Sanctus (14 page)

The Lockheed Tri-Star shuddered as the Cypress Turkish Airlines flight took off from London Stansted en route to the furthest edge of Europe. The moment the wheels left the tarmac the wind took over and the aircraft lurched as if unseen hands were trying to tear it apart and fling it back down to the ground.

It was a large plane, which was comforting; but it was also old, which was not. It still had aluminium flip-top ashtrays in the arm-rests that rattled as the plane wrestled its way upwards. Liv eyed them now, imagining a time when she could have calmed her nerves the old-fashioned way. Instead she tore the top off a packet of pickled ginger, the remains of an overpriced sushi takeaway she’d grabbed during her stop-over, and popped a sliver under her tongue. Ginger was good for stress and helped reduce travel sickness. She folded the top of the packet and squirreled it away for the journey. She had a feeling this flight would test its reputation to the hilt.

She chewed the ginger slowly and glanced around at her fellow passengers. The cabin was only half-full; it was a particularly unsociable time of night. The old Lockheed lurched again as a fresh gust shoved it sideways. She could see the port wing from her window. It appeared to be flapping, albeit stiffly. She forced herself to look away.

She had hoped to get some sleep during this final leg of her journey, but there was absolutely no chance of that while crash anxiety continued to light up her nerve endings. She pulled out the other purchase she’d made during her stop-over – a travel guide to Turkey.

She flipped to the index. There was a whole chapter devoted to Ruin and a map reference. She turned to the map first. Like most people, she only had the vaguest idea where Ruin was. The ancient city, and the Citadel in particular, were like the pyramids in Egypt: everyone knew what they looked like, but few could pinpoint them in an atlas.

A triple-page fold-out showed Turkey, stretching like a bridge between mainland Europe and Arabia, hemmed in top and bottom by the Black Sea and Mediterranean respectively. The grid reference drew her to the right-hand side of the map, close to the border where Europe rubbed shoulders with the biblical lands of the Middle East.

She spotted two airport symbols to the north and south of the city of Gaziantep – where she was due to land in around four hours – but she couldn’t see Ruin. She checked the reference and looked again. It was only after a few minutes’ close scrutiny in the gloom of the cabin that she found it – west of the uppermost airport, where the Eastern Taurus mountains started to rise, right in the fold of the page and almost totally obscured by the straight black line of the grid. It struck Liv as bitterly apt that her brother should choose to hide away in such a place; somewhere so well known yet so obscure, nestling enigmatically in the crease of a map.

She flicked through the book until she found the chapter on Ruin and started to read, sucking up facts about the place she was heading to, logging and arranging them in her journalist’s mind until they started to form a picture of the city where her brother had lived and died. It was a major religious centre; that made sense, given what Samuel had said to her the last time she’d seen him. It was also the world’s oldest place of pilgrimage, owing to the health-giving properties of the waters that bubbled plentifully from the ground, ice melt from the mountains that surrounded it. That made sense also. She could imagine him working as a mountain-guide, hiding under a borrowed name somewhere well off the beaten track while he sought the peace he’d set out to find.

I want to be closer to God
. That’s what he’d said.

She’d often wondered at these words in the silence that followed his disappearance, torturing herself with the darkest possibilities of their meaning. But somehow she’d known, even as that silence stretched into years, that he was alive. She’d still believed it even when the letter from the US Bureau of Vital Records had told her otherwise. And now she was following the path he had trodden, to find out about the life he had led there. She was hoping the Inspector would be able to point her to where he’d lived and maybe some of the people who’d known him. Maybe they could give her some answers, and fill in the blanks that echoed in her mind.

She turned the page and stared at a photograph of the old town clustered at the base of the soaring mountain. The caption beneath identified it as
The most visited place of antiquity in the world and supposed repository of a powerful, ancient relic known as The Sacrament
.

