by Simon Toyne
He stared out across the pool, the mirror of its surface reflecting the night sky. The night was cold, but he didn’t mind. He had taken his jacket off and draped it over Hevva when she had curled up and fallen asleep in his lap. He sat like this for a long time, just holding her until the phone buzzed again and he answered it quickly so as not to wake her.
‘It’s Franklin. I’m standing in Merriweather’s apartment looking at plans of Marshall, fake IDs, and a whole directory of names that includes our good friend Fulton Cooper. Seems Merriweather was something of an archiver – you should see the collection of old 45s he’s got here – he recorded everything, you couldn’t ask for a more smoking gun. There’s also some kind of shrine in his basement, like an altar or something with a big T-shaped cross hanging on the wall – it’s a proper fanatic’s home-from-home.’
Shepherd nodded but said nothing.
‘Listen, Shepherd, if you want me to arrange transport back, I can do that. Just tell me where you are and I’ll set the wheels in motion.’
Shepherd looked up at the sky. ‘I think I’ll stay here a while,’ he said, watching Hubble twinkling like a new star. ‘It is Christmas after all. Isn’t that when you spend time with family?’
‘I didn’t know you had a family.’
Shepherd felt Hevva stir in his arms, her head nuzzling him as she slept. ‘Neither did I. You should go home too, Ben – spend some time with your family.’
‘I will, just as soon as I’ve arrested the guy behind the explosion at Marshall that nearly got us killed.’
Shepherd frowned. ‘Not Merriweather?’
‘No. He couldn’t possibly have got there before we did and set all that up in time.’
‘Who then?’
114
Chief Ellery looked up from his desk as the door opened and a man wearing a black suit came in. He didn’t recognize him, but he knew the Sheriff who walked in with him, a kid called Rogers, someone he’d known from back when he was still in uniform.
The suit showed him his FBI credentials, read the charges then Sheriff Rogers stepped forward to read him his rights, looking slightly embarrassed about the whole thing. Ellery looked up at the photograph of his younger self. He’d never really wanted to quit being a cop, but the Church had wanted to keep a close eye on NASA, maintaining its long tradition of suspicion regarding science in general and astronomers in particular.
Sheriff Rogers finished Mirandizing him and stepped forward, reaching for the cuffs on his belt clip.
‘You don’t need to do that, son,’ Ellery said, rising from his chair. ‘I’m too old to make a run for it or try anything stupid.’ He turned to the agent. ‘I’m surprised Agent Franklin didn’t come here to do this himself. I imagine he would have enjoyed it.’
The agent shot him a cold smile. ‘Agent Franklin’s got bigger fish to fry.’
Franklin pulled up outside the large Colonial-style house, took a breath then got out of the car. He waited for the two-man arrest team to join him on the porch before knocking loudly and smoothing his hand down over his tie. He smiled at the surprised-looking woman who answered the door and turned down the offer of coffee as he walked across the hallway to where a news station could be heard playing behind a door.
He rapped once out of courtesy then pushed the door wide without waiting for an answer.
Assistant Director O’Halloran looked up from the TV. Franklin saw surprise flash across his face, but he recovered quickly. ‘I was expecting your report, Agent Franklin, not a house call.’
‘A draft version of my report has already been filed, sir. I sent it to Assistant Director Murray.’
The surprise returned but this time it stayed. ‘Might I ask why?’
‘Murray took over the covert running of Operation Fish, sir – after you tried to shut it down. It was felt that your reasons for ending the investigation into highly placed and potentially influential Christians were not entirely robust.’ O’Halloran glanced past Franklin and saw the two uniformed officers waiting in the hall. ‘I can tell you what’s in the report if you like, though I’m sure you know how most of it goes – foot soldiers recruited and run by the Reverend Fulton Cooper through the Church of Christ’s Salvation to fight the good fight against so-called “heretical scientific exploration” and the rising tide of ungodliness, Chief Ellery at Marshall keeping his eye on James Webb, Merriweather over at Goddard doing the same for Hubble – all of them controlled centrally by a well-placed puppet-master inside the FBI, feeding them information and their mission orders for the greater good of the mother church you all serve.’
