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

up and slipped the phone back in his pocket.

      He kicked the mulchy ground flat again where the wheels had churned it up, then walked over to the second canvas bag. He unzipped it and took out two wheels, several black tubular components and the engine of the portable trail bike he had been using for most of the summer on the Sudan project. Both the frame and the 100cc engine block were aluminium, which made the machine very light, and it folded away so neatly you could strap four of them to a pack horse and take them into some of the most inaccessible regions of the world. It took Gabriel a little less than five minutes to snap it all together.

      He took a black crash helmet from the bag and replaced it with Liv’s holdall and the other empty bag. He zipped it shut, slung it over his shoulder and hopped on to the saddle, bouncing the springs to loosen them. It took a couple of kick starts to work fuel into the engine then it roared into life. Anyone listening would have mistaken it for the sound of a small chainsaw. He swung the bike round, dropped it into gear and headed back down the tyre ruts the Renault had made on the way in.

      53

      Liv woke with a start, her heart beating wildly in her chest as if someone was trying to kick their way out of it. She’d just had one of those falling dreams, where you tip forward and jolt yourself awake before you hit the floor. Someone once told her that if you ever fell the whole way it meant you were dead. She’d always wondered how they knew this.

      She raised her head from her arms, squinting against the brightness of the interview room.

      A man was sitting in the chair opposite.

      She jerked back instinctively. The chair creaked against the bolts in the floor that kept it firmly in place.

      ‘Morning,’ the man said. ‘Sleep well?’

      She recognized the voice. ‘Arkadian?’

      ‘That’s me.’ His eyes dropped to a folder lying on the table between them, then back up again. ‘Question is, who are you?’

      Liv looked down at the folder, feeling as though she’d just woken up on Planet Kafka. Next to it was a bag of bread rolls, a full mug of black coffee and what looked like a pack of wet-wipes.

      ‘Closest thing to a shower and breakfast I could rustle up at short notice,’ Arkadian said. ‘Help yourself.’

      Liv reached for the bread, saw the state of her hands, and grabbed the wipes instead.

      ‘Now, I’m a fairly trusting man,’ Arkadian said, watching Liv scrub away at the dried mud and grime between her fingers, ‘so if someone tells me something, I’m inclined to believe them, until something else comes along to persuade me otherwise. Now you gave me a man’s name when I called you up, and that name checked out.’ He glanced down at the folder again.

      Liv felt her throat tighten as she realized what it must contain.

      ‘But you also said that man was your brother – and that’s what I’m having a problem with.’ His brow creased, like a patient and indulgent father who’d been badly let down. ‘You also turn up at the airport in the middle of the night talking about people being ambushed and people being shot, and this also tests my faith, Miss Adamsen.’ He looked at her with sad eyes. ‘There have been no reports of any car shunts near the airport. No reports of gunfire. And, so far, no one has found any bodies lying on any roads. In fact, as of this moment, the only person claiming any of this happened is –’

      Liv dropped her head and scratched violently at her mud-caked hair, going at it with both hands like a frenzied dog rousting a flea until a shower of what looked like tiny diamonds began to patter down on the tabletop. The frenzied scratching stopped as suddenly as it had begun and her green eyes blazed from her grime-streaked face. ‘You think I always carry bits of shot-out car window around in my hair, just in case I need to back up a story?’

      Arkadian looked at the tiny crystals sparkling across the scarred surface.

      Liv rubbed her eyes with cleanish hands that now smelt of baby lotion. ‘If you don’t believe I was nearly kidnapped, fine. I don’t care. All I want is to go see my brother, have a good cry, then make all the no-doubt tedious arrangements to take him back home.’

      ‘And I’d be more than happy to let you. But I’m not yet convinced that he is actually your brother and you’re not just some journalist looking for an exclusive on the big story.’

      A look of confusion clouded Liv’s face. ‘What big story?’

      Arkadian blinked, as if something had just clicked into place in his mind. ‘Answer me one question,’ he said. ‘Since I first spoke to you, have you seen a paper or caught any news reports?’

      Liv shook her head.

      ‘Wait right there.’ Arkadian rapped on the window. The door opened and he disappeared.

      Liv grabbed a bread roll from the bag. It was still warm. She devoured it while she looked out at the scruffy open-plan office through the crack in the door, heard the hum of phone calls and conversation, saw the edges of desks piled high with paperwork. It made her feel strangely at home.

      Arkadian returned just as she was washing the first roll down with the coffee and reaching for a second. He slid yesterday’s evening edition of the newspaper across the table.

      Liv saw the picture on the front page. Felt something inside her break, like it had on the lakeshore in Central Park. Her vision started to swim. She reached out to stroke the grainy image of the bearded man standing on top of the Citadel. A sob wrenched itself from somewhere deep inside her and tears finally began to fall.

      54

      Dawn drew everyone back into the great cathedral hall for Matins, the last of the four nocturnes, to bear witness to the death of night and the birth of a new day. Because it carried with it so many powerful symbolic overtones of redemption, rebirth, deliverance from evil, and the triumph of light over darkness it was compulsory for everyone in the Citadel to attend.

      Only today, something was different.

      Athanasius noticed it when Father Malachi was in the middle of one of his rhetorical flights of fancy from the pulpit, and he glanced absently across the lines of red-cassocked guards standing in front of him. Despite the strictness of the rule that all should attend Matins, one of them was missing. At six foot five, Guillermo Rodriguez usually stood out, quite literally, from the others. But today he wasn’t there.

      He remembered the sixty-two personnel files he’d delivered to the Abbot’s chamber the previous day. Sixty-two red files for sixty-two Carmina. He turned his body slightly as if listening intently to the sermon and conducted a silent head count.

      The trapped air of the cathedral cave shook with the deep sound of every voice in the Citadel chanting the final doxology in the original language of their church. ‘Every day will I bless thee; and I will praise thy name forever and ever. Blessed art thou, O LORD: teach me thy statutes.’

      Athanasius just managed to finish as the lines of the congregation started to disperse. There were fifty-nine guards. Three were missing.

      As the sun rose, the great windows lit up above the altar; God had opened his great eye and was gazing down upon his loyal congregation. Light had, once again, defeated darkness; the new day had begun.

      Athanasius filed out of the cathedral in the crush of brown cassocks, his mind filled with the possibilities of his discovery. He knew a little of Brother Guillermo’s past and guessed now at the reason the Abbot might have singled him out. It was a thought that troubled him greatly. He had always prided himself on his ability to curb the Abbot’s impulsiveness. The fact that three of the guards were now missing made him anxious – not just because he feared the Abbot’s response to Brother Samuel’s death, but because he’d had to discover it for himself.

      By revealing the prophecy to him in the forbidden vault the