“I have now had a chance to decipher the diary of the mad monk of Cordoba which was unearthed very recently in Spain and passed into my hands. I don’t need to remind you that this is the only written history of the Old Ones and their fight against the five children who came to be known as the Gatekeepers. The Old Ones ruled the Earth about ten thousand years ago. They were all-powerful but they were defeated – according to the diary – by a trick. Sadly, we have no more details. There was a great battle, which the Old Ones lost, and they were banished. Two gates were built to keep them out of our world. Many of us have been working for their return ever since.
“Further examination of the diary has provided me with the answers that I have been looking for and I can tell you that, without a shadow of a doubt, very soon we will have achieved our aims and a new millennium will have begun. Yes, my friends, the Old Ones are about to return to take control of a world that should, in truth, have been theirs all along.”
He stopped to catch his breath, his nostrils flaring. It hurt him to speak. It hurt him to do almost anything, a result of his head having been deliberately mutilated at birth.
“We are now in mid-June,” he went on. “And the twenty-fourth of this month is a sacred day in my country. We call it Inti Raymi, the summer solstice. On that day, the second great gate, built in the desert in Nazca, will open. By carefully examining the diary, I have discovered the means to unlock it and nothing can now prevent me.”
He lifted a hand. Next to his head it looked ridiculous, out of proportion.
“But we have enemies,” he said. “Incredible though it may sound, the five children who defeated us all those years ago have somehow returned. You may have found two of them in America. One of them is on his way here to Peru. My agent encountered him in a church in London.
“This much I can tell you. There have to be five of them. It’s only when they come together that they have the strength to be a danger to us. On their own, they are powerless. And nothing can stop us. On June twenty- fourth, the Old Ones will take what is theirs and all of us will share in the rewards.”
Around the boardroom table the executives began to applaud. They were thousands of miles apart: in London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Beijing
… all over the world. It was as if someone had turned up the volume. The noise echoed around the room.
The fourteenth screen went black. Salamanda had broken contact.
“Now you know the stakes,” the chairman said. “Just a few days stand between us and the end of the old world. But let’s not fool ourselves that our work is over. It’s just beginning. A war is coming and our job is to prepare the way. We need a president of the United States who is sympathetic to our aims. Mr Simms, I am relying on you. Mrs Mortlake, see to the child. Make him one of ours. Then find his brother and deal with him too.”
The chairman signalled to one of his two assistants. One of them reached out and flicked a switch. The remaining thirteen screens went black.
In her office in Los Angeles, Susan Mortlake watched the red light on her own webcam blink out and knew that she was no longer transmitting. She also knew that she was very fortunate to be alive. The chairman had briefly considered asking her for her resignation. She had seen it in his eyes.
Even so, he had told her to make redundancies. She leant forward and reached out with a long finger, the nail sharpened to a point. There was an intercom in front of her and she pressed a button. “You can send them in now,” she said.
A few seconds later, the door opened and Colton Banes and Kyle Hovey walked in. There were two chairs opposite her desk and they sat down without being asked. The room was ice cold, the air-conditioning turned up to its highest level, but Susan Mortlake noticed that beads of sweat had broken out on Hovey’s forehead. Banes was looking more relaxed. He didn’t even flinch when she turned and looked at him. Both men knew why they were here. It was inevitable that they would be called to account.
“Well?” Mrs Mortlake snapped out the single word. She really was like a teacher now, a headmistress about to select the punishment.
“It was his fault!” Hovey chipped in at once, eager to get over his version of events. He glanced at Banes. “He made serious mistakes. He should have known about the dog.” He raised an arm, wincing at the same time as if to prove his point. Underneath his suit jacket he was covered in bandages where he had been bitten. He’d had to be injected against tetanus and rabies. “And he should have had more men waiting at the stage door.”
“Mr Banes?” Mrs Mortlake turned her head back to him. She was wearing long earrings that jangled as she moved.
Banes shrugged. “It’s true,” he said. “I didn’t know about the dog. The kids were lucky. Sometimes it happens like that.”
Mrs Mortlake considered. She already knew what she was going to do. She hadn’t risen to a position of power in the Nightrise Corporation without being able to make fast decisions.
“It seems to me that you half succeeded,” she began. “Which is to say, you half failed. One boy got away but we still have the other one. If both boys had escaped, I would have no choice but to make you both redundant. As it is, one of you can be spared.” She smiled sweetly. “Mr Banes, I’m very sorry…”
In the chair next to him, Mr Hovey relaxed.
“But I’m going to have to ask you to strangle Mr Hovey. I know you’re friends. I know you’ve worked together for a long time. But the corporation really cannot allow failure and the fact that Mr Hovey is a bit of a whiner, I personally find most displeasing.”
“Do you want me to do it now, Mrs Mortlake?” Banes asked.
“Yes. Please go ahead.”
Colton Banes stood up and walked behind the other man. Kyle Hovey sat where he was. His entire body had slumped in on itself. He was carrying a gun – it was in a holster under his jacket – but he didn’t even try to reach for it. At least this would be quick. Fairly quick, anyway.
Banes’s hands rested briefly on the other man’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, Kyle,” he said, “but for what it’s worth, you always were a loser.” His outstretched fingers reached underneath the black ponytail and closed on the other man’s throat. He began to squeeze. From the other side of the desk, Susan Mortlake watched with interest. It took just a minute. Then Colton Banes went back to his chair and sat down. Next to him, Kyle Hovey remained where he was as if nothing had happened.
“Will there be anything else, Mrs Mortlake?” Colton Banes asked.
“No, thank you, Mr Banes. You can wait for me here in Los Angeles.”
Kyle Hovey slid gently to one side, then toppled to the floor.
“You’d better get your friend cremated,” she continued. “And send flowers if he has a family. As for me, I’ll be heading out to Silent Creek. I can’t wait to meet this boy, Scott Tyler. I think we need to begin his treatment right away.”
JAMIE'S STORY
They saw her come out of the office building, the woman dressed in black with the closely cut grey hair. There was a limousine waiting for her and they watched her as she was driven away, up West 4th Street towards the Harbor Freeway. But they didn’t know who she was or where she was going. They would find that out later.
Jamie and Alicia were sitting in a car in the business district of Los Angeles. It was the same car that Alicia had rented in Reno – the two of them had driven out the day before.
Jamie had slept for much of the journey although he had been awake at the start. An hour after they had left Reno, the highway had sloped upwards and suddenly he had found himself passing through forests of fir trees that rose steeply on both sides. If he looked up far enough he could see clumps of snow still refusing to melt and he had realized that he was finally going over the mountains. Beyond the snow. He had once dreamt that he would make the crossing and this was where he would find a new life. Now he wasn’t so sure. All he knew was that his old life had been shattered and he was leaving the pieces far behind.
Alicia would have preferred to take a plane. But Jamie had no picture ID. He couldn’t fly. And with the police