‘I assume your report contains proof?’
Franklin nodded. ‘Merriweather kept exceptionally detailed records – I guess it’s the risk you run if you start doing business with paranoid conspiracy theorists. I have all the evidence I need of the “How?” – the only thing I don’t have is the “Why?”’
O’Halloran steepled his fingers in front of him so it looked like he was praying but said nothing. Franklin nodded at the arrest team and they moved out of the hallway and into the den. He stayed by the door, ready to move if he had too, remembering how it had gone down with Cooper but O’Halloran just sat there, staring ahead while they read him his rights. When they had finished he looked up at Franklin. ‘If you want to know the “why?”’ he said, ‘just look at what’s happening in the world. A judgement is coming where all shall be held to account. I answer to His law above all others. I am ready to face my Lord, Agent Franklin – are you?’
Franklin stared into his face, hardly recognizing the man before him now that the weird light had crept into his eyes. ‘I believe in people, sir. If you spend as much time on the streets as I have, it’s hard not to. I used to believe in you, too, but when you chose to partner me up with a rookie on a case as important as this, even someone with Shepherd’s science background, I started having my doubts. It was as if you were setting out to hamper the investigation and limit its chances of success. But in the end, sir, that’s where you made your biggest mistake. You underestimated the power of people – and you picked the wrong rookie.’
115
Dawn rose over the compound, lighting up the dew on the grass and the unfurling petals of waking flowers and fresh blossom that dripped between the green leaves of the trees.
Two figures emerged from the main building and moved through the morning mist that had drifted across the ground from the central fountain of water. They walked in silence, though the way they were together told their story: he, with his arm round her waist; she, leaning against him, her arms forming a natural cradle for the bundle of a sleeping baby.
They headed up the incline, bare feet leaving tracks in the wet grass that swept up the hill to the graves. The smell of loam and earth rose from the mound of freshly dug dirt where the one who called himself Novus Sancti lay buried next to those he had called his enemy.
The two figures moved higher to a spot where the grass covered an older grave, now fuzzed with green, a slab of granite at its centre.
‘Here he is,’ the woman said, resting her head on the man’s chest. ‘I put the Starmap here because I wanted to mark it out in some way. I thought it was something you would do, if you’d been here.’
Gabriel knelt down and wiped his hand across the surface of the Starmap, clearing the dew to reveal the symbols beneath. In the middle of the second line an arrow pointed down, something Liv had always assumed meant ‘King’. Now, in the light of all that had happened, she saw it was more general than that.
The Sacrament comes home and The Key looks to heaven
A new star is born with a new ruler on Earth to bring order to the end of days.
The baby began to stir in her arms as Gabriel hooked his fingers round the edge of the stone and hauled it over to reveal the symbols on the other side.
The star that heralded the end of the old had new meaning for her now. It spoke of opposites coming together and a balance being struck, for it was made up
of two other symbols, the ones for the Citadel and for Eden. The symbol below also spoke of reconciliation, though this one was far more personal. When she first saw it Liv thought it must refer to her in some sinister way, the Tau with a line cutting through it. Now she realized what it was. It was the Tau and the sword combined, her symbol and Gabriel’s together, creating something new entirely.
The baby wriggled and stretched in her arms, the hungry mouth searching for its mother. ‘What shall we call her? I was thinking maybe Kathryn,’ Liv said, referring to the wife of the man lying buried beneath the stone – Gabriel’s mother.
Gabriel smiled and kissed the top of Liv’s head. ‘It’s a good name,’ he said. ‘Do you know what it means?’
The baby girl yawned, unaware of the wonderful new world she had been born into.
‘It means “pure” …’
EPILOGUE
The sun shines and traffic flows freely down the great wide boulevards of Ruin, all signs of the quarantine that held the city in its grip for most of the previous year now gone. The people have returned, the dead are remembered and life goes on.
