by Simon Toyne
‘You think he knows what the symbols mean?’
‘Undoubtedly,’ Thomas replied. ‘Malachi knows more about early writing than any man alive. If there is anything in the library that will help decipher this text then it will already be in his head. He knows exactly what it says.’
‘So how do we get him to tell us?’
‘We don’t,’ Athanasius replied. ‘Malachi has never been a man who could be swayed. And he hates me. He thinks I have betrayed the brotherhood. There is no way he is going to share what he learned with us. I should have known better than to trust him, but I wasn’t counting on him being so – unhinged.’
‘Yes,’ Thomas agreed, ‘there was something desperate about him. He’s not going to help us. I fear he is already lost.’
‘So it seems we must take matters into our own hands,’ Athanasius said, rubbing his hands together as if, on some level, he was enjoying all this. ‘If we are going to interpret the rest of the stone we need to gain access to the ancient records. You helped me break into the library once before.’
Thomas smiled. ‘And that was when the lights were still working, the security protocols were in place, armed guards were on constant patrol and unauthorized access was punishable by death. This should be relatively easy in comparison.’
‘Can you do it tonight?’
‘I’ll need to hook into the library systems to see what is still running and what has been disabled, I don’t want you walking into a trap or tripping any alarms. The absence of the lights will be a big help, and I don’t suppose they’re availing themselves of the night-vision goggles, what with “the corrupting influence of modernity”, which means we can use them. They are kept in the control room by the main entrance.’
‘Could we gain access via the reading rooms? We could go via the restricted section to the one used by the Sancti?’
‘What’s that?’ Gabriel asked.
‘The Sanctus monks were kept strictly segregated from the rest of the population to preserve the secrets they kept. However they still had access to the library at certain times when no one else was there, and they had their own reading room. It’s reached by a staircase from the upper section of the mountain. There are other stairways too, one in the prelate’s quarters, one close to the cathedral cave and one just through there.’ He pointed to the door leading to the Abbot’s bed chamber. ‘They enabled the trusted senior members of the mountain to meet with the Sancti and partake in their ceremonies. Since there are no longer any of them left, the stairways and Sancti’s reading room have been unused.’ He looked back at the door leading to the bedchamber. ‘I have the Abbot’s key for that door. But not one for the door leading into the reading room. We’d have to force it.’
Father Thomas shook his head. ‘We would make far too much noise. It’s a heavy door with a solid lock and the reading rooms where Malachi and the black cloaks are residing is right next door. I’d rather break in using my own systems than bludgeon my way through a door. Once we are inside and have acquired the night-vision goggles it should be easy. We can find our way to the ancient texts and read anything we like in total darkness. Give me a couple of hours and I’ll have worked out how to get us in. That should also give everyone time to go to sleep. Shall we say midnight?’
Athanasius nodded. ‘Between Matins and Lauds.’
‘Can I come with you?’ Gabriel said, clearly meaning it.
‘You’re not going anywhere.’ Dr Kaplan appeared behind Thomas with something in his hand and a serious expression on his face. ‘You’re far too weak to do anything other than lie here and rest. However, if you really want to help …’
He opened his hand and Gabriel felt his stomach flip when he saw several empty test tubes lying in his palm. ‘This is the situation. So far we’ve taken eight hundred mils of your blood which would take your body about five weeks to fully replace. The plasma gets replaced in a day or two. The blood cells take much longer. In the study of disease it is these cells that give us the most information. They’re the things that have battled the disease and, in your case, won. At the moment your body will only just have started replacing the plasma and your white cell count per litre will still be relatively high. As far as virology and toxicology is concerned this is the good stuff, packed full of all the information we need. It would really speed things up if we could take some more of this rich blood now.’
‘How much?’
‘Another five hundred mils.’
‘And how much would that leave me with?’
‘Enough, you’d still have seventy-five to eighty-five per cent of your usual amount, which is in the safe zone for a healthy patient. My concern is that the last time we took blood it triggered some kind of mild relapse, though you recovered quickly and seem fine now.’ He looked at the ECG monitor connected to Gabriel’s finger by a clip. ‘Your vital signs are all strong and there’s no obvious reason for concern. But ultimately it’s your decision.’
Gabriel looked at the stained-glass window, the peacock motif hardly visible now as evening darkened the sky behind it. ‘What the hell,’ he said. ‘I’m not going anywhere. But if I do pass out please don’t wake me until morning.’ An assistant appeared from nowhere and started to tighten Gabriel’s bindings.
‘Just a precaution,’ Kaplan said. ‘In case you do have another fit.’
Gabriel turned to Athanasius. ‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘And I sincerely hope you have a better night than I’m about to.’
81
Malachi’s candle lit up the words carved into the inside of the upper curve of an archway as he passed through it: CRYPTA REVELATIO – Vault of the Revelation.
Most of the library was organized according to date and origin, with the newest items nearest the entrance. But the contents of the Crypta Revelatio were drawn from every culture, every century and every part of the world. It was a collection with one unique subject in common: all of the texts and references gathered there contained prophetic accounts of the end of the world.
