ground and smelt it. Only there was no gold mine.
He started cross-checking each company’s tax returns for anything that looked profitable enough to explain the Church’s sudden change of fortunes. Again there was nothing. After over an hour of searching, the only company he had highlighted as a potential candidate was an oil exploration company.
On paper it was wrong. It was running at a huge loss and was drilling in an area that had been tested before and come up dry. But, of all the companies listed, it was the only one that might legitimately dig around to see what it could find, and — most crucially — it was in the right place. The registered head office of Dragonfields SPA was in Vatican City, but they had office space in Baghdad and a compound operating under licence in the Syrian Desert. The licence gave co-ordinates marking out the broad patch of wilderness that was now theirs for the plundering.
He clicked on Google Earth, input the co-ordinates and within a minute found himself staring down on a brown patch of nothingness. He zoomed out until he picked up a road then scrolled eastwards along it until he finally found a sprawling grid of buildings the same colour as the earth. The image settled and Arkadian almost punched the air when the name of the other place popped up on the map. It was Al-Hillah.
99
Liv and Gabriel found the site where John Mann had died just as the moon rose above the horizon and the wind picked up. It was about ten kilometres outside Al-Hillah, past the huge mounds of bricks that were all that remained of the ancient city of Babylon.
An American garrison was stationed there now, camped in the shadow of the once great walls in lines of temporary tents surrounding a section of ground that had once seen the triumphal procession of King Nebuchadnezzar and more recently been bulldozed flat to accommodate squadrons of Apache and Cobra helicopters. The ground crew were busily anchoring the aircraft to the deck with securing cables as they drove by, wrapping the engine cowls with heavy-duty covers against the worsening weather. Gabriel took note but said nothing. It didn’t matter how bad the weather got, they had no choice but to press on.
A few kilometres further along the main road they had found a goat track running north into the desert and followed it until the read-out on the jeep’s sat-nav told Gabriel he had finally arrived at the coordinates where his father’s life had ended. He had memorized them twelve years ago, always knowing that he would end up here one day, often running through them in his head like a mantra or a spell to keep his father’s memory alive.
He switched off the engine and stepped outside, surveying the flattened dish of desert. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t this. There were no graves to mark the site, no structures remaining to show there had ever been anything here other than rock and dust.
He’d often wondered how he would feel when he eventually got here. He had thought that coming here might make sense of the anger and abandonment he’d felt for most of his adult life. But standing here now he felt nothing. If anything, it served to emphasize how powerless he was against the merciless flow of the universe. His father had died out here and Gabriel had not been there to save him; now he was here with someone else who needed saving and he had no idea how to do that either.
Hearing the sound of the jeep door opening behind him, he turned away so Liv would not see the tears brimming in his eyes. He didn’t want her to show him any pity when he deserved none. He had failed once and was failing again.
But instead of joining him, she walked away, up the bank of the wadi towards a spot on the horizon, her eyes looking up towards the stars.
‘Liv?’ he called out, but she didn’t answer. She kept walking, her gaze fixed on the sky. ‘Liv!’ He moved across the sand and stepped in front of her, grabbing her shoulders to snap her out of her trance.
She blinked and looked at him as if she had just been shaken awake.
‘Where are you going?’
She pointed up at a snaking line of stars hanging low in the sky. ‘The dragon,’ she said. ‘I was following the dragon.’
Gabriel followed the line of her extended arm, recognizing the constellation she was pointing at. She was right — it was Draco, the dragon. The dragon was everywhere, it seemed: in the prophecy, in the madman’s account of how his father was killed — and now even in the sky.
‘Let’s get back to the jeep,’ he said, aware of how cold it was getting and how she was starting to tremble. ‘We can follow the dragon in that. It will be quicker.’
‘That way,’ she said, pointing back up at the sky.
‘Whichever way you want,’ he said, steering her back to the car. He was losing her, he could feel it. Things predicted in the prophecy were coming to pass.
As he helped her into the passenger seat he heard a sound like a bird cheeping in the night. Gabriel climbed back in behind the wheel, slamming the door against the night wind. The noise had been his phone and he checked the caller ID before answering. It was Arkadian.
‘I think I’ve found something,’ he said before Gabriel even had a chance to speak. The detective revealed what he had discovered about the oil operation called Dragonfields, then supplied map coordinates. Gabriel fed the information directly into the sat-nav and set it to calculate a route.
Another dragon, Gabriel thought. Coincidence or destiny?
When the sat-nav finished its calculations, it answered the question for him. An arrow on the screen showed the direction the coordinates lay in, pointing in the exact direction Liv had been walking.
The oil operation was less than thirty kilometres away, somewhere in the wastelands of the Syrian Desert, following the constellation of the Dragon.
100
Athanasius had always hated the dark. When he had given his life to God and first entered the Citadel it had never occurred to him that he was also consigning himself to a life of darkness. The tunnels had been vastly improved during his time there, with electric lighting now used throughout most of the mountain, but the forbidden upper sections he now stumbled through had changed little in hundreds of years. In his haste to get here he had not brought a torch and was having to use the glow from the phone screen to guide him. It struck him as apt in many ways that the bright photograph of the prophecy was lighting his path towards the one man trying to thwart it.
He reached the upper section breathless and perspiring and held the screen to his chest to cut out the light. For a moment his eyes were blind, but as they slowly adjusted he could see a glow ahead of him. It was coming from one of the smaller tunnels to his left, not the one leading to the chapel of the Sacrament as he had expected. He followed the telltale light, keeping his own covered and feeling his way along the wall until he came to a forgotten, dusty corridor dotted with piles of rubble that showed how poorly it had been maintained. The glow was coming from a partially open door halfway along it. There was also a breeze, sweet-smelling after the trapped air of the stairwell, and it drew him towards the door.
The source of the glow was a flambeau that had been slotted into a niche in the wall. It guttered in the night breeze that flowed through a loophole cut in the outer wall. In his mind, Athanasius had imagined he was at the heart of the mountain. It had not occurred to him that the higher he climbed, the narrower the mountain became and the closer to its edge he would be.
Dragan was standing by the opening with his back to the door. At first Athanasius thought he must be praying, but then he turned and he saw the phone clutched in the black, leathery grip of his hand.
‘What are you doing?’ Athanasius asked, realizing from his own experience the significance of his position by the open window.
Dragan snarled, his spare hand reaching for the wooden T-shaped crux in his belt. He pulled it clear, revealing the ceremonial dagger inside and lunged at him. Athanasius spun away, grabbing the burning torch from the wall and holding it out in front of him to keep him back. Dragan regained his footing and kicked the door shut,