On the page opposite was a brief chronicle of the Citadel, expanding on its incredible age and outlining its constant presence throughout human history. Liv had assumed the Citadel was a Christian shrine, but the text revealed that it had only aligned itself with Christianity in the fourth century following the Roman emperor Constantine’s conversion. Prior to that it had been independent of any organized religion, though it had exerted a huge influence in almost every ancient belief system: the Babylonians had considered it the first and greatest Ziggurat; the Ancient Greeks worshipped it as the home of the gods and renamed it Olympus; even the Egyptians held it as sacred, the Pharoahs journeying across the sea to the Hittite empire to visit the mountain. It was even believed by some that the great pyramids of Giza were attempts to recreate the mountain in the hope that the magical properties of the Citadel could be reproduced in Egypt.

Once the Citadel had made its political move to endorse Christianity, the operational centre of the Church moved to Rome to enjoy the full protection of the newly created Holy Roman Empire. The Citadel, however, remained the power behind the throne, issuing its edicts and dogma through Rome now, as well as a new version of everything through the publication of an authorized bible. Any dissent from this official view was seen as heresy and was crushed, first by the might of the Roman army and subsequently by any king and emperor trying to curry favour with the Church and, by extension, with God.

Liv scanned the blood-soaked details, disturbed as much by the riot of exclamation marks and adverbs as anything they described. She didn’t care about the brutal history of the place, or what secrets it was meant to contain; she only cared about her brother, and what in this ancient city had driven him to his death.

The plane shuddered and a soft
bong
caused Liv to look up. The fasten seat belt sign had been turned on again. The no smoking sign stayed resolutely on. It taunted her through the rest of the flight as the night got darker and the storm grew steadily worse.

The devotional day within the Citadel was divided into twelve different offices, the most important being the four nocturnes. They took place each night when it was believed the absence of God’s light allowed the forces of evil to prosper. It was a theory any police officer, in any major city in the world, would agree with: dark deeds are almost always done under cover of night.

The first of the nocturnes was Vespers, a formal service held in the one place large enough for the entire population of the Citadel to witness the dying of another day – the great cathedral cave in the eastern section of the mountain. The first eight rows were filled with the black cassocks of the spiritual guilds – the priests and librarians who spent their lives in the darkness of the great library. Behind them sat a thin white line of Apothecaria, then twenty rows of brown cassocks, the material guilds – masons, carpenters, and other skilled technicians whose job it was to constantly monitor and maintain the physical well-being of the Citadel.

The russet cassocks of the guards slashed across the body of the congregation, separating the higher guilds at the front from the numerous grey cloaks at the back; the administrative monks who did everything from cooking and cleaning to providing manual labour for the other guilds.

Above the multi-coloured congregation, in their own elevated gallery, sat the green-clad brethren of the Sancti – thirteen in all, including the Abbot, though today there were only eleven. The Abbot was not among them, and neither was Brother Gruber.

When the sun had dipped past the three great casements behind the altar, the large rose window flanked by two triangles representing God’s all-seeing eye, everybody filed out for their last meal in the refectory before retiring to the dormitories.

All, that is, but three men dressed in the red cassocks of the Carmina.

A sandy-haired monk with a flat, impassive face and the build of a middleweight boxer headed across the echoing space towards a door directly below the Sanctus balcony. The other two followed. No one said a word.

Cornelius’s record as an officer in the British Army had singled him out to the Abbot as the group’s natural leader, so he had passed a note to him on the way into Vespers, containing the two other names, instructions and a map. Cornelius glanced at the map as he passed out of the cathedral cave, turning left as instructed and proceeding down the narrow, less trodden tunnels towards the abandoned section of the mountain.

Dusk deepened in the tangled sprawl of the old city. The last of the tourists were ushered from the old town by polite stewards and portcullises clanked emphatically into place, sealing it for the night. To the west, in the section known as the Lost Quarter, the shadows began to take human form as the nightly traffic in flesh resumed its furtive trade.

To the east, Kathryn Mann sat in her living room waiting for her printer to complete its task. She now regretted having programmed it for the highest quality image as she watched it appear line by steady line. The TV news reported large groups of people having gathered in silent tribute to the man they did not yet know as Brother Samuel in America, Europe, Africa, Australia, even China, where public demonstrations, particularly of a religious nature, were not undertaken lightly. A woman interviewed outside the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City was asked why she felt so strongly about the monk’s death.

‘Because we need faith, you know?’ Her voice was taut with emotion. ‘Because we need to know the Church cares for us – and is lookin’ out for us. If one of their own is driven to this, and the Church don’t even say nuthin’ about it . . . well, where does that leave us . . .?’

