The Key (25 page)

‘Hello?’

There was the briefest of pauses – satellite delay – then he spoke.

‘Liv. It’s me. It’s Gabriel.’

Never had she experienced such relief at the sound of somebody’s voice. Liv felt the smile start somewhere deep inside her and radiate upwards like heat. So much had happened – so much to say. ‘Hi,’ she managed, her smile lighting up the word as though it was written in neon.

‘Hi,’ he said. He was smiling too. She could hear it in his voice. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m …’ She was about to say ‘home’, but the word stuck in her throat. ‘I’m back in New Jersey in a hotel a friend sorted out for me.’ She caught sight of the TV and remembered the news she had seen on it. ‘How about you? I saw the news.’

‘I’m OK,’ he said, shutting down her question, the smile suddenly absent from his voice. ‘We can talk about it later. Right now we need to get you safe before the Citadel finds you again. Have you got your laptop and access to the Internet?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you ever used Skype before?’

‘Of course.’ Skype was every journalist’s friend. Wherever there was Wi-Fi it could be used instead of a phone to make free calls. It also worked as a videophone and was increasingly being used to file news reports from difficult foreign locations. Liv opened up the application and copied Gabriel’s Skype address. Then she clicked on ‘new contact’ to make the call.

The receptionist looked up at the man in the crumpled suit lumbering towards her and clipped on her corporate smile.

‘How can I help you today, sir?’

‘Well, you could have a word with my boss and tell him these early-morning flights are killing me.’ He dropped his holdall to the floor and leaned heavily on the reception counter, glancing down at the computer screen.

‘Do you have a reservation with us, sir?’

Dick took a deep breath and let it out slowly in a pantomime of weariness. ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t. What I do have is a court appearance later this morning and, after getting exactly zero sleep on the overnight from London, I need somewhere to rest my weary head for an hour or two, otherwise I’m not going to be much use to my client. I guess they don’t call it the red-eye for nothing.’

He handed over a passport and a dummy credit card in the same fake name.

‘Let’s see what we can do for you, sir,’ she said, taking the documents and pecking away at the keyboard.

‘I don’t need anything special,’ he said, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. ‘Just a basic room where I won’t get woken by the noise of the traffic or the morning crowd heading down to breakfast.’ Her fingers continued to tap. He leaned in conspiratorially, the counter creaking under his weight. ‘In fact, a lawyer friend of mine says they sometimes use this hotel to put up jurors and witnesses in key cases. I bet those rooms are nice and out of the way. One of those would be perfect.’

Her fingers finished tapping. She hit the return key, extracted a plastic card from a coding machine and slipped it into a cardboard wallet. ‘Room 722,’ she said, writing the number on the front of the card. ‘Take the elevator to the seventh floor and it’s at the end of the corridor to your right. Do you need a hand with any luggage?’

Dick took the keycard along with his passport and credit card and winked at her. ‘No thanks,’ he said, picking up his holdall and heading away across the lobby. ‘You’ve been more than enough help already.’

The rapid beeps of a number being dialled fed through the stereo speakers of Liv’s laptop. She was still in shock from the flood of memories the translated text had brought back. For all her scepticism and rationality what she had read there made a sort of sense. It explained why she could understand an ancient language she had never heard of or learned. It explained why she felt the sting of needles every time the whispering rose up. But it didn’t explain what ‘The Key’ was, or what it had to do with her. The dialling tone switched to a ringing one. Liv cleared her throat and pushed herself up in the chair, suddenly nervous about seeing Gabriel again.

On screen the feed from Liv’s webcam popped up, revealing a low-res version of herself, amplifying how tired and dishevelled she was looking. She fussed with her hair and rubbed at the dark circles under her eyes as if it was dirt that could be wiped away. She considered cutting the connection and splashing more water on her face first to try to make herself more presentable, but a click cut off the ringing sound and the main window expanded to display the incoming feed.

Gabriel’s voice materialized first, much richer than it had sounded on the phone and just as deep as she remembered.

‘Liv? Can you hear me?’ Then there he was, gazing at her, his brow knitted with concern, his blue eyes burning from the screen. She reached out involuntarily to touch his face. ‘Hey,’ she said.

A smile softened his face and he reached out for her. It was the first time they had seen each other since the Turkish police had taken him away and he had told her to go somewhere safe, promising he would find her. And now he had made good that promise, though it was not quite the reunion either of them had envisaged.

‘I need to show you something,’ Liv said, reaching for the piece of paper she had found in the envelope. ‘The monk who helped us escape from the mountain gave it to me. Let me know if you can’t read it – turns out, I can!’ She held it up to the screen and four thousand miles away in Ruin the symbols came into focus. She held it long enough for him to translate it. When she lowered it again Dr Anata had joined Gabriel on the screen. From the looks on both their faces she could tell that they’d both read it.

‘Of course,’ Anata said. ‘What else would the Sacrament be but something of the original divine. It’s the only thing old enough or powerful enough to make sense. The Sacrament is the earth goddess, trapped in darkness by envious men, and you have set her free. The prophecy has been fulfilled.’

Liv shook her head and let out a long breath. ‘I have to tell you I’m having a lot of difficulty with all of this. A couple of weeks ago I would have laughed in your face if you had told me half the things I’m now taking seriously. Let’s, for argument’s sake, say that all of this is true, then why do I feel like crap? If some divine spirit has entered into me, shouldn’t I be feeling fantastic? And why am I getting whispered messages that don’t make sense? And how come those maniacs in the Citadel are still killing everyone? Doesn’t feel like very much has been fulfilled to me.’

Gabriel and Anata exchanged glances.

‘What?’ Liv said.

‘There is a second prophecy,’ Gabriel said, ‘the Mirror Prophecy, and it follows on from the first.’

