by Simon Toyne
Gabriel lifted the stone, feeling its weight. It was no wonder his grandfather had been unwilling to jump into the moat with it. He could also feel more symbols on the back and turned it over. The reverse of the stone was filled with dense text in what looked to be two distinct languages, neither of which he recognized. It was surrounded by clusters of dots showing other constellations.
He produced his phone from his pocket and took photographs of both sides. He also took pictures of the room, the maps and the documents on the table. Finally he took a picture of the Dragonfields logo, then bundled the whole lot into a file and attached it to an email. Then he stepped outside where the signal was strongest and waited until the message had been sent.
Over by the lagoon a horse dipped its head to drink from a pool that had started the day as a pit full of oil. It was a scene he could have witnessed on any given day since the dawn of time. In the sky the moon was now gone, wiped away by the brightness of the coming day. He breathed deep, filling his lungs with the moist air. It didn’t even smell like an oil drilling platform any more. It smelled natural and fresh, like oranges.
… within the phase of a moon — the prophecy had said. And by God they had done it — but only just. No one knew what had just been averted… or almost no one.
He shielded the phone from the misting rain and dialled a number.
113
Athanasius was in the Prelate’s quarters, rinsing out a fouled dressing, when he felt the phone vibrate in his pocket. He looked over at the figure strapped to the bed. Dragan had been delirious since the Lamentation overtook him. Even so, the Sanctus still had moments of clarity, when all his hate came bubbling forth. He would have to be careful.
He set aside the cloth and moved quickly across the room towards a window that overlooked the walled gardens. The gardens remained out of bounds so there was no one there to see him. The inhabitants of the Citadel were either attending to the numerous sick wards that had been set up throughout the mountain, or lying strapped to a bed, trying to break free so they could scratch themselves to death. Even so, Athanasius scanned the orchard for any sign of movement before taking the phone from his pocket and finally answering it.
‘Hello?’
‘She’s home,’ Gabriel said.
Athanasius closed his eyes in relief. It was over. ‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘I feared when I failed to find the map all might be lost. Tell me. What does Eden look like?’
‘Nothing like you would imagine.’
‘But you’re sure it’s the right place?’
‘I’m positive.’
A wail echoed through the room as Dragan strained against his bindings.
‘What was that?’ Gabriel asked.
‘A poor soul struck down by the blight.’
There was a pause on the end of the line. ‘What blight?’
‘It’s some kind of… infection. The first case was reported about forty-eight hours ago. There have been new ones almost every hour since. So far, no one has survived it. We have attempted to contain it through quarantine. We now know that an infected subject only becomes infectious themselves after the first symptoms have manifested. By this method we have managed to isolate those who have become infected and slowed the spread of it. But now the Sacrament has been returned. So, according to the words of the prophecy, the blight shalt no longer prosper. It will stay here, locked in the Citadel.’
‘What are the symptoms?’
‘Every victim reported a strong smell of oranges followed by a sudden and violent nosebleed.’
Silence stretched out on the other end of the line.
‘Hello?’ There was no answer.
Athanasius looked at the phone. The screen was blank. The battery had died. He slipped it into the pocket of his cassock as another moan drew him back to the bed.
Dragan was dreaming, his eyes moving beneath the blackened lids. He seemed to be whimpering, saying something in his sleep. Athanasius leaned down to try to catch what it was. He recognized snatches from the Lord’s Prayer, repeated endlessly in a pitiful chant.
… forgive us our trespasses… as we forgive those…
… forgive us our trespasses… as we forgive those…
Athanasius took a damp cloth from a bowl by the bed and laid it across Dragan’s hot forehead. ‘I forgive you,’ he said.
The red eyes sprang open and focused at the sound of his voice. ‘You,’ Dragan said, ‘always you. The Sacrament will return — then we will see.’
Athanasius shook his head. ‘The Sacrament has returned to its rightful home,’ he said. ‘It will never again return to the Citadel.’
Dragan stared up at him, then his face crumpled. ‘In that case it’s over,’ he groaned. ‘You have done for us all. The end of days is upon us.’
114
Gabriel stared out through the drifting rain, running through the details of his phone conversation.
First case reported forty-eight hours ago.
He had been inside the Citadel much more recently than that, after the blight had already taken hold.
He remembered the chilling cry that had risen up from the depths of the mountain and how Athanasius had hurried away to tend to it.
He wondered now if his bone-deep tiredness and aching body might be the result of something more sinister than fatigue, and all that he touched might be tainted too.
He looked back at the main building and pictured Liv inside, lying on the examination table: fragile and vulnerable.
Was he infected? Had he infected her?
Every part of him wanted to go back in there and sit by her bed, hold her hand until she woke, but he knew he could not. He had to put her safety first — he had to put everyone else’s safety before his own.