People on every continent were saying more or less the same. The monk’s lonely death had clearly touched them. His mountain-top vigil seemed to symbolize their own sense of isolation, and the silence that followed, evidence of a Church that did not care; a Church that had lost its compassion.

Maybe change is happening,
she thought as she finally removed the sheet of paper from the printer and stared at the photograph of Liv Adamsen lifted from the police file.

Perhaps the prophecy is coming true after all.

She turned off the TV and grabbed a couple of apples on her way out. The airport was a thirty-minute drive away. She had no idea how long she’d have to wait there.

A heavy door shrieked open on rusty hinges. Cornelius stepped through it and reached for the burning torch that had been left for them. He held it in front of him as they made their way into the forgotten depths of the Citadel. Brother Johann at his shoulder, his dark matinee-idol looks belying a Scandinavian ancestry, his blue eyes full of the ice of his homeland. Brother Rodriguez brought up the rear, towering a foot above them both, his slender height at odds with his urban Hispanic roots, his golden eyes watchful and blank as he loped through the low tunnels.

The crunch of their footfalls and the crackle of the burning flambeaux echoed around them as the mountain’s history rose out of the dark to greet them. Doorways yawned here and there like mouths frozen in mourning. Beyond them they glimpsed remnants of the lives once lived here: beds sagging under the weight of water-logged straw and splintered benches that could hardly bear the weight of the ghosts who now sat upon them. From time to time crumbled stone littered the pathway and streaks of lime-scale flared white in the darkness like the passing phantoms of those who had once walked there.

Ten minutes later they saw a faint orange light ahead, flickering from a doorway that dribbled smoke across a ceiling carved in a time when people were smaller. They smelt burning wood as they got nearer and felt the cold air give way to a little warmth. Cornelius pushed through into a cave that might once have been a kitchen. On the far side of the chamber a figure squatted by an old-fashioned range, poking with a stick at a struggling fire.

‘Greetings, Brothers,’ the Abbot said, like an innkeeper welcoming travellers in from a blizzard. ‘My apologies; this is a poor excuse for a fire. I’m afraid I seem to have lost the art of it. Please . . .’ He gestured towards a table set with two large loaves and some fruit. ‘Sit. Eat.’

The Abbot joined them at the table, watched them break bread in silence, taking none for himself. He scrutinized them as they ate, putting names to faces he had last seen in their personnel files. The tall one: Guillermo Rodriguez. Twenty-two years old. Originally from the Bronx. Former street rat and gang member. His records showed a string of arrests for arson, with stiffer sentences handed down each time. Spent half his life with a drug-addicted mother and the rest in a succession of juvenile detention centres. Found God after AIDS made him an orphan.

Opposite him sat Johann Larsson. Twenty-four. Dark haired, blue eyed and strikingly handsome. Born in the Abisko forests of northern Sweden into a separatist, pseudo-military religious commune he had been raised in the belief that the end was close, when the sinful millions would become devils and turn on the righteous. In order to protect himself and his extended ‘family’ from these imagined hordes he had learned how to use a gun at the same time as his A-B-C’s. The end, when it did come, took a more tragic form. A lorry driver first raised the alarm when he spotted a timber wolf dragging a human leg across the road in front of him. The police unit that was dispatched discovered that the commune had been wiped out by a suicide pact. Johann was the only survivor. They found him curled up on a bed next to the corpse of his younger brother. He told the police his father had given him some pills to ‘let him see God’, but he’d been angry with him because he’d shouted at his brother, so had thrown them away. A succession of foster families failed to touch this beautiful, troubled boy. He was withdrawn, violently distrustful of strangers and clearly on the path to self-destruction. Then the church stepped in, sent him to one of their rehabilitation seminaries in America, and took him on as a lost son.

Then there was Cornelius Webster. Thirty-four. Grew up in an orphanage and went straight into the British Army as soon as he was old enough. Invalided out after watching his platoon burn alive in front of him when their armoured vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. The scars on his face, like drops of pale wax that made his beard grow in patches, were the badges of this tragedy. The day he left the army he’d swapped the institutionalized life of a soldier for the institutionalized life of a monk. The Citadel was his family now, as it was to all of them.

