The Key (38 page)

‘Name’s Dick,’ the man said, thrusting out his hand and shooting him a cold smile that seemed like a challenge. He was more than a foot taller than Hyde and probably a hundred or so pounds heavier. ‘I’m here to collect the girl and take her back, once she has been
re-ac-quired
.’

‘Hyde,’ he said, grasping the hand and embarking on a short hand-crushing competition that, if he was honest, he lost. The guy was a monster. He was also now in charge.

The giant let go of Hyde’s hand and looked up just as the rider dropped down from his horse and unwrapped the keffiyeh from his face.

‘You expecting an army?’ the Ghost said, nodding at the idling helicopter.

‘It’s good to be cautious,’ Hyde said, in no mood for his particular brand of shit today. ‘And it can find a target and kill it before it even knows it’s been spotted.’

The Ghost looked the machine up and down then turned to Hyde and smiled. ‘It never found me. I suggest I organize my riders into tracking parties. Maybe your whirlybird can cover the eastern section while we cover the desert to the west. Is there anything out there we should know about – anything of yours that might not be marked on the maps?’

Hyde looked into the pale eyes, knowing from the tone of his question that he already knew the answer. ‘There’re some excavation works left over from test drills about twenty or thirty clicks from here. There’s also a smaller compound further out with temporary huts and security. You’ll know it when you find it. They’ve been instructed to be aggressively defensive. I’ll warn them you’re in the area, but I still wouldn’t get too close.’

‘Sounds serious. Maybe you found something valuable out there.’

‘Maybe.’ Hyde turned and introduced the giant, partly to change the subject and partly to put the Ghost through the same hand-crushing ordeal he’d just had to endure. He watched the two men shake. The Ghost didn’t flinch. He just stared into the big man’s eyes and pulled him slowly down until his face was level with his. ‘You need to cover up,’ he said, his voice like fingernails on a blackboard. ‘Out here, someone as fair as you can easily get burned.’

Then he let go of his hand and walked back to his men and his horses.

Baghdad

The asylum stood on the southern fringe of the city, isolated at the end of a street. It looked more like a derelict maximum-security jail than a hospital. Razor wire stretched round the squared-off roof of a solid concrete block, a thick coating of dust covered every surface and at first sight it appeared to be deserted. It was only as they drove past that Liv saw people moving in the shadows – wraiths in the dust with watchful eyes.

Washington had come with them. He said he had business in this part of town, but Gabriel doubted it. Either way, he was glad to have him along. Thanks to Washington’s credentials and stone-faced military demeanour it took them less than ten minutes to gain access to the asylum. Promising he’d be back to pick them up within the hour, he departed for his dubious meeting, leaving them to follow a man in white overalls down bare concrete corridors that smelled of urine, faeces and desperation. An occasional ceiling fan turned lazily above them, just enough to mix up the smells but not enough to cool the air.

They progressed in silence, the state of the corridors and cells getting steadily worse the deeper they got into the stifling building. It was obvious that Zaid Aziz’s lengthy stay here had not earned him any privileges. As they dropped down another level, what natural light there was disappeared entirely. The only illumination came from a string of low-wattage bulbs that had been switched on by the guard as he reached the bottom of the stairs. The patients down here – if ‘patients’ was the right word – clearly spent most of their time alone in the dark with their madness and their demons. The guard stopped in the middle of the corridor and waved his hand in the direction of the last cell on the left where the lights didn’t quite reach. ‘Aziz,’ he said, in a way that sounded as if he was spitting. Then he turned and walked away, clearly unwilling to spend any more time down here than he had to. They listened to his boots scuffing away up the steps, leaving them alone with the remnants of men in the dark. The ‘patients’ heard it too and the basement steadily filled with shuffling sounds and filthy chuckles that slid down the darkness towards them. Gabriel turned to Liv, wishing he had not brought her here, but she just smiled and reached out to take his hand.

Then the corridor erupted in noise.

