by Simon Toyne
‘Harzan.’
The man smiled and rose up the side of the pit to join them. ‘John Mann,’ he said. ‘I have often wondered if the Ghost might be you. You are a hard man to kill, it seems.’
John nodded at the white-overalled people down in the pit. ‘Do these people know how well you treat your co-workers?’
Harzan smiled. ‘These people do not seek to use the past to threaten the Church’s future.’
‘Neither did any of my men, but you killed them anyway.’
Harzan shrugged. ‘Oh, come, come, you know as well as I do that history is full of people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some make a positive habit of it.’ He looked at Gabriel. ‘Your son looks just like you. It’s a pity he takes after you in other ways too. Enjoy your time together. Father-and-son time is so important, don’t you think? No matter how brief.’
108
Hyde spotted the Ghost as the Cobra descended to the compound. He was sorely tempted to open up with the chain gun just to see him ripped to bloody pieces, but he doubted he would be able to persuade the military pilot to oblige. He had to return the girl alive anyway and the gun was a bit too lively to risk it. Besides, he didn’t want to take out Dr. Harzan — not until he’d been paid, at least.
The skids touched down and the guards hustled the prisoners over. Hyde would take particular pleasure in killing the Ghost. For so long he’d had the impression that the insurgent looked down on him. He wondered if he would feel the same way after he had dropped him in the middle of the Syrian Desert and shot him in both legs. Gabriel he would merely shoot in the head: he felt no animosity towards him, he was just a job.
The three prisoners arrived at the chopper and were bundled inside by two guards who kept their sidearms trained on them. Hyde gave the pilot the thumbs up and they lifted off. The Cobra would take them back to the main compound then return to base. The rest of the journey would be made in the company chopper and, as the pilot was on the payroll, he would be a lot less squeamish about the unscheduled stops Hyde planned to make. He would fly to Turkey via the most inhospitable, godforsaken piece of desert he could find and make sure, once and for all, that the Ghost finally lived up to his name.
109
Liv was fading fast by the time the helicopter tipped forward and started racing east towards the main compound. It frightened her how quickly it had come upon her. She’d felt fine in the cave and on horseback. Now it was as if someone had pulled a plug out and her life force was rapidly draining from her. She raised her eyes to Gabriel, sitting opposite her in the cramped cabin. The expression on his face told her she must look as bad as she felt.
Through the window behind him she could see the sky beginning to lighten and the thin sliver of moon fading away, just as she was. When the sun rose, both of them would be gone, she felt sure of it. She was resigned to her fate. It gave her some small comfort to think that at least she would not make it as far as Ruin and be locked back in a cycle of torture and pain, imprisoned in the darkness of the mountain.
She could feel the thing she carried, curled up and still in the pit of her stomach, its dead weight pulling her down the way a star collapses to create a black hole that sucks everything into it including light. Maybe that’s what would happen to her. Maybe that was what the end of days meant.
Below her the dusty desolation of the desert stretched away, and a memory surfaced that she knew was not hers. It was of the world when it was young and the land beneath her, green and fertile — and she walked free upon it. There had been a man there too and she looked up at him now and felt the warmth of his being and his strong arm around her. And he was here still, smiling down at her now: Gabriel.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, but the helicopter was too loud for her to hear.
She shook her head and the vision of him dissolved in tears. There was nothing to forgive. She knew he understood the pain of separation and she was going to make him feel it again soon. She had loved him too late and for too short a time, but her destiny was not hers to choose.
The helicopter banked and began its descent to the desert floor. Through the window the sky and the earth tilted like a preview of the end of the world.
Then she saw it, squatting on the desert floor, its long black neck stretching out from a body of spines and plate with fire coming out of its mouth.
It was the dragon of her nightmares: the dragon of the prophecy and the Book of Revelation — waiting to devour her and the Sacrament inside her — and they were dropping down towards it.
