Sanctus

Chapter 45

The Lockheed Tri-Star yawed and rolled as it slipped through the storm clouds guarding the descent into Gaziantep Airport. Lightning flared in the dimmed interior and the engines moaned as they struggled to grab hold of the slippery air. Liv clutched her guidebook as if it was a bible and looked around at the forty-or-so other passengers. None of them were sleeping either. Some appeared to be praying.

God damn you, Sam, she thought as the plane lurched again. Eight years without a word and now you put me through this.

She looked out of her rain-lashed window in time to see another bolt of lightning actually strike the wing. The engines roared in pain. She hoped to God the two incidents weren’t connected and glanced yet again at the ashtray in her armrest, wondering what the penalty was for smoking on a commercial airliner. She was seriously considering it, whatever it was.

She peered once more into the turbulent night, hoping for some respite. As if by divine instruction, the clouds parted to reveal a dark, jagged landscape that twitched restlessly with the near constant flashes of lightning. In the distance she could make out the glow of a large town held in the natural cup of the mountain range like a shallow pool of gold. The rain running off the window made it shimmer like it wasn’t quite solid. In its centre was a spot of darkness with four straight lines of light radiating out from it. It was Ruin, and the darkness at its centre, the Citadel. From her lofty vantage point it looked like a black gemstone set in the centre of a bright cross. Liv fixed on it, remembering everything she’d read about the place and all the blood that had been shed for the sake of the secret it contained.

Then the Lockheed banked unsteadily away, continuing its descent into Gaziantep Airport, and the Citadel slipped back into the night.

Kathryn Mann stood watching the flood of people pour through into the arrivals hall. Following the revelations in the stolen police file she’d figured the girl would come to Ruin as soon as possible to take possession of her brother’s body. She’d felt the same way twelve years ago when her husband had been killed. She still remembered the urgent need to be with him, even though she knew he was dead.

Given the time of the phone interview recorded in the file, a travel agent’s website had indicated that this was the first connecting flight the girl could have caught.

Freed from the customs hall, passengers raced for taxis or waiting relatives, or to be first in the queue to pay for their parking. Two flights had arrived at once, making it difficult to see anyone clearly as they emerged. Kathryn had memorized the girl’s face from the printout but also had a name card as back up. She was about to hold it up when she spotted a man behind the opposite rail, holding up an identical sign. LIV ADAMSEN was printed on it in magic marker.

Kathryn felt her scalp prickle.

She slipped her hand into her coat pocket and curled it round the grip of her pistol, watching him out of the corner of her eye. He could be police. It was possible there had been further contact that she did not yet know about.

He was fairly tall and bulky. A sandy beard covered what looked like scarring on his cheeks. There was something unsettling about the way he surveyed the crowd, like a bear eyeing salmon in a stream. He had an air of authority, and it was this above all that made Kathryn fearful. They wouldn’t send a ranking officer just to pick up a witness, especially not this late at night. He wasn’t police.

A woman emerged from the customs hall and was moving with the crush of people. She had dirty blonde hair that fell forward over her face. She was looking down at a holdall, searching for something. She looked the right height, the right age.

Kathryn glanced across at the man with the sign. He’d seen her too. The girl fished a mobile phone out of her bag and looked up. It wasn’t her. Kathryn’s fingers relaxed and emerged from her pocket. The man continued to stare intently at the girl, watching her drift closer. When she was just a few feet from him he held up his sign, his face breaking into a quizzical grin. She just looked straight through him and carried on past.

The grin vanished and he returned to his surveillance. Kathryn did the same. By the time the last passenger drifted out into the concourse it was clear the girl had not been on this particular flight and Kathryn had learned two other things. Her instincts had been correct; the Sancti had indeed sent people to intercept the girl. And for whatever reason, they had no idea what she looked like.

Chapter 46

It was not yet two in the morning when Liv cleared customs and emerged into the high-ceilinged and airy arrivals hall. Expressionist murals and hanging sculptures filled its cavernous space. She recognized some of the more dramatic moments of Ruin’s long and bloody past from her in-flight reading.

The energetic historical figures contrasted starkly with the real people shuffling about below them. There were a few sharp-suited business types, scrutinizing their laptops and BlackBerrys, but not many. Small herds of dead-eyed visitors trundled aimlessly across the marble floors while a couple of bored cops looked on, each with an automatic weapon slung over their shoulder.

Most of the tourist traffic heading to Ruin flew into the larger airport north of Gaziantep as it was closer to the ancient stronghold. Liv hadn’t considered any of this when booking her ticket; she’d just bought the first flight she thought she could catch. According to the guidebook there were still plenty of buses to the ancient city from the old airport, but at this time of the morning she figured she’d probably have to splash out on a cab just as soon as she’d got hold of some local cash.

As she scanned the place for a bureau de change she saw the tall, good-looking guy staring straight at her. She glanced past him at first, flustered by his direct gaze, then looked back. He was smiling at her now. She smiled back. Then he held up a card with her name written across it in magic marker.

‘Miss Adamsen?’ he asked, drifting closer.

She nodded, not quite sure what to make of him.

‘Arkadian sent me,’ he explained. His voice was deep. It sounded like it belonged to someone older. There was no trace of an accent in it.

‘American?’ Liv asked.

‘I studied there,’ he said, the smile remaining cool and steady. ‘But don’t be impressed. This is a tourist town, everyone speaks English here.’

She nodded as one mystery was solved, then frowned again as another presented itself.

‘How did you know which plane — ?’

‘I didn’t,’ he cut in. ‘I’ve met the last few international flights on the off chance you’d be on one of them.’ He sounded pretty cheerful for a guy who’d been up half the night staking out an airport.

‘First one I could get. .’ she said, feeling bad he’d been landed such a crappy detail.

‘It’s not a problem.’ He pointed at the crumpled holdall dangling from her hand. ‘That your luggage?’

‘Yeah; but don’t worry, I got it.’ She hoisted it on to her shoulder and began following him across the shiny marble floor.

You sure don’t get this kind of service in Jersey City, Liv thought as she fixed her eyes on the broad back cutting a swathe through the bovine knots of tourists. His long black trench coat billowed out behind him as he breezed along, giving him an air of dashing chivalry very much in keeping with the murals.

She slipped into a slowly moving revolving door. In the confined space she found herself standing close enough to be enveloped by his scent. Clean, astringent, with hints of leather and citrus and something ancient and comforting — incense maybe. Most of the cops she knew generally considered Old Spice the height of sophistication. She glanced up. He was taller than she’d thought, and handsome in a traditional, tall, dark kind of way — his eyes blue and icy, though his hair wasn’t black, as she had first thought, but very dark brown. He was exactly the sort of man mothers warned their daughters about and fortune-tellers found lurking in crystal balls if you