For a few seconds they stood there, gripping each other as the roar of voices engulfed them and the bars shook violently the entire length of the corridor. There was a loud crash nearby as a man ran at them from the back of his cell and collided with the upright of his door, gashing his head deeply and sending a spray of blood into the air. Opposite, another man had bunched his pants down to his knees and was thrusting his hips violently against the bars, his penis, covered in sores and scars from previous abuse, waving obscenely as he moaned in pain and pleasure. They didn’t notice the figure behind them uncoil himself from the floor until an inhuman shriek split the gloom, instantly silencing the maniacal din and sending everyone scurrying back to the darkest corner of their cells.

Gabriel spun towards the sound and discovered a knife-thin man watching him from behind the bars. He was naked from the waist up and the entire right-hand side of his body was covered with thick scars that looked more like scales than skin. They spread down his arm to a claw of a hand, up his neck and over the side of his head, robbing it of hair and tightening the skin so it pulled his face into a permanently quizzical look. And there was a smell coming off him that was very specific and very disturbing, given the man’s history: it was the smell of smoke.

‘Zaid Aziz,’ Gabriel said, putting his hand to his heart and bowing his head in deference. ‘My name is—’

‘John!’ the figure exclaimed with something close to wonder. His mouth twisted into a smile that became a snarl where his burns began. ‘John Mann.’ He stepped into the light, his right eye white and sightless, the left restlessly darting over Gabriel’s face.

Gabriel took the scrutiny, feeling the steady pressure of Liv’s hand like a lifeline to sanity.

‘But I saw you die.’ Aziz’s voice was rusty from lack of use, and the ruined muscles around his mouth made his English sound strangely formal.

‘I did die,’ Gabriel said, playing along in order that he might utilize the bond of trust his father would have formed. ‘Now I’ve come back and I’m looking for the people who did this to us. I want to pay them back.’

The man’s face curled into another smile-snarl. Then his expression became guarded and he stepped closer to the bars. ‘Then you must kill the dragon,’ he whispered.

‘Yes,’ Gabriel replied. ‘Tell me about the dragon.’

Aziz flinched and cowered on the floor, his white eye staring up as if seeing again the last thing it had witnessed. ‘We heard it first, you remember? A roar in the desert, then the wings beating.’

‘What did it look like?’

Aziz stamped his foot and glared at him. ‘You SAW it!’ he said, with the fury of a man who’d been telling the same story for twelve years to disbelieving ears. ‘Don’t
you
say it wasn’t there. The others are fools, but
you
were there.
You
saw it.’ The anger burned in his face then softened as confusion crept in. He reached up with the claw of his right hand and rubbed a raw knuckle against the molten flesh over his sightless eye. ‘No,’ he said, remembering more. ‘You were down in the dig when the dragon came. You were in the library cave.’

‘Tell me about the library – what did we find there?’

‘So much treasure we found. You should remember.’ He tapped his head. ‘I remember. I remember everything. Sometimes they try to steal my memories with kicks and fists. Sometimes they try to steal them with the electric. But I keep them still. And I remember.’

‘Tell me what you remember. Did the dragon kill everyone?’

Aziz shook his head. ‘It was not the dragon that brought death. It was the white devils, born of its belly. They brought the fire and the fury. They laid us low and burnt everything. Tents. Vehicles. People. It was one of our own who betrayed us. I hid from the dragon and saw him showing the other devils where to look. He was the one who took them to the cave where you were. He was the one who killed you.’

‘Did you see who it was?’

‘He was a white devil, like them.’

‘A Westerner?’

Aziz shook his head. ‘A ghost. They were all ghosts. Only ghosts can ride a dragon. The ghost went inside the cave, brought out boxes and fed them to the dragon, stealing the treasure we had found. Then the earth shook and the cave was gone. You never came out. A white devil saw me and struck me down.’ His hand rose again to the side of his head. ‘The fire woke me when the dragon was gone. The sand made the fire go away. The desert saved me, see –’ He held out his arm. Grit was embedded beneath the skin. ‘I am part of the land now and the land is part of me. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’

‘And after you put out the fire, what did you do then?’