110
Hyde had seen it too out of the pilot’s window, burning in the desert before them like an early sunrise.
Goddamn, he thought, they did it.
He called ahead on the radio and managed to get hold of the operations manager. The man’s excitement was clear, even through the emotion-stripping narrow band of the military frequency.
‘We punched through a layer of capping stone,’ he said, ‘and there it was. It’s huge. We’re well-testing it now, that’s why there’s all the gas burn off. So far the figures are off the scale. It’s high grade, sweet crude and there’s an ocean of it down there. I’ve never seen anything like it. We drilled a world record depth of hole and found a world record amount of oil at the bottom of it!’
Hyde took it all in, imagining his profit share and all the things he could do with it. He’d love to head back to Austin and drive by his old house in some ridiculous car so Wanda would realize she’d given up on him right before the slot machine paid out. He’d bet it all on black and it had paid off: not on the spin of a roulette wheel, but on the turn of a drill.
They circled the compound, avoiding the thermals created by the burn-off, then started to drop to the helipad. The moment the skids touched down, Hyde was out of his seat and moving to the side door to start the transfer of the prisoners. He wanted to get this done as quickly as possible so that he could start concentrating on spending his money.
Liv was paralysed with fear. Through the window she could see the beast, huge and demonic. The door of the helicopter was yanked open and she felt its heat and heard its roar. It was calling for her, wanting her.
‘Out!’ a man with a gun shouted. John Mann went first and Gabriel followed. Liv stayed where she was, rooted by fear. Gabriel turned to look at her. He was framed in the doorway in exactly the same way as he had been in her dream — moments before the flames had engulfed him. In her delirium this memory seemed real and she leapt forward to save him from the dragon, hitting him in the chest and knocking him backwards. She was outside now, sprawled across Gabriel and the concrete floor. She could feel the heat on her back and imagined the beast watching her, drawing the breath that would flow out as flame and engulf them both. She didn’t mind for herself, her life was already over, but Gabriel deserved to live.
She rolled away from him, scrabbling across the concrete to draw the fire down on herself alone and spare Gabriel from it. Pushing herself to her feet, she turned to face the beast, staggering backwards in an instinctive desire to get away. Her foot reached the edge of the concrete, stepped backwards on to the dry desert then everything became fluid and slow.
All sound cut out.
Except one.
The whispering.
Rising inside her.
The solid thing that she carried within her began to uncoil and grow. It became heavier as it expanded, pulling her to the earth. The ground felt alive wherever she touched it. She was on her knees now, sagging with the colossal weight of the thing she carried. The whispering was all around her, rushing through her like a hurricane or a river choked with spring ice-melt. Wherever she touched the ground she could feel it flow, passing through her into the earth and giving her relief from the pain of its containment. She fell forward, spreading herself out so that every part of her touched the dust. The effect was immediate. It was like a dam bursting inside her. She felt it pouring out of her and into the ground. And as it flooded out, she heard something el
se, a low rumbling rising up to meet it. Then the ground began to tremble.
At first she thought it might be the beast, shaking the ground as it walked. She turned to look at it towering over her, the flame still pouring from its open mouth. There was a sign fixed to its tall neck, a logo showing an oil derrick rising above a red line of earth. To Liv’s terrified eyes it looked like an upside-down Tau. An alarm sounded high on the platform in a high-pitched shriek and the nightmare vision from her dream was complete.
She waited for the flames, knowing they were next, as beneath her the rumbling continued to build.
From deep inside the beast there came a tortured groan, like metal being twisted out of shape. As the noise grew, the fire sputtered and coughed until it flickered out entirely and a cloud of steam hissed from the vent where the flames had roared. Then the steam was gone too, smothered by water that shot from the vent under pressure so great it arced over the compound and split into an atomized spray that fell to the earth like rain.
