thought back to the woman who had been evacuated from the Citadel. He had seen her image on the news, even glimpsed her himself when they had first been admitted to hospital. Her hair was blonde too, the same colour and length as the strand he now held in his hand. She must have been here, inside the chapel. And she was a woman, a sacred vessel with the power to carry living things inside her.
Dragan turned and left the chapel with a renewed sense of purpose. He moved swiftly along the tunnel towards the top of the stairs then turned right into one of the ancillary passageways. A set of narrower steps carried him down a few levels to one of the deserted sections of the mountain where a series of abandoned cells fed off from the main tunnel. He entered the first door and saw what he was looking for, carved into the wall opposite. It was a loophole, a narrow window cut into the rock of the outer wall of the mountain; beyond it was a clear uninterrupted view of the sprawling city of Ruin.
He hurried over, reaching into the pocket of his cassock to pull out the mobile phone he had taken from the dead priest. Ordinarily, entrance by the Ascension Cave involved each new arrival stripping naked; a symbolic rebirth, but also a practical measure to ensure nothing from the outside world could be smuggled into the mountain. In the unusual circumstances of his own re-entry these customs had been ignored and the phone had remained undetected in his pocket.
He turned it on and the display lit up. As he had hoped, his elevated position and clear view provided him with a full-strength signal. His stiff black fingers moved over the keys as he navigated his way through the menu until he found the caller logs. There was only one number listed, with several calls in and out over the last few days. Text messages had also been received from the same number. He read through them, smiling as he came across the one that had ordered his own death. He selected the number it had come from and pressed the call-back button.
As he looked out over Ruin, waiting for the phone to connect, it struck him that he was standing in the same cell Brother Samuel had been taken to after he had failed his initiation. This was where he had escaped from and started the chain reaction that had led the Citadel to its current crisis. How sweetly ironic it would be if his sister’s return completed the circle and put things back as they were. She must have carried the Sacrament out of the mountain. Only she could bring it back again.
The phone rang.
Dragan waited.
Then, just as God had ordained it, someone picked up.
63
Vatican City
Clementi had been pacing in his office, waiting for confirmation of his earlier order, when the phone rang in his pocket. He stubbed out his cigarette and answered it. ‘You have news?’
‘Yes.’ The voice was thickly accented and unfamiliar. ‘I have news from beyond the grave.’
Clementi said nothing, fearing a trap.
‘Don’t worry,’ the voice continued, ‘I am not angry that you ordered me killed. I understand better than most the need for these rules of absolute secrecy. I am only surprised you did not try it sooner. Unfortunately, the priest you sent did not manage to bring death to me, rather the other way round. By God’s grace I am now back where I belong, inside the Citadel.’
He sounded Slavic. The personnel records Clementi had read indicated that the last Sanctus was a Serbian monk. It could be him, but he needed to be sure. He moved over to his desk and opened the top drawer where he kept the files relating to the crisis in Ruin. ‘Tell me your name,’ he said.
‘I am Dragan Ruja. Born in the city of Banja Luka on the twenty-fourth of October 1964. I entered the Citadel in 1995 following the death of my family during the Bosnian War.’
It was him. No question. The facts checked out. ‘I am glad you have found your way home safely,’ Clementi said, a slight shudder running through him as he realized he was talking to someone actually inside the Citadel.
‘Thank you for your concern. However I have returned here only to discover there has been a theft. Tell me, do you know where Liv Adamsen is?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. I presume you have issued a similar silencing order regarding her.’
Clementi didn’t reply.
‘You must cancel it immediately. She is not to be killed. She is to be brought here to the Citadel as quickly as possible. She is to be brought here alive.’
‘I’m not sure that will be possible.’
‘This is not a request, this is an order. You are familiar with the Constantinian decree of 374, ceding the Church’s power to Rome?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then you know that the Prelate of Ruin remains de facto head of the Church, even though the Pope is its public and temporal figurehead.’
Clementi swallowed drily. If he’d had any doubts as to the identity of the man he was speaking to they had now been entirely banished. Only the most senior clerics in the Vatican and the governing elect of the Citadel knew these secret edicts.
‘I will do all I can,’ Clementi said, ‘but the field agent is close to his target and I may not be able to contact him in time. There is a very real chance that the girl may already be dead.’
There was a pause on the line and Clementi could sense the anger in it. ‘I hope for your sake that she is not,’ the Sanctus replied. Then the line went dead.
64
Newark, New Jersey
Liv woke gently from sleep.
Outside she could hear the low-level hiss and rumble of traffic on the street. Light filtered softly through the curtains showing it was still day, although she had no idea what time it was. She might have been asleep for a few minutes, a few hours or even a few days. She blinked and peered around the plain hotel room. Her laptop was where she’d left it, folded down and switched off; her jacket was draped over the back of the chair; the Gideon Bible lay open on the bed where it had slipped from her hand — nothing was out of place, yet something was different. It took her a long few moments to realize what it was. For the first time in weeks she hadn’t had the nightmare. She had woken up, gently and unterrified, like any normal person. There was no whispering in her ears, no vision of T-shaped crosses or things terrible and unseen moving in the darkness.
All was quiet.
All was calm.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling the tension in her shoulders melt away. She felt relaxed — at peace.
Then a loud knock split the silence like a gunshot.
Liv sat bolt upright in bed and stared at the door, running through the short list of people who knew she was here: Gabriel; Ski; Dr Anata. No one else.
The chances were it was Ski, checking up on her, but she was reluctant to call out and confirm her presence in the room until she knew who was there.
Another knock made her jump, loud and emphatic, still no identifying voice. Even room service would have announced themselves by now.
She slipped quietly from the bed, wrapping the discarded bathrobe round her as she ran through her options. There was nowhere to hide in the tiny room, nothing she could see that could be used as a weapon. Her room was