Aziz shook his head. ‘Everyone was dead. Everything was burning. I was afraid the fire might touch me again. I feared the dragon’s return, so I ran. I ran into the desert. But the dragon knows I live still. It wants to finish me – I can feel it.’ He stepped forward and gripped the bars. ‘Find the dragon, John Mann. Kill it for me so I can be free of this place. Only you can tame the dragon now – for you are a ghost too.’

Athanasius sat in the Abbot’s private washroom, his back to the door, his face illuminated by the glow from the phone. Outside he could hear Father Thomas engaging Malachi loudly in a conversation designed to draw his attention while Athanasius slipped away.

He opened the message and pressed
send
. This time there was no error alert. Even so, he watched it until the screen went black then tapped it again to make sure. The screensaver was back in place, showing the photograph of the Mirror Prophecy. Ever since Gabriel had first shown it to him in the darkness of the ossuary he had been thinking about the possible meaning of the last few lines.

A blight.

It was what Brother Gardener had called the disease when it first appeared in the garden; and now something was stalking through the corridors of the mountain and striking people down. And the earthquake that had shaken the mountain: was that not the earth starting to splinter?

It all suggested the prophecy was true, which meant the best way to stop the spread of the disease was to help the girl find her way home to Eden. And yet Brother Dragan believed only the restoration of the Sacrament to its place inside the chapel would cure the mountain. He was trying to bring her back here. Maybe
he
was the dragon mentioned in the prophecy and the fire of his zealous beliefs the thing that needed quenching. He needed to talk to him. Maybe if he could just show him the Mirror Prophecy he could convince him of its wisdom.

Father Thomas was still arguing with Malachi when Athanasius burst from the washroom and virtually sprinted across the room to the Abbot’s desk.

‘We need to talk to Dragan,’ Athanasius said, pulling open the upper drawer where the old Abbot kept the key to the forbidden stairs. ‘I think I know how we can cure the Lamentation.’

The Abbot was one of only two monks in the Citadel permitted to pass both in the upper, restricted section of the mountain reserved for the Sancti, and the lower parts where the general populace lived. The only other monk granted these privileges was the Prelate. Dragan had ventured up to the forbidden section through the Prelate’s staircase; Athanasius now intended to do the same using the Abbot’s. He grabbed the key and headed to the bedchamber.

A large wooden bed filled most of the space, draped with thick fabrics to keep the occupant warm. The only other thing in the room was a vast tapestry with the sign of the Tau embroidered upon it in green thread. Athanasius pulled it aside to reveal a door hidden in the wall.

‘What are you doing?’ Malachi called after him. ‘You are not permitted to go through that door.’

Athanasius turned on him, all the frustration and stress of the last few weeks spewing out in his answer. ‘What difference does it make? You’ve seen for yourself there’s nothing there. Whatever secret we have pinned our past to, it’s gone. We would be fools to fix our future to it as well. Brother Dragan is clinging to a dream, and it’s a dangerous one that might kill us all.’ He twisted the key in the lock and stepped through the door. ‘I must find him and persuade him that, for all our sakes, he needs to let go.’

Malachi moved to try to stop him but Athanasius was too quick. He slammed the door behind him and locked it so no one could follow or try to stop him.

Washington was waiting for them when they emerged from the dingy hell of the asylum. They got into the cooled interior of the 4x4 – Gabriel in the front, Liv in the back – and drove away without saying a word.

‘That bad, huh?’ Washington said after a few kilometres of silence.

Gabriel shook his head, still trying to process the bizarre story he had just heard. ‘I don’t know, he seemed pretty lucid to me. I think he was telling the truth, or something he believed to be true. He said a dragon destroyed the camp and a ghost killed my father. I’m sure these must be abstract or metaphorical terms for something else, but his burns are real enough, and his experience was clearly traumatic enough to splinter his mind.’

Washington went quiet. ‘Did he say “a ghost” killed your father, or “the Ghost”?’

Gabriel stared out of the window at the bleached streets as he tried to recall.

‘It was “a ghost”,’ Liv answered.

Washington frowned. ‘There’s an insurgent – not a major league threat, so he’s low down on the priority list – but he’s caused us some problems in the past. He’s known as Ash’abah – “the Ghost”.’