The Key (16 page)

He started to move away down the street and opened another app that located free Wi-Fi spots. The reception was even slower now he had left the building’s Internet footprint and it took a while for a map to appear on the screen. A blue dot pulsed at the centre showing his own location, then other icons started popping up around it. There was a hotspot in the direction he was heading, about two streets away, close to the hospital. He slipped the phone in his pocket and increased his pace. He wanted to be in position when the time came to call Arkadian. He also wanted to be nearer his mother. He knew it was the first place the authorities would look for him, which was why he had stayed away, but until he could figure out a way to ensure her safety he’d feel better being close – just in case anything happened.

It took Arkadian seven of the ten minutes he’d been given to get hold of his old partner and tell him what he needed. The rest was easy – too easy.

‘She’s on Cyprus Turkish Airline TK 7121 to Newark,’ Yun said.

‘What time’s takeoff?’

‘Five minutes ago.’

Arkadian felt oddly relieved. Maybe it was for the best. Liv had wanted to go home after all. ‘Thanks anyway,’ he said.

‘No problem. The information was right there on the system the moment I accessed the database.’

Arkadian frowned. ‘Why would that be?’

‘Could be coincidence. More likely someone else had already put in the request.’

Arkadian’s mind lit up with the implications. ‘Is there any way you can find out who called up the information first?’

‘Sure, hold on.’ He heard the clatter of a keyboard and the background noise of planes. He wondered if one of them was Liv’s. ‘It’s just showing a guest user ID,’ Yun said. ‘It came through on the blue channel though.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The pre-authorized account for the Ruin Police Department. It would have come from one of the dedicated data terminals in your records office. Someone there will be able to tell you who asked for the info.’

It was an inside job
.

The phone started beeping in his ear. ‘Listen, Yun, I’ve got another call coming in. I owe you for this.’

‘Just come work for me when you’ve finally had enough of the hours and the grief.’

‘I’ll do that.’ He ended the call and returned the phone to his ear. ‘Gabriel?’

‘Any luck?’

‘Yes and no.’

‘Meaning?’

‘You were right, and we have a big problem.’

Flight TK 7121

The thrust of the engines pressed Liv into her seat and made the raindrops slip from the window as the plane picked up speed. Beyond the lights of the airport she could see the broken peaks of the Taurus mountains rising up against an inky sky. She watched them until the cabin tilted backwards and the wheels lifted off the tarmac with a
bump
. At the same moment she felt a tightening in her stomach, as though something inside her was connected to the ground and was now being pulled unbearably tight as the plane accelerated away from it. She gasped at the sensation, doubling over and struggling to breathe. She was aware of the passenger next to her leaning forward, his face clouded with concern. The tightening increased until she felt that it might pull her through the floor of the plane; then something seemed to snap and she gulped air. A wave of nausea followed, along with the same intense pins-and-needles feeling over her entire body she had felt in the departure hall. The mild G-forces of the climbing plane didn’t help. She turned and forced a smile for the person next to her, muttering something about nerves then closed her eyes and breathed deeply and slowly. She was really getting tired of all this. It was as if someone had a voodoo doll of her and was randomly sticking pins in it.

The plane started to bank and the delicate feelings inside her rolled with the movement. She continued to breathe until the sick feeling melted away and she felt safe enough to open her eyes again.

Outside she could see the stars beginning to prick the darkening sky and below them, shining like a bright stain, the lights of Ruin, nestling in the foothills of the mountain. She imagined each light as a person and one of them was Gabriel.

If you get the chance, then go
,
he had said,
as far from the Citadel as you can. Keep yourself safe – until I find you
.

Once she’d returned to Newark, got her head straight and her memory back, she would call him; then they could talk. She had so many questions, about what had happened in the Citadel, but also about him. She hardly knew him and yet, in the midst of all the darkness and strangeness of the past few weeks, it was to him that her mind had constantly returned. He shone through it all, like the lights she now looked down upon.

The plane shuddered slightly as the higher winds caught it and below her those same lights started to disappear, winking out one by one, as though the city was being switched off a block at a time.

