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

man.

      Arkadian scrolled through it all – background, psych reports, security checks, everything. He was thirty-two, American father, half-Brazilian, half-Turkish mother. Father an archaeologist, mother worked for and later ran Ortus, an international aid charity – so early years spent travelling the world.

      Education a patchwork of interrupted study at a series of international schools then a Harvard scholarship majoring in modern languages and economics. Spoke five languages fluently including English, Turkish and Portuguese, and could get by in Pashto and Dari following his tours of duty in Afghanistan.

      Something in the file caught Arkadian’s eye and he stopped skimming and started reading. At the beginning of his final year at Harvard, something happened that clearly had a seismic effect on young Gabriel. Whilst cataloguing a major new find of ancient texts unearthed in the Iraqi desert near a place called Al-Hillah, Dr John Mann had been killed, along with several colleagues. It caused a major international stir. Saddam Hussein, still dictator in residence at the time, blamed Kurdish rebels. The worldwide community suspected Saddam might have done it and pinned the blame on the Kurds while he looted the priceless treasures for himself. None of the texts were ever seen again.

      It was not clear from the file who Gabriel blamed for his father’s death, but the fact that he dropped out of college and enlisted in the US Army in advance of the impending war in Iraq suggested he may have harboured certain suspicions. He enlisted as a private – though his academic record would have guaranteed him a commission – and passed out of basic training with such high grades he was immediately accepted for Special Airborne training.

      He spent nine months at Fort Campbell on the Kentucky–Tennessee border, learning to fly planes, jump out of them and kill people in an assortment of ways and with a variety of weapons. The file became more opaque as the specifics of his duties became more classified, but he served as a platoon sergeant in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom, and was decorated twice, once for courage under fire and once for his part in a covert hostage rescue operation; he and his platoon had rescued a group of kidnapped aid workers from a Taliban stronghold. He’d left the service four years ago. It didn’t say why.

      There was an additional page tagged to the end of the file detailing his known movements since his discharge. He worked as a security advisor for Ortus, and had travelled extensively to South America, Europe and Africa.

      Arkadian Googled Ortus. Its website homepage displayed an eerily familiar image: the stone monument of a bearded man, arms outstretched – the statue of Christ the Redeemer overlooking Rio de Janeiro. Ortus claimed to be the oldest charitable organization on earth, formed in the eleventh century by the dissolution of an ancient order of monks – the Brotherhood of the Mala – whose lineage stretched back into prehistory. They had been forced to renounce their spiritual vows after the church denounced them as heretical. Many had been burned at the stake for their belief that the world was a goddess and the Sun was a god and all life came from their union. Others escaped, regrouped and re-emerged as a secular organization dedicated to continuing the works they had previously undertaken as holy men.

      He scrolled down to their ongoing projects, the ones Gabriel de la Cruz Mann would have been involved with. There was a major project in Brazil protecting large tracts of rainforest from illegal loggers and gold prospectors, another in the Sudan replanting fields laid waste by the civil war, and another in Iraq restoring natural marshlands drained by systematic industrial land grabs and years of war.

      Arkadian could only imagine what being a security advisor in these places entailed. Protecting unarmed volunteers from guerrillas and bandits while they tried to bring food and water to the world’s poorest regions; trying to bring law to places where there was none. Whoever this guy was, he was clearly a saint – which made his presence in the morgue that morning all the more baffling.

      He clicked back to the home page and selected the ‘Contact Us’ link. The first address on the list was in Rio de Janeiro. That explained the statue. There were others in New York, Rome, Jakarta and one in Ruin – Exegesis Street in the Garden District, just east of the police building.

      He wrote it on the back of the grainy printout of Gabriel’s face from the CCTV footage, folded it in half and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

      78

      Alone in the white-tiled changing room, Liv blotted her reddened skin with the thin, scratchy towel. She could hear someone doing laps in the pool beyond the shower block.

      The small pile of white and blue gym clothes the Sub-Inspector had given her positively sparkled next to her old blouse and jeans. She slipped into the tracksuit bottoms and pulled the white T-shirt over her head. ‘POLIS’ was printed on the front and back in large black letters. She went through her pockets, transferred the few dollars and change and wiped the mud-caked phone clean. She jogged the on button and the screen flashed on. It shivered gently in her hand; a new text message. She didn’t recognize the number.

      She opened it and felt the chill return.

      DO NOT TRUST THE POLICE

      The capitals couldn’t have been more emphatic.

      CALL ME AND I’LL EXPLAIN

      She thought of the warning she had received last night, before the crash and the gunfire.

      Liv stood stock still. She could hear the trickle of shower water, the splash of whoever was in the pool and the hum of air conditioning overhead, but nothing else. No approaching footsteps. No muffled conversations in the corridor. But she suddenly had the feeling that someone was in the room with her, standing behind the wall that divided the changing area from the main door, listening to her movements.

      She slipped the phone in her pocket and pulled on a pair of white gym socks.

       I think it’s best that you stay under our protection …

      Arkadian had said that before packing her off with her chaperone.

      Police protection. Her brother hadn’t benefited too well from it, had he?

      She laced her grubby trainers over the pristine socks. The dark blue sweat-top swamped her slender frame. It too had POLICE emblazoned across it. She glanced once more towards the door then scooped up her ink-stained newspaper and headed in the other direction, past the still-dripping showers towards the pool.

      The air in the pool enclosure was warm and damp and scraped the back of Liv’s throat with chlorine fingers as she made her way around its edge towards the fire exit. A slash of morning sunlight had somehow found its way through the crush of surrounding buildings and sparkled on the surface of the pale blue water.

      Liv pushed down on the horizontal locking bar. A high-pitched siren echoed through the building. She pushed it closed behind her, killing the alarm as suddenly as it had started. The swimmer didn’t look up, just carried on doing steady lengths, sending glittering reflections across the white painted walls.

      Sulley was on the phone to a news producer. The warning only sounded for a few seconds but it snapped him to attention.

      ‘Listen,’ he whispered, ‘I’ll have to call you back.’

      He approached the entrance to the ladies’ locker room, the soles of his shoes squeaking against the shiny vinyl floor. Women. Jesus. She’d been in there for a lifetime. He listened for the sound of the shower. Heard nothing. Knocked gently.

      ‘Miss Adamsen?’ He pushed the door open far enough to poke his head through.

      No reply. There was a partition just inside, so he couldn’t see a thing.

      ‘Miss Adamsen?’ A little louder this time. ‘You OK in there?’

      Still nothing.

      He peered around the corner. Apart from a small pile of dirty clothes and a wet towel, the place was empty. Sulley felt a hot flush rising under his shirt, turning his pale flesh pink. ‘Miss Adamsen?’

      He looked left.