the rest of the message with a growing sense of dread.
Lest the Key shalt perish, the Earth shalt splinter and a blight shalt prosper, marking the end of all days
She wondered at the sickness that seemed to have struck the Sancti. Could this be the blight that was mentioned? In the chaos of the ER when she had first arrived at the hospital she had glimpsed what it had done to the monks — the blackened skin, the blood-red eyes, the bleeding. If that spread out into the world it would be like the darkest vision from the Book of Revelation, turning all men into the image of demons. She looked at the blank page, restless with a desire to know what else was written there. It would be a whole day before the sun swung round again and shone back through her window, a day she could not afford to lose. She felt the weight of what she had just learned and the frustration of knowing that it was locked in this room with her, with the clock already ticking.
Ten days gone.
Eighteen remaining.
22
The lift door opened and Liv experienced a surge of panic. After days locked up in virtual isolation the noise and volume of people milling around the reception area was overwhelming. She had found a baseball cap in her bag and pulled it over her head now to hide her face a little, then forced herself out of the lift and across the worn mosaic floor towards the reception desk. She scanned the signs crowding the walls, seeking one that might offer a clue, but they were all in Turkish.
‘Patients’ property?’ she asked the receptionist.
A taloned finger pointed to a door by the entrance. She headed over, glancing outside as she passed the main door. It had been raining and the low afternoon sun shone off the wet pavement. A news truck was parked on the opposite side of the street, a cameraman and a reporter sitting in the cab smoking and talking while they waited for something to happen. She didn’t want to be ambushed leaving the building and end up on the evening news again. She needed to stay under the radar — for the time being at least. There had to be another way out of here.
The patients’ property office was tucked away in a dark cupboard with stacks of paperwork rising up from every horizontal surface and teetering precariously along the length of a narrow counter that cut the room in half. A young and bored-looking man sat behind it, steadily working his way through a large pile of folders with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man. Liv showed him the plastic tag around her wrist with her name and admissions number on it and he hefted a pile of folders under his arm and sloped off into the dark valley of shelves that stretched away behind him. Liv glanced at the door, listening to the muted sounds of the reception area beyond, ready to make a run for it at the first sign of marching boots. Her escape had been easier than she had expected. She had thought either the cop or the priest would have done more to stop her, but the surprise of her departure had clearly caught them both off guard. That didn’t mean she was free and clear though. They would undoubtedly both have been straight on the phone to their superiors and might be looking to detain her again even now. She needed to be cautious.
The clerk returned from the dim archives carrying a cardboard container. She signed for it and pulled the lid off, recoiling at the sight of the clear plastic bag stuffed with her old bloodstained clothes.
‘Rubbish over in corner.’ The clerk pointed to a large portable waste bin with a yellow plastic sack bulging beneath it. Liv carried her box over and lifted the lid with her free hand. Inside were five or six other bags containing similarly blood-ruined clothing. She wondered why the hospital didn’t just bin the stuff themselves. Then saw the disclaimer on the underside of the lid and understood. It was an insurance thing. It said if you threw away anything of value it was officially your fault. She added her bag of dried gore to the others and let the lid bang shut.
The only other thing left in the box was a creased white envelope containing some pieces of folded paper and a few hundred Turkish lira. She had no idea whether that meant she was rich or if it was merely enough to buy a cup of coffee. Either way, it was better than nothing. She stuffed the envelope into her holdall and left the box on the countertop. ‘Thanks,’ she said, fastening her bag and preparing herself for the outside world. The clerk said nothing, merely carried on rolling his boulder of paper uphill for all eternity.
Liv opened the door and scanned the people milling about in the reception area. The main entrance was out because of the news crew camped in front of it. Right now she needed to remain low key and draw minimal attention to herself. There had to be another exit. She locked on to a couple of guys in hospital greens walking away from her. There was something about their body language that caught her attention. It was relaxed, unhurried. One of them reached up to his breast pocket and she saw the telltale rectangle straining against the green material. She knew then, with the finely tuned instincts of a reformed smoker, that they were heading for a cigarette break. And, unless there was a smokers’ room somewhere in the hospital, that meant they were heading outside.
She fell in line behind them as they passed through a set of double doors into a shabby corridor, matching her steps with theirs so they wouldn’t hear her, but they were too preoccupied to notice the petite blonde woman following them. They reached a fire exit at the end of the corridor and leaned against the locking bar to open it, already fitting cigarettes into their mouths. Liv skipped along to catch up and slipped through the door after them. ‘Hi!’ she said, looking down an alley to where the main street was visible.
‘Main entrance that way,’ one of them grunted, pointing back down the corridor.
‘I can get out this way though, yes?’ Liv was already marching away towards the street. She didn’t wait for a reply.
The alley opened up on to a wide street with two lanes of traffic all heading in the same direction. She walked against the flow, squinting against the glare and looking for a cab. At least the rain had stopped; cabs were always harder to come by when it was raining. She saw an empty one, waved it down and slid gratefully into the back seat.
‘ Nereye? ’ the driver asked.
‘Airport,’ she said, buckling herself in.
‘Which one?’ He switched to English with the ease of someone who made his living in a tourist town.
‘The busiest,’ she said, sliding low in the seat. ‘Whichever has the most flights out of here.’
23
Ortus Offices, Garden District, Ruin
Ajda Demir squinted out of the fourth-floor window at the bright evening, holding her hand up against the reflected glare from the wet streets. The movement reflected in the glass, drawing her attention to the transparent version of herself hovering like a spectre in front of her. The story of the past week was written on her face: dark circles under her eyes, her forehead creased with worry, silver hair escaping from the usually immaculate confines of her scraped-back bun. She reached up and carefully smoothed it down, as if this small act could somehow return everything to order.
Turning from the ghost of herself, she surveyed the chaos that had been brought into her ordered world. The room she was in resembled a small classroom, with strip lights overhead and desks in lines that usually housed a mixture of fundraisers and aid workers who quietly ran one of the charity’s larger projects based in central Sudan. Following the explosion at the Citadel, however, all that had stopped. Ortus accounts had been frozen worldwide pending a full enquiry into why the head of the charity had taken a truckful of fertilizer, donated in good faith by a large, well-respected conglomerate, and used it to try to blow up the world’s oldest and most sacred monastery. For the past week a team of investigators had been camped out here, checking through the company accounts and records, searching for proof that the charity was a cover for a church-hating terrorist organization. They had found nothing, of course, but it didn’t matter. The PR fallout had been immense. As well as fielding press calls and fending off reporters, Ajda had been busy compiling a steadily growing list of the various companies and funding bodies who were severing their ties with the charity. The towering heap of boxes before her, all of which needed re-sorting and filing away, was a physical manifestation of the huge mess the organization was now in.
But it wasn’t the extra work that was making her soul heavy. It was the invisible cost, the unquantifiable