In the centre of the city, looming above it all, the Citadel remains as dark and silent as always. It has cast its long shadow here before there was a city and will do so after the city has crumbled to dust. But those who have held sway for so long inside it and spread their influence way beyond the physical shadow of the mountain are now gone. After thousands of years withstanding everything kings and emperors could throw at it in their attempts to crack open the walls and learn its great secrets, it was a virus, one of the smallest life-forms on Earth that brought the mountain down.
But life goes on for the Citadel too.
Today the embankment surrounding the mountain is filled with people and news cameras, there to witness its reopening. Cameras have already been inside, moving through the carved corridors to reveal to the outside world all that it wondered about for so long – the dormitories, the refectories, the great cathedral cave, all preserved exactly as they were when the monks lived there.
At the foot of the mountain, where the ascension platform used to rest, the mayor now gives a speech and the news cameras roam the crowd, capturing the excitement and anticipation of the first people to ride the newly installed elevators up the side of the mountain into what used to be the tribute cave. A man hangs back, hiding beneath a hat and behind dark glasses. He avoids the cameras, for he has nothing to share. He has been inside the mountain before.
A ribbon is cut and cameras flash, capturing the first elevator shooting up to the dark cave where more cameras are waiting to capture the looks on the faces of the first people to take this journey into a secret world few have ever known or seen before.
A tour guide leads them through the tunnels, explaining how the monks lived and recounting crowd-pleasing stories culled from the Citadel’s long and bloody history. The man in the hat listens from the back of the group, making mental notes when the guide deviates too far from the script he helped write so he can correct him in the debrief later.
He puts the dark glasses on again as the group steps out into the brightness of the garden and the guide tries his best to paint a picture of what the barren space might have looked like when everything flourished. He moves on quickly, sensing the crowd is not that interested, and heads back inside to the grand finale of the cathedral cave. But the man in the hat remains. He removes his sunglasses and stares at a spot by the firestone where the ground has been nourished by the ash of the fire. He walks over and squats down, removing his hat to fan the dust away from the thing he has seen. The dust blows away and Athanasius breaks into a broad smile at the miracle he has discovered. It is a green shoot rising up from the grey ground straight and sharp, like a model of the Citadel in miniature.
A new life. A new hope. A new beginning.
Acknowledgements
Writing a novel is a lonely process, particularly when you are grappling with the end of the world. For shining much needed light down into the dark of the first draft mines I would like to thank my agent Alice Saunders, who inspires, encourages and constantly nags me to do more exercise; Peta Nightingale who turns the first draft into something altogether more second draft and George Lucas at Inkwell Management who keeps the Sanctus flags fluttering in America.
At HarperCollins I am luckier than any writer deserves to be in having the legends that are Julia Wisdom in the UK and David Highfill in the US nudging, cajoling and supporting me throughout the lengthy process of turning an idea into a book. Loud applause must also be reserved for their sterling teams of editorial staff, designers, marketeers and sales folk. Particular thanks must also go to the long-suffering Emad Akhtar in the UK for his patience and professionalism in the face of the tightest of deadlines. I also owe a huge debt to everyone at ILA who continue to spread the Sanctus story to the four corners of the globe.
As ever, final thanks must go to my inspirational children, Roxy, Stan and baby Betsy Bean, as well as my wife Kathryn for all the love, support – and for doing all the nights when I needed to work. I love you all, though – obviously – in slightly different ways.
Simon Toyne
Brighton
February 2013
About the Author
In 2007 Simon Toyne quit his job and moved to France to fulfil a long-held desire to write a thriller. After a sleepless night crossing the Channel, he and his family abandoned a planned eight-hour drive to their new home and limped instead to the city of Rouen. It was the sight of the sharp spire of Rouen Cathedral piercing the pre-dawn sky that gave birth to the fictional Citadel of Sanctus.
Sanctus and The Key both became immediate bestsellers. To date they have been translated into 27 languages and published in 40 countries. The Tower is Simon’s third novel.
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Also by Simon Toyne
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Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2013
Copyright © Simon Toyne 2013
Simon Toyne asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Source ISBN: 9780007391639
Ebook Edition © April 2013 ISBN: 9780007507481
Version 1
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