The Abbot also matched their various skills to the mission he was about to give them: Cornelius with his age and authority; Johann with his distracting looks and perfect English, bait to catch a female fish; Rodriguez with his US passport and knowledge of the streets. Each had violence in their past and a sharp and zealous desire to prove themselves to God. He waited until they’d finished eating before speaking again.

‘Please forgive the unorthodox nature of this meeting,’ he said, the fire now framing him in a hazy red glow. ‘But when I explain the reason, you will understand the need for such caution and secrecy.’

He tapped a finger against his pursed lips.

‘This section of the mountain once housed a garrison of warrior monks, the Carmina, the red knights of the Citadel, the illustrious forebears of the guild you serve. They rode forth to root out false religions, crush false gods, destroy heretical churches, and purge misguided worshippers of their sins in the purifying fires of the Inquisition. These crusades were known as the
Tabula Rasa
– the Clean Slate – for no trace of heresy was ever left in their wake.’

He lowered his voice and leaned forward against the table, making it creak like the timbers of an ancient ship.

‘The Carmina were not bound by the ordinary laws of man.’ He regarded each of them individually. ‘Nor by the laws of whatever land they found themselves in; for those were but the laws of kings and emperors, and the Carmina answered only to God. I bring you here now to resume their sacred mantle. We may no longer find ourselves besieged by armies, but we still have enemies. And we still have need of soldiers.’

He slid an envelope across the table to Cornelius.

‘Here are details of what you must do and instructions as to how you can leave the mountain. I have chosen you because you each have within you the character and past experience to do God’s work. Be guided by Him and not by earthly laws. Like your predecessors you must be single-minded in the performance of your duty. The threat is real. You must eliminate it.’

He pointed to the far side of the room where three identical canvas bags were propped against the wall.

‘Inside those you will find currency, identification documents and civilian clothing. You will be met outside the walls of the old town two hours after midnight by two men who will provide transport, weapons and whatever else you need. Just as your fore-bears used mercenaries to assist them in their missions, you must use these men to help you in yours. But never forget that what you are doing for the love of God,
they
are doing for the love of money. So use them – but do not trust them.’

He paused.

‘It is not lightly that I send you on this mission. Should you fall in your duty, as some of you might, then know you will be embraced by God as a blessed warrior, as those who fell before you. Those who do return will be welcomed back, not as members of the guild of guards you currently serve, but as the highest of our kind – a green cloak, a Sanctus. You may be aware,’ he added, ‘that there are already two vacancies. But I would expand our number to accommodate all of you who prove so worthy. And in rising to the highest level of our brotherhood you would, of course, be blessed with the sacred knowledge of that which I now ask you to protect.’

He rose from his seat and removed his Crux from his rope belt. ‘You have a few hours in which to change and prepare for your return to the world. I will bless you now in the tradition of the order we revive here tonight.’

He raised the Tau above his head and began uttering the ancient blessing of war, in words as ancient as the mountain they now prayed in, and behind him the fire crackled and hissed, and threw his huge shadow across the ceiling of the cave.

Some hours later, a light tremor shook the ground by the old city wall, an echo of the storm flickering its way over the mountain peaks to the north. At the end of an alley between two multi-storey car parks, a heavy steel shutter rumbled upwards to reveal a gap just wide enough for a man to pass through. Three shadows peeled themselves away from the darkness, pieces of night dispersed by the wind. They headed down the alley towards a parked van with its rear doors unlocked.

The first fat spots of rain pinged down on the thin steel roof of the van and cracked against the bone-coloured flagstones as the three figures slipped inside. The doors clanged shut and the engine growled into life. The headlights flicked on, sweeping the dusty road as rain erupted across it like a contagion.

The van moved off, heading for the inner ring-road and the great eastern boulevard that would take them all the way to the airport. The rain intensified as they circled the old town, black tears weeping for all that had happened and all that might, running down the sides of the Citadel, down to the chalky earth where a moat once flowed and a man once swam, down narrow cobbled streets where red knights had ridden, to wash away the flowers and cards marking the spot where the monk had so recently fallen.