We have attempted to contain it through quarantine, Athanasius had said, an infected subject only becomes infectious after the first symptoms have manifested… a strong smell of oranges followed by a sudden and violent nosebleed.
He wiped the back of his hand across his nose. There was no blood, but the smell of oranges was almost overwhelming. But he had only just started smelling them. The symptom was fresh, so there was still a chance of containment.
Without pause for thought, Gabriel walked directly to the transport shed, giving everyone he saw a wide clearance. He grabbed a couple of canteens of water and a ration pack from the cab of a truck, and headed back out to the holding lagoon.
The horse looked up as he approached. He held out his hand and stroked it, talking softly as he loaded his few supplies into the saddlebag and fitted Hyde’s M4 into a saddle holster. He thought of his father, lying on the bed next to Liv in the sick bay, and finally understood the sacrifice he had made. He hoped one day Liv would forgive him too for what he was about to do, just as he now whispered his own belated forgiveness to his father.
The horse splashed through the mud and pools of water until the dry earth began.
Gabriel fixed his eyes on the horizon. He did not look back.
He did not trust himself.
He kept riding north, the smell of oranges following him, until he disappeared into the desert.
115
Arkadian was back at his desk on the fourth floor of the police building. He knew that everything he had been working on would soon be public knowledge, so he saw little point in continued caution. He finished his report and read it through.
Gabriel’s email had provided all the missing links. He could now connect the Church with Dragonfields, the map with the ancient location of Eden and the timing of the huge loan to the Church that had underwritten the whole covert venture. They had been seeking buried treasure after all, but not the legendary hoards of Alexander the Great and King Croesus. They had been looking for more modern riches. All underground oil reserves start out as prehistoric trees and shrubs that decay over millions of years to become carbon-rich crude. Because of its size, its age, and the secrecy that had always surrounded its location, the Garden of Eden had become, over t
ime, the largest, most enriched untapped oil reserve on earth. The Church had not been trying to locate Eden for any sacred reason but so that it could mine its past — everybody’s past — in order to safeguard its own future.
Arkadian attached the report to a mailing list he had prepared including the addresses of as many news outlets as he could find — large and small, local and international — as well as several independent political blogging sites. The list also included Interpol, the press offices of a number of governments — and the Vatican. He had left the addressees visible so that each one would know who else it had been sent to and those who were already compromised would realize a cover-up was impossible. It was his way of casting the seeds as widely as possible so they could take root wherever they found purchase. He liked the biblical implications of this.
Finally he emailed his report to the entire Ruin City Police Department, copied it on to a flash drive that he slipped into his pocket, then grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and went home to his wife.
VII And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth. Revelation 12:16
116
She was in a dream of darkness, like before, but this time she did not fear it; this time she knew what the darkness contained. Waking from the dream, she reached out for Gabriel, as she had in the cave, expecting her hand to find his solid form, but he was not there.
Liv opened her eyes.
She was in some kind of medical room, but, though it was unfamiliar to her, she felt she belonged here, as if she was — home.
There was another bed. It was occupied by John Mann, resting at last. She could tell that he was dead, but she could also feel his peace. Slipping from her bed, she moved across to stand beside him, laying her hand on his. She felt anxious for Gabriel, wondering where he was and why he was not sitting vigil beside his father, whom he had found and lost again in the space of a few hours. Now he truly was alone in the world — like her. But he was not alone. He would never be alone. He had her, and she him.
Liv drifted out into a corridor, drawn by the noises from outside. The building seemed deserted, all sounds coming from the compound beyond. She moved down the corridor and spotted the door at the end with the splintered frame.
The Starmap was lying on the table where Gabriel had left it. Her eye traced the constellations marked on the surface, recognizing Draco, Taurus, and the Plough. She noticed an extra star in the last one, cut deeper than the rest, with a line drawn from it to a section of the text. There was no whispering sound to herald the arrival of a translation; this time she found she could just read it.
The Sacrament comes Home and The Key looks to Heaven
A new star is born with a new King on Earth to bring order to the end of days
It was as if some of the substance of the Sacrament had permanently rubbed off on her. She picked up the heavy tablet and turned it over, hoping there might be more on the other side. What she found was a note. My darling Liv, Nothing is easy, but leaving you is the hardest thing I have ever done. I know now what pain my father must have felt when he had to leave us. I hope to return when I can. In the meantime, do not look for me, just know that I love you. And keep yourself safe — until I find you again. Gabriel
117
Dr Harzan paced around the rim of the pit where the Sikorsky lay buried.
Most of the relics had now been retrieved and were ready to be shipped to Turkey where they would finally enter the great library, as they should have done twelve years earlier. The sense that this long-unfinished business was about to be resolved gave him huge satisfaction.