He made his way over to the far side of the vault and held his dying candle to a fresh one until the new wick caught and wavering orange light rippled across a desk entirely buried beneath books and sheets of paper filled with Malachi’s dense handwriting. Collapsing in the seat at his desk, he grabbed a fresh sheet of paper and took up his pen. His hand shook as he wrote, his lips moving as he recalled the symbols he had seen. He had not been able to memorize them all in the short time, but he had seen enough. He drew the symbols from memory, writing his interpretation of each next to it so he could capture as much of it as he could remember: one sign for a rider – a warrior on horseback; one sign for the Citadel, which occurred more than once; and at the very end of the prophecy the symbol of a skull – meaning death or an end – followed by the moon in the sun, representing a day.
End of Days.
He pulled the candle over and his magnified eyes moved behind the lenses of his spectacles, his skittish hands extensions of his tumbling thoughts as they searched through the accumulated mass of doom that spilled across the table top and down to the floor, looking for one item in particular. He had read and re-read the documents so many times that the terrible imagery and predictions they contained bled into his dreams as he slept here each night in his nest of prophesies.
He found what he was looking for buried beneath the handwritten, original manuscript of the Poetic Edda and a first edition of Les Propheties by Michel de Nostredame. The text was written on papyrus in Ancient Greek and bound into a codex with thin strips of leather. Such binding was usually reserved for pristine texts but these pages were filled with crossings out and additions crammed in the borders and between every line.
Malachi turned the pages, his hands touching only the edge of each page in recognition of the great delicacy of the book. It had arrived in the Citadel barely a hundred years after the death of Christ, shortly after it was written on the island of Patmos. Any Christian scholar with a passing knowledge of Greek would hav
e instantly recognized the apocalyptic imagery of dragons and lambs that whispered up from the dry pages. It was the Book of Revelation of Saint John the Divine, the last book of the Holy Bible, written in the saint’s own hand.
The first copies of the Bible had been compiled and written in this very library, using the original texts as reference. But not everything had been copied into the official, public version everyone now knew. Under the supervision of the earliest scholars whole books had been omitted in order to help clarify God’s meanings. And anything that alluded too closely to the Citadel or the Sacrament was also omitted so the secrets would remain so. But the complete visions and prophecies of Saint John had been preserved in this, the one remaining copy of the original work. Malachi found the page he was looking for and scanned the confusion of crossings out and notes until he found the seventh verse:
And when he had opened the fourth seal,
I heard the voice of the fourth beast say,
Come and see.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse:
and his name that sat on him was Death,
and Hell followed with him.
The same version was written in every Bible on the face of the earth. But in this Codex there was an additional part that had been marked for exclusion by one of the fathers of the Church because of the direct reference to the Citadel.
And he did ride forth from the wilderness
A demon disguised as an angel
And the keepers of the flame within the great tower, which had stood and held the secret
of God since Adam’s time,
Were fooled and they did let him inside
And there he did remove the light,
But the pure of heart were fooled not
And God did give them a white fire to burn away all corruption and carry the false one away unto death.
And God did smile upon those who had done His work,
And they did take their place by His side.
Blessed among the blessed.
And what had Athanasius – that fool – told him about the man who had cheated death and recovered from the blight? That he had ridden to the Citadel on a horse, and that his name was Gabriel.
What had they done?
The Revelation of St John the Divine and the prophecy etched on the stone both predicted the end of days – and Athanasius had made it all happen. He had lit the fuse to something that would blow everything apart.
Malachi closed his eyes and tried to think. There had been constellations etched onto the stone too and moon symbols denoting a time frame. Maybe the end was not here yet, Maybe it could be avoided. He re-read the words of the Saint, looking for fresh meaning in them, his eyes drawn to one phrase in particular:
But the pure of heart were fooled not
And God did give them a white fire to burn away all corruption and carry the false one away unto death.
What had Athanasius said about the demon, the one who called itself Gabriel? That it was recovering from the blight, and that they had taken it to the Abbot’s private chambers to recover while they conducted their tests and pandered to it, slaves already without even knowing it – the fools. But Athanasius had also said something else – that it was still weak, not fully recovered. And he knew a way to the Abbot’s private chambers through the stairways and corridors leading up from the locked reading room of the Sancti. And Malachi had the key. There was yet time to vanquish it, but he would have to strike quickly, before it grew too strong.
82
Franklin drove back into Charleston the same way he’d driven out. He had borrowed Sinead’s car, preferring the indignity of turning up to an arrest in a Hyundai Elantra to the pain and probable rejection of asking Marie if he could borrow her Chevy Malibu.
Jackson met him with two other uniforms as arranged at a gas station twenty miles outside the city limits. They drove back into town the wrong way on the empty lanes of the outbound interstate, lights flashing and sirens blaring in case they met anything coming the other way. The traffic on the inbound lane was as bad as it had been before and they drew envious glances as they blew past from all the people behind wheels, still waiting patiently in line and inching their way back home.
