is why we’ve brought him here to the isolation wards, but it’s not an exact match and I personally don’t think that’s what it is. There are also indicators of bubonic plague, but these diseases are extinct or extremely rare, so it’s unclear how he could possibly have contracted either.’
‘He was clearing the garden,’ Athanasius said, remembering the last time he had seen him.
‘Yes, the tree blight. I had thought of that, and it’s the most likely cause. There are some forms of fungus and mould spores that can rapidly attack the human immune and respiratory system. These can provoke a massive allergic reaction that produces mycotoxins, or they cause mycosis, which is effectively a gross fungal infection. Because of the skin condition, I suspect what we have here is mycosis, though I’ve never heard of anything that can bring it on so rapidly. We’re hoping we can find an example of the blight and test its toxicity, but as I understand the gardeners were ordered to burn all evidence of it.’
Athanasius nodded, thinking of the black infected smoke rising up into the clear air. ‘What about the other gardeners?’
Simenon stopped by another large door. ‘That’s what I’m most concerned about.’ He opened the door on to the largest ward in the hospital complex.
The room was narrow and vaulted, like a large cellar, with four beds lined up on each opposing wall — eight in total. Each bed contained a monk. They looked up in unison as the door opened and Athanasius saw the collective fear in their eyes. It was the entire garden detail, brought here under quarantine. Three more Apothecaria were in attendance, surgical masks covering their faces and blue nitrile gloves on their hands as they interviewed each monk in turn, looking for some early-warning symptom as well as taking numerous blood samples.
‘We thought it best to isolate anyone who came into direct contact with the tree blight, until we can rule it out as the cause of whatever has infected Brother Gardener.’ The wailing coming from down the corridor rose again, as if he had responded to the mention of his name. Everyone in the ward heard it.
One of the youngest monks, lying in a bed closest to the door, started weeping openly. He sank into the hospital sheets like a child hiding from the dark and stared through the open door towards the corridor as if the thing making the sound was coming for him next.
Simenon pulled the door closed and hurried back up the corridor, reaching into his pocket for a syringe and some sedative.
‘And if it is the tree blight,’ Athanasius asked, ‘how soon before they start showing the same symptoms?’
‘Brother Gardener was the first to come in contact with it and symptoms manifested themselves in less than twenty-four hours. So if the blight is the cause, and any of the garden detail have been similarly infected, then we will know soon enough.’
Simenon fixed the face mask back in place as he arrived outside the door. ‘My prediction is that we will know within the next couple of hours. If the others are clear, we can literally breathe more easily and do what we can for Brother Gardener. If they have it, then what we have already done here will hopefully be enough to contain the spread. But there is a third potential outcome. If this thing proves to be something more virulent and contagious, some airborne pathogen that passes from host to host merely by proximity, then all of us in the Citadel, every last one of us, has already been exposed. We were all there, last night in the cathedral cave, when Brother Gardener dragged in the first infected branch and dropped it at the altar.’
Athanasius pictured the branch breaking as it hit the stone floor, the dry dust, caught in the light, rising from the crumbling wood like a wisp of smoke.
‘Tell me,’ Simenon asked, ‘you were in the garden at the start of the clear-up operation. How many trees were infected? Was it just one or two? Was it confined to certain areas or certain types of trees?’
Athanasius shook his head gravely.
‘It was everywhere,’ he said, realizing the dark implication of Simenon’s careful question. ‘Almost every tree had been affected.’
IV
Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh.
It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt, and festering boils will break out on men and animals throughout the land.’
Exodus 9:8-9
74
Evening brought the return of something approaching normality to the city of Ruin. There had been no aftershocks after the initial tremors, so the clean-up operation was rapid and unhampered. Most of the streets had re-opened with restaurant tables spreading over pavements that had been littered with broken glass only a few hours previously. There were plenty of people too, relaxing after the stress of the previous twenty-four hours. Into these crowds Gabriel emerged.
He ambled along, sticking to the more touristy streets, his face covered by the peak of his cap, heading through camouflaging crowds to the old town wall. He didn’t need to be in position for another few hours, but any earlier and the daylight would have made him easier to spot, any later and his presence on the empty streets might arouse unwanted suspicion.
The old town itself was now closed to the public. Since the mid-nineteenth century, every building in the old town had been converted to commercial use. The official line was that the curfew was to keep the area quiet so as not to interfere with nocturnal worship within the mountain. In truth, there was an ancient covenant on all the land surrounding the Citadel that capped residential rents at mediaeval levels, whereas commercial rates were not controlled. The church had earned ten times more money from rental income after the ban had come into place. So no one was allowed in the old town at night. Every day at dusk, stewards swept the streets, shepherding tourists down the hill towards the public gates, ready for the portcullises to bang down and seal the place up for the night. Consequently, Gabriel’s first challenge was to get inside.
He spotted Arkadian by one of the main public gates, loitering beside a metal door built into the old stonework. With mill
ions of tourists and salvation seekers climbing the steep streets every year, there were almost daily incidents involving everything from twisted ankles to heat exhaustion. Most of these could be dealt with locally, but if something more serious transpired and they needed to get an ambulance up there fast, the emergency hatches came into use, operated and maintained by the ambulance service and the police.
Arkadian nodded at Gabriel as he approached and turned to the control panel to punch in the access codes. From somewhere inside the stone wall the sound of a motor began to purr and the metal screen started to rise. Gabriel slipped underneath without breaking stride. Arkadian followed, cradling his immobile arm as he crabbed underneath. He punched the same codes into another panel and the shutter juddered and reversed direction, sliding back down to the floor then banging shut with a percussive thump. The whole thing had taken less than a minute. They headed up the darkened streets in silence, keeping to the shadows.
The old town was lit by the yellowy glow of sodium lamps that cast a sickly light over the deserted buildings, making the whole place look diseased. They trod carefully, minimizing the sound of their footfalls on the hard cobbles, listening out for the sound of the clean-up crew. They heard nothing but the muffled noise of the night, and the sounds of people enjoying themselves beyond the old town walls.
Halfway up the hill Arkadian ducked into a narrow passage between two leaning buildings and unlocked a door to a small office with a counter running the length of it and posters on the walls giving advice about pickpockets in several languages. It was the old town police station, as good a place as any to wait until it was time to move. Gabriel checked his watch. They had about four hours to kill, but at least they were in position.