In the holding lagoons, the thick black lake of oil that had already been collected began to bubble, and the rank, decayed deposits of long-ago forests clarified into something pure. Even the helicopter, idling on the hardpan, stuttered and seized as the fuel in its tanks turned to water.
Liv looked up at the spray spewing from the dragon’s mouth, remembering the lines from the prophecy:
The Key must follow the Starmap Home
There to quench the fire of the dragon within the full phase of a moon
She had done it.
As quickly as it had overwhelmed her, the whispering left, sinking away, returning to the home it had once known; and Liv fell with it, on to the dust of the desert, and everything went black.
111
In all the confusion and chaos, the soldiers were no longer watching the prisoners. Some were staring up at the rig as their profit shares washed away. Others looked out into the desert at the approaching dust cloud, kicked up by the remnants of the victorious riders whose horses, unaffected by the miracle of fuel turning to water, had won the battle with Hyde’s mechanized forces.
Gabriel scrambled over to Liv and checked the pulse in her neck. It was very weak. He picked her up and ran towards the nearest building, hoping a compound this large would have a proper medical facility.
Hyde caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. He was still in shock, trying to work out what the hell had just happened. One moment he’d been imagining the life he had always dreamed of, the next he was standing in the rain as poor as ever. He didn’t understand it, but he knew it had something to do with the man and the woman who were running away from him. And he hated them for it.
He stepped across to the helicopter, pulled his M4 from behind his seat and sighted along the barrel, aiming for the broad back of the retreating man. He tracked his movement, settling on a point where the bullet would pass straight through him and maybe take the girl out too.
His finger tightened. He pulled the trigger. The Ghost appeared in front of him — silent and unannounced as always — and took the bullet instead.
Hearing the shot, Gabriel looked over his shoulder and saw his father fall forward, knocking Hyde to the ground.
All the scenarios from his youth when he’d imagined what he would have done to save him flashed through his head. In the end it had been his father who had saved him.
He saw Hyde roll his father’s inert body off him and bring the weapon back to bear. Then a blur of movement flashed across him as a rider galloped straight through Hyde, the horse kicking the gun away as it fired, trampling him beneath its hooves.
Gabriel didn’t wait to see if he got up again. He kept on running, straight through the doors of the nearest building, carrying Liv to safety.
112
Inside, the building was deserted. The only sounds came from the great arc of water pattering down on the roof and the hum of air-conditioning.
Gabriel found the sick bay at the end of a long corridor and kicked the door open. Gently he set Liv on an examination table, feeling her neck for any improvement in her pulse. It was steady but still low. Her eyes rolled open but failed to focus. Her mouth formed words that were barely whispers. ‘Did we make it?’
‘I think so. Just hold on.’
The words of the prophecy prickled in his mind:… within the full phase of a moon, Lest the Key shalt perish.
He opened a cupboard-full of dressings and sterile gloves. Gabriel was field-trained in combat first aid, which was mostly about pain relief and stopping blood loss, neither of which applied in this situation. The next cupboard was locked. Obviously where they kept the good stuff. He raised his leg to kick it open just as the door opened behind him.
Gabriel spun round ready to fight and saw a medic standing in the door.
‘Help her,’ he said, grabbing the man’s elbow and steering him towards Liv.
The man slipped immediately into doctor mode, checking pulse, temperature and reflex response in the same time it would have taken Gabriel to find and unwrap a Band-Aid.
‘She’s dehydrated and appears to be suffering from shock,’ the medic said. ‘Nothing serious. I’ll put her on a drip and keep her mildly sedated.’
Gabriel nodded. More footsteps outside in the corridor, heading their way. He palmed a scalpel from an instrument tray and tensed his muscles ready to fight. His father was still out there, probably bleeding out from the bullet wound. He needed to get back to him.
The door to the sick bay opened and he saw he was too late: the same rider who had trampled Hyde to the ground was now carrying his father’s body in his arms. Gabriel felt a twist of guilt: it should have been him, not this stranger.
