Sanctus

Gabriel stood up and stretched, his lithe body preparing once again for action as his mind began calculating logistics. ‘They weren’t mentioned in the case file, so the Citadel might not know about them yet. Gives us a head start at least.’ He stalked over to the window and stared across the low-stacked crates towards the warehouse door. ‘They’ll either be in the evidence lockers or most probably the labs. That’s a bit of a problem. Security is bound to be much tighter following what happened at the morgue.’

‘I could get them,’ Liv said. ‘I could call Arkadian. Tell him I think I’ve worked out what the letters mean, but that I need to see the seeds they’re written on. Then, when I get them, I’ll drop them on the floor or distract him somehow and take one, or swap it for another.’ She looked up at Gabriel. ‘You only need one, don’t you?’

Gabriel stared at her for a moment, his face a mixture of concentration and concern. Then it softened into a smile.

‘Yes,’ Oscar answered for him. ‘We only need one. You must become our Eve and grasp the forbidden fruit. And if these seeds prove to be something extraordinary, just imagine what good we could do with them.’

Liv’s mind raced with the incredible implications of what he had just said and a worrying thought struck her. ‘But if these seeds are really from the fruit of the. .’ she could hardly bring herself to say it ‘. . from the tree of knowledge,’ she managed. ‘Then surely messing with them will be. . a really bad idea.’

Oscar continued to look at her, his widening smile refusing to die in the face of her concern. ‘Why?’

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Look what happened last time.’

‘You mean the fall of man? Original sin? Being cast out of the garden of Eden to live a life of perpetual pain and hardship?’

Liv nodded. ‘That kind of thing, yeah.’

Oscar’s smile turned into a dry chuckle.

‘And where did you read all that?’ he asked.

Liv thought it through and realized what he meant. Of course. She’d read it in the Bible, something written by the men of the mountain, a transcription of source material no one else had ever seen. What better way to stop people seeking knowledge of something than to scare them away from it? Give them an official version of divine teachings, starting with the most terrible tale where eating fruit from a forbidden tree leads mankind to damnation.

‘We know there is something in the Citadel,’ Oscar continued. ‘Something — supernatural. Something so strong that even those outside the mountain can feel its healing power. No wonder the monks have guarded it for so long. Being so close must be intoxicating. Must make them feel more like gods than men. But imagine if that pure life force could be freed from the mountain and spread throughout the world. Imagine no longer needing to pour tons of fertilizer into the dry earth,’ he said, gesturing through the office window to the stacks of crates filling the warehouse. ‘Just one seed, planted and tended, could make whole areas as fertile as the shadowy garden at the centre of the Citadel. Deserts could become gardens. Wastelands might become forests. Our slowly dying earth could be reborn.’

Liv sat stunned in her seat. This was something her brother would have staked his life on. He’d told her the last time they’d met how he thought he’d been spared for a reason. Maybe he had died just to get those five seeds to her. She owed it to him to find out if they were worth it. She slipped her hand into her pocket, searching for her mobile, then remembered where she’d left it. ‘Arkadian’s number was on my phone,’ she said, looking up at Gabriel and discovering he was still gazing at her.

He smiled a half-shrugged smile, and Liv felt the blush rising again and turned away.

‘His details are at the end of the case file,’ Kathryn said, leaning over the desk to open up the relevant document. Liv scanned the office, looking for a phone. Her eyes passed over the TV screen and she froze as she saw the picture of a smiling man hovering behind the shoulder of the newsreader. ‘Hey,’ she said, her voice a mixture of surprise and concern. ‘I know that guy.’

Then every eye turned and looked at the smiling face of Rawls Baker.

Chapter 109

By the time Athanasius reached the Chamber of Philosophy he had stopped running. The moment he entered he saw a dim glow to his left and stopped.

He stared for a moment at the faint light sketching the outline of a bookshelf, then moved quickly and silently toward it. He reached the edge, took a deep breath and peered round.

For a moment he could not make out who stood at the centre of the bright circle of light, so accustomed were his eyes to the dark; then — as his eyes adjusted and penetrated the glare — he saw with relief who it was.

Father Thomas stood halfway down the row next to Ponti, who was hunched over a reading desk deep with abandoned books, his cart parked beside him full of dusters and brushes, carrying on his work, oblivious to the unaccustomed light he was currently bathed in.

Athanasius moved down the row of shelves towards them, clearing his throat as he went. ‘Brother Ponti! Father Thomas!’ he said in a voice that seemed unnaturally loud after his long enforced silence. ‘I thought I heard something.’

Ponti looked up, staring straight through him with his blank, white eyes. Thomas glanced across and smiled, the relief of seeing his friend lighting up his face.

In the control room by the main entrance two dots converged on a computer screen and the program invisibly transposed their identities then deleted itself.

‘There’s a security drill underway,’ Thomas said matter-of-factly. He watched Athanasius quietly withdraw four sheets of folded paper from his sleeve. ‘We should probably make our way to the exit, don’t you think?’

‘You two go ahead,’ Ponti replied. ‘They don’t even spot me half the time. I’ll move on if somebody makes me. Elsewise I’ll just carry on with my work.’

Athanasius picked up the largest of the open books on the reading desk, placed the folded sheets of paper inside and gently closed it. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Then we won’t mention we saw you.’ They turned to walk away, dragging the light with them as they went.

‘Much appreciated, Brother. Much appreciated,’ came the caretaker’s dry voice as his spectral form melted back into the darkness.

Athanasius glanced down at the cover of the book. It was a copy of Also Sprach Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, printed in the original German and now containing wax rubbings of most of the contents of the Heretic Bible. The temptation to open it and look at the pages now he had his light back was almost too much to resist. But it was too risky. The guard might return with Father Malachi at any moment. It was best to wait until the alarm was over and the library was re-opened. Then he could read it at his leisure.

Thomas walked on ahead as agreed, heading for the entrance alone so they would not be seen emerging from the depths of the library together. Athanasius held back, scanning the shelves, looking for somewhere to hide the book. He daren’t risk whoever had been studying Nietszche to return and discover what it now contained. He reached the end of the row and saw a wall of identical books completely filling a low shelf. He lowered his head and looked over the top. There was a gap between them and the back of the shelf. He quickly slid the volume of Nietzsche over them and down into the gap, then leaned back, straightened the volumes on the shelf and read one of the spines. It was the complete works of Soren Kierkegaard. Nietzsche had been totally obscured by his Danish counterpart.

Satisfied, he stood back up and headed to the exit, cocooned in the darkness by his rapidly brightening circle of light.

Chapter 110

The vehicle pulled to a stop just short of the barrier and level with the guardhouse window. The guard looked