He held Oscar’s diary up to the webcam and this time Liv’s screen filled with the familiar symbols. The whispering rose again as she stared at it and again she scribbled the translation into her notebook directly below the other. Even as she was transcribing she realized its significance. She had wondered what the key was and now she knew. It was her.

She had been yearning for home ever since waking up in the hospital. At the time she had thought it was her survivor’s instinct driving her to return to the familiar and the safe, back to America and away from the dark, threatening streets of Ruin. Now she realized it was something different. It had not been her own home she had been craving – and continued to crave – it was wherever the Sacrament had come from. ‘The Key must follow the Starmap Home,’ she repeated.

‘Yes,’ Dr Anata said. ‘The Home referred to by the Mirror Prophecy is the original home for all of us, the place where the Sacrament first walked: Eden.’

Again Liv felt her rational self take a body blow.

‘The Mirror Prophecy is clear,’ Anata continued. ‘The dragon is the symbol of fire and destruction. If you do not carry the Sacrament home to Eden in time, then the end of days will be upon us.’

‘How long have we got?’

‘Seventeen days – maybe less.’

‘And if we fail?’

‘The end of days is described in the Book of Revelation of Saint John the Divine. An antichrist will arrive on earth bringing plague, famine, earthquakes and flood. The oceans will rise up and swallow the mountains and the mountains will crumble to the sea. Cities will be destroyed. Life as we know it will end and the righteous will be gathered to God.’

Liv slumped in her chair.

Gabriel leaned forward until his face filled the screen. ‘I’ll arrange safe transport to bring you here. All the ancient biblical lands are close to Ruin and that’s where we’ll need to look. By the time you get here, I’ll have worked out a way of getting into the Citadel.’

Liv snapped to attention. ‘What?’

‘That’s where Oscar hid the Starmap. If we don’t find it, we won’t find Eden.’

Yet again the Citadel was pulling at her with its dark gravity. She had run as far away as she could and yet here she was, still shivering in the long shadow it cast, her destiny still tied up in the secrets it contained and now carried with her. Then a thought struck her. She reached for the sheet of paper, reread the note from Athanasius, then looked up at Gabriel and smiled. ‘I think I know how you can get into the Citadel,’ she said.

The elevator doors slid open and Dick stepped on to the blue-grey carpet of the seventh floor. He stood for a moment, scanning the long empty corridor, listening for any sounds through the early-morning quiet of the hotel. Turning right as the receptionist had instructed, and moving silently despite his size, he listened to each room as he went by.

He passed a tray covered with the gnawed remains of a room-service order, a couple of doors with ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs dangling from their handles, but other than that the corridor appeared to be unoccupied.

The hydraulic arm of a fire door hissed as he pushed through into the corridor furthest from the main stairwell. His own room was just inside, but he drifted past, drawn by sharp predatory instincts and the faint murmur of something at the end of the hallway. He followed the sound, barely more than a whisper, until he stood by the door it was coming from.

Dick reached out and touched its surface with his fingertips, feeling the tiny vibrations coming from the other side. Then he leaned forward, and pressed his ear to the door. It was fire regulated, which meant it was solid and therefore an excellent conductor of sound waves. Inside the room he could hear a TV tuned to a news channel and beneath it, softer and less distinct, the sound of two people talking.

He shifted his position, careful not to make any noise, and pressed his ear tighter to the surface. He had planned to improvise his way into her room under the guise of room service or housekeeping and break her neck the moment she opened the door. But another person put an entirely different complexion on things. He would have to wait a while longer.

For a brief moment he thought about kicking the door in with one mighty blow and taking his chances. It was what his old self would have done. But that was not the way he worked any more. He had learned to contain his violent exuberance and form his feelings into words. Words gave him control, and the word for this situation was clear:

Pa-tience

Liv stood under the hot shower feeling the tension she had been carrying around for the last few weeks running off and swirling down the drain with the dirty water. She was surprised by how calm she felt following her conversation with Gabriel. In effect, she had been given two weeks to live, and a near impossible task to complete if she wanted to change that, and yet her overwhelming reaction was one of relief. She had read that soldiers often experienced similar feelings when they were finally faced with combat duty. There was something comforting about knowing that your fate was in your own hands, even if the odds were stacked against you. She shut off the water and grabbed a bathrobe and a couple of thin towels from the rail.

The bedroom seemed particularly cold and gloomy after the glare of the bathroom and the steam followed her out like a vapour trail. Gabriel had told her to sit tight until he could work out the details of her transportation back to Ruin. From there she had no idea where they would go, but she would be with him, so that was something at least.

She packed her belongings and laid some fresh clothes on the chair, but didn’t put them on. The travel arrangements were bound to take a while to sort out and she hadn’t slept for more than twenty-four hours. Until Gabriel called back, she was going to try to sleep. After towelling herself dry, she wrapped the smaller towel round her damp hair and squirmed into bed.

The sheets were starchy and cool against her skin and the mattress was firm, but it felt like the finest feather down. Outside she could hear the growing hiss of the morning traffic as people made their way into work. It struck her as odd that, here she was, lying in a nondescript corporate hotel room in New Jersey, contemplating a journey that would ultimately take her to the Garden of Eden. The idea seemed absurd, like calling up a travel agent and trying to book a flight to Mordor. In her rather vague religious upbringing she had assumed that the creation story and the Garden of Eden were legends. It had never occurred to her that they might be real.

She reached over to the nightstand and pulled open the drawer, curiosity outweighing her exhaustion. Sure enough, it contained a copy of the Gideon Bible, the only book you could find in every hotel room in America. She opened it to Genesis and scanned the first few pages, the onionskin paper feeling much too flimsy to carry the weight of the words printed on it. Then, in the tenth verse of the second chapter she came across something very interesting:

And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.