Bestselling Conspiracy Thriller Trilogy: Sanctus, The Key, The Tower. Simon Toyne

through the publication of an authorized bible. Any dissent from this official view was seen as heresy and was crushed, first by the might of the Roman army and subsequently by any king and emperor trying to curry favour with the Church and, by extension, with God.

      Liv scanned the blood-soaked details, disturbed as much by the riot of exclamation marks and adverbs as anything they described. She didn’t care about the brutal history of the place, or what secrets it was meant to contain; she only cared about her brother, and what in this ancient city had driven him to his death.

      The plane shuddered and a soft bong caused Liv to look up. The fasten seat belt sign had been turned on again. The no smoking sign stayed resolutely on. It taunted her through the rest of the flight as the night got darker and the storm grew steadily worse.

      43

      The devotional day within the Citadel was divided into twelve different offices, the most important being the four nocturnes. They took place each night when it was believed the absence of God’s light allowed the forces of evil to prosper. It was a theory any police officer, in any major city in the world, would agree with: dark deeds are almost always done under cover of night.

      The first of the nocturnes was Vespers, a formal service held in the one place large enough for the entire population of the Citadel to witness the dying of another day – the great cathedral cave in the eastern section of the mountain. The first eight rows were filled with the black cassocks of the spiritual guilds – the priests and librarians who spent their lives in the darkness of the great library. Behind them sat a thin white line of Apothecaria, then twenty rows of brown cassocks, the mater-ial guilds – masons, carpenters, and other skilled technicians whose job it was to constantly monitor and maintain the physical wellbeing of the Citadel.

      The russet cassocks of the guards slashed across the body of the congregation, separating the higher guilds at the front from the numerous grey cloaks at the back; the administrative monks who did everything from cooking and cleaning to providing manual labour for the other guilds.

      Above the multi-coloured congregation, in their own elevated gallery, sat the green-clad brethren of the Sancti – thirteen in all, including the Abbot, though today there were only eleven. The Abbot was not among them, and neither was Brother Gruber.

      When the sun had dipped past the three great casements behind the altar, the large rose window flanked by two triangles representing God’s all-seeing eye, everybody filed out for their last meal in the refectory before retiring to the dormitories.

      All, that is, but three men dressed in the red cassocks of the Carmina.

      A sandy-haired monk with a flat, impassive face and the build of a middleweight boxer headed across the echoing space towards a door directly below the Sanctus balcony. The other two followed. No one said a word.

      Cornelius’s record as an officer in the British Army had singled him out to the Abbot as the group’s natural leader, so he had passed a note to him on the way into Vespers, containing the two other names, instructions and a map. Cornelius glanced at the map as he passed out of the cathedral cave, turning left as instructed and proceeding down the narrow, less trodden tunnels towards the abandoned section of the mountain.

      Dusk deepened in the tangled sprawl of the old city. The last of the tourists were ushered from the old town by polite stewards and portcullises clanked emphatically into place, sealing it for the night. To the west, in the section known as the Lost Quarter, the shadows began to take human form as the nightly traffic in flesh resumed its furtive trade.

      To the east, Kathryn Mann sat in her living room waiting for her printer to complete its task. She now regretted having programmed it for the highest quality image as she watched it appear line by steady line. The TV news reported large groups of people having gathered in silent tribute to the man they did not yet know as Brother Samuel in America, Europe, Africa, Australia, even China, where public demonstrations, particularly of a religious nature, were not undertaken lightly. A woman interviewed outside the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City was asked why she felt so strongly about the monk’s death.

      ‘Because we need faith, you know?’ Her voice was taut with emotion. ‘Because we need to know the Church cares for us – and is lookin’ out for us. If one of their own is driven to this, and the Church don’t even say nuthin’ about it … well, where does that leave us …?’

      People on every continent were saying more or less the same. The monk’s lonely death had clearly touched them. His mountain-top vigil seemed to symbolize their own sense of isolation, and the silence that followed, evidence of a Church that did not care; a Church that had lost its compassion.

      Maybe change is happening, she thought as she finally removed the sheet of paper from the printer and stared at the photograph of Liv Adamsen lifted from the police file.

       Perhaps the prophecy is coming true after all.

      She turned off the TV and grabbed a couple of apples on her way out. The airport was a thirty-minute drive away. She had no idea how long she’d have to wait there.

      44

      A heavy door shrieked open on rusty hinges. Cornelius stepped through it and reached for the burning torch that had been left for them. He held it in front of him as they made their way into the forgotten depths of the Citadel. Brother Johann at his shoulder, his dark matinee-idol looks belying a Scandinavian ancestry, his blue eyes full of the ice of his homeland. Brother Rodriguez brought up the rear, towering a foot above them both, his slender height at odds with his urban Hispanic roots, his golden eyes watchful and blank as he loped through the low tunnels.

      The crunch of their footfalls and the crackle of the burning flambeaux echoed around them as the mountain’s history rose out of the dark to greet them. Doorways yawned here and there like mouths frozen in mourning. Beyond them they glimpsed remnants of the lives once lived here: beds sagging under the weight of water-logged straw and splintered benches that could hardly bear the weight of the ghosts who now sat upon them. From time to time crumbled stone littered the pathway and streaks of limescale flared white in the darkness like the passing phantoms of those who had once walked there.

      Ten minutes later they saw a faint orange light ahead, flickering from a doorway that dribbled smoke across a ceiling carved in a time when people were smaller. They smelt burning wood as they got nearer and felt the cold air give way to a little warmth. Cornelius pushed through into a cave that might once have been a kitchen. On the far side of the chamber a figure squatted by an old-fashioned range, poking with a stick at a struggling fire.

      ‘Greetings, Brothers,’ the Abbot said, like an innkeeper welcoming travellers in from a blizzard. ‘My apologies; this is a poor excuse for a fire. I’m afraid I seem to have lost the art of it. Please …’ He gestured towards a table set with two large loaves and some fruit. ‘Sit. Eat.’

      The Abbot joined them at the table, watched them break bread in silence, taking none for himself. He scrutinized them as they ate, putting names to faces he had last seen in their personnel files. The tall one: Guillermo Rodriguez. Twenty-two years old. Originally from the Bronx. Former street rat and gang member. His records showed a string of arrests for arson, with stiffer sentences handed down each time. Spent half his life with a drug-addicted mother and the rest in a succession of juvenile detention centres. Found God after AIDS made him an orphan.

      Opposite him sat Johann Larsson. Twenty-four. Dark haired, blue eyed and strikingly handsome. Born in the Abisko forests of northern Sweden into a separatist, pseudo-military religious commune he had been raised in the belief that the end was close, when the sinful millions would become devils and turn on the righteous. In order to protect himself and his extended ‘family’ from these imagined hordes he had learned how to use a gun at the same time as his A-B-C’s. The end, when it did come, took a more tragic form. A lorry driver first raised the alarm when he spotted a timber wolf dragging a human leg across the road in front of him. The police unit that was dispatched discovered that the commune