She turned on her reading light. It made the dark symbols on her hand stand out against her pale flesh, mocking her again with their mystery. She pulled the book from the seat pocket in front of her and looked at the cover. It was called
The Mystery of Lost Languages
. Maybe she would find some answers in here.

Eight rows back a large man in a business suit sat jammed in an economy seat built for someone half his size. His eyes were fixed on Liv’s blonde hair, glowing in the gloom of the cabin. She was looking down at something, reading. He wondered what it was. He liked books. They were full of words, and words were a kind of magic to him. It was how he had got his nickname during his first spell in prison: Dick, short for Dictionary. Sometimes people tried to make fun of his name, as if it meant something dirty, but not for long. He could tell which people said it properly and those who were calling him something else – a prick, a cock, a penis. That was the problem with language. It had such power, but it was slippery. You had to focus on the words and use them correctly to convey what you wanted. That’s why he liked strong words. Pure words. Words that only had one meaning. The word he was currently savouring was one of these:

Ser-en-dip-ity

When the jailhouse hit had gone wrong, he’d been told his mission was over. Not his fault, just one of those things. He was too recognizable and the witness had got away. So he had been reassigned.

He’d gone to his hotel room, picked up his stuff and put on the baggy business suit that covered up all his tattoos and was specifically tailored to disguise his shape. Then he’d neatly combed his hair and headed off to the airport looking like any other nondescript, out-of-shape businessman on his way to who knows where. But God had known. He had made all this happen so that Dick ended up in exactly the right place at the right time. The perfect solution had presented itself, as if by accident.

Ser-en-dip-ity

If everything had gone to plan in the cell block he wouldn’t have been at the airport and the girl would have got away. And she was the most important of the three targets. The girl was the most dangerous to the Church and needed to be silenced. And silence was the greatest power anyone could have over another person, the ability to take away their words. He’d learned that in prison. Whenever they had wanted to punish him, they had taken his books. But they could never take away the words in his head. Not unless they killed him. And he had such words inside him, the best words. They had been given to him by Isaiah – the name of a prophet and also of the old trustee who had wheeled the library cart round the corridors of E Wing.

‘You like words,’ he’d said one time as he’d shuffled past his cell. ‘Well, take a look at this. All the words you’ll ever need.’

Dick had never read the Bible before. It had never occurred to him. But he’d read it now, hundreds of times, until the words flowed through him like the blood in his veins. He had even scratched some of the more powerful ones on to his own skin, so he was like a book himself, anointed with spells to ward off evil when he was asleep and his tongue was still.

Deu-ter-on-om-y

Re-ve-la-tion

Ne-pha-lim

That’s what he was – a Nephalim – one of the giants of legend, mentioned in Genesis. A creature of God. A watcher.

He was watching now in the dimness of the cabin, as the armrests dug into his legs and his knees rubbed against the seat in front. Once the girl was home, she would feel safe; and that was when he would strike.

That was when he would take away her words and silence her for ever.

Gabriel sprinted headlong down the street towards the hospital. The moment Arkadian had told him the passenger manifest had already been searched he knew. The Church’s dark forces were making a coordinated move to tidy up their loose ends: first him, then Liv – next his mother.

He concentrated on the rhythm of his feet pounding the tarmac, driving him closer, step by step. He reached a corner and turned into Asklepios Street. Running through the streets like this wasn’t the safest thing to do now his picture had appeared on the news, but he had to balance caution with haste. He reached a turning a third of the way down and rounded it, keeping tight to the houses. Ahead of him the street ended at a junction where the new extension block of the hospital rose up, shining with rain and reflected light. He scanned the upper windows, slowing as he neared the junction, wary of breaking cover into a main road that might have police patrols stationed on it. He stopped a few metres short and looked up from the safety of the shadows.

The main hospital building stretched along the full length of the street. At one end it joined the stone walls of the original building and at the other a covered walkway connected it to a smaller stone building that resembled a castle. This was the old psychiatric wing where the receptionist had said his mother was being kept.