The rider laid John Mann down on the second examination table and stepped aside as the medic took over. He cut away the blood-soaked shirt clinging to his chest and revealed a neat bullet hole that sucked and bubbled each time he breathed. This was the sort of injury Gabriel was more familiar with. The sucking meant the bullet had punctured the lung. It would gradually be filling with blood, effectively drowning and suffocating him. The colour was draining from Mann’s face, and his lips were already turning blue. The medic grabbed an oxygen mask and held it over his gasping mouth. Gabriel stepped forward and took over, leaving the medic free to clean the wound and prepare an occlusive patch to try to re-inflate the lung. He leaned in low over his father’s face, saw the eyes flicker open and focus on him.
‘I’m sorry, my son,’ John Mann said. ‘One day you will understand. One day I hope you will forgive me.’
The grey eyes closed and the wheezing stopped. Gabriel looked at the chest wound — no longer sucking air, no longer moving at all. The medic grabbed the oxygen mask and held it tightly over his face with one hand while the other clamped down on the wound. The chest inflated and air hissed from around his hand, but when he took it away it sank again and all the air rushed out. The lungs had stopped working. He was gone.
The rider who had brought him in turned to Gabriel. ‘ Ab? ’ he asked.
Gabriel nodded. ‘Yes. He was my father.’
‘He was good man.’
‘Yes,’ Gabriel replied. ‘Yes, he was.’ He looked across at Liv. She was still unconscious, but there was colour in her cheeks and she was breathing deeply. He moved to her bedside and kissed her forehead. Her skin was cool and her breath warm on his face. He turned to the rider, pointing at the AK-47 slung across his back. ‘Could I borrow that?’
The rider handed it over without question.
‘Thanks. Stay here and watch over them — both of them. I’ll be right back.’
As it turned out, the rifle wasn’t necessary.
Outside in the compound all resistance had been abandoned. Everyone was too distracted by the miracle they had witnessed to do anything other than marvel at it. They were gathered in circles, standing around the fountain of water gushing from the oil well. To the east, the sun had begun to peep over the rim of the earth and was filling the air wit
h rainbows.
Hyde was staring too, but he saw nothing. He was lying on his back with both eyes open, the left one bloodshot and dilated below the deep dent in his skull where the horse’s hoof had caught him. Gabriel looked down at him and felt nothing. He had always wanted to find the man who had killed his father, and imagined the pure righteous rage that would fuel his vengeance. Now that he had found him, he felt empty. His father was not the man he had imagined him to be — and neither was his end. He had grieved for him too long on a false assumption and now death had come for real there was nothing left to give — nothing except forgiveness.
He took Hyde’s M4, slung it over his shoulder then gazed at the surreal desert scene playing out around him, the water rising up from deep in the ground and falling back down as rain. This dry scrap of desert, marked by a map that kings and emperors had waged wars to possess.
The last piece of the puzzle.
It didn’t take him long to find the locked door of the operations room. He stood back, fired a short burst into the lock from the M4 then kicked the door open and stepped inside.
There was a large topographical map of the area pinned to the wall with various markers showing all the dig sites and a table in the centre covered with seismic charts and old fragments of ancient tablets. There were also copies of the same Iraqi military intelligence documents Washington had shown him. But none of this was what he was looking for.
The Starmap lay in a drawer of its own, nestled in a solid block of foam rubber cut to fit its irregular shape. It was black granite, cracked and chipped at the edges, but the symbols on it were still solid and clear. Dr Anata had been right. At the centre of it was the same T shape he had seen on the Imago Mundi from the British Museum. The central reference point was the same: the ancient city of Babylon near modern day Al-Hillah. Everything else was relative to it. He studied the markings, recognizing the dots that outlined the constellation of Draco. They pointed the way to a simple cluster of symbols denoting where the garden stood: a tree, some markings he assumed must relate to distance, and a simple stick figure of a human.