And yet…
They had all heard the distant gunfire coming from the direction of the compound. Since then he had been unable to raise anyone on the radio. All he got was a whispering static. It made him uneasy. Maybe their radio was faulty; the damned sand got into everything. His encounter with John Mann earlier had also unsettled him. It was a potent reminder that history could return to cause trouble, even when you were sure it was dead and buried. These relics, with their alternate telling of the stories enshrined in the Bible were solid proof of that. The sooner they were locked away, where no one else could get them, the better.
His head recoiled as the round hit him in the eye and took away most of the back of his head. He toppled over and slid to the bottom of the pit, coming to rest against the metal fuselage of the dead dragon just as the sound of the gunshot caught up with the M4 round then echoed away across the desert.
118
Cardinal Clementi was at his desk, staring at his computer screen. His phone was ringing but he didn’t seem to notice. He was slumped in his chair, his head sunk down almost to his chest, his shoulders loose and sloping as if the great bulk of his body was pulling everything down. A cigarette dangled from his marshmallow lips, almost an inch of ash hanging from the end. On the screen was an opened email sent by Pentangeli: We are calling in our secured loans as of start of business on Wall Street tomorrow. Should you fail to honor these debts here is a facsimile of tomorrow’s city edition of the Wall Street Journal.
Beneath the text was a mock up of the front page with the splash headline:
CHURCH BANKRUPT
Through the constant sound of his ringing desk phone he heard footsteps approaching, hurrying towards him down the marble corridor, several people by the sound of it. The first arrived and started banging at the door. Clementi flinched at the sound and the ash finally fell from the end of his cigarette, spilling down the black expanse of his cardinal’s robes. The handle twisted but the door remained shut. At least he’d had the presence of mind to lock it. Not that it would keep them for long. It was designed for privacy not a siege. They would break through soon enough.
He reached forward and deleted the email, as if that might remove the news it contained, then levered himself out of his chair and walked over to the window.
There were already crowds gathering below in St Peter’s Square, looking towards the Apostolic Palace. But these were not crowds of the faithful, hoping to catch a glimpse of His Holiness, they were news crews, setting up cameras and equipment, ready to catch the breaking story — and this time they were looking for him.
Behind him the door continued to rattle and the phone continued to ring, but Clementi carried on smoking his cigarette and stared out at the view, as if it were a normal day. Despite everything that had happened, he still believed it had been a good plan. If he had gone public with the discovery of the site of Eden, the Church would have just ended up with another shrine in the middle of a country that now worshipped a different religion. What good would that have done them? The oil was different. It was a fluid commodity that could have flowed into the withered veins of the Church and changed everything. It could have been God’s gift to His mission on earth; a modern miracle — a myth turned into money. But, for whatever reason, it was not to be.
Clementi took a final puff on his cigarette then placed it carefully in the marble ashtray, leaving it to burn down to the filter. He stepped up on to the high ledge of the windowsill and looked down at the gathering crowds, hearing the gasps as they spotted him. He thought of the monk who had climbed to the top of the Citadel, over two weeks ago now, and started the unravelling of everything. He held his arms out in the shape of a cross, just as he had, and stood like that, head bowed, until he heard the doorframe splinter behind him.
Only God will understand, he thought as he tipped forward, his weight pulling him down to the marble courtyard four storeys below him.
And only God can forgive.
EPILOGUE
The sun began to rise over Ruin, casting the deep, dark shadow of the Citadel across the tables and chairs that were steadily spreading out from the cafes and restaurants lining the embankment. The tourists hadn’t arrived yet, but the bell in the public church was tolling, meaning the portcullises at the foot of the hill would now be raised and the pilgrims and
sightseers were on their way.
Yunus clattered the last fold-out chair down on to the broad flagstones and resisted the urge to collapse on to it. He was sweating, despite the chilled morning air, and every muscle in his body ached. He’d been holding down two jobs for over a month now, salting away what cash he could to pay for his place at Gaziantep Universitesi, starting in September. He figured a solid summer season would pay for a big chunk of next year, provided he didn’t lose any more days to explosions or earthquakes or any of the other crazy stuff that had recently shut down the old town and kept paying customers away. At least the closures had given him a chance to catch up on lost sleep, so he supposed they hadn’t been all bad.
Stifling a yawn, he headed back inside the cafe where Auntie Elmas was pouring cardamom pods and coffee beans into the grinder.
‘You look tired,’ she said, her eyes still sharp in her weathered walnut face.
‘I’ll be OK — just need some coffee.’
He reached for one of the khave glasses stacked on the countertop, misjudged it and sent it tumbling to the wooden floor. It bounced and rolled away, miraculously not shattering.
‘Go lie down before you break something,’ she hissed, looking over her shoulder to check none of the other staff was listening. ‘I give you a shout when we get busy.’