A car swished past and he used the hiss of its tyres to mask his own splashing steps as he dashed to the other side of the street. The ground-floor windows were all boarded up along with a large doorway that had once served as the entrance. High up on the side of the building a scaffold platform jutted out. It was the sort of thing workmen used to hoist materials on to, but there were no ropes hanging down that might help him gain access, they were all curled up and secured to the scaffold poles. The windows to the side of the platform were mostly dark – but not all. Two glowed with light – one in the middle of the row and another at the very end – both on the fourth floor. The hospital receptionist had said his mother was being kept in room 410. His money was on the middle window. He continued to gulp air, relaxing slightly now he had at least located his mother.

Then he felt the vibration.

At first he thought it was thunder, rolling down from the clouds, but when the ground started to shake and a sound like trains in a subway rumbled up from beneath his feet, he realized what it was.

He stepped away from the nearest building, his legs unsteady on the quivering ground as the earthquake took hold of the city. He stopped in the middle of the road, away from any falling debris, his legs planted apart, and looked back up at the fourth-floor window. The shaking increased and the rumbling was joined by the high-pitched wail of hundreds of car and burglar alarms as the quake triggered them. Then, just as the noise and the tremors reached their peak, all the lights in the city went out.

Inside the hospital the sudden darkness was followed by frightened screams that echoed down the corridor from the main building.

Ulvi had managed to jam himself in a doorway and was hanging on to the edge of a wall that was trying to shake itself free from his grasp. There was a crash from way down the hallway as something heavy fell over in one of the partially renovated wards. Outside, car alarms shrieked through the streets like a beast on the loose. To Ulvi it was the sound of opportunity.

Once the earthquake ended, everyone would be busy and disorientated. No one would come running if an emergency alarm suddenly sounded all the way over here. And accidents happened all the time during quakes – falling masonry, broken glass, electricity sparking from severed cables. It was perfect. He just needed to get rid of the cop. He held on until the building finally shook itself still. The distant screaming seemed louder in the sudden quiet and it had been joined by the wail of alarms from various pieces of medical equipment throughout the building.

Ahead of him Ulvi saw the figure of the cop let go of a doorframe and step into the dust-filled corridor. He was looking towards a soft glow of light at the end of the corridor where most of the noise was coming from. The emergency power was clearly working in the main building, but the corridor remained dark.

‘You think we should check out the lights?’ Ulvi said, moving up the corridor towards the light. ‘Someone must be able to get the power back on for us.’

‘No,’ the cop stepped ahead of him. ‘You stay here and check the rooms. Make sure no one’s hurt.’

Ulvi stopped and watched the cop march forward and disappear round the corner. He smiled. He had never seen him go into the room that contained the monk and had gambled on this small observation to give him his chance. If the cop had avoided it in daylight there was no way he would want to go in now in pitch darkness. Ulvi’s offer to go and check what was happening with the lights had been calculated to make the cop volunteer instead. And he had, so now Ulvi was alone. He took the room keys from his pocket and used the light from his mobile phone to find the one with 410 stamped on it.

Ladies first
, he thought, then moved through the darkness towards Kathryn Mann’s door.

Gabriel stared up at the hospital building, listening to the sounds of distressed patients mingling with the thousand other fractured noises rising from the stunned city.

The main wing was illuminated from within by the dim orange glow of emergency lights, but the satellite buildings were dark. He fixed his eye on the square of black window that he believed was his mother’s room, willing her to come to it so he could see she was OK. Behind him a car turned into the street, its headlights on full. Gabriel sank further into the shadows, his eyes still fixed on the dark window on the fourth floor. The car drew closer and swept round the corner, washing light across the darkened building ahead. In that moment Gabriel saw someone standing in the window on the fourth floor. It was too dark to see much but he had seen the white slash of a priest’s collar and that was enough to set his own alarm ringing. He could have been there to check on the patients. The room might not even be his mother’s. But he wasn’t going to take the chance. The Citadel had tried to silence him earlier and he knew they were hunting Liv.