They killed the sirens and lights when they made it downtown and the traffic started to thin again. They weaved through the snow-softened streets and parked round the corner from Cooper’s church where Franklin went through his strategy for the take- down, the layout of the building, the number of people likely to be inside. He even called up a picture of Cooper on his phone to show them. The cops barely looked at it. Everybody knew who Fulton Cooper was.
They checked their weapons and put on body armour vests. Due to some mess-up they had only brought three so Franklin decided to do without. He couldn’t imagine Cooper was going to put up any kind of a fight. They went through it all one last time then split up, the two uniforms heading round the back to cover the rear entrance just in case the good Reverend lost his faith in the Lord and decided to make a run for it.
Franklin and Jackson took the front. Franklin yanked hard on the bell pull and heard it ring somewhere inside the building. There were lights on and the most recent update from the Eavesdropper log suggested that Cooper, or his phone at least, had still been in the building as of ten minutes ago. Franklin reached into the gap between the mailbox and the wall to retrieve the crumpled pack of cigarettes with the bug inside.
Snow fell. They waited.
A light came on above them, lifting them from the dark and throwing their shadows out onto the blank whiteness of the road. Miss Boerman appeared in the doorway and regarded them with a look as cold as the ground they stood upon. ‘Yes?’
‘Is the Reverend in?’ Franklin asked.
‘Can’t this – whatever it is – wait until tomorrow?’
‘No.’ Franklin noticed her shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, a small thing but on her it seemed as though he’d caught her half-dressed. Her hand rose to her shirt collar and her face hardened. ‘I’m afraid he’s unavailable.’ The fine scar on her face wrinkled as she spoke. Franklin wondered if it was the reason she never smiled.
‘Mind if we come in and see for ourselves?’
‘Do you have a warrant?’
‘What, you mean like this?’
Jackson held up the signed paperwork he had managed to hustle out of the one judge who was still in town and answering his phone and Franklin enjoyed the surprise that registered on the blank mask of her face. She looked up, still making no further move to unlock the gate.
‘OK, I’ll tell you what I’ll do.’ Franklin opened his hands in his I’m-being-reasonable-here manner. ‘You have exactly three seconds to open this gate or I’m going to shoot the lock off and arrest you for obstruction of justice, sound fair?’
He held up three fingers.
Then two.
He reached into his jacket for his gun.
She stepped forward and jabbed a key into the lock, twisting it open and standing aside to let them in.
‘Where is he?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Well take a guess and make it a good one.’
‘He’s probably at prayer, in the chapel.’
‘You think so or you know so?’
Her hand went to her collar again. ‘He’s there.’
‘Where is it?’
‘In the basement, down the side stairs you went up earlier.’
‘Is he alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anyone else in the building I should know about?’
‘The church is closed.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
‘No. There’s no one here but Fulton and myself.’
Franklin smiled. ‘Thank you, miss. You have been most helpful. Why don’t you wait here until we’re done.’
He pushed through the front door and into the warmth of the entrance hall with Jackson following close behind. The phone room was empty and so was the post
room. They continued through to the narrow stairs and headed down, Franklin’s steps loud on the bare boards, announcing his approach to whoever might be listening in the basement. He reached the bottom and waited for Jackson to join him. ‘You set?’
A short nod.
‘OK, let’s do it.’
They moved together through the gloom towards a solid wooden door that swung open easily on well-oiled hinges to reveal a small chapel beyond lit by sunlight miraculously pouring through a large stained-glass window. Cooper was on his knees in front of it, head bowed, hands in front of him where they couldn’t be seen.
‘Hello, Reverend,’ Franklin said, moving to the centre of the room. ‘Sorry to burst in on you like this but I was just dying to introduce you to a friend of mine. Detective Jackson of the Charleston PD, meet the man we’re here to arrest for conspiracy to murder.’
Cooper didn’t move. Franklin glanced over at Jackson. ‘You want to Mirandize him while he’s saying his goodbyes to the Lord?’
Franklin sat down on one of the benches while Jackson read Cooper his rights. He felt suddenly tired from the long and event-filled day. Driving away from Marie and Sinead had taken more out of him than he thought. At least Cooper wasn’t kicking and screaming. He watched the Reverend lower his hands and look up at the cross built into the design of the window. ‘Might I ask on what evidence you are arresting me?’
‘You might.’ Franklin produced his phone and played the intercepted phone message, Cooper’s voice sounding thin and tinny on the small speaker. He switched it off before it got to the end.
‘You really have no idea what all of us are facing here, do you?’ Cooper said.
Franklin smiled. ‘Feel free to enlighten me,’ he said wearily, ‘though you would be advised to keep it short as everything you now say constitutes evidence that can be used against you in a court of law.’
‘Whose law – the law of man? The law of governments? What fear I of such flawed and inadequate things?’